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high seas, in maritime law, all parts of the mass of saltwater surrounding the globe that are not part of the territorial sea or internal waters of a state. For several centuries begin- ring in the Middle Ages, a number of maritime states asserted sovereignty over large portions of the high seas. Well-known examples were the claims of Genoa in the Adriatic and of Great Britain in the North Sea and elsewhere.
The doctrine that the high seas in time of peace are open to all nations and may not be subjected to national sovereignty (freedom of the seas) was proposed by a Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius, as early as 1609 in his De Jure Praedae (“On the Law of Prize and Booty”). It did not become an accepted principle of international law, however, until the 19th century. Ideologically connected with other 19th- century freedoms, particularly laissez-faire economic theory, freedom of the seas was vigorously pressed by the great maritime and commercial powers, especially Great Britain, and is presently recognized to include freedom of navigation, fishing, the laying of submarine cables and pipelines, and overflight of aircraft.
By the second half of the 20th century, demands by some coastal states for increased security and customs zones, for exclusive offshore fishing rights, for conservation of maritime resources, and for exploitation of resources, especially oil, found in continental shelves caused serious conflicts. A United Nations conference of 86 nations at Geneva in 1958 sought to codify the law of the high seas but was unable to resolve many outstanding issues, notably the maximum permissible
breadth of the territorial sea subject to national sovereignty. Another conference in Geneva in 1960 and one in Caracas, Venez., in 1974 also failed to resolve this point.
