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Hayley Cotter, Honors Discovery Seminar instructor in Commonwealth Honors College, has solved a nearly 400-year-old bibliographical mystery, a discovery that was recently published in the journal “Quærendo.”

In 1635, English lawyer and scholar John Selden published a legal treatise on the principle of closed seas. “Mare clausum” (“The Closed Sea”), which became an instant bestseller, argued that England enjoyed the right to police its generously defined territorial waters. One central issue involved fishing; every June, approximately 600 Dutch herring busses—fishing vessels—arrived near the Shetland Isles and spent the summer fishing down the coast of England. Selden’s treatise argued that England enjoyed the right to police and tax these Dutch busses.

Given its potential impact on international law, “Mare clausum” stirred considerable international interest. Unsurprisingly, the Dutch were particularly concerned, as the treatise challenged their fishing practices in English territorial waters. Three Dutch booksellers produced unauthorized editions of the book in early 1636. These unauthorized copies were secretly exported to England, arousing the ire of King Charles I, who issued two royal proclamations forbidding the import, purchase, sale and printing of any foreign edition of “Mare clausum.” Two of the Dutch printers who pirated the treatise were identified immediately: the Maires and the Elzeviers, publishing houses located in Leiden. But the identity of the third printer, who did not name himself on the book’s title page, has eluded historians of the book for nearly 400 years.

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Cotter began her search for this third publisher by focusing on books printed in Amsterdam between 1628-36, because previous research revealed that the unidentified printer most likely worked in the city. She examined decorations in the books, such as initial letters and ornaments at the end of blocks of text, and compared them to those found in the copy of “Mare clausum” in question. This investigation revealed that the book was almost certainly printed by Jan Jansson (Johannes Janssonius), a prominent Dutch printer and cartographer active in Amsterdam during the first half of the 17^th century.

Cotter says that the discovery is significant for a number of reasons.

“Jan Jansson is well-known among scholars of the period as a major mapmaker, and unsurprisingly, he copied the maps of the original London edition of ‘Mare clausum,’” she says. “And not only did he copy them, but he changed them in politically charged ways. For example, in his map of the British Isles, he depicted a group of herring busses near the Shetland Isles, protected by a Dutch naval vessel. This alteration shows a remarkable willingness to promote Dutch national interests, although in a covert, cartographic way.”

Cotter, who is currently writing her second book on print culture and early modern maritime law at the Newberry Library in Chicago, believes that this discovery will open new avenues of research concerning maps in legal texts.

“Legal scholars have long overlooked the importance of the maps in ‘Mare clausum,’” she says. “By identifying Jansson as the cartographer responsible for the maps in this unauthorized edition, scholars can now contextualize them in more sophisticated ways.”