John Selden,
Mare Clausum, seu de Dominio Maris
(Leiden: John and Theodore Maire, 1636).

John Selden (1584-1654) was the greatest English antiquarian, linguist, and legal historian of his age. Mare Clausum ("Closed Sea") was his famous response to Hugo Grotius's Mare Liberum ("Open Sea"), in which Selden argued that seas could be rightfully controlled by sovereign powers. In an age of humanism and reform, historical texts gained new authority in debates over contemporary norms. Selden thus made his case with reference to ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic sources. Only recently available in metal type, Arabic was printed in the Leiden edition of Selden's De Diis Syriis (1629) and again in this work. Although first published in London in 1635, Mare Clausum saw more immediate editions and a willing (if disagreeing) audience in Leiden and the Dutch Republic.

Our 1636 copy of Mare Clausum also gains interest as a historical witness, which can be seen in the first image below. Owned by the Protestant church in Rouen (see handwriting at bottom, underlined), it was confiscated following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by officials of Louis XIV (underlined at top right: "by gift of Louis the Great"), and donated to the Jesuit order of Rouen (see near middle).