But anyway, Lauren Benton's "A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900" is terribly interesting, and though I won't have time to finish it now, I really hope I can sometime soon!
Although empires did lay claim to vast stretches of territory, the nature of such claims was tempered by control that was exercised mainly over narrow bands, or corridors, and over enclaves and irregular zones abound them.
Maritime empires represented this pattern most clearly, with their networks of sea lanes connecting dispersed settlements or trading posts. But territorial expansion in Europe also occurred through the creation and protection of corridors and enclaves. The pattern extended to overseas reconnaissance, influenced settlement strategies, and helped shape systems of colonial rule. Imagining and enlarging empire sometimes appeared synonymous with efforts to gather information about corridors of control, including mapping and describing ocean passages, river networks, merchant roads, and other travel routes. Enclaves such as missions, trading posts, towns, and garrisons were strung like beads along interconnected corridors. These imperial outposts coexisted with other kinds of enclaves, including areas of partial or shared sovereignty within larger spheres of influence or rule. Such zones might form when peoples or polities fended off formal conquest, bargained for a measure of autonomy, or courted rival imperial sponsors for protection. Colonial powers found reasons to create semiautonomous spaces that were legally and politically differentiated from more closely controlled colonial territories. Together these patterns and practices produced political geographies that were uneven, disaggregated, and oddly shaped - and not at all consistent with the image produced by monochrome shading of imperial maps.
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