Abstrakt
This chapter focuses on the relation between space and law. As within the modern jurisprudence, this relation is usually regarded from the standpoint of national jurisdiction, it suggests tracing the modern legal spatiality rather as a diasporic distribution of legal institutions through communities of merchants operating between regional societies, rather as "local knowledge" fragmented among state legal systems.
It proposes a spatial re-contextualization of the traditionally "national" legal histories that describe legal development within borders indicated by the current or former territorial situation of nation states as well as law and colonial history based usually on the dichotomy between metropolis and colony, into a broader network of actors.