Terra Nullius

By Deane Barker • • tags: latin, idiom •

This is Latin for “no mans land.” It’s a concept in international relations that refers to physical land that no nation claims. It can be claimed by occupation (though that might violate other laws).

The only major area of unclaimed land on Earth is Antarctica.

There are, at any given time, several smaller areas of terra nullius, generally caused due to border disputes (where claiming land would require acknowledging an undesirable border).

Why I Looked It Up

It came up in The Deepest Map when discussing how China was creating new islands in the South China Sea by dumping sand on the seafloor until it broke through the surface, enabling them to claim that “land” and the surrounding ocean.

Accretion is another time-honored tactic for claimining land by stealing it from the seafloor – the new terra nullius.

Links from this – The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World's Oceans March 13, 2024
This is the story of the floor of the ocean, and all our attempts to map it. Turns out, we know nothing relatively little about it. The framework of the book is that the author got to travel on the Five Deeps expedition. This was a project of adventurer Victor Vescovo to travel to the deepest...