Le rôle des traités internationaux en France dans la criminalisation de la violence sur les mers du Ponant (fin XIIIe – début XVIe siècle)

Abstract

French sovereign law remained uncertain for a long time about offences committed at sea. Neither doctrine nor jurisprudence succeeded in qualifying some maritime facts, which explains, for example, why the Valois ordinances failed to establish the crime of piracy until the end of the Middle Ages. However, despite the rise in the stigmatisation of these acts in the context of the expansion of the shores and conflicts with England, the historian notes that there were decades of legal hesitation which only faded in the second half of the 15th century. At the end, if sovereign acts criminalised acts committed at sea, it went through out a modality of treaties initiated by the kings with the neighbouring crowns of Castile, Portugal and England.