Corridors of Trade and Halls of Justice: Law, Coercion, and Loyalty in the Río de la Plata Borderlands

My paper explores the development of property rights along the networks of commercial exchange that crisscrossed the porous frontier between Rio Grande do Sul and Uruguay during the middle of the nineteenth century.  Taking river trade connections as a point of departure, the first part of the essay examines the various solutions to the problem of defining law in the absence of a single sovereign.  It argues that merchants and landowners utilized common institutions such as public notaries to project local rights and legal remedies across international commercial space.  The second part then argues shifting definitions of law and coercion were critical in defining property rights in the frontier environment.