Cabotage

A nautical term from the Spanish, denoting strictly navigation from cape to cape along the coast without going out into the open sea. In International Law, cabotage is identified with coasting-trade so that it means navigating and trading along the coast between the ports thereof. In construing tbis term in commercial treaties and International Law no consideration need be given to the fact that municipal laws sometimes attach a meaning absolutely different from that it has or can have in International Law. It is the universally recognized law of nations that every littoral state can exclude foreign merchantmen from the cabotage within the maritime belt, just as it can exclude foreigners from the fisheries therein. In commercial treaties the meaning of cabotage has been stretched so as to exclude "sea-trade between any two ports of the same country, whether on the same coast or different coasts (cabotage petit or grand cabotage), provided always that the different coasts are all of them the coasts of the same country as a political and geographical unit." Thus Russia excludes foreigners from trade between Russian ports and Vladivostok. The United States makes a further extension of the word so as to exclude trade between ports of the United States proper and ports in the Philippines, Porto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands.