The New Arctic Map. Who Owns the Seabed, the Straits, and the Shortcuts - Saoirse Kelleghan

The Arctic has always been mapped as a frontier, but in the twenty-first century, it is being mapped as an argument. As ice conditions shift and ships, sensors, and survey vessels reach farther north, states compete to turn cold water and submerged geology into recognised rights and enforceable routines. Yet the region resists simple conquest: the seabed can be claimed without controlling the surface above it, and a passage can be regulated without ever being formally "owned". The result is a new kind of geopolitical contest, fought through dossiers, charts, patrol schedules, and administrative systems as much as through diplomacy.

The New Arctic Map explains how Arctic disputes actually work when you follow the mechanics. It traces the legal architecture of the law of the sea, the scientific labour behind continental shelf claims, and the evidentiary standards that make some arguments persuasive and others fragile. It then shows how control over routes depends on Arctic straits governance: the slow accumulation of practice, the choice of regulations, and the ability to monitor and respond. Throughout, the book links maps to capacity, explaining why hydrographic data, surveillance, and dual-use infrastructure can quietly harden positions even when formal boundaries remain unsettled.

Written for general readers, students, and policy and security audiences, this book offers a clear framework for evaluating what "ownership" means in the far north, and what it cannot mean. Readers will come away able to distinguish sovereignty from seabed rights, entitlement from delimitation, and rhetoric from enforceable authority. Above all, it reframes the Arctic not as a blank space being filled in, but as a layered jurisdictional landscape where legitimacy is built through proof, institutions, and the practical limits of operating at the edge of the inhabitable world.