Definition
A Latin phrase meaning, literally, "to give the right hands." In legal usage, it carries two distinct meanings:
1. To shake hands in token of friendship, peace, or good faith — a formal gesture of reconciliation or pledge between parties.
2. To surrender oneself into the power or custody of another person — an act of submission with legal significance, particularly in contexts of truce, capitulation, or formal yielding of authority.
The phrase also appears in the context of Italian maritime law, where it describes a contract — known as di colonna — entered into among a ship's owner, captain, and mariners, by which all parties agree to share in the proceeds of a voyage rather than receive fixed wages. The New England whaling industry historically operated under substantially similar arrangements.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No general English entry exists for this phrase as a common expression.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as a common English term.
Editorial note: The phrase has no meaningful life in ordinary English. Its legal significance is entirely classical and technical, rooted in Roman and civil law tradition. A researcher encountering it in historical sources should resist reading it as a mere pleasantry — in legal instruments, the gesture of giving the right hand carried binding, ceremonial weight equivalent to a formal pledge.
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Common Confusion
The phrase encompasses two legally distinct acts that share the same name but operate in different contexts. The handshake-as-pledge meaning (an affirmative act of agreement or reconciliation) is easily conflated with the surrender meaning (a passive submission to another's authority). In Roman and early civil law sources, context is essential: a dextras dare in a treaty negotiation signals mutual compact; in a military or custodial context, it signals capitulation. Researchers should also distinguish the maritime di colonna usage, which is a separate contractual application of the phrase and not reducible to either of the other two meanings.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
1. Pledge or reconciliation: The right hand given as a token of good faith between parties — functionally analogous to a solemn undertaking or informal covenant.
2. Submission or surrender: The right hand given as an act of yielding oneself to another's authority or custody.
3. Di colonna contract (maritime): A profit-sharing agreement among vessel owner, master, and crew, named in connection with dextras dare in Rapalje & Lawrence. Associated particularly with the New England whaling trade.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical and civil law sources. Researchers working in Roman law, early common law, admiralty, or maritime history are most likely to encounter it. Several navigational points are worth noting:
The maritime di colonna usage is the most practically significant surviving application. Researchers tracing the legal structure of the American whaling industry — particularly lay contracts, where crew were compensated by a fractional share of the catch rather than wages — will find this term a useful entry point into a body of admiralty and labor law that diverges sharply from standard employment doctrine.
The pledge and surrender meanings appear in sources treating Roman law, medieval truce-making, and early diplomatic instruments. These are unlikely to appear in American case law but may surface in treatises, civil law commentaries, or legal history scholarship within the Law Mind corpus.
Black's Law Dictionary carries only the bare two-part definition across both its first and second editions, with no elaboration. Rapalje & Lawrence is the richer source here, preserving the Bouvier reference and the maritime application. Researchers who rely solely on Black's will miss the contractual dimension entirely.
Because this term appears in no modern American statutory or case law context, any encounter with it in post-nineteenth-century sources almost certainly reflects either historical quotation, civil law commentary, or maritime law scholarship.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core two-part definition: (1) handshake as token of friendship, (2) surrender into another's power. This formulation appears verbatim in Black's first and second editions, suggesting the term was treated as stable and self-contained — a glossary entry rather than a working legal concept requiring elaboration.
Rapalje & Lawrence departs meaningfully by preserving the di colonna maritime application and crediting Bouvier as the source. This is the only instance in the surveyed sources where dextras dare is connected to an operative contractual form rather than a mere gesture or act of submission. The Bouvier attribution signals that this usage was circulating in American legal dictionaries before Rapalje & Lawrence's own compilation, though its practical reach was geographically and industrially narrow.
No source attempts to trace the Roman law origins in depth, and none situates the term within a broader jurisprudential framework. Researchers seeking that context will need to look beyond dictionary sources to civil law treatises and classical scholarship.
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Jurisdictional Note
The di colonna maritime application has American relevance through the New England whaling trade, but the term itself never became embedded in American statutory or common law vocabulary. In civil law jurisdictions, the underlying concepts it describes — pledge by gesture, formal submission — were absorbed into broader doctrinal frameworks. The phrase is effectively a historical artifact in any jurisdiction.
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