Master and servant acts, the cornerstone of English employment law for
more than four hundred years, gave largely unsupervised, inferior
magistrates wide discretion over employment relations, including the
power to whip, fine, and imprison men, women, and children for breach of
private contracts with their employers. The English model was adopted,
modified, and reinvented in more than a thousand colonial statutes and
ordinances regulating the recruitment, retention, and discipline of
workers in shops, mines, and factories; on farms, in forests, and on
plantations; and at sea. This collection presents the first integrated
comparative account of employment law, its enforcement, and its
importance throughout the British Empire.
Sweeping in its geographic and temporal scope, this volume tests the
relationship between enacted law and enforced law in varied settings,
with different social and racial structures, different economies, and
different constitutional relationships to Britain. Investigations of the
enforcement of master and servant law in England, the British Caribbean,
India, Africa, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, and colonial America shed
new light on the nature of law and legal institutions, the role of
inferior courts in compelling performance, and the definition of "free
labor" within a multiracial empire.
Contributors:
David M. Anderson, St. Antony's College, Oxford
Michael Anderson, London School of Economics
Jerry Bannister, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
M. K. Banton, National Archives of the United Kingdom, London
Martin Chanock, La Trobe University, Australia
Paul Craven, York University
Juanita De Barros, McMaster University
Christopher Frank, University of Manitoba
Douglas Hay, York University
Prabhu P. Mohapatra, Delhi University, India
Christopher Munn, University of Hong Kong
Michael Quinlan, University of New South Wales
Richard Rathbone, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Christopher Tomlins, American Bar Foundation, Chicago
Mary Turner, London University
