Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955
Files
Available in the Osgoode Hall Law School Library
Description
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.
ISBN
9781469614731
Publication Date
3-2014
Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
City
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Keywords
Master and servant--History; Labor contract--History; Master and servant--Colonies--History; Labor contract--Colonies--History; Great Britain
Disciplines
Law
Repository Citation
Hay, Douglas and Craven, Paul, "Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955" (2014). Books. 34.
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/faculty_books/34
Comments
Bibliographic Citation
Hay, C. Douglas, and Paul Craven. Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Print.