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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.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on Citations

1. Introduction — Douglas Hay and Paul Craven

English Origins

Taking Statutes Seriously

Labor and the Law in the Older and Newer British Empires: An Outline

Free Labor and Unfree Labor

Uses of the Law

An Example: The Cape Colony

Enforcement, Repression, and Resistance

Master and Servant as Imperial Law

2. England, 1562-1875: The Law and Its Uses — Douglas Hay

The Law to the Eighteenth Century

Enforcement by the Magistracy before the Eighteenth Century

Parliament and the Judges to 1823

Enforcement in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Written Contracts and Testimonials

Magisterial Justice and the Growing Taint of Criminalization

The Judges and an Increasingly Oppressive Legal Regime

The Last Years

3. Early British America, 1585-1830: Freedom Bound — Christopher Tomlins

The Chesapeake: Virginia and York County

New England: Massachusetts and Essex County

The Delaware Valley: Pennsylvania and Chester County

Postscript

4. Law and Labour in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland — Jerry Bannister

Master-Servant Relations in a Fishing Society

The Development of Naval Government

The Newfoundland Law of Master and Servant

The District Courts: A Case Study of Trinity, 1760-1790

Contextualizing Labor Disputes and Court Actions

Paternalism Reconsidered

Conclusion

5. Canada, 1670-1935: Symbolic and Instrumental Enforcement in Loyalist North America — Paul Craven

Atlantic Canada

Quebec

Ontario

The West

Conclusion

6. Australia, 1788-1902: A Workingman's Paradise? — Michael Quinlan

Employment Regulations in the Australian Colonies: An Overview

Assisted Immigrants and Indentured Non-European Labor

Coverage, Penalties, and Procedure

Due Process and the Magistracy

Patterns of Use and Resistance

Conclusion

7. The Colonial Office, 1820-1955: Constantly the Subject of Small Struggles — M. K. Banton

The West Indies and Africa in the Early Nineteenth Century

The Origins and Consequences of Cape Legislation

An Alternative Model: The Gold Coast, 1877

West Indian Reform

Reform Frustrated: The Colonial Labour Committee

Managing the "Primitive" Worker

The ILO: Abolishing the Relic of Slavery

Conclusion

8. The British Carribbean, 1823-1838: The Transitionfrom Slave to Free Legal Status — Mary Turner

Reforming the Slave Labor Laws, 1823-1833

Defining Labor Laws for Free-Status Workers, 1833-1838

9. Urban British Guiana, 1838-1924: Wharf Rats, Centipedes, and Pork Knockers — Juanita De Barros

Postslavery Labor Law: The Nineteenth Century

Pressures for Change in the Twentieth Century

The Logic of Labor Law and Labor Markets

Evidence of Enforcement

10. South Africa, 1841-1924: Race, Contract, and Coercion — Martin Chanock

Passes

Master and Servant Law: Content and Interpretation

The Political Ecology of Labor Law

Conclusion

11. Hong Kong, 1841-1870: All the Servants in Prison and Nobody to Take Care of the House — Christopher Munn

The Political Economy of Master and Servant in Hong Kong

The Servant's Interest

The Master's Sanctions

Regulation and Registration

Conclusion

12. Britain: The Defeat of the 1844 Master and Servants Bill — Christopher Frank

13. India, 1858-1930: The Illusion of Free Labor — Michael Anderson

The Labor Market and New Employment

Discipline and Advances

Penal Contracts in the Workplace

Judicial Construction of a Working Class

Towards a Formally Free Labor Market

Conclusion

14. Assam and the West Indies, 1860-1920: Immobilizing Plantation Labor — Prabhu P. Mohapatra

Indentured Labor and the Plantation System

Penal Contract Legislation in Assam and the West Indies

Enforcing the Penal Contract

Enforcement in Assam

15. West Africa, 1874-1948: Employment Legislation in a Nonsettler Peasant Economy — Richard Rathbone

Labor and Its Regulation

16. Kenya, 1895-1939: Registration and Rough Justice — David M. Anderson

Master and Servants Legislation in Kenya, 1985-1923

Overlapping Legislation, 1910-1939

Prosecution and Punishment

Discussion

Bibliography of Secondary Works Cited

Contributors

Index of Statutes

General Index