'By a Flash and a Scare' illuminates the darker side of rural life in the nineteenth century. Flashpoints such as the Swing Riots have long attracted the attention of historians, but here John E. Archer focuses on the persistent war waged in the countryside, analysing the prevailing climate of unrest, discontent, and desperation.

In this detailed and scholarly study, based on intensive research among the local records of Norfolk and Suffolk, Dr Archer identifies and examines the three most serious crimes of protest in the countryside — arson, animal maiming, and poaching. He shows how rural society in East Anglia was shaped by terror and oppression in equal measure. Crime and protest were an integral part of the ordinary life of the rural poor. 'By a Flash and a Scare' dispels any lingering notions of a 'green and pleasant land', and makes an important contribution to our understanding of life in the nineteenth century countryside.

Contents

PREFACE

MAPS

ABBREVIATIONS

1. An Introduction to Rural Protest

The Categorization of Rural Crime

Crime in the Countryside

2. The Farm Labourer: Work and Wages

3. The Labouring Community and the Relief of Poverty: 'A Class Which Has Something to Lose'

4. Incendiarism: Annual Survey 1815-1834

Introduction

Incendiarism: A New Expression of Grievance

Annual Summary — 1815-1819

The 1820s

The Swing Years 1830-1833

5. Incendiarism: Annual Survey 1835-1870

1835-1841: The Introduction of the New Poor Law

The 1840s

The Mid-century Depression 1849-1852

The Era of High Farming 1853-1870

6. Incendiarism: An Analysis

The Location and Timing of Incendiary Attacks

Prices, Wages, and Unemployment

Mechanization and Incendiarism

Incendiarism and the Poor Laws

Incendiarism and Rural Crime

Victims of Incendiarism

Protection and Detection

Why Incendiarism?

7. The Myth and Reality of the Incendiary

Introduction

The Myth

The Reality

8. Animal Maiming: 'A Fiendish Outrage'?

9. The Poaching War: 'The Great Attraction'

Introduction

The Poacher

Policing and Detection

Protest and Poaching

10. Conclusion

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PLACE INDEX

SUBJECT INDEX

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The classic and imaginative account of the working-class society in its formative years, 1780 to 1832, revolutionized our understanding of English social history. E. P. Thompson shows how the working class took part in its own making and recereates the whole-life experience of people who suffered loss of status and freedom, who underwent degradation, and who yet created a culture and a political consciousness of great vitality.

"This book has a clumsy title, but it is one that meets its purpose. Making because it is a study of an active process, which owes as much to agency as conditioning. The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making.

Class, rather than classes, for reasons which it is one purpose of this book to examine. There is, of course, a difference. 'Working classes' is a descriptive term, which evades as much as it defines. It ties loosely together a bundle of discrete phenomena. There were tailors here and weavers there, and together they make up the working classes.

By class I understand a historical phenomenon, unifying a number of disparate and seemingly unconnected events, both in the raw material of experience and in consciousness. I emphasise that it is a historical phenomenon. I do not see class as a 'structure', nor even as a 'category', but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships."

Contents

Preface

Preface to the 1980 edition

PART ONE : THE LIBERTY TREE

1 Members Unlimited

2 Christian and Apollyon

3 'Satan's Strongholds'

4 The Free-born Englishman

5 Planting the Liberty Tree

PART TWO : THE CURSE OF ADAM

6 Exploitation

7 The Field Labourers

8 Artisans and Others

9 The Weavers

10 Standards and Experiences

I Goods

II Homes

III Life

IV Childhood

11 The Transforming Power of the Cross

I Moral Machinery

II The Chiliasm of Despair

12 Community

I Leisure and Personal Relations

II The Rituals of Mutuality

III The Irish

IV Myriads of Eternity

PART THREE : THE WORKING-CLASS PRESENCE

13 Radical Westminster

14 An Army of Redressers

I The Brick Lamp

II The Opaque Society

III The Laws Against Combination

IV Croppers and Stockingers

V The Sherwood Lads

VI By Order of the Trade

15 Demagogues and Martyrs

I Disaffection

II Problems of Leadership

III The Hampden Clubs

IV Brandreth and Oliver

V Peterloo

VI The Cato Street Conspiracy

16 Class Consciousness

I The Radical Culture

II William Cobbett

III Carlile, Wade and Gast

IV Owenism

V 'A Sort of Machine'

Postscript

Bibliographical Note

Acknowledgements

Index

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All historical studies begin with the framing of questions to be addressed to the evidence left by the past: questions which in the process of research will be revised or abandoned, and will give rise to further or often unexpected questions. In the case of this book the questions arise from hypotheses formulated in Marxist historiography, because those are relevent to 'history from below' and focus on the 'poor', especially the wage workers, and those who claimed to speak for them.

At the time of the English Revolution it was common to make a tripartite division of society into the gentry, the 'middling sort' and 'the poor'. The first and second of these categories have occupied the attentions of historians — the first much more than the second — in assessing the causes and course of the revolution, but the third has been largely neglected. It is the intention of this book to make a preliminary attempt to remedy this omission.

The first chapter considers the economic setting and the growth of the wage earning class in the context of developing capitalism. The second chapter analyses the ideological setting, especially the important role of religion.

The Levellers provided much of the philosophy and programme of radicalism, to which the millenarian Fifth Monarchists and the Quakers added important elements. Such radicalism may be described as being on the 'left' of the revolution, being more radical than the Presbyterians, Independents and Republicans who dominated the revolution. But the focus of thsi book is upon those who stood further to the left than the leaderships of the Levellers, Fifth Monarchists and Quakers. The 'far left' in the English Revolution is defined in terms of ideas, which sought to promote a shift in the revolution towards establishing and economic equality, and in terms of practice, which involved taking more militant action than the established leaders, in order to achieve some of the aims of the far left, but also of the left in general. The latter is the subject of chapter three.

Attention is concentrated on those who attempted to speak for the poor and the more depreived sections of society. Questions arise about how far they reflected attitudes and aspirations of the poor, who remain almost entirely silent in the sources. Questions also arise about cultural differences between dominant and subordinate classes, and about obstacles to revolutionay action by the poor.

The third chapter deals with two attempts at armed insurection arising from the radical or left milieu of the 1650s, and at the same time puts the focus on two individual revolutionaries who emerged from the ranks of plebians. The poor generally did rise in revolt against the republican governments established by the revolution. But viewing the period from below brings with it analysis of the formation of classes, the appearance of class conflicts, and explanation of the course which the revolution eventually took. It is also the purpose of this book to consider aspects of Marxist historiography that relate to its themes, and to place the English Revolution in the history of struggles for social justice.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: LABOUR

The extent and limits of proletarianisation

Resistance to proletarianisation

Divergence between small producers and wage workers

Resistance by wage workers

Chapter 2: EQUALITY

Religion and the poor

The search for equality

Decentralisation of power

'Practical Christianity'

Redistribution of wealth

God and revolution

Resistance

Restraints on popular revolutionary action

Chapter 3: REVOLT

The Corporal's Revolt, 1649

The Cooper's Revolt, 1657

Chapter 4: THE ENDING

Index

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Southern England has been studied considerably less than the industrializing north and midlands in the debate on the standard of living in the period up to 1850. Yet it is becoming clear that it was in the south and in the countryside that the greatest poverty and deprivation was to be found.

These essays examine responses to the struggle to live. The responses ranged from, at the most extreme, sheep-stealing and incendiarism to joining in food riots in an attempt to impose a "moral economy". More sustained protest is to be seen in passive and sometimes active resistance to authority, and in particular in the opposition to the introduction of the New Poor Law of 1834. Finally the appeal yet limitations of Chartism in the south is demonstrated.

From the authors' preface:
Our formative years were in the great era of 'History from Below'. Although we acknowledge that it left some 'silences', especially over gender and ethnicity, it still hugely enlarged the historical subject. We have no reluctance in continuing to write within the tradtion of George Rudé, Eric Hobsbawm, Edward Thompson and Gwyn 'Alf' Williams.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Abbreviations

1 Crime, Protest and Radicalism

John Rule and Roger Wells

2 The Revolt of the South West, 1800-1

Roger Wells

3 The Perfect Wage System? Tributing in the Cornish Mines

John Rule

4 The Chartist Mission to Cornwall

John Rule

5 Richard Spurr of Truro: Small-Town Radical

John Rule

6 Resistance to the New Poor Law in the Rural South

Roger Wells

7 Southern Chartism

Roger Wells

8 Social Crime in the Rural South in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

John Rule

9 Crime and Protest in a Country Parish: Burwash, 1790-1850

Roger Wells

10 The Manifold Causes of Rural Crime: Sheep-Stealing in England, c. 1740-1840

John Rule

Index

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Controversial and complex, without an understanding of Thomas Müntzer it is impossible to gain a full understanding of the Reformation.

Hitherto Müntzer has not been fully understood. He has often been characterised simply as an extremist: some have seen him as a theologian steeped in mystic piety, others as a rabid apocalyptic, or a relentless antagonist of Martin Luther, or an intrepid revolutionary. He has been deprecated as a restless fanatic and utopian; and just as often honoured as a selfless fighter for truth and justice.

Professor Goertz has found the key to understanding the many controversial aspects of Müntzer's life in Müntzer's extraordinary ability to relate social conflicts with theological thinking, in a world where changing medieval traditions took on profound spiritual dimensions, created new social conflicts, and ultimately revolutionised the social and spiritual lives of ordinary people.

Goertz shows how Müntzer was inseparably apocalyptic mystic and revolutionary.

—

Scholars are at odds over Thomas Müntzer. Some condemn him as an 'unrestrained fanatic', while others defend him as a 'selfless fighter for truth and justice.' Responses to Müntzer are characterised by fascination and repulsion. It has been like this for some hundreds of years, and it was the case even during the course of his life. His name, in his own words, 'to the little band of the poor and needy, […] has the sweet savour of life, while to those who pursue the pleasures of the flesh it is a gruesome abomination presaging their speedy downfall.' Then as now, he polarises opinions. However, it is only in a precise theological sense that the battle-lines may be defined as the poor versus the pleasure-loving. For some time now the contrast between 'bourgeois' and 'socialist' judgements of society has entered the dispute about Müntzer and has lent a new and, to us, more immediate sense to the concepts of poverty and hedonism: in the former German Democratic Republic Müntzer was an historic hero, the visionary of a more just society, but in the West he is seen rather as a utopian hot-head, the very pattern of unheard-of recalcitance.

It is not possible to avoid this conflict, for it determines the context in which Thomas Müntzer addresses and challenges us today. Since his day we have come to a better understanding of the social struggles in which he was involved, and of the theological insights which he embraced. Anyone who wishes to portray Müntzer must be free of any compulsion to seek principles of interpretation based exclusively either on the social issues or on the movement of theological thought. This biography seeks to resolve this tension and use the best arguments of both approaches: Müntzer's theological reflections led him by their own logic into social action, and likewise, the social tensions of the early Reformation period created the atmosphere in which his thinking gradually took shape — not in a detached or arbitrary way, but closely related to the actual experiences of his time. And in this form his declarations and writings had in their turn an effect on the general course of events.

Müntzer wanted to bring about 'a full and final reformation in the near future' and placed his theology at the service of the 'transformation of the world.' From this sprang — for the first time on German soil — a theology of revolution. It was a sharp attack on the spirtual and temporal authorities; and Müntzer's way of reflectng on society's experiences confronts us today with a challenge which has yet to be taken up: 'the people will go free and God alone will be their Lord.' This is the challenge made by the 'theologian of revolution' to all who step within his circle of influence. We should not meet him either with our defences bristling, or with uncrtical adoration, but with critical sympathy.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction

I Distorted Images

II Changing Times

III Blurred Tracks

IV In The Reformers' Camp

V An Early Movement

VI A Personal Manifesto

VII 'In the wretchedness of my expulsion'

VIII Pastoral Care and Political Correspondance

IX Lords, Commoners and Resistance

X Absolute Incompatibilty

XI 'Eternal Alliance' and 'Eternal Council'

XII Battle Under the Rainbow

XIII Apocalyptic Mystic and Revolutionary

XIV Unfinished and yet fulfilled

Bibliography

Index of Names and Places

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This is a study of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic of all seventeenth-century figures. Like its famous predecessor The Cheese and The Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, it explores the everyday life and mental world of an extraordinary yet humble figure. Born in Lincolnshire with a family of Cambridgeshire origins, Thomas Totney (1608–1659) was a London puritan, goldsmith and veteran of the Civil War. In November 1649, after fourteen weeks of self-abasement, fasting and prayer, he experienced a profound spiritual transformation. Taking the prophetic name TheaurauJohn Tany and declaring himself 'a Jew of the Tribe of Reuben' descended from Aaron the High Priest, he set about enacting a millenarian mission to restore the Jews to their own land. Inspired prophetic gestures followed as Tany took to living in a tent, preaching in the parks and fields around London. He gathered a handful of followers and, in the week that Cromwell was offered the crown, infamously burned his bible and attacked Parliament with sword drawn. In the summer of 1656 he set sail from the Kentish coast, perhaps with some disciples in tow, bound for Jerusalem. He found his way to Holland, perhaps there to gather the Jews of Amsterdam. Some three years later, now calling himself Ram Johoram, Tany was reported lost, drowned after taking passage in a ship from Brielle bound for London.

During his prophetic phase Tany wrote a number of remarkable but elusive works that are unlike anything else in the English language. His sources were varied, although they seem to have included almanacs, popular prophecies and legal treatises, as well as scriptural and extra-canonical texts, and the writings of the German mystic Jacob Boehme. Indeed, Tany's writings embrace currents of magic and mysticism, alchemy and astrology, numerology and angelology, Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, Hermeticism and Christian Kabbalah – a ferment of ideas that fused in a millenarian yearning for the hoped for return of Christ on earth. The English Revolution freed men and women both self-taught and formally educated to speak their minds and challenge their times. But only by contextualizing and then unravelling the mind of this exceptional person can we truly appreciate what it meant to be living in a world turned upside down.

See also: TheaurauJohn : A Name, Not The Thing

Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Introduction: TheaurauJohn Tany and the English Revolution

Part I: Genesis

1 Genesis

Little Shelford, Cambridgeshire: The Totneys

South Hykeham, Lincolnshire: John Totney the younger

Apprenticeship: Thomas Totney

The Goldsmiths

2 The bitterness of the godly

St. Katherine Creechurch, London: The bitterness of the godly

3 The wilderness of Zin

The times of trouble

The wilderness of Zin

4 Birth of the Prophet

Ecstasy

The heart prepared

The penitent puritan

Purgation

Illumination

Union

The prophet armed

Part II: Genealogy of the High Priest

5 TheaurauJohn

Genealogy and heraldry

The transmutation of Totney into Tany

TheaurauJohn

6 Genealogy of the High Priest

Genealogy of the High Priest

The High Priesthood

7 Justice

The coming of the prophets

Justice

8 Hell

Coming forth in glory

The prophet outcast

The trial

Manifest error

The Muggletonians

Prison of Stone

Aurora

Part III: King of the Jews

9 King of the Jews

Theauroam Tannijahhh

The seal signatory

10 Canonical and extra-canonical sources

Canon and Apocrypha

The Books of Enoch and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

11 Son of the morning stars

Prisca theologia

Mysterium Magnum

Son of the morning stars

12 The book of Theos-ologi according to TheaurauJohn

The book of Theos-ologi according to TheaurauJohn

13 To your tents, O Israel

To your tents, O Israel

King of the Seven Nations

The grand idols of England

The thousand-year reign of Christ

A third great and terrible fire

14 Gold Tried in the Fire

Gold Tried in the Fire

Bibliography

Index

Index of names

Index of places

Index of signs

Index of canonical and extra-canonical texts

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During the seventeenth century, attempts at fenland drainage projects provoked bitter opposition and widespread rioting. In this book Keith Lindley relates the disturbances to their wider political context, showing how they contributed to the causes, course and consequences of the English Revolution.

The implementation of drainage schemes in the 1630s confirmed the absolutist direction of government during Charles I's personal rule. Fenmen were preoccupied with preserving their commons from large-scale enclosure and their traditional economy from transformation, and a broad spectrum of local society from peasant to gentry was drawn into the resistance.

Fenland disturbances helped to raise the political temperature country-wide, as the political elite became convinced that the King must be supported as a bulwark against anarchy. Yet the fenmen were not revolutionaries. The riots themselves were essentially defensive, conservative and restrained. For the vast majority of those involved, the chief significance of the political crisis was the ideal opportunity it afforded to level enclosures and regain their commons.

By the end of the seventeenth century they could claim a large measure of success: courtier-dominated schemes were not revived after the Restoration and fenland drainage projects became subject to parliamentary approval.

Contents

Dating and Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction

1. The Fenland Undertakings

The Hatfield Level

The Great Level and the Deeping Level

The Ancholme Level

Courtier-dominated undertakings: the East, West and Wildmore Fens; the Lindsey Level; and the Holland Fen

2. Commoners, Undertakers and the Privy Council

The Hatfield Level, 1627-40

The Great Level, the first phase: 1632-3

The East and West Fens: 1635-9

The Great Level, the second phase: 1637-8

The Holland Fen, 1638; The Lindsey and Ancholme Levels, 1639

3. Lords, Commons and Commoners

The Short Parliament and its aftermath

The Long Parliament

4. Civil War Allegiance and Regained Commons

5. Commoners, Adventurers and Soldiers

6. Levellers and Fenmen

7. The Restored Undertakings

Courtier-dominated undertakings

The Ancholme Level

The Great Level and the Deeping Level

The Hatfield Level

Conclusion

Index

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Some of the liveliest and fruitful debates in recent historical writing have been about the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Rodney Hilton's vast and distinguished body of work on medieval society has been a major reference point in these debates. Throughout his work the dominant theme has been has been his argument that the 'prime mover' in the development of medieval society was the conflict between landlords and peasants over the appropriation of the peasants' surplus product. This is the class conflict that gives the present volume its title.

The wide ranging collection, updated to include some of Hilton's most recent writings, explores not only the peasant economy and peasant movements but also the nature of towns and their principal classes. Essays include a fascinating study of women traders in medieval England, and an account of medieval tax revolts — all informed by his lucid, undogmatic attention to broad theoretical issues as well as empirical detail. This is a book not only for historians, but for anyone interested in the evolution of capitalism or the larger questions of historical process and social change.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Feudalism in Europe: Problems for Historical Materialists

2 Unjust Taxation and Popular Resistance — Marxist Theory and Practice on a Historical Problem

3 Small Town Society in England Before the Black Death

4 Medieval Peasants: Any Lessons?

5 Peasant Movements in England Before 1381

6 Reasons for Inequality Among Medieval Peasants

7 Popular Movements in England at the End of the Fourteenth Century

8 Some Problems of Urban Real Property in the Middle Ages

9 Towns in English Feudal Society

10 The Small Town and Urbanisation — Evesham in the Middle Ages

11 Lords, Burgesses and Hucksters

12 Women Traders in Medieval England

13 Social Concepts in the English Rising of 1381

14 Feudalism or Feodalité and Seigneurie in France and England

15 Was there a General Crisis of Feudalism?

16 Ideology and Social Order in Late Medieval England

17 Some Social and Economic Evidence in Late Medieval English Tax Returns

18 Capitalism — What's in a Name?

19 Feudalism and the Origins of Capitalism

Notes

Index

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On three successive mornings in February 1652, God spoke to a London tailor by the name of John Reeve. Consequently he and his cousin Lodowicke Muggleton believed that they were the Last Two Witnesses prophesied in the Book of Revelation. Over the next six years the pair attracted a small but dedicated band of followers that, following the death of Reeve, became known as the Muggletonians.

In this lively and engaging history, the origins of the sect during the religious turmoil and freedoms of the 1650s are described in detail. Their unique theology, beliefs and practices are described and traced throughout the changing circumstances of the centuries. Yet the book offers much more than a history of another puritan sect, for unlike many of their contemporaries, the Muggletonians persisted until the latter years of the twentieth century. Moreover, they preserved a comprehensive archive, rescued from the Blitz by a Kent farmer who transported the papers in empty apple boxes on his way back from market. Discovered by E.P. Thompson in 1974, this archive paints a vivid picture of the Muggletonians from their earliest days until the death of their last member in 1979.

By following the history of the Muggletonians from the heady post-civil war days through to the 1970s, this work offers a unique perspective on radical Christian belief and practice, and how it adapted to the changing world around it. More than this, however, it tells the fascinating story of how a small religious group, which eschewed active proselytising and believed in the mortality of the soul, managed to overcome persecution and obscurity, to survive for 320 years.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements and Sources

Bibliographical Abbreviations

1 Introduction: The Archive Discovered

2 'Lodowick Muggleton Was Also Included': 1652–1658

Encounter with God

The Two Last Witnesses

Blessings, Curses, Prison and Death

3 'Great Muggleton' Declares the Truth: 1658–1661

Putting down Clarkson

Changing A Divine Looking Glass

Rewriting Revelation

4 The Prophet of Letters: 1661–1698

The 1671 Rebellion

Delamaine's 'Great Book'

Imaginary Witches

Prison, Release, Death

5 Witnesses Against the Beast: 1698–1837

Life Without a Prophet

William Blake, Benjamin Franklin and the London Muggletonians

Putting Down a False Prophet

6 The Victorian Crisis: 1837–1901

Redefining the Faith: 'Reevonians' versus 'Old Believers'

Redefining the Faith: From 'Ancient' to 'Modern' Muggletonianism

Last Curses

7 Last Days: 1901–1979

8 Conclusion: Muggletonians – the Proper Historical Context?

Bibliography

Index

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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