Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955

Douglas Hay, Paul Craven, Douglas Hay, Paul Craven

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9781469614731, 9780807828779
• eBook ISBN: 9780807875865
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Law

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

General Index

Abbreviations used:

CJ

Chief Justice

CO

Colonial Office

CO Sec.

Secretary of State for the Colonies, Colonial Secretary

DC

District Commissioner

Gov.

Governor

HC

High Commissioner

J

Judge, Justice of court of record

JP

Justice of the Peace

Mag.

Magistrate

parlt.

parliamentarian, member of a legislature (including cabinet ministers)

• Abbott (J, British Guiana), 332
• Aberdeen, Lord (CO Sec.), 321
• Aboriginal workers and populations: in Australia, 220, 229; in Canada, 205n, 211, 212, 213
• Absconding. See Desertion
• Advance of wages. See Credit and debt
• Africa, 9, 24, 37, 48, 49, 53, 256, 277, 289, 292–94, 301, 481–83, 498, 499, 500, 504. See also Central Africa; East Africa; Southern Africa; West Africa; and names of colonies
• Agents. See Labor: recruitment by agents
• Agrestic bondage. See Slavery
• Ahuja, Ravi, 424, 428
• Aikins, James (lieutenant Gov., Manitoba), 216
• Ainsworth, John (official, Kenya), 506
• Algeria, 483
• America, British colonial, 9, 23, 27, 117–52 passim. See also Canada; New England; and names of colonies
• American Revolution, 174
• Amery, L. S. (British parlt.), 277
• Andrews, John (ship’s master), 171–73
• Angola, 483
• Annual hiring. See Contract length
• Antigua, 319–21, 328
• Antrobus, William D. (police official, Canada), 208
• Apprentices: in Australia, 224, 234n; in Canada, 178, 181, 183, 191, 197n; in colonial America, 134; in the Empire, 12; in England, Britain, U.K., 3, 6–7, 63–65, 67n, 70–71, 84, 85, 92–94, 95–96; native children as, in Cape Colony, 24, 38–40
• “Apprenticeship” (postslavery), 3, 4, 14, 23–24, 29–30, 40, 51, 115, 259–60, 303–5, 313–22 passim, 325
• Arbitration, 187
• Arrears of wages, 66, 76n, 387, 395, 465, 512, 515, 525. See also Remedies under master and servant law: wage recovery
• Arrest, private. See Employer self-help
• Articles. See Apprentices; Indentured labor to 1834; Master and servant law: written contracts of employment; Seamen
• Asante, 487n
• Asia, 48
• As...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Citations
• One: Introduction
• Two: England, 1562–1875
• Three: Early British America, 1585–1830
• Four: Law and Labor in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland
• Five: Canada, 1670–1935
• Six: Australia, 1788–1902
• Seven: The Colonial Office, 1820–1955
• Eight: The British Caribbean, 1823–1838
• Nine: Urban British Guiana, 1838–1924
• Ten: South Africa, 1841–1924
• Eleven: Hong Kong, 1841–1870
• Twelve: Britain
• Thirteen: India, 1858–1930
• Fourteen. Assam and the West Indies, 1860–1920
• Fifteen: West Africa, 1874–1948
• Sixteen: Kenya, 1895–1939
• Bibliography of Secondary Works Cited
• Contributors
• Index of Statutes
• General Index