Law, Work and Culture in Early America (1600-1800)
Author: Christopher L. Tomlins
This research has been examining the legal history of work and labor during the first two centuries of American history. It has been pursued in two phases. Initially it concentrated on the development of historiographical and methodological arguments for the integration of law with labor history during this period and specifically on the exemplification of those arguments through study of the British law of master and servant and its global diffusion in the course of British imperial expansion. This phase was designed as the “American” element in an international comparative study of the diffusion of master and servant law. It considered the hypothesis that, from the sixteenth century onward, the law of master and servant played an integral role in British domestic and colonial policy and administration by providing the model for labor force organization and regulation readily adaptable to the tasks of colonizing. Research tested this hypothesis through comparative analysis across the full spectrum of British colonial jurisdictions in mainland America. This work was revised and refined in an extended essay for inclusion in the international project volume, Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955, Douglas Hay and Paul Craven, editors (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
A second phase has resulted in a far more sustained examination of the relationship of law, work and colonialism in 17th and 18th century America. This research, under way for several years, has concentrated on resort to law as a technology of organization for colonizing ventures on the American mainland and as a means to express far more general concepts justifying European expansion beyond Europe; on the processes of migration and the formation of labor forces; on the differing legal conditions of “free” workers and indentured servants and their roots in English legal culture; on the social organization of work; on the legal origins and conditions of colonial slavery; and on the relationship between work and civic identity. Research on this broader project has resulted in more than twenty publications since 1996 (working papers, articles and essays) and has been presented on numerous occasions at a variety of conferences and colloquia. A book manuscript is about 90% complete.