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Book Review
| Douglas Hay and Paul Craven (eds), Masters, Servants and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 2004. pp. xi + 592. US $65.00 cloth.
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| During the latter part of the twentieth century the distinguished British historian, John Saville, often called upon historians to attend to the important, but much neglected, subject of master and servant law and to develop the work pioneered by Daphne Simon in the 1950s into the operation of 'Master and Servant' in England. I do not know whether Douglas Hay and Paul Craven, co-directors of the Master and Servant Project at York University in Canada, heard Saville's call from across the Atlantic, but their edited collection will elicit his warm approval. Along with the 13 other distinguished contributors to this substantial and handsomely produced volume in the University of North Carolina's 'Studies in Legal History', they have achieved the novel and important feat of placing the study of relations between master and servant firmly on the agenda of labour, social, political and legal history. Furthermore, they have ventured well beyond Simon's and Saville's recommended English framework, to produce a pioneering work which contributes significantly to filling massive gaps in, and advancing knowledge and understanding of, the operation of the master and servant statutes and social practice in Britain and throughout the British Empire over a period of 500 years, from 1562 to 1955. |
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The planning, organisation and scope of the book are impressive. The collaborative research project on which the study is based, developed over more than a decade and involved the contributors sharing 'a comprehensive database of some 2,000 master and servant statutes'. The introduction, written by the editors, demonstrates that amidst complexity and diversity of practice, effect and response, the law of master and servant had 'three defining characteristics'. These were the private nature of the employment contract between the commanding employer and the employee 'who undertook to obey'; the enforcement of the contract by 'lay justices of the peace or other magistrates, largely unsupervised by the senior courts'; and the 'effective criminalization' of the worker's, but not the employer's, breach of contract (pp. 1-2). |
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The introduction is followed by 15 case studies organised into separate chapters. These comprise the operation of master and servant in England (Douglas Hay), Early British America (Christopher Tomlins), Newfoundland (Jerry Banister), Canada (Paul Craven), Australia (Michael Quinlan), the British Caribbean (Mary Turner), British Guiana (Juanita de Barros), South Africa (Martin Chanock), Hong Kong (Christopher Munn), Britain (Christopher Frank), India (Michael Anderson), Assam and the West Indies (Prabhu P. Mohapatra), West Africa (Richard Rathbone), Kenya (David M. Anderson) and the role of the Colonial Office (M.K. Banton). These studies, which effectively challenge the conventional categories of 'free' and 'unfree' labour, will be read with pleasure and enlightenment by the specialist and general reader alike. |
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The book does contain some weaknesses. For example, and without wishing to suggest that the contributors should be bound by absolute uniformity of practice and procedure, it is somewhat confusing to find that not all the case studies address the same or similar issues and debates. This question of inconsistency is accompanied by the more serious problem of the presentation of parallel national and regional, rather than genuinely comparative, case studies. In the introduction Hay and Craven outline their desire to break out of the regional and national frameworks that have characterised most historical studies of 'employment regimes' (p. 3). However, this volume achieves this aim only in very limited and indirect ways. Rather than comparing and contrasting across regional and national boundaries in order to describe and explain cross-national similarities and differences, the case studies presented here are largely confined to their chosen regional and national frameworks. As such they are only incidentally concerned with cross-national imperial comparisons. While some of the latter are made in the introduction, there is far more scope to develop the comparative aspect. This could be done either in a more integrated and consistent way throughout the volume as a whole, or in a substantial concluding chapter. As matters stand, the reader is largely left to draw her or his comparative conclusions concerning the nature, chronology, struggles around and outcomes of the operation of master and servant law in a range of national and regional settings within the British Empire. This weakness will hopefully be remedied in a future volume exploring the assembled database of imperial statutes. |
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In conclusion, criticism should not be allowed to detract from the considerable merits of this important and fascinating book. For the latter is a seminal work which current and future scholars in the field will quarry and remain heavily indebted to for many years to come. |
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| Manchester Metropolitan University |
NEVILLE KIRK | |
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