The Law of the Whale Hunt

Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-1-107-11463-0
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 204 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 437 g

Reihe: Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society

Whale oil lit the cities and greased the machines of the Industrial Revolution. In light of its importance, competition between whalers was high. Far from courts and law enforcement, competing crews of American whalers not known for their gentility and armed with harpoons tended to resolve disputes at sea over ownership of whales. Left to settle arguments on their own, whalemen created norms and customs to decide ownership of whales pursued by multiple crews. The Law of the Whale Hunt provides an innovative examination of how property law was created in the absence of formal legal institutions regulating the American whaling industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using depositions, court testimony, logbooks, and other previously unused primary sources, Robert Deal tells an exciting story of American whalers hunting in waters from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific and the Sea of Okhotsk.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Deal, Robert

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Geschichte der Schifffahrt
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsgeschichte, Recht der Antike

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction; 2. The biology, economics, and geography of Anglo-American whaling; 3. Fast-fish, loose-fish; 4. Iron holds the whale; 5. Laws of honor; 6. Halves; 7. The environment of litigation; 8. An untragic commons; 9. Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Deal, Robert
Robert Deal is an Assistant Professor of History at Marshall University, West Virginia.