Bonds of Empire

Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-1-108-81789-9
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 474 g

Reihe: Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society

Bonds of Empire presents an account of slave law that is entirely new: one in which English law imbued plantation slavery with its staying power even as it insulated slave owners from contemplating the moral implications of owning human beings. Emphasizing practice rather than proscription, the book follows South Carolina colonists as they used English law to maximize the value of the people they treated as property. Doing so reveals that most daily legal practices surrounding slave ownership were derived from English law: colonists categorized enslaved people as property using English legal terms, they bought and sold them with printed English legal forms, and they followed English legal procedures as they litigated over enslaved people in court. Bonds of Empire ultimately shows that plantation slavery and the laws that governed it were not beyond the pale of English imperial legal history; they were yet another invidious manifestation of English law's protean potential.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilson, Lee B.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsgeschichte, Recht der Antike
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Geschichte der Sklaverei

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Tables; Acknowledgements; A Note on Text; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Chattel; 2. Bonds; 3. In Rem; 4. Equity; 5. Res Publica; Conclusion; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Wilson, Lee B.
Lee B. Wilson is Assistant Professor of History at Clemson University. A historian of colonial British America and the early modern Atlantic world, her research interests include the legal history of early American slave societies, colonial property law, and legal discourse.