Masters, servants, and magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955 /

This important, voluminous book covers a subject of great importance for understanding the extent and depth of globalization and spread of British laws around the globe. Concepts of democracy, civil rights, civil society, rule of law, freedom of speech, and democracy are just some of the means through which Western capitalism seeks to impose its domination of the world. The British Empire played the leading role. For some 500 years, the law that defined the master/servant relationship fixed the boundaries of "free labor" in Britain and the empire among a quarter of the world's population and in more than 100 colonial and now independent national territories. A useful, interesting 58-page introduction is followed by Hay's study of English law from 1562 to 1875. Next, 14 case studies cover the early British US (1585-1830), Newfoundland, Canada, Australia, the Caribbean, British Guiana, South Africa, Hong Kong, Britain, India, Assam and the West Indies, West Africa, Kenya, and the Colonial Office. A 30-page bibliography rounds out this model study that, understandably, took a decade to produce. ^BSumming Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. D. Long Eastern Michigan University