Bonds of Empire

Bonds of Empire The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1660-1783 - Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society

Paperback (04 Apr 2024)

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Publisher's Synopsis

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.

Book information

ISBN: 9781108817899
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Pub date:
DEWEY: 342.757087
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 288
Weight: 440g
Height: 150mm
Width: 229mm
Spine width: 21mm