Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865

by Christopher Tomlins

• ISBN13: 9780521761390
• ISBN10: 0521761395
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-09-06
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Freedom Bound is about the origins of modern America - a history of colonizing, work, and civic identity from the beginnings of English presence on the mainland until the Civil War. It is a history of migrants and migrations, of colonizers and colonized, of households and servitude and slavery, and of the freedom all craved and some found. Above all it is a history of the law that framed the entire process. Freedom Bound tells how colonies were planted in occupied territories, how they were populated with migrants - free and unfree - to do the work of colonizing, and how the newcomers secured possession. It tells of the new civic lives that seemed possible in new commonwealths, and of the constraints that kept many from enjoying them. It follows the story long past the end of the eighteenth century until the American Civil War, when - just for a moment - it seemed that freedom might finally be unbound.

Table of Contents

Tables and Figures	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Prologue Beginning: "As much freedome in reason as may be …"	p. 1
Manning, Planting, Keeping
Manning: "Setteynge many on Worke"	p. 216
Planting: "Directed and Conducted Thither"	p. 67
Keeping (i): Discourses of Intrusion	p. 93
Keeping (ii): English Desires, Designs	p. 133
Poly-Olbion; or The Inside Narrative
Packing: New Inhabitants	p. 193
Unpacking: Received Wisdoms of Law and Work	p. 231
Changing: Localities, Legalities	p. 296
"What, then, is the American, this new man?"
Modernizing: Polity, Economy, Patriarchy	p. 335
Enslaving: Facies Hippocratica	p. 401
Ending: "Strange Order of Things!"	p. 509
Appendices to Chapter I	p. 571
Index	p. 599
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