The Invention of Free Labor

by Steinfeld, Robert J.

• ISBN13: 9780807854525
• ISBN10: 0807854522
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Examining the emergence of the modern conception of free labor--labor that could not be legally compelled, even though voluntarily agreed upon--Steinfeld explains how English law dominated the early American colonies, making violation of labor agreements punishable by imprisonment. By the eighteenth century, traditional legal restrictions no longer applied to many kinds of colonial workers, but it was not until the nineteenth century that indentured servitude came to be regarded as similar to slavery.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 3
The Master-Servant Relationship in Early Modern England and the American Colonies	p. 15
Labor Imagined	p. 55
The Freeborn Englishman and the Persistence of Traditional Service	p. 94
The Ambiguous Impact of the American Revolution	p. 122
Working Out the Idea and Practice of Free Labor	p. 147
The Federal Anti-Peonage Act of 1867	p. 173
Conclusion Self-Ownership and Self-Government in the Nineteenth Century	p. 185
Corpus File of Runaway Laborers, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company (1829)	p. 189
Notes	p. 197
Bibliography	p. 253
Index	p. 265
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