Paul Craven

Master and Servant in England and the Empire: A Comparative Study

THE LAW OF MASTER and servant was a complex of legislation and related case law that defined the terms of the individual contract of employment for many hundreds of years, and was distinguished by the use of penal sanctions, notably imprisonment, for breach by the servant (but not the master). Reconstituted by repeated legislation from early modern times until the 19th century in England, it was repealed after one of the first organized campaigns of united trade unions in 1875. Yet the 19th century and the 20th century saw the extension of the same kind of legislation, and the legal doctrines based on it, to almost every jurisdiction in the empire and subsequently the commonwealth, as well as other parts of the common law world. It was crucially important in the organization of colonial labour regimes, and in the constitution of employment relations in England itself until repeal. Its doctrines continue to be felt in some parts of modem employment law. Much of the English and colonial history of master and servant legislation and its administration remains unexplored. While there is a growing international literature, the law has most often been treated as a local phenomenon with only the vaguest of links to its counterparts elsewhere in the world. Yet both in terms of legal doctrine and