Tracing British West Indian Slavery Laws A Comparative Analysis of Legal Transplants Routledge Studies in Comparative Legal History Series

This book provides a legal historical insight into colonial laws on enslavement and the plantation system in the British West Indies.

The volume is a work of comparative legal history of the English-speaking Caribbean which concentrates on how the laws of England served to catalyse the slavery laws and also legislation pertaining to post-emancipation societies. The book illustrates how these ?borrowed? laws from England not only developed colonial slavery laws within the English-speaking Caribbean but also inspired the slavery codes of a number of North American plantation systems. The cusp of the work focuses on the interconnectivities among the English-speaking slave holding Atlantic and how persons, free and unfree, moved throughout the system and brought laws with them which greatly affected the various enslaved societies.

The book will be essential reading for students and researchers interested in colonial slavery, Caribbean studies and Black and Atlantic history.

Introduction.

Chapter 1: The origins of legal transplantation in the British West Indies, 1500s-1700s.

Chapter 2: The origins of slave laws within the British West Indies 1600s.

Chapter 3: The comprehensive slave codes of the British West Indies and their reverberations, 1660s-1700s.

Chapter 4: The tole of legal transplantation within manumission law and other ameliorative measures.

Chapter 5: Legal transplantation within post-emancipatory British West Indies, 1830s-1870s.

Conclusion.