Law and Colonial Society

IT HAS been observed that if we are ever to have a competent legal history of the American colonial period, way will have to be found for getting scholars and colonial court archives together.' It may also be observed that some way must be found to familiarize historians with the nature and function of in particular colonial societies. These two objectives are the subject matter of the present paper, which is essentially a plea for more attention to colonial by historians and their students. Certainly the time for an artistically balanced picture of colonial has not yet come, and it seems unlikely that that time will come until historians, economists and sociologists have given us the benefit of their techniques and special skills in the preparation of studies which are an essential prerequisite to the writing of a history of American law. Although it is obvious that some knowledge of law is necessary on the part of such social scientists, a formal education in is not required. Some of the most valued contributions to American, as well as to English, legal history have been made by scholars who received no formal training in the law. The importance of legal records in understanding colonial society is clear, and the point requires no extended comment. It is no longer possible to say, as Herbert Osgood did in 1904, that colonial legal records are fragmentary and not easily accessible.2 Increasingly, with the compilation of bibliographies and the publication of court and other legal records, the

Colonialism · Political science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Anthropology · History · Law