From Masters of Slaves to Lords of Lands
The Transformation of Ownership in the Western World
Published on 16. January 2025
Book
Hardback
452 pages
978-1-009-49753-4 (ISBN)
Description
Today we think of land as the paradigmatic example of property, while in the past, the paradigmatic example was often a slave. In this seminal work, James Q. Whitman asserts that there is no natural form of ownership. Whitman dives deep into the long Western history of this transformation in the legal imagination - the transformation from the ownership of humans and other living creatures to the ownership of land. This change extended over many centuries, coming to fruition only on the threshold of the modern era. It brought with it profound changes, not only in the way we understand ownership but also in the way we understand the state. Its most dramatic consequence arrived in the nineteenth century, with the final disappearance of the lawful private ownership of humans, which had been taken for granted for thousands of years.
Reviews / Votes
'A brilliant book with a bold thesis, monstrously erudite, spanning centuries of diverse legal cultures, and written with dazzling clarity and overwhelming authority. This is comparative legal history at its very best.' Robert W. Gordon, Stanford Law School, and author of Taming the Past: Essays on Law in History and History in Law 'James Whitman presents us with a tremendously valuable and important work, erudite yet accessible, that would interest a wide readership. This study shows why history matters: that property in Western thought had transformed from control over people to control over land matters because it had left us with traces otherwise inexplicable, most particularly, the idea of absolute dominium, and the license to employ violence to obtain, maintain and secure property.' Tamar Herzog, Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs, Harvard University 'Whitman dazzlingly sets out the power of the legal imagination in producing and embedding historical change across the longue duree. He unpeels the palimpsest of property law in this dizzyingly intellectual book. The scholarship is immense, and the implications profound.' Hannah Skoda, Fellow and Tutor in History, St John's College, OxfordMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 31 mm
Weight
883 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-49753-4 (9781009497534)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
James Q. Whitman is a professor at Yale Law School. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Hitler's American Model (2018), The Verdict of Battle (2012), The Origins of Reasonable Doubt (2008) and Harsh Justice (2003) and the recipient of many awards.
Content
Introduction: owning humans, owning land, two primitive modes of the property imagination; Part I. Masters of Men and Beasts: 1. Hierarchy and the hunt for prey: the anthropology of early human ownership; 2. Masters of men and beasts: the early Roman fantasia of ownership; 3. The dominus enters the law; 4. Classical Roman slave law: the just hunt for human prey; 5. An empire of the chieftainship over people; Part II. From Masters to Lords: 6. Introduction to Part II: from Pierson v. Post to Johnson v. M'Intosh; 7. From slavery to feudalism: the great hypothesis; 8. From masters to lords in late antiquity; 9. From the law of owning humans to the law of owning land: the early modern culmination; Conclusion: from man the killer to man the tiller; Bibliography; Index.