Werezi Books

An essential examination of the role of labourers in early modern Atlantic political-economic history.

In Masters and Servants, Scott P. Stephen reveals startling truths about Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) workers. Rather than dedicating themselves body and soul to the Company’s interests, these men were hired like domestic servants, joining a “household” with its attendant norms of duty and loyalty. The household system produced a remarkably stable political-economic entity, connecting early North American resource extraction to larger trends in British imperialism. Through painstaking research, Stephen shines welcome light on the lives of these largely overlooked individuals. An essential book for labour historians, Masters and Servants will appeal to scholars of early modern Britain, the North American fur trade, Western social history, business history, and anyone intrigued by the reach of the HBC.

Masters and Servants is a refreshing and invaluable contribution to our understanding of the function of household-factories in the early modern British world.

Stephen advances our knowledge in several key areas: the HBC; the labour relations on a transatlantic scale; the challenge of mercantile capitalism and its early labour requirements; and the ideology prevailing among the labouring classes and among the owners of these British imperial companies.

Masters and Servants significantly broadens our understanding of the Company’s operation during its pivotal first century of business and effectively dispels the traditional perception of the HBC as a conservative, antiquated, and often oppressive force in the history of labour relations and the fur trade.

Scott Stephen’s study of the HBC’s early modern labour relations is both an evocative depiction of its “household factories” and a nuanced analysis of how these relations fitted within a broader British world. He argues persuasively that these HBC households were remarkably adaptable institutions for assuring stable workplaces and projecting British imperialism into North America. Scholars of labour relations in the British Empire will find Masters and Servants a valuable book with relevance far beyond the fur trade country.

Get Masters and Servants by at the best price and quality guaranteed only at Werezi Africa's largest book ecommerce store. The book was published by University of Alberta Press and it has pages.