For proponents of institutional economics, laws are one of the humanly devised constraints that structure human interactions. Like other formal and informal constraints, they define the incentive structure of societies and economies. In Freedom Bound, Christopher Tomlins subtly shifts the emphasis, suggesting that we think of laws not simply as constraints but as a “technology” that provides “… a means by which designs, structures, institutions might be imagined, created, implemented, and implanted” (p. 506). Viewed as technology, legal thought is both a tool enabling action and a constraint, channeling that action in specific directions.

In this expansive history of the legal context of the first two centuries of English settlement in North America, Tomlins clearly and compellingly documents both the power of law to structure the course of the colonizing enterprise, and its adaptability to different circumstances and economic realities. He organizes his narrative around the three challenges of colonizing identified by Richard Hakluyt the elder in 1585, a quarter century before the settlement of Jamestown: recruiting migrant populations—“manning” in Hakluyt's terminology; transporting populations and combining them with land and other resources—“planting”; and claiming sovereignty, securing occupancy and realizing jurisdiction—“ keeping.”

Before turning to this narrative, though, Tomlins begins by reexamining the quantitative realities of the peopling of North America. It has been well established by now that the majority of English migrants to North America came as indentured servants. But, using the sort of mathematical logic that will appeal to economists, Tomlins shows that the dominance of servants among immigrants did not translate into the dominance of servitude among the colonists. Because terms of service were relatively short, and rates of natural increase were high, servants constituted a small minority of the workforce in most of the mainland colonies for most of their history. With this quantitative foundation established, Tomlins turns to the legal context in which transatlantic migration took place. Chapter 2 is concerned with the basis of the King's authority to prohibit or allow workers to leave his jurisdiction, as well as his ability to establish governments in the colonies. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the evolution of English legal thought regarding the legitimacy of claims to territory in the Americas. Tomlins explores two themes here: the first is the effort to establish the legitimacy of English claims vis—vis other European states, while the second concerns the relationship of English settlers with the indigenous populations they encountered. In the latter case, he documents an evolution in English thought that “… progressively banishes existing inhabitants to the margins of consciousness by denying their civic capacity…” (p. 132).

In the next three chapters, Tomlins begins to explore the legal context of colonial settlement with a particular focus on labor law. Chapter 5, which is largely synthetic, argues that English emigrants brought with them not a single, unified legal tradition, but multiple traditions that reflected the differening economic and legal context of the locales from which they were emigrating. Coming overwhelmingly from pastoral regions, migrants to New England brought traditions of well-ordered village self-government; while settlers in the Chesapeake, who were drawn mainly from arable regions, brought a more heavy-handed tradition of law as a tool for social control. Chapter 6 questions the prevailing wisdom of a unidirectional movement in employment relationships from unfreedom toward freedom. According to Tomlins, labor regulations varied considerably both regionally, and across different types of labor. As a result, statutes created considerable space within which adult white males at least experienced considerable freedom. In chapter 7, Tomlins provides additional support for this argument through an analysis of court records from one county drawn from each of the three major regions of settlement: the Chesapeake, Middle Atlantic, and New England. While courts did provide support to employers seeking to impose work discipline, he shows that they also provided considerable protection to servants.

Tomlins next turns (chapter 8) to the broader political sphere, where again he takes issue with the prevailing wisdom which has depicted a steady movement toward civic modernization. Instead, he argues that a close reading of the documentary evidence suggests that arguments for governmental authority based on contract and patriarchy coexisted with each other throughout the colonial period.

The final topic Tomlins considers is the evolving legal status of slaves. Accounting for almost one-fifth of this book, chapter 9, documents the evolution of the colonists' efforts to rationalize their possession of African slaves and to establish a legal framework for controlling this captive population in their midst. In every colonial region, he documents the correlation between rising slave numbers and the elaboration of slave laws. In this sense, the law appears to have responded endogenously to what the free population perceived as a potentially dangerous captive work force. Although there were regional differences in the statutes enacted to control the slave labor force, the more striking feature is the degree of similarity in legal regimes. In part, this reflects a common pattern of borrowing from legal traditions established earlier in Barbados, which was a source of both slaves and of slaveowners who relocated to the mainland in search of more abundant land.

Tomlins' narrative ends with American independence, but the concluding chapter argues that the legal regime established during the colonial period formed the basis for American expansion until the crisis of the Civil War. More specifically, he argues that the Supreme Court's ruling in the Dred Scott case is entirely of a piece with this legal foundation. The cost of departing from this long chain of legal precedent was the Civil War, and without this costly conflict change would have been impossible.

By focusing on the legal context of English colonization, Tomlins provides a new perspective on a familiar topic. His richly detailed reexamination of American origins forcefully illustrates the power of ideas to shape and constrain human actions, while at the same time illustrating how legal ideas were themselves shaped by their evolving social and economic context. In both its wealth of detail and the broad sweep of its argument, this is an important contribution that deserves the attention of scholars of American history as well as those interested in better understanding the role of law in economic development.