Law and English Railway Capitalism, 1825-1875 is the first large scale historical treatment of the relationship between English law and the rise of a leading sector of 19th century industrial enterprise. The book examines the impact of English common law and lawyers on the early steam railway industry. Grounded in a wide variety of legal and industrial source materials, the studys eight analytical narrative chapters examine a range of interactions between early railway capitalism and the evolving culture, doctrine, and procedures of Victorian lawyers. Subjects considered in depth include the legal ramifications of the great railway manias. law and the infiltration of the English countryside, railway accidents, corporate monopolism, and the organization of Englands first corporate legal departments. Each chapter contributes to the books ambitious general interpretation of the profound but ambiguous engagement of an antiquated but powerful legal system with a dynamic new industry.
List of tables List of illustrations Note on Abbreviations and Citation Introduction Part I: Law and the Inception of Railways 1: Dis-organizing Capitalism: How Lawyers Made and Unmade the Railways Manias 1825-1845 2: A Hurricane of Litigation: The Legal Aftermath of the Railway Panic 1845-1850 3: Capitalism in the Lawyers' World: Railways, Private Acts and Parliamentary Legal Culture 1825-1870 4: The Invasion of the Land: Railways, Land Expropriation, and Legal Process 1825-1850 Part II: Law and the Operational Railways 5: Into the Ideological Breach: Railway Monopolism, the Small Freight War, and the Courts 1840-1872 6: Localism and Capitalism: Law and the Parochial Taxation of Railways 1825-1862 7: `The Instrumentality of Others': Railway Accidents and the Courts 1840-1875 8: `A Ruinous System': Railway Companies and their Lawyers 1825-1875 Conclusion: The Dialectics of Law and English Railway Capitalism 1825-1875 Appendix: A Case-Study of the Legal Department of the London and North Western Railway 1862-1875: The Problem of Personal Injury Claims Bibliography Index
Reviews for Law and English Railway Capitalism 1825-1875
This is a classic monograph in every respect but one: it is highly entertaining. Carefully researched, well-written, and closely argued, ...this lively, engaging book is highly recommended as a vital contribution to a frequently overlooked aspect of railway history. --Railroad History<br> Probably the most illuminating study ever done of the legal profession's role in mediating between business enterprise and the state....Impeccable in its research, highly sophisticated in its method, Kostal's book sets a new standard for the study of law in society, showing how the world of law and lawyers, a realm with its own peculiar logic and habits, often interacts with bizarre and perverse effects upon its social and economic environment. --Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School<br>
- Winner of Canadian Historical Association Wallace K. Ferguson Prize 1995.
- Winner of Winner of the 1995 Wallace K Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association.
