Unfree Labor, Apprenticeship and the Rise of the Victorian Hull Fishing Industry: An Example of the Importance of Law and the Local State in British Economic Change

Abstract

Within the last decade there has been considerable renewed attention on the importance of British master and servant law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a means of labor discipline and control. This article argues for further analyses of how the law was used within local contexts and specific industries and calls for increased focus on the role of the local state in labor relations. It argues that unfree labor played an important role in the development of some industries, and challenges claims of the demise of apprenticeship in later nineteenth-century England. Through an analysis of the Hull fish trawling industry in 1864–1875 it demonstrates that the exploitation of apprentice labor, and the control of fishing apprentices through punitive master–servant prosecutions were vital to the expansion of the trade.