UNITED STATES AND CANADA The Many Legalities of Early America. Edited by Christopher L. Tomlins and Bruce H. Mann. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. ix, 466. $22.50, paper.

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Historians of early America are considering legal institutions in new and refreshing ways. The Many Legalities of Early America, a volume of 15 essays edited by Christopher L. Tomlins and Bruce H. Mann, is an excellent model for those seeking to integrate recent trends in the study of race and gender within the context of the law. The editors recognize that legal history has existed outside of the mainstream of American colonial history for a long time, in large part because scholars in the field were more committed to “detail than to worldview” (p. 9), a trend that has left the study of law in the hands of “internalists” for far too long. The efforts of Tomlins and Mann to present research in legal history within the broad trends of colonial history are quite revealing, and economic historians will find a number of essays pertinent to their interests.