In the more than 250 years since Lord Mansfield pronounced judgment in Somerset v. Steuart (1772) that slavery was not supported by law in England, historians and legal scholars have probed its significance for the history of slavery and abolition in the Atlantic world. Engaging both the robust traditions of scholarship and the recent upswell of interest surrounding the case, the essays in this volume show how the ruling exposed the fissures in the seemingly solid structures of empire, slavery, and “freedom” in British North America. In the short run, the ruling amplified the alienation of white North American colonists from metropolitan Britain; in the longer run, it bolstered both proslavery and antislavery movements in the new empire of the United States.

The contributors are Harvey Amani Whitfield, John N. Blanton, Henry N. Buehner, Matthew Crow, Jesse R. Eaton, Daniel J. Hulsebosch, Matthew Mason, H. Reuben Neptune, Dana Rabin, Padraig Riley, Grant Stanton, Kirsten Sword, Evan Turiano, David Waldstreicher, Nicholas P. Wood, and Helena Yoo-Roth.