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Upon the abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1833–1834, the British Caribbean had to revise their labour laws in accordance with, and in a way conducive to, the transition from enslaved to free labour. To do so, they drew on English labour legislation, which, since the mid-14th century, had regulated employment relations by equating civil breaches of agreement by servants with criminal offences punishable by imprisonment. After the establishment of the system of »apprenticeship« in 1834, and even after its abolition in 1838, the emancipated of the British West Indies became increasingly aware that the combination of civil violations and criminal consequences inherent to this labour legislation produced a coexistence between their formal liberty and personal subordination to their employers, who were also their former masters. By turning the formerly enslaved into a mass of servants and enforcing their duty to work, the new Caribbean labour laws maintained the hierarchies of slave society in the new society of theoretically free and equal individuals along the colour line.

The origins of social science in Britain cannot be separated from the history of the philanthropic movement. In fact, the first uses of the expression «social science» appeared within the context of charitable associations at a date as early as 1790. More particularly, philanthropy itself was conceptualized as the science of social order, aimed to extract information from society to improve the «art» of governing it. In 1857, organized charity also inspired the establishment of the Social Science Association.

review on: Hugh Cunningham, The Reputation of Philanthropy since 1750: Britain and Beyond, Manchester: Manchester University Press 2020, VIII + 218 p., ISBN 978-1-5261-4638-0

The purpose of this article is to show the concept of common property of Thomas Spence (1750-1814) as a genealogy of the current political debate about the commons. This debate is characterized by two main ways of conceiving of common property : one that considers the commons as a material heritage produced by Nature, and one that focuses on labour and proposes the concept of commonwealth for the wealth produced during production processes. Spence’s Plan reconciles the differences between these two versions of common property : in fact, being a project for the reappropriation of both the commons and the commonwealth, the Plan offers the conceptual tools to help overcome the limitations of the current debate.