Book Reviews: ROB MCQUEEN, A Social History of Company Law — Great Britain and the Australian Colonies 1854—1920. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2009, pp. xii + 362, ISBN 9780754621683, £65.00 (hbk)
| Author | Roman Tomasic |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639110200010706 |
| Published date | 01 March 2011 |
| Date | 01 March 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
human rights common to Western thought. Speed and Reyes close Part III with the
poignant observations of Mayas in Chiapas who reiterate that human rights as positive
law is not their way but is a useful tool to defend against the state where civil and
political rights violations continue, despite constitutional civil and political rights
guarantees.
The editors are correct that ‘the concept of human rights at the end of the twentieth
century is intimately bound up with the questions of indigenous rights and indigenous
rights movements’ (p. 7). In light of the Mayan experience presented in this volume,
one must question whether it is it truly possible for human rights discourse to enjoy
universal application throughout the world. Adopting the human rights discourse as
a tool to engage with the state appears to be more successful among the various Mayan
groups than does adopting the discourse to alter the way in which the particular groups
engage with one another or even how individuals within a group deal with one another
or the group. As Stoll reminds us, ‘[t]he purpose of human rights agitation is to protect
individuals from state abuses’ (p. 202). Thus, it appears from Human Rights in the
Maya Region that perhaps human rights discourse should be invoked in tandem with
indigenous culture in Mayans’ engagement with the state rather than treated as an
either/or choice. Those interested in the intersection of universal human rights and
indigenous cultures should definitely treat themselves to this book and come to their
own conclusions.
Kasey L McCall-Smith
University of Edinburgh, UK
ROB MCQUEEN, A Social History of Company Law – Great Britain and the Australian
Colonies 1854–1920. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2009, pp. xii þ362, ISBN
9780754621683, £65.00 (hbk).
Corporate law scholarship has long been open to ideas drawn from other disciplines,
such as economics. Professor Rob McQueen’s new social history of British company law
reminds us that if we are to fully understand company law, it is useful to be historically
informed. He suggests that many ‘dysfunctions of the modern corporate law are ... dif-
ficult to understand without some grasp of its history’ (p. 319). McQueen adds that social
and policy debates would be greatly enriched if we were aware of these historical
dimensions.
We have seen a number of important scholarly contributions to our understanding of
the emergence of English company law, such as Ron Harris’s 2000 study, Industrializ-
ing English Law, covering the period from the passage of the Bubble Act in 1720 to
the passage of the Companies Act of 1844; the period immediately prior to that dealt
with by McQueen. R.W. Kostal (1997) has also illustrated the close connection
between the development of English company law and the railway booms of the
mid-nineteenth century. Others, such as J. Willard Hurst, have undertaken similar his-
torical analyses in regard to the emergence of the corporation in the USA since 1780.
132 Social & Legal Studies 20(1)
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