Today in History: Sir Henry Sumner Maine Dies

On this date, February 3, 1888, Sir Henry Sumner Maine, the Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge, died at Cannes, France.  Maine is perhaps best known for his thesis in his Ancient Law (1861) that the history of “progressive societies” has been “a movement from Status to Contract” — in other words, that free contract was supplanting older, restrictive status-based relationships derived from family, clan, and crown.

Maine’s thesis likely played a major role in giving a moral component to the freedom-of-contract ideology of the late 19th century.

[Frank Snyder]