However, even as Europe was rapidly developing a set of legal concepts and frameworks that served to coordinate and integrate its disparate commercial law systems, European colonialism required the development of legal systems that could adapt and deal with the particular needs of far-off colonies. In general, colonizers attempted "to impose legal systems intact," but in the case of the Americas (and elsewhere) this proved largely impossible, as unforeseen situations meant that colonists themselves had to develop their own legal systems and concepts, frequently drawing on the legal thought of their home country but including novel developments that changed the shape of commercial law (Benton, 2002, p. 2). Furthermore, simple geographical distance meant that colonizing countries could not effectively enforce their own laws, allowing the colonies themselves much freer reign to develop their own schools of legal thought (Klein, 2005, p. 170). Thus, at the same time that Lord Mansfield...
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