Handbook Global History of Work

Coffee from East Africa, wine from California, chocolate from the Ivory Coast - all those every day products are based on labour, often produced under appalling conditions, but always involving the combination of various work processes we are often not aware of.

What is the day-to-day reality for workers in various parts of the world, and how was it in the past? How do they work today, and how did they work in the past? These and many other questions comprise the field of the global history of work a young discipline that is introduced with this handbook.

In 8 thematic chapters, this book discusses these aspects of work in a global and long term perspective, paying attention to several kinds of work. Convict labour, slave and wage labour, labour migration, and workers of the textile industry, but also workers' organisation, strikes, and motivations for work are part of this first handbook of global labour history, written by the most renowned scholars of the profession.

Auteur
Marcel van der Linden, Professor and Director of Research at the IISH, Amsterdam; Karin Hofmeester, Professor at the IISH, Amsterdam.

Contenu

Contents

1. Introduction

Karin Hofmeester and Marcel van der Linden

2. Regional perspectives

   2.1. China

Christine Moll Murata

2.2. South Asia

Rana P. Behal

2.3. Sub-saharan Africa

Bill Freund

2.4. Latin America and the Caribbean

Rossana Barragan and David Mayer

2.5. Canada and the United States

Bryan D. Palmer

2.6. Eastern Europe and Russia

Susan Zimmerman

2.7. Western Europe

Andrea Komlosy

2.8. Iran (Persia)

Touraj Atabaki

2.9. The Ottoman Middle East and Modern Turkey

Gavin Brockett and Özgür Balklç

3. Kinds of work

   3.1. Agriculture

Erik Vanhaute

3.2. Mining

Ad Knotter

3.3. Textile Industry

Prasannan Parthasarathi

3.4. Trade, transport and services

Peter Cole and Jennifer Hart

3.5. Administration

Therese Garstenauer

4. Types of labour relations

   4.1. Introductory remarks

Karin Hofmeester

4.2. Subsistence and household labour

Eileen Boris

4.3. Convict labour

Christian de Vito

4.4. Indentured labour

Rosemarijn Hoefte

4.5. Slavery

Patrick Manning

4.6. Wage labour

Jan Lucassen

5. Attitudes towards work

Karin Hofmeester

6. Labour migration

Marlou Schrover

7. Work incentives and forms of supervision

Marcel van der Linden

8. Organization and resistance

   8.1. Mutualism

Marcel van der Linden

8.2. Desertion

Matthias van Rossum

8.3. Strikes, lockouts and informal resistance

Sjaak van der Velden

8.4. Trade unions

Marcel van der Linden

Acknowledgments

Notes on contributors

Index