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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Industrial history
Lockheed has been one of American's largest corporations and most
important defense contractors from World War II to the present day
(since 1995 as part of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company). During
the postwar era, its executives enacted complicated business
responses to black demands for equality. Based on the papers of a
personnel executive, the memoir of an African American employee,
interviews, and company publications, this narrative history offers
a unique inside perspective on the evolution of equal employment
and affirmative action policies at Lockheed Aircraft's massive
Georgia plant from the early 1950s through the early 1980s. Randall
L. Patton provides a rare, perhaps unique, account of African
American struggle and management response, set within the context
of the regional and national struggles for civil rights. The book
describes the complex interplay of black protest, federal policy,
and management action in a crucial space in the national economy
and within the South, contributing to business history, policy
history, labor history, and civil rights history.
Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula juts into Lake Superior, pointing
from the western Upper Peninsula toward Canada. Native peoples
mined copper there for at least five thousand years, but the
industrial heyday of the "Copper Country" began in the late
nineteenth century, as immigrants from Cornwall, Italy, Finland,
and elsewhere came to work in mines largely run from faraway cities
such as New York and Boston. In those cities, suburbs had developed
to allow wealthier classes to escape the dirt and grime of the
industrial center. In the Copper Country, however, the suburbs
sprang up nearly adjacent to mines, mills, and coal docks. Sarah
Fayen Scarlett contrasts two types of neighborhoods that
transformed Michigan's mining frontier between 1875 and 1920:
paternalistic company towns built for the workers and elite suburbs
created by the region's network of business leaders. Richly
illustrated with drawings, maps, and photographs, Company Suburbs
details the development of these understudied cultural landscapes
that arose when elites began to build housing that was
architecturally distinct from that of the multiethnic workers
within the old company towns. They followed national trends and
created social hierarchies in the process, but also, uniquely,
incorporated pre-existing mining features and adapted company
housing practices. This idiosyncratic form of suburbanization
belies the assumption that suburbs and industry were independent
developments. Built environments evince interrelationships among
landscapes, people, and power. Scarlett's work offers new
perspectives on emerging national attitudes linking domestic
architecture with class and gender identity. Company Suburbs
complements scholarship on both industrial communities and early
suburban growth, increasing our understanding of the ways
hierarchies associated with industrial capitalism have been built
into the shared environments of urban areas as well as seemingly
peripheral American towns.
Monotown: Urban Dreams Brutal Imperatives examines the
post-industrial transformation and transnational legacy of single
industry towns, which emerged as a distinctive socio-political
project of urbanisation in the Soviet Union during the 1920s.
Monotowns took form through the establishment of industrial
enterprises strewn across remote parts of the Siberian hinterland,
around which cities had to be built to provide labour. This model
entailed the relocation of vast populations which would require
services, housing, and social and physical infrastructure, all
linked to a given industrial enterprise. By examining the ways in
which monotowns have adapted over time in this expanded field, this
book establishes a broader yet more specific dialogue about the
challenges faced by towns within this particular single-industry
etymology.
The Hawaiian pineapple industry emerged in the late nineteenth
century as part of an attempt to diversify the Hawaiian economy
from dependence on sugar cane as its only staple industry. Here,
economic historian Richard A. Hawkins presents a definitive history
of an industry from its modest beginnings to its emergence as a
major contributor to the American industrial narrative. He traces
the rise and fall of the corporate giants who dominated the global
canning world for much of the twentieth century. Drawing from a
host of familiar economic models and an unparalleled body of
research, Hawkins analyses the entrepreneurial development and
twentieth-century migration of the pineapple canning industry in
Hawaii. The result is not only a comprehensive history, but also a
unique story of American innovation and ingenuity amid the rising
tides of globalization.
Women's emancipation through productive labour was a key tenet of
socialist politics in post-World War II Yugoslavia. Mass
industrialisation under Tito led many young women to join
traditionally 'feminised' sectors, and as a consequence the textile
sector grew rapidly, fast becoming a gendered symbol of
industrialisation, consumption and socialist modernity. By the
1980s Yugoslavia was one of the world's leading producers of
textiles and garments. The break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, however,
resulted in factory closures, bankruptcy and layoffs, forcing
thousands of garment industry workers into precarious and often
exploitative private-sector jobs. Drawing on more than 60 oral
history interviews with former and current garment workers, as well
as workplace periodicals and contemporary press material collected
across Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia,
Women and Industry in the Balkans charts the rise and fall of the
Yugoslav textile sector, as well as the implications of this
post-socialist transition, for the first time. In the process, the
book explores broader questions about memories of socialism,
lingering feelings of attachment to the socialist welfare system
and the complexity of the post-socialist era. This is important
reading for all scholars working on the history and politics of
Yugoslavia and the Balkans, oral history, memory studies and gender
studies.
It seems bizarre that in a place as crowded, noisy and expensive as
London there are still wasted unused spaces. The relentless drive
for regeneration across Britain's capital deceives us into thinking
that every spare building and patch of ground is under development.
But this vast metropolis of more than 10 million people hides many
secrets and unexpected treasures from the city's unique 2000-year
history. In Abandoned London, read about the Abbey Mills Pumping
Station, a facility created in 1858 to deal with 'the Great Stink',
and now London's Italian-Gothic cathedral of sewage; or the
subterranean Finsbury Park underground reservoir, a space capable
of holding five million gallons of water and today used as an
occasional movie location; or the remnants of Highgate's overground
steam railway station, now a protected bat habitat; or the Clapham
deep-level shelters, constructed in World War II and designed to
provide protection for locals against aerial bombing raids; or the
Haggerston public baths, part of an early 20th century building
programme devised to improve London's hygiene. These photographs of
abandoned places capture a moment in time. Some of the buildings
have since been demolished or refurbished, but many are still
there, neglected and uncared for. These places have great value and
a rich significance, offering us a glimpse of past worlds.
It is 1615. Shakespeare is still alive and the country is at peace.
James 1 of England (James VI of Scotland) has been on the throne
since the childless Elisabeth I died in 1603. He claimed the throne
by virtue of the fact that he was direct in line of descent from
Henry VII, his great-grandfather. The English Navy, which had been
founded as a standing force by Henry VIII and had defended the
country from several Spanish Armadas during the Elisabethan era,
had been neglected. It needed rebuilding and this meant new ships
and plenty of stout English (and Welsh) oak. Luckily for James, one
of his closest advisors was an admiral, Sir Robert Mansell, who
having given up his naval career and become an industrialist and
entrepreneur (as well as a Member of Parliament), saw an
opportunity to secure his new-found business of coal mining and
glass-making. Mansell applied to the King to grant him a patent
forbidding the use of timber for smelting (mainly iron and glass)
and on 23 May 1615 the papers were signed. Thus, with the stroke of
his quill, the king started the industrial revolution that turned
the British Isles from an agrarian economy, based upon wool, water
power and wind power, to one where coal and steam brought about
unimaginable developments in trade and industry. It was following
the signing of the 1615 patent that glassmaking in Britain went
from a peripatetic, nomadic business which chased the fuel from
clearing to clearing in the dwindling forests, to one where the
fuel travelled to the kilns. By virtue of the fact that kilns
didn't have to move as the wood ran out, they could be bigger and
better, brick-built with chimneys and flues, which made the glass
stronger and more durable. It was into this exciting, changing
world of glassmaking that Sir Kenelm Digby developed his strong
verre Anglais bottles which enabled the production of (lightly)
sparkling bottle-fermented ciders and wines. The Knight who
invented Champagne is the story of King James I, Admiral Sir Robert
Mansell and Sir Kenelm Digby and the part they played between 1615
and 1630 in revolutionising the production of glass. The changes
they helped bring about led to the development and production of
stronger glass that could be used for making bottles that would
withstand the pressure caused by a secondary-fermentation in the
bottle. By 1662 we know that it was common practice by cidermakers,
vintners and coopers to add raisins and sugar to wine and cider at
bottling to start a secondary fermentation in the bottle. All of
this happened several years before Dom Perignon, often credited
with 'inventing Champagne', took up his position as cellarer at the
Abbaye Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers.
International Arms Trade has always been a powerful and
multi-functional constituent of world politics and international
diplomacy. Sending military advisors abroad and promoting arms
sales, each legitimizing and supporting the other, became
indispensable tools of alliance-making starting from the eve of the
First World War until today. To the German Empire, as a relative
latecomer to imperialistic rivalry in the struggle for colonies
around the word in the late 19th century, arms exports performed a
decisive service in stimulating and strengthening the German
military-based expansionist economic foreign policy and provided
effective tools to create new alliances around the globe.
Therefore, from the outset, the German armament firms' marketing
and sales operations to the global arms market but especially to
the Ottoman Empire, under the rule of Sultan Abdulhamid II, were
openly and strongly supported by Kaiser Wilhelm II, Bismarck and
the other decision-makers in German Foreign Policy. Based on
extensive multinational archival research in Germany, Turkey,
Britain and the United States, Arming the Sultan explores the
decisive impact of arms exports on the formation and stimulation of
Germany's expansionist foreign economic policy towards the Ottoman
Empire. Making an important contribution to current scholarship on
the political economy of the international arms trade, Yorulmaz's
innovative book Arming the Sultan reveals that arms exports,
specifically under the shadow of personal diplomacy, proved to be
an indispensable and integral part of Germany's foreign economic
policy during the period leading up to WW1.
The pottery industry was key for Burton-in-Lonsdale on the borders
of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria for nearly three centuries
until its demise in 1944. This book tells the story of Richard
Bateson, the last potter of Black Burton, a renowned thrower and
teacher. It encapsulates the history and traditions of this lost
trade; the personalities, the struggles, the humour alongside the
hard work. The book is a grand contribution to the history of
Burton, the history of pottery and the story of rural arts in
transformation from an industrial to a more artistic endeavour.
"The most comprehensive collection of history, stories, first-hand
accounts and photographs we are ever likely to see... social
history of a high order; rooted in its context, explored by those
who really understand how it was." From the Foreword by Mark
McKergow "(Richard) didn't like Bernard Leach's pots, because all
Leach's pots had a wobble and Richard's never did." David Frith,
Brookhouse Pottery
The most significant debate in global economic history over the
past twenty years has dealt with the Great Divergence, the economic
gap between different parts of the world. Thus far, this debate has
focused on China, India and north-western Europe, particularly
Great Britain. This book shifts the focus to ask how Japan became
the only non-western county that managed, at least partially, to
modernize its economy and start to industrialize in the 19th
century. Using a range of empirical data, Peer Vries analyses the
role of the state in Japan's economic growth from the Meiji
Restoration to World War II, and asks whether Japan's economic
success can be attributed to the rise of state power. Asserting
that the state's involvement was fundamental in Japan's economic
'catching up', he demonstrates how this was built on legacies from
the previous Tokugawa period. In this book, Vries deepens our
understanding of the Great Divergence in global history by
re-examining how Japan developed and modernized against the odds.
In this book, Sean Safford compares the recent history of
Allentown, Pennsylvania, with that of Youngstown, Ohio. Allentown
has seen a noticeable rebound over the course of the past twenty
years. Facing a collapse of its steel-making firms, its economy has
reinvented itself by transforming existing companies, building an
entrepreneurial sector, and attracting inward investment.
Youngstown was similar to Allentown in its industrial history, the
composition of its labor force, and other important variables, and
yet instead of adapting in the face of acute economic crisis, it
fell into a mean race to the bottom.
Challenging various theoretical perspectives on regional
socioeconomic change, "Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save
Youngstown" argues that the structure of social networks among the
cities' economic, political, and civic leaders account for the
divergent trajectories of post-industrial regions. It offers a
probing historical explanation for the decline, fall, and unlikely
rejuvenation of the Rust Belt. Emphasizing the power of social
networks to shape action, determine access to and control over
information and resources, define the contexts in which problems
are viewed, and enable collective action in the face of externally
generated crises, this book points toward present-day policy
prescriptions for the ongoing plight of mature industrial regions
in the U.S. and abroad.
This book presents new research on spaces for science and processes
of interurban and transnational knowledge transfer and exchange in
the imperial metropolis of Vienna in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Chapters discuss Habsburg science policy,
metropolitan natural history museums, large technical projects
including the Ringstrasse and water pipelines from the Alps, urban
geology, geography, public reports on polar exploration, exchanges
of ethnographic objects, popular scientific societies and
scientifically oriented adult education. The infrastructures and
knowledge spaces described here were preconditions for the
explosion of creativity known as 'Vienna 1900.'
The Press and the People is the first full-length study of cheap
print in early modern Scotland. It traces the production and
distribution of ephemeral publications from the nation's first
presses in the early sixteenth century through to the age of Burns
in the late eighteenth. It explores the development of the Scottish
book trade in general and the production of slight and popular
texts in particular. Focusing on the means by which these works
reached a wide audience, it illuminates the nature of their
circulation in both urban and rural contexts. Specific chapters
examine single-sheet imprints such as ballads and gallows speeches,
newssheets and advertisements, as well as the little pamphlets that
contained almanacs and devotional works, stories and songs. The
book demonstrates just how much more of this literature was once
printed than now survives and argues that Scotland had a much
larger market for such material than has been appreciated. By
illustrating the ways in which Scottish printers combined
well-known titles from England with a distinctive repertoire of
their own, The Press and the People transforms our understanding of
popular literature in early modern Scotland and its contribution to
British culture more widely.
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