The recent vast upsurge in social science scholarship on job precarity has generally little to say about earlier forms of this phenomenon. Eloisa Betti's monograph convincingly demonstrates on the example of Italy that even in the post-war phase of Keynesian stability and welfare state, precarious labor was an underlying feature of economic development. She examines how in this short period exceptional politics of labor stability prevailed. The volume then presents the processes whereby labor precarity regained momentum- under the name of flexibility- in the post-Fordist phase from the early 1980s, taking on new forms in the Craxi and Berlusconi eras. Multiple actors are addressed in the analysis. The book gives voice to intellectuals, scholars, politicians and trade unionists as they have framed the concept and debates on precarious work from the 1950s onwards. Views of labor law experts, politicians and public servants are investigated in regard to labor regulations. Positions of the very precarians are explored, ranging from rural women, industrial homeworkers and blue-collar workers to physicians, university researchers and trainees, unveiling the emergence of anti-precarity social movements. The continuous role of women's associations and feminist groups in opposing labor precarity since the 1950s is prominently exposed.

Running counter to the general decline of technological industries in post-Victorian Britain, optical munitions provides an important, previously overlooked, study into the business of manufacturing.

Britain's rise to global dominance from the 16th century owed as much to the vision and creativity of traders, industrialists and bankers as it did to wars of conquest fought by military men. DRAGONS tells the story of British business endeavour through the lives of ten titans of commerce. Beginning with the Tudor merchants who transformed England's economy via trade with the New World, Liam Byrne traces an entrepreneurial golden line through men such as Thomas Pitt, saviour of the East India Company; financier Nathan Rothschild, creator of the modern bond market; William Lever, brand-builder, philanthropist, and creator of Britain's first great multinational; and John Spedan Lewis, founder of the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership. At the start of the 21st century Britain remains a major economic power. DRAGONS is both a rousing celebration of British business genius and a fascinatingly informative narrative of a neglected but essential strand of our island's story.

This pioneering work comprehensively examines the history of female entrepreneurship in the Russian Empire during nineteenth-century industrial development.

Marwick argues that economic development in Scotland was severely delayed until the 18th Century unlike neighbouring countries. Originally published in 1936, this study aims to explore key features of economic development in Victorian Scotland to promote more understanding of this issue. Issues discussed include ownership of land and capital, administration and finances of industry, organisation of trade and marketing, labour and recruitment, trade unions, housing and other aspects which impact on the standard of life. This title will be of interest to students of Economics and Industrial History.

Corporate social responsibility was one of the most consequential business trends of the twentieth century. Having spent decades burnishing reputations as both great places to work and generous philanthropists, large corporations suddenly abandoned their commitment to their communities and employees during the 1980s and 1990s, indicated by declining job security, health insurance, and corporate giving. Douglas M. Eichar argues that for most of the twentieth century, the benevolence of large corporations functioned to stave off government regulations and unions, as corporations voluntarily adopted more progressive workplace practices or made philanthropic contributions. Eichar contends that as governmental and union threats to managerial prerogatives withered toward the century's end, so did corporate social responsibility. Today, with shareholder value as their beacon, large corporations have shred their social contract with their employees, decimated unions, avoided taxes, and engaged in all manner of risky practices and corrupt politics. This book is the first to cover the entire history of twentieth-century corporate social responsibility. It provides a valuable perspective from which to revisit the debate concerning the public purpose of large corporations. It also offers new ideas that may transform the public debate about regulating larger corporations.

Drawing on a body of research covering primarily Europe and the Americas, but stretching also to Asia and Africa, from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, this book explores the methodological and heuristic implications of studying cities in relation to one another. Moving fluidly between comparative and transnational methods, as well as across regional and national lines, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the necessity of this broader view in assessing not just the fundamentals of urban life, the way cities are occupied and organised on a daily basis, but also the urban mindscape, the way cities are imagined and represented. In doing so the volume provides valuable insights into the advantages and limitations of using multiple cities to form historical inquiries.

Originally published in 1912, Industry in England provides a complete history of industry and industrial changes in England from pre-roman times to modern England as it stood in the early twentieth century. Using Gibbons' previous text The Industrial History of England as a base, this work aims to tackle economic and industrial questions in relation to social, political and military contexts in further detail to present a full picture of what life in England was like at the time these industrial changes took place and how this influenced industry. This title will be of interest to students of History.

This book outlines the story of shipping as a business and describes the way in which, at each period of the world's history, merchant ships were owned and operated. It provides information on the relations between ship-owners and governments, and the conditions of life and work afloat.

By the 1970s, Robt. Jowitt & Sons was believed to be the oldest surviving wool company in Britain. From a small family concern it grew into a large international business before suffering from the general decline in domestic demand and increase in overseas competition which afflicted all British wool businesses. This book tells the story of the company and the family behind it. In the seventeenth century, the Jowitts were persecuted for being Quakers. By hard work and moderate habits, they escaped poverty to become leading opinion-formers and benefactors in nineteenth-century Leeds. They backed the Reform Bill, fought tirelessly against the slave trade and were instrumental in setting up the Leeds branch of the Cotton Districts Relief Fund. Th ey were a major force behind the General Infirmary, the Medical School and the University. As well as business records and newspaper articles, the book draws upon unpublished diaries which give a fascinating glimpse into the private lives of the Jowitts, in particular John Jowitt junior and Deborah Benson's trip to Europe in 1835, the year before their marriage. The diaries also shed light on the family's central role in the Beaconite controversy which caused many, including the Jowitts, to leave the Society of Friends. Peter Danckwerts studied at Oxford Polytechnic, the University of Leeds, the Open University and Birkbeck College, University of London.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Alexander Dalrymple was once described as the man who, after Hakluyt, had done most for the spread of Britain's commerce. In this important new work, Dr. Fry discusses Dalrymple's extensive contribution to knowledge about New Guinea and his pioneer attempt to establish a free port on Balambangan, and shows that his interest in the possibility of a North-West Passage and his influence in government circles were to be a major factor in bringing about Vancouver's survey. Dalrymple's research and theories about the great Southern Continent led to his appointment by the Royal Society as commander of the 1768 expedition, and though the Admiralty countermanded this decision and appointed instead Captain Cook, Dalrymple's geographical researches were the motivating force behind the initiation of the search for Terra Australis. Dr. Fry throws interesting new light on Dalrymple's relations with Cook, which, he argues, have been consistently misrepresented. Dalrymple became an expert navigator and surveyor during his years as captain of East India snows, and he became in turn hydrographer of the East India Company and the Admiralty. His work in this field revolutionised chart-making and was a contribution of incalculable value to Britain's maritime supremacy in the nineteenth century. This classic book was first published in 1970.

Follow the development, decline and later revival of Britain's iconic railways with bestselling railway author Julian Holland. Discover the fascinating history of our remarkable railway heritage through expert commentary, stunning photographs and archive material from a lifetime of railway research. The iconic railways of Britain have seen unprecedented change and innovation in just a few hundred years, shaping Britain's industry, society and transport system along the way. Discover the historic events that have shaped Britain's railways. Highlights include: * 1604: The beginnings of the railways - Wollaton Waggonway opens in Nottinghamshire * 1830: Britain becomes connected - the world's first inter-city railway, the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, opens * 1938: A world leader in train travel - the LNER 'A4' Mallard sets a still unbroken world speed record for steam locomotives * 1963: 'Beeching Report' published - marked the death sentence for many rural lines * 2015: Borders Railway reopens between Edinburgh and Tweedbank - marks a modern-day revival for the railways

Peter Mathias's subject is the creation in late eighteenth-century England of the industrial system - and thereby the present world. That unique conjuncture poses the sharpest questions about the nature of industrialization, social change and historical explanation, issues that are his principal scholarly concern. For many readers these collected studies will be as indispensable as the author's general introduction, The First Industrial Nation, whether for the richness of their material or the freedom and subtlety of his analysis. These fascinating essays are divided into two groups: general themes, the 'uniqueness' in Europe of the industrial revolution, capital formation, taxation, the growth of skills, science and technical change, leisure and wages, diagnoses of poverty; and topics, the social structure, the industrialization of brewing, coinage, agriculture and the drink industries, advances in public health and the armed forces, British and American public finance in the War of Independence, Dr Johnson and the business world. This book was first published in 1979.

Apprenticeship or vocational training is a subject of lively debate. Economic historians tend to see apprenticeship as a purely economic phenomenon, as an 'incomplete contract' in need of legal and institutional enforcement mechanisms. The contributors to this volume have adopted a broader perspective. They regard learning on the shop floor as a complex social and cultural process, to be situated in an ever-changing historical context. The results are surprising. The authors convincingly show that research on apprenticeship and learning on the shop floor is intimately associated with migration patterns, family economy and household strategies, gender perspectives, urban identities and general educational and pedagogical contexts.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Taking the form of two companion volumes, Police Courts in Nineteenth-Century Scotland represents the first major investigation into the administration, experience, impact and representation of summary justice in Scottish towns, c.1800 to 1892. Each volume explores diverse, but complementary, themes relating to judicial practices, relationships, experiences and discourses through the lens of the same subject matter: the police court. Volume 1, with the subtitle Magistrates, Media and the Masses, provides an institutional, social and cultural history of the establishment, development and practice of police courts. It explores their rise, purpose and internal workings, and how justice was administered and experienced by those who attended them in a variety of roles. Special attention is given to examining how courtroom discourse was represented in print culture, the role of the media in providing a discursive commentary on summary justice, and the ways in which magistrates and the police engaged in a law and order dialogue with the press. Throughout, consideration is given to uncovering the relationship between magistrates, the courts, the police and the wider community, and to charting the implications of the rise of summary justice and the 'police-man' state for the urban masses (as evidenced through prosecution, conviction and punishment patterns). Volume 2, with the subtitle Boundaries, Behaviours and Bodies, explores, through themed case studies, how police courts shaped conceptual, spatial, temporal and commercial boundaries by regulating every-day activities, pastimes and cultures.

This book was first published in 1967. This volume contains a number of essays looking at Scottish business history, its sources and archives. Section two explores domestic and enterprise organsation with examples of lead-mining, joint stock and he law, the Glasglow savings bank and the east coast herring fishing. Section three expands Scottish Enterprise overseas from 1707 to the nineteeth century.

Manila, 1645 reconstructs what the city of Manila was like before the earthquakes of the mid-seventeenth century. The book demonstrates the importance of addressing the history of Southeast Asia as a multi-layered framework, rather than a series of entangled histories. In doing so, Manila is contextualized not merely as a Spanish settlement connected to New Spain via America, but instead within Southeast Asia, situated between the Chinese and the Sulu Seas, and located in the centre of commercial routes used by Armenian, Dutch, and Portuguese traders. This historical and geographical context is crucial to understanding later cultural dialogues. Urban planning, housing and architecture, and social networks in the city are also examined. The book will appeal to students and scholars interested in early modern history, global history and architectural history.

Late medieval and early modern cities are often depicted as cradles of artistic creativity and hotbeds of new material culture. Cities in renaissance Italy and in seventeenth and eighteenth-century northwestern Europe are the most obvious cases in point. But, how did this come about? Why did cities rather than rural environments produce new artistic genres, new products and new techniques? How did pre-industrial cities evolve into centres of innovation and creativity? As the most urbanized regions of continental Europe in this period, Italy and the Low Countries provide a rich source of case studies, as the contributors to this volume demonstrate. They set out to examine the relationship between institutional arrangements and regulatory mechanisms such as citizenship and guild rules and innovation and creativity in late medieval and early modern cities. They analyze whether, in what context and why regulation or deregulation influenced innovation and creativity, and what the impact was of long-term changes in the political and economic sphere.

Interest in the history of the workplace is on the rise. Recent work in this area has combined traditional methods and theories of social history with new approaches and new questions. It constitutes a 'topical contact zone', a particularly dynamic field of research at the junction of social history, history of occupational health and safety, history of technology and the industrial environment. This book focuses on the new approaches in this important and growing area and their possible range of influence. These new attempts to rewrite a history of the workplace are multiple - and in some cases disparate - but share many key characteristics. They are turning away from the assumption that class and class conflict is the prime mover in social history, abandoning the traditional binomial workers vs. entrepreneurs perspective which had long sustained the historical perspective on labour. Moreover, as this collections outlines, these new attempts concentrate on the analysis of complex social networks of actors that defined and configured industrial workplaces, suggesting a broadening of possible social actors. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Review of History.

The Tenants' Movement is both a history of tenant organization and mobilization, and a guide to understanding how the struggles of tenant organizers have come to shape housing policy today. Charting the history of tenant mobilization, and the rise of consumer movements in housing, it is one of the first cross-cultural, historical analyses of tenants' organizations' roles in housing policy. The Tenants' Movement shows both the past and future of tenant mobilization. The book's approach applies social movement theory to housing studies, and bridges gaps between research in urban sociology, urban studies, and the built environment, and provides a challenging study of the ability of contemporary social movements, community campaigns and urban struggles to shape the debate around public services and engage with the unfinished project of welfare reform.

In the last two decades, research on spatial paradigms and practices has gained momentum across disciplines and vastly different periods, including the field of medieval studies. Responding to this 'spatial turn' in the humanities, the essays collected here generate new ideas about how medieval space was defined, constructed, and practiced in Europe, particularly in France. Essays are grouped thematically and in three parts, from specific sites, through the broader shaping of territory by means of socially constructed networks, to the larger geographical realm. The resulting collection builds on existing scholarship but brings new insight, situating medieval constructions of space in relation to contemporary conceptions of the subject.