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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Industrial history
Originally published in 1935, this provocative book examined the tendencies of the Trade Unions in early 20th Century Britain in the light of their history. An advocate of a Socialist society, the author regarded the form and limited functions of the trade unions as temporary and predicted that they would be transformed into industrial unions and become part of the administrative mechanism of industry which would endure.
Originally published in 1970 this book was written by a successful trade union leader. It describes the changes which took place in the environment in which trade unions have to function; the vast modern corporations, with their highly professional management and often with an international base making them almost immune to pressure in any one country; the technological revolution; the direct involvement of government in industrial relations, prices and incomes policy and the international pressures which impel government intervention.
When this book was originally published in 1982 the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) was an organisation which catered for some 40 unions with an aggregate membership of 490,000. The GFTU in the late 20th Century was a very different organisation from what its founders in 1899 hope it might become, but in both its early and later form, it holds a significant place in the history of British trade unionism. Its history, outlined in this book sheds much light on the history of labour relations and working-class organisation in this country as a whole. The book provides a framework within which the GFTU's contribution to the history of British labour in the 20th Century may be understood.
Originally published in 1955, this book describes in a clear and concise way the nature of a Trade Union in England from the legal point of view, the particular aspects of the Law which make it possible for Trade Unions to carry on their activities and the restraints which the Law place on them for the protection of their members and the community. It briefly reviews the history of Trade Union Law, describes the Acts of Parliament which made the modern Trade Union possible and deals with those aspects of the Law which are important for those who have industrial relations with Trade Unions.
Originally published in 1991, this book opens with a theoretical and historical section and analyses the affairs of both the communist party and the trade unions of specific European countries. The first part of the book deals with cases of communist strength, where the communist part had close links with a particular trade union (France, Italy, Spain). The second part looks at cases where social democracy dominated the Left (Belgium, The Netherlands and the UK). Two further essays examine developments in the 1980s in Hungary and Poland.
Originally published in 1994, this volume analyses the relationship between political parties and trade unions in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. Political parties had high visibility in the changes that took place in Eastern Europe during the 1980s and early 1990s. Far less visible were the developments in the trade union sphere, where the old 'mass organizations' of the communist period, now independent, were joined by newly-formed organizations, and both played a central role in politics.
Originally published in 1986, the 1970s and 80s saw the emergence of the 'the new working class' or 'new middle class'. This book is an authoritative study of the 'white collar workers' relationship with their unions and analysis of their newly designated class. The authors drew extensively on original fieldwork and verbatim accounts from technical workers and foremen in industry. White Collar Workers examines the particular circumstances of different groups of workers and their functions in relation to capital and labour. It analyses changes in the composition of union membership and the effect of these changes on the structure and policy of unions.
This book explores the development of the putting-out system in hand-woven textile industries in late Qing Dynasty and China's Republican Period. In classic sociology theory, the putting-out system in handcraft production was regarded as traditional and inefficient. In the context of Republican China, it was believed that this kind of household-based production system would have totally failed in competition with the factory system of machinery production. However, this book exhibits the historical fact that the putting-out system was booming in handcraft textile production and subsequently provides an explanation to this phenomenon from the perspectives of institutional analysis and quantitative modeling. With rich county-level data and comprehensive analysis, this book is valuable for both researchers, academics and students in economics and social history studies.
Originally published in 1979 at a time when white-collar union membership had increased both in the public and private sectors of the economy, this book explains who the members were, why there was such astonishing membership growth and the circumstances which surrounded it. The history of this growth is recorded and the special problems of organization and recruitment are outlined. Issues discussed include bargaining, communications, the salary package concept, organization and recruitment problems, the rewards system, incomes policies, government liaison work and industrial democracy.
In 1922, a coal miner strike spread across the United States, swallowing the heavily-unionized mining town of Herrin, Illinois. When the owner of the town's local mine hired non-union workers to break the strike, violent conflict broke out between the strikebreakers and unionized miners, who were all heavily armed. When strikebreakers surrendered and were promised safe passage home, the unionized miners began executing them before large, cheering crowds. This book tells the cruel truth behind the story that the coal industry tried to suppress and that Herrin wants to forget. A thorough account of the massacre and its aftermath, this book sets a heartland tragedy against the rise and decline of the coal industry.
This book is part of an ongoing transnational turn in cultural history. Studies on the history of urban popular culture and the entertainment industries increasingly engage with the European or global circulation of genres, actors, and shows, especially during the period of massive growth and expansion of the sector from the 1870s to the 1930s. Nevertheless, a large part of this research remains focused on exchanges between Western and Central European, and North American metropolises. To provide a fuller picture of the emergence and cross-border transfer of different genres of popular culture, this volume investigates Northern, East Central, and Southern European cities and their relations with each other and the West. The authors analyze the mediating agents, transnational networks, and local responses to new forms of entertainment from Madrid to Vyborg, and from Istanbul to Reykjavik. These examples re-focus the history of urban popular culture in Europe in view of multidirectional transfers and a wider range of regional experiences. Urban Popular Culture and Entertainment will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in the history of popular culture in modern societies, particularly those studying urban centers in Europe, and their transnational and transregional connections.
Motherhood, Respectability and Baby-Farming in Victorian and Edwardian London explores a largely obscured marketplace of motherhood that provided ways for women to manage the stigma of illegitimacy and their respectable identities within Victorian and Edwardian society. It focuses on the extent of women's 'dirty work', when maternal problem management was fundamental to the general maintenance of respectability and, by extension, to Empire and Civilisation. Despite its intrigue, history has struggled to understand and represent an uncomfortable but significant artefact of Western modernising society: 'baby-farming'. During a period when ideologies of respectability and civilisation arguably mattered most, the 'right' kind of parenthood - especially motherhood - became paramount. As the 'wrong' offspring could jeopardise a woman's chances of being respectable, a wholesale, informal, and somewhat clandestine marketplace emerged that catered to various maternal difficulties. Within this marketplace, a pregnancy or newborn child who may have compromised a woman's respectability could be 'disposed' of through different means, for a fee. From the Victorian period to the present, the commercialised maternal practices associated with baby-farming have become firmly established within collective consciousness as being synonymous with child murder, female pathology, and 'infanticide for hire'. This book provides a revised, far more complex, and nuanced narrative history which reveals all that was associated with baby-farming - including all possible outcomes - to be entirely natural, rational, and even necessary products of their time; an understandable outcome of the period's 'civilising offensive'. Motherhood, Respectability and Baby-Farming in Victorian and Edwardian London will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, history, and gender studies.
In many ways this book tells a familiar story in British industry: of innovation and enterprise in the early decades ...of worldwide dominance at a time when Britain was the workshop of the world ...of wars and economic downturns ...of foreign competition ...and of relative and absolute decline on the path of - de-industrialisation in the latter part of the twentieth century. For most of this period the farm machine industry grew and matured. It is an inspiring story of technological achievement and of industrial success, as farmers and engineers brought iron and steel to fields which had - previously been the domain of locally made timber implements and power provided by horses.Agricultural technology moved on, inexorably, from broad-cast seed and the sound of the threshing flail, via the portable steam engine and the threshing machine, right through to the modern world of giant tractors - each with the power of 200 horses - combine harvesters and - impressively efficient farming methods.This book traces the broad sweep of the whole industry over 200 years, looking at many individual companies and products to explain how and why the farm machinery industry developed in the way it did. Important individual machines are described and illustrated in detail. The British farm machine industry is unlikely ever again to be large by world standards, nor to dominate the world stage as once it did. Yet the author traces a rich vein of innovation, enterprise and technological inspiration, often taking place within the large number of relatively small-scale, craft-based workshops which were so prevalent in the early decades. Rather than mere manufacturing, therefore, perhaps it is this tradition of technical innovation and invention which marked out the British farm machinery industry for historical greatness, and perhaps it is this tradition which will continue to mark it out in the future.
The work of the pioneering historian Raphael Samuel helped opened up new vistas of historical enquiry, bringing about the democratisation of the historical discipline, as well as its practice via the influential History Workshop movement of which he was a founder. Yet much of his own historical research remains inaccessible to the general reader, hidden in academic journals and obscure volumes. Now, for the first time, Workshop of the World brings the full range and depth of Samuel's historical writing on nineteenth-century Britain to the fore. From his pioneering study of the influence of the Catholic Church on England's Irish population to his expansive and erudite essay on the itinerant labourers of Victorian Britain, The Workshop of the World shows both the breadth and depth of his learning. Guided by both a political engagement as well as a methodological commitment to uncovering the stories of ordinary people, The Workshop of the World will help introduce Raphael Samuel's work to a new generation of readers.
Management and labor have been adversaries in American and Canadian workplaces since the time of colonial settlement. Labor lacked full legal legitimacy in Canada and the United States until the mid-1930s and the passage of laws that granted collective bargaining rights and protection from dismissal due to union activity. The US National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) became the model for labor laws in both countries. Organized labor began to decline in the United States in the late 1960s due to a variety of factors including electoral politics, internal social and cultural differences, and economic change. Canadian unions fared better in comparison to their American counterparts, but still engaged in significant struggles. This analysis focuses on management and labor interaction in the United States and Canada from the 1930s to the turn of the second decade of the twenty-first century. It also includes a short overview of employer and worker interaction from the time of European colonization to the 1920s. The book addresses two overall questions: In what forms did management and labor conflict occur and how was labor-management interaction different between the two countries? It pays particular attention to key events and practices where the United States and Canada diverged when it came to labor-management conflict including labor law, electoral politics, social and economic change, and unionization patterns in the public and private sectors. This book shows that there were key points of convergence and divergence in the past between the United States and Canada that explain current differences in labor-management conflict and interaction in the two countries. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of management and labor history, employment and labor relations, and industrial relations.
British Tank Production and the War Economy, 1934-1945 explores the under-researched experiences of the British tank industry in the context of the pressures of war. Benjamin Coombs explores the various demands placed on British industry during the Second World War, looking at the political, military and strategy pressures involved. By comparing the British tank programme with the Canadian, American, Russian and Australian equivalents, this study offers an international perspective on this aspect of the war economy. Topics covered include the premature contraction of the tank programme and dependence on American armour, the supply of the Valentine tank to the Russian authorities and the ongoing employment of the tank in the postwar peacetime markets.
This book assesses developmental experience in different countries as well as British expansion following the industrial revolution from a developmental perspective. It explains why some nations are rich and others are poor, and discusses how manufacturing made economies flourish and spur economic development. It explains how today's governments can design and implement industrial policy, and how they can determine economically strategic sectors to break out of Low and Middle Income Traps. Closely linked to global trade and (im)balances, industrialization was never an accident. Industrialization explains how some countries experience export-led growth and others import-led slowdowns. Many confuse industrialization with the construction of factory buildings rather than a capacity and skill building process through certain stages. Industrial policy helps countries advance through those stages. Explaining technical concepts in understandable terms, the book discusses the capacity and limits of the developmental state in industrialization and in general in economic development, demonstrating how picking-the-winner type focused industrial policy has worked in different countries. It also discusses how industrial policy and science, technology and innovation policies should be sequenced for best results.
This book focuses on the ethnically composite, heterogeneous, mixed nature of the Mediterranean cities and their cultural heritage between the late middle ages and early modern times. How did it affect the cohabitation among different people and cultures on the urban scene? How did it mold the shape and image of cities that were crossroads of encounters, but also the arena of conflict and exclusion? The 13 case studies collected in this volume address these issues by exploring the traces left by centuries of interethnic porosity on the tangible and intangible heritage of cities such as Acre and Cyprus, Genoa and Venice, Rome and Istanbul, Cordoba and Tarragona.
What is the role of cultural heritage in multi-ethnic societies, where cultural memory is often polarized by antagonistic identity traditions? Is it possible for monuments that are generally considered as a symbol of national unity to become emblems of the conflictual histories still undermining divided societies? Taking as a starting point the cosmopolitanism that blossomed across the Mediterranean in the age of empires, this book addresses the issue of heritage exploring the concepts of memory, culture, monuments and their uses, in different case studies ranging from 19th-century Salonica, Port Said, the Palestinian region under Ottoman rule, Trieste and Rijeka under the Hapsburgs, up to the recent post-war reconstructions of Beirut and Sarajevo.
How would the history of an urban area look if water were at the center of analysis? Water in the Making of a Socio-Natural Landscape explores the transition from early modern to modern water management in late nineteenth-century Rome. It merges local water management with national water policies aimed at promoting irrigated agriculture, industrial processes, and public health. It investigates perceptions and conceptualisations of water, changes in the water law, engineering projects, medical knowledge and practices, value of water in different productions, and needs and uses of local stakeholders. From which derives that water infrastructures are the complex outcome of the clash between different users and uses of water as well as the dynamic interaction between different levels of power. In this book, it builds upon Maria Kaika's Cities of flows and Erik Swyngedouw's Liquid power to introduce a new dimension to the analysis of urban water: the interaction among the three main uses of water: drinking, agriculture, and industry. Water in the Making of a Socio-Natural Landscape is written for a specialist readership with an interest in environmental and urban history and science and technology studies, but it can also be used by graduate and PhD students.
It is now almost impossible to conceive of life in western Europe, either in the towns or the countryside, without a reliable mains electricity supply. By 1938, two-thirds of rural dwellings had been connected to a centrally generated supply, but the majority of farms in Britain were not linked to the mains until sometime between 1950 and 1970. Given the significance of electricity for modern life, the difficulties of supplying it to isolated communities, and the parallels with current discussions over the provision of high-speed broadband connections, it is surprising that until now there has been little academic discussion of this vast and protracted undertaking. This book fills that gap. It is divided into three parts. The first, on the progress of electrification, explores the timing and extent of electrification in rural England, Wales and Scotland; the second examines the effects of electrification on rural life and the rural landscape; and the third makes comparisons over space and time, looking at electrification in Canada and Sweden and comparing electrification with the current problems of rural broadband.
The need for a skilled, motivated and effective workforce is fundamental to the creation of the built environment across the world. Known in so many places for a tendency to informal and casual working practices, for the sometimes abusive use of migrant labor, for gendered male employment and for a neglect of the essentials of health and safety, the industry, its managers and its workforce face multiple challenges. This book brings an international lens to address those challenges, looking particularly at the diverse ways in which answers have been found to manage safe and productive employment practices and effective employment relations within the framework of client demands for timely and cost-effective project completions. Whilst context, history and contractual frameworks may all militate against a careful attention to human resource issues this makes them even more deserving of attention. Work and Labor Relations in Construction aims to share understanding of best practice in the industries associated with construction and related activities, recognizing that effective work organization and good standards of employee relations will vary from one location to another. It acknowledges the real difficulties encountered by workers in parts of the developing world and the quest for improvement and awareness of some of the worst hazards and current practices. This book is both critical and analytical in approach and seeks to alert readers to the need for change. Aimed at addressing practical issues within the construction industry from a theoretical and empirical standpoint, it will be of value to those interested in the built environment, employment relations and human resource management.
Urban history is a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field of research. The rate of urban growth in the twentieth century has also stimulated interest in the city as an object of socio-historical inquiry. Some historical studies on individual Indian cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Cawnpore, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat and Madras have primarily explored the growth of urban centres by tracing their histories under colonial rule. This study offers a macro picture of the urban process under British administration, giving an understanding of how colonial capitalism shaped and imposed urban patterns in India. It contextualizes the urbanization of India in the world capitalist system of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, explaining the multifaceted historical conditions in 1857, just before the imposition of direct Crown rule. Sahoo examines the socio-economic developments and demographic changes in India under British rule and analyzes the impact of the world capitalist economy, the pattern of urbanization under British rule, and the contribution of railways to urbanization. This volume is a profile of India's primate cities, identifying the core, the periphery and the underdeveloped hinterlands.
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.' |
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