Migrant Labour in Europe (1987) examines the movement of workers from less prosperous parts of Europe to areas with demand for their services. The author identifies seven major systems of migrant labour: the North Sea System (mainly Westphalian workers heading for the German and Dutch North Sea Coast and Walloon/French workers bound for the Belgian and Zeeland coasts); the area between London and the Humber; the Paris Basin; Provence, Languedoc and Catalonia; Castile; Piedmont; and central Italy with Corsica. A detailed study of the first of these systems, tracing its development and changes, is brought into a synchronic relation with data for the other regions. The evidence shows major waves of immigration in the seventeenth century, and a rapid diminution of migratory labour to the North Sea in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a time when new 'pull areas' were created by the expanding industrial complexes of Germany and labour began to come in from areas outside Europe.

These transfers of sovereignty resulted in extensive, unforeseen movements of citizens and subjects to their former countries. The phenomenon of postcolonial migration affected not only European nations, but also the United States, Japan and post-Soviet Russia. The political and societal reactions to the unexpected and often unwelcome migrants was significant to postcolonial migrants' identity politics and how these influenced metropolitan debates about citizenship, national identity and colonial history. The contributors explore the historical background and contemporary significance of these migrations and discuss the ethnic and class composition and the patterns of integration of the migrant population.

The study of wage levels and the purchasing power of wages is often viewed as a specialized academic topic of little concern to the wider public. This is far from being the case, as this book demonstrates. The study of wages opens up vistas of the daily life of the working people, of their standards of living and, therefore, addresses questions of larger economic developments and unequal power relationships in a region. Wage Earners in India 1500-1900: Regional Approaches in an International Context brings together several scholars-young and veteran-to study new data and reinterpret older data from a fresh methodological perspective to locate India within global economic systems more effectively. This book * identifies previously unused and unpublished material for the study of wages * underlines the importance of wages as a source of income for Indians from early times * demonstrates the trends in wages over the period under review * stresses the need to take women into account for the reconstruction of household income

The first truly global history of work, an upbeat assessment from the age of the hunter-gatherer to the present day "Beginning in the hunting-and-gathering past, this long view of work shows how little has changed over millennia. Progressing through the rise of cities, wages and markets for labour, it traces a perennial cycle of injustice and resistance-and the age-old desire for more."-The Economist, "Best Books of 2021" "Absolutely fascinating. . . . Lucassen's own compassion shines through this magisterial book."-Christina Patterson, The Guardian We work because we have to, but also because we like it: from hunting-gathering more than 700,000 years ago to the present era of zoom meetings, humans have always worked to make the world around them serve their needs. Jan Lucassen provides an inclusive history of humanity's busy labor throughout the ages. Spanning China, India, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, Lucassen looks at the ways in which humanity organizes work: in the household, the tribe, the city, and the state. He examines how labor is split between men, women, and children; the watershed moment of the invention of money; the collective action of workers; and the impact of migration, slavery, and the idea of leisure. From peasant farmers in the first agrarian societies to the precarious existence of today's gig workers, this surprising account of both cooperation and subordination at work throws essential light on the opportunities we face today.

In the celebrated words of Sir William Temple, the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces was 'the fear of some, the envy of others, and the wonder of all their neighbours'. This 1996 book looks at the history of the Dutch Republic from a comparative perspective, and provides a comparative study of key issues in Dutch history from the late sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Contributors examine political, cultural, economic and social developments in the Netherlands in an interrelated way, and in doing so shed light on historical developments in other parts of west and central Europe. In contrast with previous comparative studies in European early modern history, this book concentrates on comparisons within the central belt of Europe running from north Italy through southern Germany, Flanders, the Dutch Republic and England. An editorial introduction and conclusion place the individual chapters within a coherent framework.

New approaches in economic, social, labour and institutional history have re-examined guilds - not least within the framework of a re-appraisal of the classic distinction between the "capitalist" and "pre-capitalist" modes of production. These fresh approaches are unravelling the reasons why guilds were established, and why they could maintain themselves so long. International comparisons have fostered this rejuvenation of guild studies; awareness is growing that guilds are not just a European phenomenon, but have been prominent all over Northern Africa and the Middle East, as well as in many parts of Asia, including China and Japan. This volume attempts to set up a comparative framework to analyse the functioning of guilds from West to East, in the period between Classical Antiquity and the Industrial Revolution.

The recent wave of globalization has a profound impact on labour. Consequently, research in the field of labour and working-class history has become less Eurocentric and more global over the last twenty years. Outstanding specialists take stock of the globalization of the field in eighteen essays. Two introductory essays discuss the theoretical consequences of this development as well as the early historiography of labour and working-class history. Next, ten essays provide an exceptionally complete coverage of recent historiographical trends in the labour history of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, China, Japan, and Australasia. Finally, six case studies research worldwide and comparative aspects of global labour history, developing best practices in this new and difficult field. They include a wide variety of occupations and economic sectors: agricultural labour, domestic labour, brick making, coal mining and the work done in the docks and on the railways on different continents.

In the celebrated words of Sir William Temple, the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces was 'the fear of some, the envy of others, and the wonder of all their neighbours'. This book looks at the history of the Dutch Republic from a comparative perspective, and provides the first comparative study of key issues in Dutch history from the late sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Contributors examine political, cultural, economic, and social developments in the Netherlands in an interrelated way, and in doing so shed new light on historical developments in other parts of west and central Europe. In contrast with previous comparative studies in European early modern history, this book concentrates on comparisons within the central belt of Europe running from north Italy through southern Germany, Flanders, the Dutch Republic, and England. An editorial introduction and conclusion place the individual chapters within a coherent framework.

During the last decade studies have indicated that migration has been a normal, structural element of human societies throughout history. Progress in migration and settlement studies under this new paradigm has been so substantial that a new state of the art is needed. This book presents a reconsideration of current theoretical perspectives encompassing enlightened insights in diverging specialisms in the field of migration history, such as slavery studies, ethnic history, macro-economic migration studies, and gypsy studies. The seventeen essays in this volume, written by leading scholars in the field, collectively represent a pioneering effort in migration and settlement studies. They address the problems of ongoing specialization (and hence the need for synthesis) and the difficulties of integrating the consequences of this new paradigm into general histories.