This collection of seventeen essays takes its inspiration from the scholarly achievements of the Dutch historian Jan Lucassen. They reflect a central theme in his research: the history of labor. The essays deal with five major themes: the production of specific commodities or services (diamonds, indigo, cigarettes, mail delivery by road runners); occupational groups (informal street vendors, prostitutes, soldiers, white-collar workers in the Dutch East India Company, VOC); geographical and social mobility (career opportunities on non-Dutch officers in the VOC, immigration into early-modern Holland; the influence of migrants on labor productivity; income differentials as migration incentives); contexts of labor relations (late medieval labor laws, subsistence labor and female paid labor, Russian peasant-migrant laborers, diverging political trajectories of cane-sugar industries); and the origins of labor-history libraries and archives.

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.

This book offers a view of shifts in labour relations in various parts of the world over a breathtaking span, from 1500 to 2000, with a particular emphasis on colonial institutions. How did growing demand for colonial commodities affect labour in the Global South? How did colonial interference with land and labour markets affect developments in labour relations? And what were the effects of the introduction of colonial currencies? The contributors to this volume answer those questions and more, combining global perspectives with impressively detailed case studies.

During the late nineteenth century, many Jewish workers and intellectuals considered their integration into the general labour movement as a good way to counter the double disadvantage they suffered in society as Jews and workers. Whilst in Amsterdam this process encountered few obstacles, it was more problematical in London and Paris. Through a detailed examination of the collaborative efforts of Jewish labour in these three cities, Jewish Workers and the Labour Movement reveals the multi-layered and unique position of Jewish workers in the labour market. It shows how various factors such as economic change, political upheaval, state intervention and anti-Semitism all affected the pace of integration, and draws conclusions that highlight the similarities as well as the differences between the efforts of Jewish workers to improve their lot in France, Britain and Holland.

During the late nineteenth century, many Jewish workers and intellectuals considered their integration into the general labour movement as a good way to counter the double disadvantage they suffered in society as Jews and workers. Whilst in Amsterdam this process encountered few obstacles, it was more problematical in London and Paris. Through a detailed examination of the collaborative efforts of Jewish labour in these three cities, Jewish Workers and the Labour Movement reveals the multi-layered and unique position of Jewish workers in the labour market. It shows how various factors such as economic change, political upheaval, state intervention and anti-Semitism all affected the pace of integration, and draws conclusions that highlight the similarities as well as the differences between the efforts of Jewish workers to improve their lot in France, Britain and Holland.

Global history is predicated on connections and exchange: how connections between far-flung people, places, and objects are forged through a variety of exchanges. As world history has matured as a field, its practitioners have found the movement of commodities between peoples, places, and time a fruitful vehicle for research and teaching. Studies of 'bulk' items like salt, spices, coffee, and other globally-traded commodities abound, but few scholars have examined the role of luxury goods from a global perspective. This anthology charts the many different contexts in which luxury objects have been used across the globe, ranging from the social practices linked to these objects to their production, exchange, and consumption, as well as how these practices varied over time and space and how different societies attributed diverse meanings to the same objects. Using luxury goods as a conduit, Luxury in Global Perspective enriches our understanding of global history.

The Life Work of a Labor Historian: Essays in Honor of Marcel van der Linden (eds. Ulbe Bosma and Karin Hofmeester), presents the latest developments in the history of labor and capitalism. As part of Global Labor History, Jan Lucassen, Magaly Rodrigues Garcia, Sidney Chalhoub, and Willem van Schendel discuss new concepts of work and workers, including sex workers, slaves in Brazil, and voluntary communal laborers in North-East India, while Andreas Eckert shows the relevance of area studies. Jurgen Kocka presents a history of capitalism and its critics to date, Pepijn Brandon analyzes Marx's ideas on the link between free and coerced labor, and Jan Breman looks at the effects of capitalism on rural solidarity through the lens of Tocqueville.

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.

From 1500 to 1650 many societies underwent profound social and economic change. As market economies developed and regions became interconnected, labour relations were transformed alongside ideas about work. Until now, these perceptions of work have rarely been studies from a global perspective, even though their analysis would help us to understand the nature and consequences of shifts in global labour relations. This volume focuses on perceptions of work world-wide and explores how ideas about working (and not working) evolved over time in the early modern period. Contributions analyse central texts containing perceptions of work, terms and concepts that express 'work', the ranking of occupations, and ideas about 'just' wages and forms of remuneration. They show, too, how gender, age, and ethnic or religious background determined who could do what work and how these ideas were transformed in particular societies and communities, either independently or in response to a transcontinental market.

Starting from a broad definition of labour relations as the full range of vertical and horizontal social relations under which work is performed, both within and outside the household, this volume examines the way states have shaped and interacted with labour relations in a wide range of periods and places, from the sixteenth-century silver mines of Potosi in the Andes to late twentieth-century Sweden, and from seventeenth-century Dzungharia to early twentieth-century colonial Mozambique. The articles presented look at very different types of states, from local and regional power holders to nation states and empires, and explore the activities of these states and their impact on labour relations in three roles, as conquerors, employers and arbiters. The volume finds diversity, but also a remarkable degree of similarity across space and time in the mechanisms deployed by states to extract and allocate the labour required to carry out their essential tasks.