With the onset of a more conservative political climate in the 1980s, social and especially labour history saw a decline in the popularity that they had enjoyed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This led to much debate on its future and function within the historical discipline as a whole. Some critics declared it dead altogether. Others have proposed a change of direction and a more or less exclusive focus on images and texts. The most constructive proposals have suggested that labour history in the past concentrated too much on class and that other identities of working people should be taken into account to a larger extent than they had been previously, such as gender, religion, and ethnicity. Although class as a social category is still as valid as it has been before, the questions now to be asked are to what extent non-class identities shape working people's lives and mentalities and how these are linked with the class system. In this volume some of the leading European historians of labour and the working classes address these questions. Two non-European scholars comment on their findings from an Indian, resp. American, point of view. The volume is rounded off by a most useful bibliography of recent studies in European labour history, class, gender, religion, and ethnicity.

The chapters gathered in this volume examine the main drivers, beneficiaries and discontents of state formation across and beyond Europe in the early modern period / This book will appeal to all those interested in the political systems of Early Modern Europe / This book also covers numerous topics related to the building of the 'Early Modern State', including standing armies, monetary and financial policy, legal policy, as well as resistance and opposition to these changes

With the onset of a more conservative political climate in the 1980s, social and especially labour history saw a decline in the popularity that they had enjoyed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This led to much debate on its future and function within the historical discipline as a whole. Some critics declared it dead altogether. Others have proposed a change of direction and a more or less exclusive focus on images and texts. The most constructive proposals have suggested that labour history in the past concentrated too much on class and that other identities of working people should be taken into account to a larger extent than they had been previously, such as gender, religion, and ethnicity. Although class as a social category is still as valid as it has been before, the questions now to be asked are to what extent non-class identities shape working people's lives and mentalities and how these are linked with the class system. In this volume some of the leading European historians of labour and the working classes address these questions. Two non-European scholars comment on their findings from an Indian, resp. American, point of view. The volume is rounded off by a most useful bibliography of recent studies in European labour history, class, gender, religion, and ethnicity.

This impressive collection offers the first systematic global and comparative history of textile workers over the course of 350 years. This period covers the major changes in wool and cotton production, and the global picture from pre-industrial times through to the twentieth century. After an introduction, the first part of the book is divided into twenty national studies on textile production over the period 1650-2000. To make them useful tools for international comparisons, each national overview is based on a consistent framework that defines the topics and issues to be treated in each chapter. The countries described have been selected to included the major historic producers of woollen and cotton fabrics, and the diversity of global experience, and include not only European nations, but also Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, Uruguay and the USA. The second part of the book consists of ten comparative papers on topics including globalization and trade, organization of production, space, identity, workplace, institutions, production relations, gender, ethnicity and the textile firm. These are based on the national overviews and additional literature, and will help apply current interdisciplinary and cultural concerns to a subject traditionally viewed largely through a social and economic history lens. Whilst offering a unique reference source for anyone interested in the history of a particular country's textile industry, the true strength of this project lies in its capacity of international comparison. By providing global comparative studies of key textile industries and workers, both geographically and thematically, this book provides a comprehensive and contemporary analysis of a major element of the world's economy. This allows historians to challenge many of the received ideas about globalization, for instance, highlighting how global competition for lower production costs is by no means a uniquely modern issue, and has b

This book looks at petitions over the last five centuries to reconstruct the lives and opinions of "humble" petitioners. Since Pharaonic times, governments have allowed their subjects to voice opinions in the form of petitions, which have demanded a favor or the redressment of an injustice. To be effective, a petition had to mention the request, usually a motivation and always the name or names of the petitioners. As a result, grievances of ordinary people which were not written down anywhere else are now stored safely in the archives of the authorities to which the petitions were addressed. The petitions considered in this book, which come from all over the globe, offer rich and valuable sources for social historians.

This volume explores the transnational dimensions of mutiny and maritime radicalism during the great cycle of war and revolution that began in the mid-1750s and continued until the 1840s. The central theme of the volume is mutiny - its causes, frequency, forms, patterns and outcomes - charting, linking and comparing maritime insurrections in different oceans, on warships, merchant vessels and convict ships. The contributions concentrate on the mutineers themselves, their social composition, self-organisation, objectives and ideas. Also included is unrest in port cities, sites of international exchange between maritime and landed forms of resistance. Sailors spent significant amounts of time in port, sometimes connecting shipboard unrest and radical movements on land in personal, political and social ways. The contributions cover the age of revolution in its full geographic extent, including the Atlantic with its wars and revolutions, but also the Indian and Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.