The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650?000

In this massive volume, the editors have assembled the first systematic global and comparative history of textile workers from 1650 to 2000, covering textile production from pre-industrial times through to the globalized textile industry of the last years of the 20th century. The first part of the book contains twenty national studies on textile production between 1650 and 2000, with the countries selected to include the major historic producers of woolens and cotton fabrics, and to show the diversity of the global experiences of textile workers. India, Japan, Poland, Italy, and the Ukraine are among the countries profiled. The second part contains a dozen thematic essays, covering topics that include globalization and trade, organization of production, division of labor, migration and ethnicity, gender, and labor organization. Likely to be a standard reference for years to come, this book will be indispensible for scholars interested in the history of the textile industry and international trade. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Lex Heerma van Voss is a research fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and holds a chair in the history of labour and labour relations at Utrecht University. He has published on the comparative history of dockworkers and on the history of the North Sea. Els Hiemstra-Kuperus is responsible for the organization of the bi-annual European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC) at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. She has also contributed to a publication on the image collection of the International Institute of Social History. Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk wrote her PhD thesis on female textile workers in the early modern Netherlands at the International Institute of Social History. Since then, she has carried out several postdoc projects at Leiden University and the International Institute of Social History. She has published, among other things, on women's and child labour, urban history and business history.