Company Towns

Company towns first appeared in Europe and North America with the industrial revolution and followed the expansion of capital to frontier societies, colonies, and new nations. Their common feature was the degree of company control and supervision, reaching beyond the workplace into workers' private and social lives. Major sites of urban experimentation, paternalism, and welfare practices, company towns were also contested terrain of negotiations and confrontations between capital and labor. Looking at historical and contemporary examples from Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, this book explores company towns' global reach and adaptability to diverse geographical, political, and cultural contexts.

Marcelo Borges is an associate professor of History at Dickinson College, where he teaches Latin American history and comparative migrations. He is the author of Chains of Gold: Portuguese Migration to Argentina in Transatlantic Perspective (2009) and of numerous articles on migration and labor history.Susana Torres was an associate professor of History at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco and the co-director of the Master's Program in Research Methodology for Social Sciences at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral, in Caleta Olivia,Argentina. She is the co-author of Historia de un ferrocarril: De Deseado a Las Heras 1909–1944 (2004) and other works on Argentine labor and immigration history.