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 Potosí 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.
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.
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 studied 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 transcontinenta
Hofmeester (affiliation not cited) offers a comparative study of Jewish workers and the labor movement in Amsterdam, London, and Paris during the period 1870-1914. Coverage includes the respective pos
Historians and social scientists present nine essays on topics that social historian Marcel van der Lindon has addressed in his long career studying labor history. Among them are workers: new deve
This book offers a view of shifts in labor 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 dem
