General Issues
SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
Chibber, Vivek. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. Verso, London [etc.] 2013. 320 pp. xii, 306 pp. $95.00. (Paper: £16.99; $29.95; E-book: $14.99.)
In this critique of postcolonial theory and subaltern studies Professor Chibber aims to show that the foundational arguments of subaltern studies are based on analytical and historical misapprehensions. He contends, for example, that subaltern studies fails as an explanatory framework, because it misrepresents the relationship between capitalism and modernity, both in the East and in the West. He argues that the shortcoming of subaltern studies lies in its romanticized and “sanitized” presentation of capitalism, which, rather than subverting colonialist and Orientalist depictions of the East, ends up promoting them.
Davidshofer, William J. Marxism and the Leninist Revolutionary Model. Palgrave Macmillan, New Haven (CT) [etc.], 2014. x, 191 pp. £62.50.
Professor Davidshofer in this book reviews Marxist and Leninist ideas for general readers. In three chapters he discusses the foundations of Marx’s thought, historical materialism and economics, and the revolutionary movement and state. In three other chapters he addresses Lenin’s doctrines of the revolutionary party and imperialism, Lenin’s April Theses and The State and Revolution. One chapter considers Soviet rule under Lenin. Each chapter concludes with notes, a bibliography and “Questions for Reflection”. In the epilogue the author compares Marxist and Leninist revolutionary theory.
Durkin, Kieran. The Radical Humanism of Erich Fromm. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2014. viii, 250 pp. £62.50.
The ideas of Erich Fromm (1900–1980), the psychoanalyst and social philosopher who explored the interaction between psychology and society, are underappreciated and underutilized in the contemporary academic world, according to Dr Durkin. In this book he advocates a reappraisal of Fromm’s ideas, which included an attempt at fusing Marx and Freud into a radical humanist form of social psychology. The book opens with an intellectual biography of Fromm, focusing on his major publications and offering an account of Fromm’s role in the early period of the Frankfurter Schule and his relationship with Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse.
Harrison, Oliver. Revolutionary Subjectivity in Post-Marxist Thought. Laclau, Negri, Badiou. [Rethinking Political and International Theory.] Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2014. 161 pp. £60.00.
Aiming to offer insight into the nature of post-Marxist thought, and focusing on the theory of revolutionary subjectivity, Dr Harrison in this book analyses the work of Ernesto Laclau, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou, arguing that although Marx’s theory of revolutionary subjectivity remains central to the theories of these three contemporary global theorists, their respective ideas have shifted away from Marx. Parts of this volume have previously appeared elsewhere.
A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences. Ed. by Roger E. Backhouse, Philippe Fontaine. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2014. ix, 248 pp. $95.00.
Taking a comparative approach and identifying parallels and contrasts between different social sciences, the six essays in this book examine how the histories of psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, history, and political science have been written since World War II. In the introductory essay the editors outline the rise of the social sciences after 1945 and describe how the history of the social sciences has evolved from disciplinary histories to its present state.
Memos, Christos. Castoriadis and Critical Theory. Crisis, Critique and Radical Alternatives. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2014. ix, 184 pp. £63.00.
Aiming to reassess the contribution of Cornelius Castoriadis to critical theory, Dr Memos studies the writings of this French-Greek radical philosopher and social theorist (1922–1997), juxtaposing his ideas against those of other radical thinkers including Lefort, Pannekoek, Arendt, Althusser, Axelos, Papaioannou, and Marx, and exploring the contemporary relevance of Castoriadis’ views on social conflicts, such as the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and May 1968. The opening chapter examines Castoriadis’ early years in Greece and his migration to and life in France.
(Mis)readings of Marx in Continental Philosophy. Ed. by Jernej Habjan and Jessica Whyte. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2014. ix, 229 pp. £60.00.
Starting from the premise that interpretations of Marx’s ideas by late twentieth-century philosophers were excessively influenced by the spectre of Stalinism and the reality of European communist parties, the thirteen contributors to this volume critically reflect on the positions that continental philosophers such as Adorno, Arendt, Althusser, Benjamin, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Negri, Badiou, Agamben, Rancière, Latour, and Žižek adopted in the Cold War through attacks on or misreadings of Marx, and identify new possibilities for aligning Marx’s insights with those of recent continental thought.
Sunar, Lutfi. Marx and Weber on Oriental Societies. In the Shadow of Western Modernity. [Classical and Contemporary Social Theory.] Ashgate, Farnham 2014. xiii, 208 pp. £60.00.
According to this book (based on a dissertation, University of Istanbul, 2010), the study of Oriental societies is key to the sociological theories of Marx and Weber, as both thinkers constructed their theories around the question of why modern capitalism emerged in the West. Professor Sunar examines how Marx and Weber formed their views on the Orient, as well as the sources they used, concluding that, despite differences in their respective analyses of modern society, both used information provided by Orientalists to define the position of modern society in world history.
Toward Spatial Humanities. Historical GIS and Spatial History Ed. by Ian N. Gregory and Alistair Geddes. [The Spatial Humanities.] Indiana University Press, Bloomington (IN) [etc.] 2014. xix, 212 pp. Maps. $85.00. (E-book: $25.95.)
Illustrating recent developments in digital and spatial humanities, the six contributions to this volume about the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to history include an essay that explores how agricultural change in England, Wales and France was affected by the development of rail networks; another about changing patterns of segregation in American cities; and an examination of potential uses for a geographical dictionary of places in Song dynasty China. The editors discuss trends in historical GIS (HGIS) and spatial history and provide a thematically organized list of further reading.
HISTORY
Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton. A Global History. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2015. xxii, 615 pp. Ill. $35.00. (Paper: $18.95.)
Connecting the history of cotton with that of the “great divergence”, Professor Beckert in this book about the rise and fall of the European-dominated empire of cotton traces movements of capital, people, goods, and raw materials around the globe since prehistoric times but mainly from the sixteenth century onwards. Using the term “war capitalism”, he examines the emergence of new ways of organizing production, trade, and consumption, which involved slavery, expropriation of indigenous peoples, imperial expansion, armed trade, and the assertion of sovereignty over people and land by entrepreneurs. See also Ulbe Bosma’s review in this volume, pp. 494–496.
Bonialian, Mariano Ardash. El Pacífico Hispanoamericano. Política y comercio asiático en el imperio Español (1680–1784). El Colegio de México, Mexico 2012. 490 pp. $36.36.
Based on both Latin American and Spanish archival sources (e.g. from the Archivo General de Indias), this book offers a history of trade relations between Spanish America and Asia. Dr Bonialian discusses the position of the Pacific Ocean in early modern world trade, Spanish Asian commercial policy, Asian trade between America, the Philippines, and China via the Pacific Ocean, the Galéon de Manila, and trade between Nueva España and Peru. In the final chapter the author analyses the Spanish East Asia trade between 1739 and 1784. See also Christian G. De Vito’s review essay in this volume, pp. 449–462.
Buschmann, Rainer F. Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899. [Palgrave Studies in Pacific History.] Palgrave MacMillan, New York (NY) [etc.] 2014. xi, 292 pp. £60.00.
In the wake of the eighteenth-century European expansion into the Pacific, a voluminous and bestselling literature about this region emerged in Britain and France. Although Spanish expeditions into the Pacific matched those of northern Europeans in scope and number, few Spanish publications were forthcoming about these explorations. In this book Professor Buschmann addresses this apparent dearth of disclosure, along with issues of knowledge production and dissemination. See also Christian G. De Vito’s review essay in this volume, pp. 449–462.
Buschmann, Rainer F., Edward R. Slack Jr, [and] James B. Tueller. Navigating the Spanish Lake. The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521–1898. [Perspectives on the Global Past.] University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu 2014. xii, 182 pp. $47.00.
The opening chapter of this book about the presence of Spain in the Pacific Ocean examines Spanish conceptualizations of the Pacific between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The second chapter argues that, whereas French and British expeditions of the eighteenth century were scientific explorations of Oceania, Spanish intellectuals and officials regarded the area as a mere extension of the Americas. The remaining two chapters are case studies of a Chinese mestizo regiment in Manila in 1762–1764 and of how indigenous people of the Marianas reacted to immigrants. See also Christian G. De Vito’s review essay in this volume, pp. 449–462.
Conocer el Pacífico. Exploraciones, imágenes y formación de sociedades oceánicas. Coords. Salvador Bernabéu Albert, Carmen Mena García, Emilio José Luque Azcona. Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla 2015. 459 pp. € 25.00.
The seventeen contributions to this volume about the Pacific world (based on a conference held in Seville in September 2013) include essays about the Pacific in the history of Islam; captains from Malaga who led major expeditions in the Pacific between 1519 and 1583; Jesuit missionaries in the Pacific; the writings of Pedro Fernández de Quirós about native peoples of the Pacific and their societies; Spanish views of the Pacific and its “discovery”; Easter Island in the nineteenth century; and the Panama–California Exposition of San Diego, California, 1915. See also Christian G. De Vito’s review essay in this volume, pp. 449–462.
Disability Histories. Ed. by Susan Burch and Michael Rembis. Illinois University Press, Urbana (IL) [etc.] 2014. xii, 401 pp. Ill. $95.00. (Paper: $30.00.)
The eighteen chapters in this anthology about the social history of disability include five contributions on disability, dependency, and the family in the United States, Brazil, and Uganda; an essay on smallpox, disability, and survival in nineteenth-century France; an article about slave disability and professional assessments of “sound” and “unsound” African–American slaves; and another on how Soviet doctors “cured” disability in World War II. Five articles consider disability in relation to citizenship and belonging, e.g. a contribution about gender and disability activism in postwar America and another on the origins of the disability rights movement in twentieth-century India.
Familias y mujeres en la sostenibilidad de elites y pobres (siglos XVIII–XIX); Women and Family within the Poor and Elites Sustainability (XVIII and XIX Centuries). Ed. Pedro Carasa. [Historia Contemporánea 2014 (II), no. 49.] Servicio Editorial de la Universidad del País Vasco, n.p. 2014. pp. 403–776. € 22.00.
A thematic issue of Historia Contemporánea devoted to the roles of families and women in supporting social sustainability among elite and poor families, this volume includes one contribution about seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Portuguese Misericórdias, which operated as large family units; another about the roles of women and families in charities in México (1873–1930); and a third about family life and domestic violence in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rural Alto Miño, Portugal. Two articles focus on the roles of women in elite networks in nineteenth-century Spain and Prussia, respectively.
Fisher, Michael H. Migration. A World History. [New Oxford History.] Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014. xiii, 149 pp. Ill. Maps. £50.00.
In this textbook Professor Fisher presents a global history of migration from c.200,000 BCE to the present, discussing migration history at several levels: from individual migrating communities, to larger patterns of moving ethnic groups, to the more abstract study of migration processes; presenting enlightening examples and considering issues of religion, colonization, class and gender, integration and cohabitation, as well as economic, social, environmental, and political aspects. The volume concludes with a timeline and lists suggestions for further reading and relevant websites.
Global Intellectual History. Ed. by Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori. [Columbia Studies in International and Global History.] Columbia University Press, New York (NY) 2013. vi, 342 pp. $35.00; £24.00. (Paper: $27.00; £18.50; E-book: $26.99; £18.50.)
Exploring possible ways to think about producing, disseminating and circulating “global” ideas, this volume (based on a conference held in New York in 2010) offers ten “alternative options” in chapters examining, for example, ideas about common humanity and cultural difference in the writings of Herodotus, Sima Qian, and Ibn Khaldoun; the role of cultural intermediaries such as guides and translators; universalization of concepts such as nation and civilization; and global intellectual history of the idea of the “Muslim world”. One chapter presents possible approaches to global intellectual history; two others feature comments on the other contributions.
Guasco, Michael. Slaves and Englishmen. Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World. [The Early Modern Americas.] University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2014. 315 pp. Ill. £29.50.
Before the mid-seventeenth century, although no law on slavery existed in the English-speaking world, the English already thought and wrote about slavery before their colonies were founded in the Americas, African people started arriving in those colonies, plantations were established, and modern racism emerged. In this book Professor Guasco studies early modern English ideas about and experience with human bondage before the race-based plantation labour system became integral to English colonialism. See also Stanley L. Engerman’s review in this volume, pp. 497–498.
Hoerder, Dirk. Migrations and Belongings 1870–1945. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2014. 230 pp. Ill. Maps. £14.95.
Aiming to avoid a Eurocentric perspective, Professor Hoerder in this book traces population movements across several continents from 1870 to the end of World War II, examining global and local migrations, free and bound, migrations in periods of war and depression, and during the aftermath of war and decolonization. He also outlines migration history before 1870, identifying regional and society-specific patterns and processes; discusses concepts of identity and belonging, as well as interpretations of migrations; and addresses gender and linguistic usage issues.
Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500–1800). Neue Perspektiven auf mediterrane Sklaverei (500–1800). With ed. ass. by Claudia Schmid; unter red. Mitarb. von Claudia Schmid. Hrsg. Stefan Hanß, Juliane Schiel. Chronos, Zürich 2014. 587 pp. Ill. € 55.50.
The twenty-two contributions to this multilingual volume (based on a conference held in Zurich in September 2012) include articles on the disappearance of European slavery outside the Mediterranean (1000–1400), Maghrebin slaves in Spain, slavery in early modern Russia, domestic slaves and servants in Byzantium, sexual relations between slaveholders and slave women in fifteenth-century Valencia, Venetian slaves in the Ottoman empire, and slave autobiography from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The introductory essay on “Semantics, Practices and Transcultural Perspectives on Mediterranean Slavery” is also presented in German.
Migraciones internacionales, actores sociales y Estados. Perspectivas del análisis histórico. Eds. Elda González Martínez [y] Alejandro Fernández. [Tiempo Emulado. Historia de América y España.] Iberoamericana, Madrid; Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2014. 338 pp. € 28.00.
The fourteen contributions to this interdisciplinary volume about American migration include six articles focusing on migration policies (e.g. of the first Peronist government, the interwar Polish government, and Franco); three on integration processes (marriage patterns in Sao Paulo from 1860 to 1930, ethnic-identity construction among the Polish community of Argentina, and links between the place of origin and the destination of Portuguese immigrants in Brazil from 1890 to 1950); and four case studies, including one about North American immigrants in Mexico and another about immigrants from Galicia, Spain, in Rio de Janeiro.
La Nao de China, 1565–1815. Navegación, comercio e intercambios culturales. Coord. Salvador Bernabéu Albert. Secretariado de Publicaciones Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla 2013. 302 pp. € 17.00.
The Nao de China or the Galeón de Manila was the trade route connecting Acapulco and Manila. After Andrés de Urdaneta discovered the tornoviaje or return route from the Philippines to Mexico, Spanish ships between 1565 and 1815 crossed the Pacific Ocean twice a year using the Kuro-Siwo current, carrying spices, ivory, silk screens, and kimonos to America and, ultimately, to Europe. The ten articles in this volume focus on various nautical, cultural and economic aspects of this major trade route. See also Christian G. De Vito’s review essay in this volume, pp. 449–462.
Un océano de seda y plata. El universo económico del Galeón de Manila. Eds. Salvador Bernabéu Albert y Carlos Martínez Shaw. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Sevilla 2013. 443 pp. Ill. € 20.00.
The Manila Galleons were Spanish merchant ships that, once or twice per year, sailed across the Pacific Ocean from the port of Acapulco to the Philippines carrying American silver and back to America carrying silk and other oriental products. The fourteen chapters in this volume examine various features and aspects of this trade, which lasted from 1565, when the tornaviaje or return route from the Philippines to Mexico, was discovered, until 1815. See also Christian G. De Vito’s review essay in this volume, pp. 449–462.
Osterhammel, Jürgen. The Transformation of the World. A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Transl. by Patrick Camiller. [America in the World.] Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2014. xxii, 1167 pp. $39.95; £27.95; € 43.50. (Paper: $29.95; £19.95; € 27.99.)
In this history of the nineteenth-century world, a translation of Die Verwandlung der Welt (2009), Professor Osterhammel surveys demography and migration; living standards; cities; invasion and colonialism; empires; war and diplomacy; revolutions (Philadelphia, Nanjing, Saint Petersburg); and the state. He addresses the themes of industrialization and capitalism; labour, networks; social hierarchies; knowledge and education; racism; and religion. In the introductory part he outlines the general parameters for this “portrait of an epoch”, namely self-reflection (opera, libraries, press), time (chronologies, periodization, turning points) and space (spatial perspectives, diaspora, borders). See also Bodhisattva Kar’s review in this volume, pp. 491–494.
Radkau, Joachim. The Age of Ecology. A Global History. Transl. by Patrick Camiller. Polity, Cambridge [etc.] 2014. xiii, 546 pp. Ill. £30.00; € 46.95.
In this book, a translation of Die Ära der Ökologie (Munich, 2011) Professor Radkau chronicles the multifaceted history of environmentalism from its origins in romanticism to the global environmental movements of today, discussing “environmentalism before environmentalism” (eighteenth-century nature worship, the struggle over the commons, environmental fears during the American New Deal era, and in Nazi Germany); and highlighting various episodes, movements, and individuals, for example, Rachel Carson; the “ecological revolution” of 1970; the response to “Chernobyl” (1986); ecofeminism; rainforest conservation; and the growing concern about global warming. See also Holger Nehring’s review in this volume, pp. 504–507.
Rossum, Matthias van. Werkers van de Wereld. Globalisering, arbeid en interculturele ontmoetingen tussen Aziatische en Europese Zeelieden in Dienst van de VOC, 1600–1800. Verloren, Hilversum 2014. 448 pp. € 39.00.
Demonstrating that the internationalization of the maritime labour market has a long history, this dissertation (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2013) explores social and intercultural relations between European and Asian sailors working for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dr Van Rossum examines the composition of the Asian maritime labour force, working relations on board, differences and similarities in the recruitment and payment of Asians and Europeans, and the construction of difference. He also addresses the themes of working regimes, shipboard hierarchy, patronage, punishment, and the occasional mutinies.
Scott, Rebecca J. and Jean M. Hébrard. Freedom Papers. An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2014 (Paper). 259 pp. Ill. $35.00; £25.95; € 31.50. (Paper: £14.95.)
Édouard Tinchant (1841–1915) was a cigar merchant in Antwerp. One of his ancestors was a woman from Senegambia who was enslaved and sent to Saint-Domingue around 1785. Using numerous archives from both sides of the Atlantic (including Cuba, Louisiana, France, and Senegal), in this book Professors Scott and Hébrard reconstruct the family history of Édouard Tinchant against the background of the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution of 1848, and the Civil War and Reconstruction in the United States, describing how each generation used the evidential value of documents to help enforce claims to freedom and respect.
Seijas, Tatiana. Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico. From Chinos to Indians. [Cambridge Latin American Studies.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2014. xiv, 282 pp. Ill. Maps. £65.00; $99.00. (Paper: £19.99; $29.99.)
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, slaves from diverse communities in the Indian subcontinent and south-east Asia were sent to Mexico on the ships of the Manila Galleon. In Mexico they were all categorized as chinos. In this book about the trans-Pacific slave trade Professor Seijas narrates these people’s histories in the context of the history of the Manila slave market, the Manila Galleon trade, the labour sector of Mexico City, the Republic of Indians, the Catholic Church, and the colonial courts of justice, highlighting individual efforts to escape from bondage prior to abolition. See also Christian G. De Vito’s review essay in this volume, pp. 449–462.
Stanziani, Alessandro. Sailors, Slaves, and Immigrants. Bondage in the Indian Ocean World, 1750–1914. [Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies.] Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2014. 188 pp. £56.50.
Contrasting the world of the Indian Ocean with that of the Atlantic and emphasizing both that different forms of bondage, dependence, and servitude coexisted, and that capitalism was compatible with unfree labour, Professor Stanziani in this book studies maritime labour in France, Britain, and their respective empires during the nineteenth century; the legacy of the French galley system and conscription; British impressment; and forms of pre-colonial slavery and labour in the Indian Ocean World. Two previously published essays appear in this volume as chapters about the islands of Réunion and Mauritius.
Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War. Agents, Activities, and Networks. Ed. by Luc van Dongen, Stéphanie Roulin, and Giles Scott-Smith. [The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2014. xvi, 292 pp. £60.00.
Exploring to what extent anti-communism was planned, coordinated, and structured, and focusing on the roles of individuals and private networks, the seventeen articles in this volume (based on a conference held in Fribourg in October 2011) include essays about the Nordic (especially Danish) trade-union movement and transnational anti-communist networks; the Swiss trade-union leader Lucien Tronchet, who was involved in American Cold War propaganda; the CIA and transnational networks of African diaspora intellectuals; transnational networks, such as Paix et Liberté and the World Anti-Communist League; and Christian networks. See also Richard Saull’s review in this volume, pp. 507–509.
Tremml-Werner, Birgit. Spain, China, and Japan in Manila, 1571–1644. Local Comparisons and Global Connections. [Emerging Asia.] Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2015. 365 pp. Maps. € 119.00.
This dissertation (University of Vienna, 2012) is about the connected histories of Spain, China, and Japan after Manila was founded as the capital of the Spanish Philippines in 1571. Using Spanish, Philippine, and Japanese primary sources, Dr Tremml-Werner examines “triangular” trade and diplomatic relations between the three pre-modern states, demonstrating the influence of cross-cultural encounters on the development of Manila as a “Eurasian” port city and on the political, social, and economic history of the three states. See also Christian G. De Vito’s review essay in this volume, pp. 449–462.
Welskopp, Thomas. Unternehmen Praxisgeschichte. Historische Perspektiven auf Kapitalismus, Arbeit und Klassengesellschaft. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2014. viii, 309 pp. € 59.00.
In this volume Professor Welskopp brings together eleven articles in which he considers aspects of modern capitalist history, such as private enterprises and capitalist business culture, class structure in modern societies, the history of labour (especially in capitalist businesses), and market and consumer history. In one article he outlines the limitations and perspectives of social-historical research; in three others he examines labour in history, especially industrial labour. In one essay he analyses discourses of market and class relations in the German social democratic movement from 1848 to 1878. Nine articles were published elsewhere between 1996 and 2008.
Women, Dissent, and Anti-Slavery in Britain and America, 1790–1865. Ed. by Elizabeth J. Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014 (Paper). x, 214 pp. £69.00. (Paper: £25.00.)
Focusing particularly on Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Unitarian women, this collection about the connections between abolitionism and religious dissent and culture contains a discussion of historical writing on British and American anti-slavery; four articles examining aspects of the links between women, religion, and abolition; an article about the London Baptist bookseller Martha Gurney (1733–1816), who printed and sold a pamphlet that instigated the sugar boycott of 1791; and another about the English Quaker Elizabeth Heyrick, who published the pamphlet Immediate, not Gradual Abolition in 1824. The concluding chapter is about Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later. Ed. by Marcello Musto. Bloomsbury, New York [etc.] 2014. £48.60.
This anthology reproduces eighty official texts (thirty of which appear in English for the first time) of the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA), ranging from the 1864 inaugural address by Karl Marx and official Congress resolutions to texts dedicated to specific themes, such as labour, trade unionism, and strikes, cooperative and mutual credit associations, education, the Paris Commune, internationalism and opposition to war, the Irish Question, the United States and political organization. In a substantial introduction Professor Musto provides a context for the texts. The appendix contains Charles Kerr’s translation of The Internationale.
A World Connecting: 1870–1945. Ed. by Emily S. Rosenberg. [A History of the World.] The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2012. 1161 pp. Ill. $29.95.
This volume features five essays, in which seven historians examine regional and global networks between 1870 and 1945. One essay studies free and unfree migrations from a longue-durée perspective, during war and depression and in the aftermath of war and decolonization; another traces commodity chains in a global economy, discussing, for example, staples such as grains and stimulants such as sugar. The third essay highlights the variety of transnational social-cultural currents (ideas, movements, and technologies) that circulated in the networked world from 1870 to 1945. The remaining two essays are about modern statehood and imperial history as a global history.
COMPARATIVE HISTORY
Healthcare in Ireland and Britain from 1850. Voluntary, regional and comparative perspectives. Ed. by Donnacha Seán Lucey and Virginia Crossman. Institute of Historical Research, London 2014. xv, 276 pp. $40.00.
Focusing on voluntary and regional and/or local aspects and adopting a comparative approach, this collection (based on two workshops held in Dublin in 2011 and 2012) about health and social care in Ireland and Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries includes two articles about historiographical directions; three others about voluntary hospitals; and six case studies, covering health care in south Wales, district nurses in Ireland, the Church of Scotland and welfare, the Dublin authorities facing the 1902–1903 smallpox outbreak, the Local Government Board for Ireland and the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic, and British municipal policies on infectious diseases.
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
Huws, Ursula. Labor in the Global Digital Economy. The Cybertariat Comes of Age. Monthly Review Press, New York (NY) 2014. 208 pp. $19.00.
In this collection of seven previously published essays Professor Huws examines how advanced information and communications technology in the digital era has generated new forms of commodification in culture and the arts (e-readers and e-books, both hardware and content) in the privatization of public services and in the “colonization” of human sociality by the market (mobile phones and social networking). She also describes how these developments impact labour conditions, especially for creative workers and everyday life in general. See also Gregory J. Downey’s review in this volume, pp. 518–519.
Immigrant Protest. Politics, Aesthetics, and Everyday Dissent. Ed. by Katarzyna Marciniak and Imogen Tyler. [SUNY series, Praxis: Theory in Action.] SUNY Press, Albany (NY) 2014. xii, 306 pp. Ill. $90.00. (Paper: $34.95.)
Documenting and studying protest in a range of mediums (including film and design) and theoretical dimensions, the thirteen chapters in this volume explore how migrants and their activist allies engage in political strategies of visibility to “make public” their concerns and grievances. The collection includes contributions about the precarious lives of asylum seekers in Glasgow; everyday resistance in Swedish clandestinity; gender and the politics of anti-racist and immigrant protest in Greece; migrant resistance and the anti-raids campaign of 2012 in London; and the World Courts of Women. In the afterword the editors reflect on immigrant protest in neo-liberal times.
Insurgent Encounters. Transnational Activism, Ethnography, and the Political. Eds Jeffrey S. Juris, Alex Khasnabish. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2013. Ill. xv, 444 pp. $99.95; $28.95.
The seventeen contributors to this volume about the dynamics of contemporary transnational social movements (advocating the rights of women and indigenous groups, environmental justice, and alternative forms of globalization) are activist ethnographers operating within the social movements they analyse. In fourteen case studies (e.g. on the World Social Forum and the global indigenous movement) and in theoretical and methodological articles they explore the possibilities of engaged ethnography, arguing that such a methodology may reveal empirical issues and generate theoretical insights exceeding the scope of traditional social-movement research methods.
Continents and Countries
AFRICA
Mobility Makes States. Migration and Power in Africa. Ed. by Darshan Vigneswaran and Joel Quirk. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (PA) 2015. vi, 297 pp. Ill. $59.95; £39.00. (E-book: $59.95; £39.00)
Arguing that human mobility has long been the historical norm, not the exception, and that mobility is central to African state formation, the ten contributors to this volume (based on a workshop held in Maputo in 2010) set out to analyse how African states have sought to “channel”, i.e. to prevent or promote, human mobility. The collection includes chapters about Portuguese empire building and human mobility in Sao Tomé and Angola (1400s–1700s); law, labour mobility, and violence in colonial Mozambique; segregation and securitization in post-apartheid Johannesburg; and recent efforts by the Ghanaian state to mobilize the Ghanaian diaspora for development purposes.
Algeria
Drew, Allison. We are no longer in France. Communists in colonial Algeria. [Studies in Imperialism.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2014. xv, 311 pp. £75.00.
In this history of the communist movement in colonial Algeria (1920s–1962) Professor Drew explores the complex relationship of communism with Algerian nationalism, emphasizing the importance of national (rural versus urban society) and international (Comintern) geopolitics. She analyses the interaction between the predominantly European Parti Communiste Français, the Parti Communiste Algérien, which, prioritizing the struggle against French imperialism, mainly attracted young radicalized Algerians, and the Front de Libération Nationale, which launched its war of independence in 1954. See also Pierre-Jean Le Foll-Luciani’s review in this volume, pp. 501–504.
Gabon
Jean-Baptiste, Rachel. Conjugal Rights. Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon. [New African Histories Series.] Ohio University Press, Athens (OH) 2014. xiii, 300 pp. Ill. $80.00. (Paper: $32.95.)
In 1849 a number of former slaves recently settled in Libreville, Gabon, staged a rebellion, voicing a single demand: they wanted wives. Beginning with this “marriage mutiny” and drawing on civil and criminal court records, ethnographies by colonial bureaucrats and military officers, missionaries’ accounts, alongside personal documents and newspapers, Professor Jean-Baptiste offers in this book a social history of heterosexual relationships among the Mpongwé inhabitants of Libreville and the Fang immigrants in the region from 1849 to 1960.
AMERICA
Bohls, Elizabeth A. Slavery and the Politics of Place. Representing the Colonial Caribbean, 1770–1833. [Cambridge Studies in Romanticism.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014. xi, 262 pp. Ill. £60.00; $95.00.
This book is about the representation of the places of British slavery in the writings of planters, slaves, soldiers, and travellers. Drawing on twenty-first-century theories of place and space, Professor Bohls examines texts such as journals by white women sojourning in the West Indies, the narrative of the Scottish mercenary John Stedman about Surinam, Edward Long’s histories of Jamaica and St Domingue, and the autobiographies of Olaudah Equiano and the domestic slave Mary Prince, aiming to demonstrate how these writers used discourses of aesthetics and natural history to engage with the slavery debate.
Internationale Parteienverbände und parteinahe Stiftungen in Lateinamerika. Hrsg. Detlef Nolte [und] Nikolaus Werz. Unter Mitarb. von Jan Müller. [Studien zu Lateinamerika, Band 27.] Nomos, Baden-Baden 2014. 350 pp. € 62.00.
This volume about international party organizations in Latin America since the Cold War (based on a symposium held in Rostock in June 2012) comprises four articles about international party networks and political party assistance; six case studies of international party organizations in Latin America (e.g. the Comintern, the Socialist International, the Organización Demócrata Cristiana de América, and the Foro de São Paulo); and four others addressing political foundations (including the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, FES). The concluding chapters address the FES-founded periodical Nueva Sociedad and Latin America studies, respectively.
Argentina
Mignon, Carlos. Córdoba obrera. El sindicato en la fábrica 1968–1973. Imago Mundi, Buenos Aires 2014. 342 pp. AR$280.00; $30.66.
Through this case study of the auto workers at FIAT and IKA Renault in Córdoba, Argentina, and their militant trade unions, Dr Mignon aims to shed light on the labour and working-class history of Córdoba in the 1960s and 1970s. He describes the social, demographic, and industrial history of Córdoba, discusses Argentine trade unionism in general, chronicles the wildcat strikes of 1970–1971, and examines the influence of organizations of the revolutionary left on the shopfloor. He also explores the everyday lives of the people who made up the unions, life at the workplace, and the social consequences of working conditions.
Milanesio, Natalia. Cuando los trabajadores salieron de compras: nuevos consumidores, publicidad y cambio cultural durante el primer peronismo. [Historia y cultura.] Siglo Veintiuno, Buenos Aires [etc.] 2014. 262 pp. Ill. $21.65.
Thanks to industrial growth and increased purchasing power, large segments of the Argentine population gained access to consumer goods between 1946 and 1955. Using oral testimonies as well as various written primary sources, Professor Milanesio in this social and cultural history of patterns of consumption in Argentina describes the rise of working-class consumerism, the way this shaped a new commercial culture, how the figure of the working-class consumer transformed images of class and gender, and how these changes influenced social identities.
La sociedad del trabajo. Las instituciones laborales en la Argentina (1900–1955). Comp. Mirta Zaida Lobato y Juan Suriano. Edhasa, Buenos Aires 2014. 366 pp. AR$215.00.
This volume about labour, the social question, and state intervention in Argentina in the first half of the twentieth century contains three contributions about state intervention in several labour disputes between 1890 and 1920; four that investigate labour relations in provincial Argentina, especially mediation by the state; and five that examine labour policies from the 1930s to the 1950s, labour-related government agencies, and labour legislation.
La tercerización laboral. Orígines, impacto y claves para su análisis en América Latina. Coord. Victoria Basualdo, Diego Morales. Siglo Veintiuno, Buenos Aires [etc.] 2014. 303 pp. $51.60.
This book about the origins, nature, and impact of outsourcing in Latin America, especially in Argentina, opens with a discussion of outsourcing as a global, regional, and national phenomenon, while the second chapter focuses on outsourcing in Latin America since the 1980s. Five chapters examine outsourcing in Argentina, including the opposition between outsourced workers and trade unions in the case of the murdered activist Mariano Ferreyra; outsourcing and the labour market; subcontracting and collective bargaining; regulation and legal aspects; the effects on workers, worker identities, and working conditions (e.g. disciplining); and forms of protest.
Peru
Arce, Moisés. Resource Extraction and Protest in Peru. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh (PA) 2014. [Pitt Latin America Series.] xviii, 171 pp. $25.95.
The extraction of natural resources, the “face of neoliberalism” in many Latin American countries, especially affects the rural poor, according to this book, and produces grievances among the local population. Drawing on political process theory, a dataset recording thirty years of collective actions and fieldwork, Professor Arce examines different forms of protest in Peru, traces the effects of mobilizations against resource extraction on Peruvian state policies, and compares three episodes of large-scale popular protest: Tambogrande (2001–2003), Cerro Quilish (2004), and Bagua (2008–2009).
Suriname
Thoden van Velzen, H.U.E. [en] Wim Hoogbergen. Een zwarte vrijstaat in Suriname. De Okaanse samenleving in de achttiende eeuw. [Caribbean Series, vol. 29.] KITLV Uitgeverij, Leiden [etc.] 2011. xxiv, 360 pp. Ill. € 27.56; $35.00.
Wetering, Wilhelmina van [en] H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen. Een zwarte vrijstaat in Suriname (deel 2). De Okaanse samenleving in de negentiende en twintigste eeuw. [Caribbean Series, vol. 32.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2013. xiii, 364 pp. Ill. € 91.00; $115.00.
This reconstruction of the history of the Okanisi, a small society of a few thousand runaway slaves in the Surinamese forest, is the result of a lifelong study by the three authors. The two books are based on a combination of anthropological field research since the early 1960s, archival research conducted mainly in Paramaribo and The Hague, and countless conversations with local history narrators. Together, they are probably the first longitudinal history of a single Maroon society over the course of three centuries (c.1712–2010). The first part is about how the community came about; the social, cultural, and religious structures and customs in the eighteenth century; and the “pacification” of 1760, when the Okanisi signed a peace treaty with the colonists. The second part reveals how, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Okanisi were gradually reintegrated into the metropolitan economy, the social and religious tensions that arose from this integration, and how this culminated in a guerrilla movement (1986–1992). Known as the Domestic War, this defeat suffered by the Okanisi marked the “definitive end of the traditional Okanese culture and society”. See also Marcel van der Linden’s review essay in this volume, pp. 463–490.
United States of America
Eugene V. Debs Reader. Socialism and the Class Struggle. Ed. by William A. Pelz. With a new intr. by Mark A. Lause and an orig. intr. by Howard Zinn. Merlin Press, London 2014. 247 pp. £14.95.
This anthology features writings and speeches by the American labour activist and leader of the Socialist Party Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) on themes such as labour organizing, prison labour, socialism, racism, class, revolutionary unionism, immigration, and women’s rights; on activists such as John Brown, Mother Jones, and Father Thomas McGrady; and on topics such as the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and the death sentence of Sacco and Vanzetti. First published in 2000, this revised edition includes a substantial new introduction to Debs and his work.
Harvey, Kyle. American Anti-Nuclear Activism, 1975–1990. The Challenge of Peace. [Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2014. xii, 221 pp. Ill. £60.00; € 91.95.
Focusing on anti-nuclear campaigns such as the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament, SANE, and the Great Peace March (1986), Dr Harvey relates the history of a series of anti-nuclear protests that took place in the United States between 1975 and 1990, exploring the movements, the ideas behind the protests, and the debates among the participants about matters of style, strategy, image, and agenda, also aiming to provide insight into the operation of other grass-roots movements during the period of the so-called Second Cold War. See also Lawrence S. Wittner’s review in this volume, pp. 512–515.
Slave Narratives of the Underground Railroad. Ed. by Christine Rudisel and Bob Blaisdell. Dover Publications, Mineola (TX) [etc.] 2014. xiv, 204 pp. $4.50. (Paperback + E-book: $4.95; E-book: $3.60.)
The Underground Railroad was a metaphorical description of the clandestine endeavours by slaves to flee from the American South. This anthology comprises thirty-one narratives offering insight into the political, legal, and physical challenges escaping slaves had to overcome to gain freedom in the nineteenth-century United States. About half the narratives were collected by William Still, the son of slaves; the other half includes excerpts from autobiographies and memoirs of slaves and helpers such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and the Quaker Levi Coffin. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is reproduced in the appendix.
Vellon, Peter G. A Great Conspiracy against Our Race. Italian Immigrant Newspapers and the Construction of Whiteness in the Early Twentieth Century. [Culture, Labor, History Series.] New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2014. x, 171 pp. Ill. $54.00; £29.99.
This book is about views of race, class, and identity in the Italian language press in New York City between 1886 and 1920. Studying radical papers such as Il Proletario and La Questione Sociale, as well as mainstream papers such as Il Progresso and Il Cittadino, Professor Vellon aims to demonstrate how both radical and mainstream papers often constructed racial hierarchies in conjunction with their own class-based interpretations of society.
Wellman, Judith. Brooklyn’s Promised Land. The Free Black Community of Weeksville, New York. New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2014. xii, 293 pp. Ill. Maps. $35.00; £23.99.
Weeksville was a community founded in eastern Brooklyn by African Americans in the mid-1830s. With a high rate of property ownership and a large proportion of skilled workers, business owners, and professionals, Weeksville was a space of physical safety, economic prosperity, education, and political power. Its residents organized churches, newspapers, a school and homes for orphans and aged people, and promoted African–American rights. In this book Professor Wellman describes the growth, disappearance as a result of urban development, and rediscovery of Weeksville by students and local citizens in the 1960s.
ASIA
Dakhli, Leyla. Histoire du Proche-Orient contemporain. [Collection Repères.] La Découverte, Paris 2015. 124 pp. Maps. € 10.00.
In this short history of the Near (or Middle) East in the twentieth century Dr Dakhli aims to situate the revolutionary events of 2011–2012 in a “genealogy” of social movements in the region. She discusses the Young Turk revolution of 1908 and the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Arab revolt of 1916, the age of Arab nationalism (1936–1967), Palestinian resistance between 1967 and 1991, and the period after the Oslo accords, highlighting the role of the United States, forms of protest, and the influence of the media. The book includes text boxes on special subjects, a glossary, a timeline, and a multilingual bibliography.
China
Zhang, Lu. Inside China’s Automobile Factories. The Politics of Labor and Worker Resistance. Cambridge University Press, New York [etc.] 2015. xvi, 240 pp. Ill. $95.00; £60.00; RMB 537.50.
Between 2004 and 2010 Professor Zhang conducted ethnographic fieldwork inside seven large automobile factories in six Chinese cities to analyse how the Chinese auto-assembly industry and its labour force had been transformed over the past two decades. She outlines the context of the industrial policies of the central government and the Chinese labour system since the 1950s and describes the present-day organization of production, working conditions, and workers’ bargaining power, as well as the collective actions of Chinese auto workers. This book is based on a dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2010. See also Robert Pauls’s review in this volume, pp. 515–518.
India
King, Mary Elizabeth. Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India: The 1924–25 Vykom Satyagraha and Mechanisms of Change. Oxford University Press, New Delhi [etc.] 2015. xxi, 344 pp. Ill. Maps. Rs 1645.00.
In the 1920s upper-caste Hindus and others led a non-violent struggle in the village of Vykom, India, to arrange access for Untouchables to the roads surrounding a Brahmin temple. From the 1930s onward romanticized accounts of the campaign conveyed the impression that a solution had been reached thanks to the conversion of the high-caste Brahmins. In this book Professor King offers a narrative of what actually happened at Vykom, including its controversial settlement. She also considers Gandhi’s concept of conversion through self-imposed suffering.
Mukherjee, Janam. Hungry Bengal. War, Famine and the End of Empire. Hurst & Company, London 2015. xii, 329 pp. Ill. £30.00; $38.50.
The majority of the Indian population experienced acute scarcity, political uncertainty, social turmoil, and collective violence in the years before the independence and the ensuing partition of India, according to Professor Mukherjee. In this book he gives a detailed account of the 1943 Bengal famine within the social, economic, and political context of pre-partition Bengal, describing how the famine infiltrated every aspect of life and revealing a “proliferation of local venalities” and a “pervasive moral bankruptcy”.
Pachuau, Joy L.K. [and] Willem van Schendel. The Camera as Witness. A Social History of Mizoram, Northeast India. Cambridge University Press, Delhi [etc.] 2015. xvi, 475 pp. Ill. Maps. £85.00; $130.00.
Mizoram is the name of a region covering parts of India, Bangladesh, and Burma. The material in this book – mainly photographs taken by amateur photographers – documents the history of the people living in the hills of Mizoram. Numbering over 400, the photographs were taken between the 1860s and the 2010s. While some are from archives in the United Kingdom, most come from more than 100 private and a few official collections in India. Presented in the context of the history of Mizoram, the pictures are accompanied by eyewitness accounts in letters, diary entries, and other documents.
Indonesia
Wamelen, Carla van. Family life onder de VOC. Een handelscompagnie in huwelijks- en gezinszaken. Verloren, Hilversum 2014. 592 pp. € 49.00.
In 1602 the Dutch East India Company (VOC) acquired not only a trading monopoly in the East Indies but also legislative authority and the power to dispense justice. When VOC settlement plans in the East Indies failed due to the absence of European women, the Dutch Republic from c.1630 onwards allowed European men to marry indigenous women and former slaves and even tolerated concubinage. Dr Van Wamelen in this book uses VOC archives, as well as church and court records, to shed light on how the VOC dealt with marriage and family affairs, as well as issues involving orphans, illegitimacy, and adoption.
Iran
Shirali, Mahnaz. The Mystery of Contemporary Iran. Transl. by Bernice Dubois. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick (NJ) [etc.] 2014. xviii, 276 pp. $47.95.
In this history of twentieth-century Iran, Professor Shirali focuses on the relationship between religion and power to examine the transformation of Iranian society, demonstrating, for example, how the rapid modernization of Iran under the Pahlavi regime in the 1960s paradoxically increased the popularity of the clergy. She also analyses the roles of the “ideologically confused” Iranian left, the communist movement, the Tudeh party, and the Fadaiyan during the “revolutionarism” of the 1960s and 1970s, explaining how Khomeini and his companions were able to “confiscate” the revolution of 1979.
Japan
Matsumara, Wendy. The Limits of Okinawa. Japanese Capitalism, Living Labor, and Theorizations of Community. [Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society.] Durham [etc.] 2015. xiii, 273 pp. Ill. £66.00. (Paper: £17.99.)
Since its incorporation into the Japanese nation-state in 1879, Okinawa has been regarded by Okinawans and Japanese alike as distinct from modern Japan. Using the Marxist concepts of living and dead labour, Professor Matsumura traces the emergence of this sense of difference by examining confrontations between local and mainland capitalists, intellectuals, and politicians, as well as small producers and cultivators who refused to be exploited, for example the Miyako Island Peasantry Movement of 1893–1895; the unsuccessful efforts to persuade Okinawan weaving women to conform to modern industrial standards around 1900; and the transformation of Okinawa’s sugar industry.
Philippines
García-Abásolo, Antonio. Murallas de piedra y cañones de seda. Chinos en el Imperio español (siglos XVI–XVIII). Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Córdoba, Córdoba 2012. 253 pp. Ill. € 20.00.
Trade between the southern provinces of China and Manila brought thousands of Chinese to the Philippines many of whom settled on the islands. This book is a compilation of articles in which Professor García-Abásolo aims to demonstrate the significance of the Chinese in the history of the Philippines and the Spanish empire by examining various aspects of the Chinese presence in the Philippines from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, e.g. Spanish–Chinese relations, the importance of legal documents for studying Chinese–Spanish relations, and how the Chinese integrated in Philippine society.
Turkey
Bread from the Lion’s Mouth: Artisans Struggling for a Livelihood in Ottoman Cities. Ed. by Suraiya Faroqhi. [International Studies in Social History, Vol. 25.] Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2015. xv, 349 pp. Ill. Maps. $110.00; £68.00.
Focusing on craft organizations (or guilds), the fifteen essays in this collection follow Ottoman craftspeople from the late fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries, describing changes as the guilds transformed and eventually dissolved as a result of modernization, state-building, and the relocation of manufacturing to the countryside. The collection includes case studies on potters in Ottoman Hungary; Damascene artisans around 1700; Istanbul Hammam employees in 1752; the cotton and silk trades of Bursa (c.1800); the shoe guilds of early nineteenth-century Istanbul; and artisan janissaries in seventeenth-century Istanbul.
AUSTRALIA AND OCEANIA
Australia
Martínez, Julia and Adrian Vickers. The Pearl Frontier. Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia’s Northern Trading Network. Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu 2015. ix, 227 pp. Ill. Maps. $50.00.
Between the 1870s and the 1970s thousands of Indonesians worked as indentured labourers in the pearling industry in northern Australia. In this economic and social history of the Australian-Indonesian “pearling zone”, Professors Martínez and Vickers give a detailed account of the recruitment of Indonesian pearling labourers, their diverse backgrounds, the indenture contracts, and working conditions, highlighting personal histories and demonstrating how Indonesian maritime peoples became part of global migration flows as indentured labourers.
New Zealand
McCarthy, Angela. Migration, Ethnicity, and Madness. New Zealand, 1860–1910. [Migrations and Identities.] Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2015. xii, 234 pp. Ill. £75.00.
Concentrating on New Zealand from 1860 to 1910, Professor McCarthy in this study of migration, ethnicity, and madness sets out to illuminate ethnic differences – mainly among “white” patients – and differences from asylums in Great Britain. She analyses how patients, families, asylum officials, and immigration authorities engaged with the ethnic backgrounds, migration histories, and trajectories of asylum patients, also raising the broader themes of discrimination, exclusion, segregation, and marginalization.
EUROPE
Hutter, Swen. Protesting Culture and Economics in Western Europe. New Cleavages in Left and Right Politics. [Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, Vol. 41.] University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (MN) [etc.] 2014. xxv, 220 pp. $75.00. (Paper: $25.00.)
Combining research on social movements of the left and right with that on party system dynamics, Dr Hutter in this study in political science examines how the emergence of a new integration–demarcation cleavage alongside more traditional cleavages related to issues such as immigration, Europe, economic liberalism, and global justice changed protest politics in western Europe (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) between the 1970s and the 1990s.
Lyons, Martyn. The Writing Culture of Ordinary People in Europe, c.1860–1920. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014 (Paper). xi, 278 pp. Ill. £69.99; $109.99. (Paper: £20.99; $31.99.)
Using source materials from recently discovered specialist archives in Italy and Spain, as well as official archives, such as the records of the French Postal Control Commission, and focusing on correspondence by French and Italian soldiers from the trenches in World War I, letters from Spanish emigrants to the Americas, and writing genres such as livres de famille in French, Italian, Castilian Spanish, and Catalan, Professor Lyons in this book studies the context, forms, and functions of lower-class writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Meinen, Insa [en] Ahlrich Meyer. Vervolgd van land tot land. Joodse vluchtelingen in West-Europa 1938–1944. Met medew. v. Jörg Paulsen. Vert. Iannis Goerlandt. De Bezige Bij, Antwerpen [etc.] 2014. 411 pp. Maps. € 24.99.
Originally published in German in 2013, this book focuses on the survival strategies of Jews in western Europe between 1938 and 1944. Using police and immigration records, population registries, and transport lists, the authors trace the efforts of Jewish refugees to escape persecution in Germany and Austria and discuss the difficulties (e.g. the restrictive asylum policies) the refugees encountered during their flight to western Europe, especially Belgium. The book includes statistical data about refugees, escape routes, and migration periods and reconstructs the fates of individuals.
Morality, Crime and Social Control in Europe 1500–1900. Ed. by Olli Matikainen and Satu Lidman. Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki 2014. 362 pp. € 45.00.
Using several definitions of “social control”, including those of Stanley Cohen and Pieter Spierenburg, the thirteen articles in this volume (based on a conference held in Jyväskylä in August 2008) examine various regulated practices and institutions that may be viewed as manifestations or forces of social control (the family, local courts, parish meetings, prisons, the army, and the scaffold). The collection includes contributions on morals in Finnish peasant communities (1850–1960); efforts to control sexuality in sixteenth-century Munich and nineteenth-century Finland, respectively; war, soldiers, and crime in modern Britain; and policing of vagrants and the poor in Finland (1850–1885).
Plas, Bas van der. Ostarbeit. Sovjetslavinnen voor Nazi-Duitsland. [Berichten uit de voormalige Sovjet-Unie, vol. 6.] Papieren tijger, Breda 2014. 176 pp. € 17.50.
During World War II, large numbers of women were transported from their homes in Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia to do forced labour in Nazi Germany. Many of those returning to the Soviet Union after the war ended up in the Gulag. Others, unable or afraid to go back, remained in the West and in some cases married Dutch men. Based on archival research and interviews and offering background information about how the Nazis used forced labour and about the position of women in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, this book tells the story of these women.
Swain, Nigel. Green Barons, Force-of-Circumstance Entrepreneurs, Impotent Mayors. Rural Change in the Early Years of Post-Socialist Capitalist Democracy. Central European University Press, Budapest [etc.] 2013. xiv, 398 pp. Maps. € 65.00.
In this book Dr Swain compares how rural communities in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia experienced the transition from communism to capitalism, emphasizing the significance of agricultural production organizations for understanding this transition, notably the dismantling of the collective farms, the “quintessentially socialist production organizations”. He examines attempts to activate local democracy and establish farms and non-agricultural businesses based on private enterprise, as well as the emergence of a new business class and the transformation of peasants into rural citizens, recounting failures and successes.
Czechoslovakia – Czech Republic
Balcar, Jaromír. Panzer für Hitler – Traktoren für Stalin. Großunternehmen in Böhmen und Mähren 1938–1950. Oldenbourg Verlag, München 2014. 523 pp. € 69.95.
Based on a dissertation (Universität Bremen, 2011) this is a history of three major steel, chemical, and machine-building industries operating in Bohemia and Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic) during the periods of the Nazi occupation and the transition to state socialism. Analysing how the relationship between state, capital, and labour manifested in corporate industry, Dr Balcar examines business policies, personnel recruitment, social benefit policies, and the German and Czech managers, also aiming to shed light on the discretionary power of both management and staff during a period of radical economic transformations.
France
Bell, David S. and Byron Criddle. Exceptional Socialists. The Case of the French Socialist Party. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2014. xii, 235 pp. £68.00.
The French Parti socialiste (PS) is one of the least successful of the major European democratic socialist parties, according to this book, in which Professors Bell and Criddle, comparing the PS to social democratic parties elsewhere and assessing the PS within the French party system, the party organization, PS factions and personalities, ideology, and policy, explore the “exceptional nature” of French social democracy (failure to integrate the working class, rejection of reformism, recurrent national electoral failure) over the past fifty years.
Hazan. Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution. Transl. by David Fernbach. Verso, London [etc.] 2014. 434 pp. Maps. £20.00.
Intended for general readers, this book, a translation of Une histoire de la Révolution française (Paris, 2012), is a detailed chronicle of the French Revolution with a special focus on urban working people and peasants. “Faithful to what are called the facts”, but not claiming to be objective, the author offers a narrative of the most famous episodes and problematic moments, using many direct quotations, considering the aspirations and demands of the lower classes, and avoiding references to other revolutions. Some individuals (Mirabeau, Robespierre) and issues (Was the French Revolution a bourgeois revolution?, the colonial question) are discussed in separate excursuses.
Kwass, Michael. Contraband. Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2014. 457 pp. Ill. Maps. £35.00.
This book reconstructs the career and afterlife of the famous French smuggler Louis Mandrin (1725–1755) in the context of the globalization of consumption and the French king’s policy of imposing a state monopoly on tobacco from America and an embargo on calico cloth from India. By focusing on the tale of Louis Mandrin and his gang of smugglers, Professor Kwass aims to offer a personified illustration of abstract arguments about globalization, states, consumption, and rebellion, and of the economic and political transformations of the global eighteenth century.
Germany
Abel, Jörg, Hartmut Hirsch-Kreinsen, [und] Peter Ittermann. Einfacharbeit in der Industrie. Strukturen, Verbreitung und Perspektiven. Edition Sigma, Berlin 2014. 221 pp. € 17.90.
Low-skilled work – easy-to-learn activities of low complexity requiring no relevant professional qualifications – accounts for about one-quarter of all jobs in the German manufacturing sector. Drawing on statistical data from 1995 to 2010, interviews, and case studies, this book examines the significance, prevalence, character, and perspectives of low-skilled work within the German high-tech economy, concluding that low-skilled work plays a key role in numerous branches of industry, yet needs to adapt to the changing demands of the market and of production.
Heberer, Eva-Maria. Prostitution. An Economic Perspective on its Past, Present, and Future. Springer Verlag, Wiesbaden 2014. 232 pp. $69.99. (E-book: $49.99.)
After reviewing the legal, social, and economic history of prostitution in Germany from the mid-nineteenth century onwards and considering the market for commercial sex, Ms Heberer presents in this book two different microeconomic models describing a woman’s decision to work in the commercial sex sector. After applying both theoretical models on historical data on German prostitution, she concludes that the main variables affecting the supply of commercial sex are the extent of legal restrictions, possible loss of reputation, the risk of getting caught, and price.
Millington, Richard. State, Society and Memories of the Uprising of 17 June 1953 in the GDR. Palgrave McMillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2014. ix, 204 pp. £55.00.
On 17 June 1953 the people in East Germany staged a massive uprising against the ruling SED, demanding free elections, better living and working conditions, and the reunification of Germany. After Soviet troops ended the unrest, the SED depicted the uprising as a “fascist-counterrevolutionary putsch” instigated by West German and American “imperialists”. In this book Dr Millington draws on interviews and archival sources to examine to what extent the SED regime succeeded in shaping ordinary citizens’ memories and awareness of the events of 1953.
Reichardt, Sven. Authentizität und Gemeinschaft. Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren. [Wissenschaft 2075.] Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2014. 1018 pp. € 29.00.
Focusing on Berlin, Frankfurt, and Heidelberg, this is a cultural and social history of the leftist milieu in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1968 to 1985. Professor Reichardt examines the political self-conception and lived experience of radical leftist groups, the significance of “1968” and the roles of (Maoist) communist groupings; the countercultural press; experiments with alternative ways of living and working in communities and squatted houses; alternative bookshops and musical manifestations; sexual relations; conceptions of gender; second-wave feminism; and anti-authoritarian education, spirituality, and experimentation with drugs. See also Gerd-Rainer Horn’s review in this volume, pp. 510–512.
Reinhardt, Max. Gesellschaftspolitische Ordnungsvorstellungen der SPD-Flügel seit 1945. Zwischen sozialistischer Transformation, linkem Reformismus und Marktideologie. Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2014. 178 pp. € 18.00; Sfr. 25.90.
This study focuses on the currents and factions within the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) after 1945, revealing that the heyday of the SPD in the 1970s was a time of multiple currents within the party, which at that point also incorporated leftist splinter groups and represented people from the middle class. Dr Reinhardt argues that the electoral decline of the SPD began with the policy of exclusion under party leader and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The book is an updated version of a chapter from Aufstieg und Krise der SPD. Flügel und Repräsentanten einer pluralistischen Volkspartei (Baden-Baden, 2011).
Great Britain
Goldman, Lawrence. The Life of R.H. Tawney. Socialism and History. Bloomsbury London [etc.] 2013. xiv, 411 pp. £58.50.
R.H. Tawney (1880–1962), the author of the best-selling Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London, 1926), was a prominent historian, a leader in educational reform, and an influential theorist and exponent of socialism in Britain. Using papers deposited at the London School of Economics, including a collection of personal material previously held by Tawney’s family, Dr Goldman aims to provide “a properly historical and contextual account” of Tawney’s life, and to show that understanding Tawney’s work requires understanding his life.
Kramer, Ann. Conscientious Objectors of the First World War. A Determined Resistance. Pen & Sword, Barnsley 2014. 176 pp. Ill. £15.99.
Although the British Military Service Act of 1916 allowed for conscientious objection, the men who refused conscription because of their religious beliefs or for political and humanitarian reasons were often viewed as cowards or traitors and treated accordingly. In this book for general readers, Ms Kramer tells the story of the British conscientious objection movement, highlighting anti-war traditions and new movements, the introduction of conscription, the tribunals, alternative service and life in prison, and, using interviews and some unpublished personal documents, reviews the roles of several individual conscientious objectors.
Lorimer, Douglas A. Science, race relations and resistance. Britain, 1870–1914. [Studies in Imperialism.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2013. xi, 344 pp. £80.00.
Contributing to the history of science and race, anti-slavery movements, and the origins of anti-racist resistance, Professor Lorimer in this book examines the conflicting opinions in the debate about race during the late Victorian and Edwardian period, studying racial ideas in scientific societies and professional science, as well as popular publications, analysing the language of race, and describing how racial dogmas aroused resistance led by radical abolitionists and Britons of Asian and African descent.
Perry, Matt. ‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson. Her ideas, movements and world. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2014. £75.00.
Ellen Wilkinson (1891–1947) was a British socialist and feminist journalist, novelist, and politician who led the Jarrow March in 1936 and served as Minister of Education in the 1945 Labour government. Using transnational and social movement theory, and drawing especially on Wilkinson’s journalism, Dr Perry sets out to reconstruct Wilkinson’s life, her relationship with socialism and communism, her involvement in the women’s movement and trade unionism, her anti-war and anti-imperialist campaigning, her parliamentary career, anti-fascism, role in Spain (1933–1939), and time in government, arguing that her involvement in the women’s movement is crucial to understanding her political trajectory.
Watson, Don. No Justice Without a Struggle. The National Unemployed Workers Movement in the North East of England 1920–1940. Merlin Press, London 2014. 281 pp. Ill. £15.95.
During the Depression of the interwar years, the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM) was formed to co-ordinate activities and to work with the TUC and the Labour Party for national action. Based on interviews as well as on government, police, and trade-union records, this detailed history of the NUWM in the north-east of England describes the impact of mass unemployment, poverty, and oppressive benefits systems, chronicling the hunger marches (e.g. the 1936 Jarrow March) and other protests, and analysing the reactions of the trade unions and the Communist and Labour parties.
Žmolek, Michael Andrew. Rethinking the Industrial Revolution. Five Centuries of Transition from Agrarian to Industrial Capitalism in England. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 49.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2013. xx, 915 pp. € 199.00; $258.00.
In this book about the Industrial Revolution (based on a dissertation, York University, 2008) Dr Žmolek, drawing especially on the work of Robert Brenner, explores the history of manufacturing in Britain within the context of the development of agrarian capitalism from the fourteenth century through the early modern period. Contrary to commonly held assumptions, he argues that the state played an active and central role in the Industrial Revolution by helping owner-employers to suppress artisan-led resistance to the conversion to capitalism in British manufacturing.
Spain
Mundo del trabajo y asociacionismo en España. Collegia, gremios, mutuas, sindicatos... Coord. Santiago Castillo. Actas del VII Congreso de Historia Social de España. Madrid, 24 al 26 de octubre de 2013. Catarata, Madrid 2014. 278 pp. (Incl. CD-rom.) € 18.00.
The ten chapters in this collection (based on a conference held in Madrid in October 2013) include contributions on miners in Roman Spain; women and guilds in the Iberian peninsula until the seventeenth century; the crisis of the guild system in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the origins of Spanish trade unionism (1750–1868); the Spanish trade-union movement from 1870 to 1970; mutualism among Spanish workers (1836–1936); trade unionism in the 1970s; the Comisiones Obreras; and the UGT. The accompanying CD-rom contains PDF files of sixteen case studies of the history of Spanish labour organizations.
Paz Sánchez, José Juan de. Entre el puerto y la mina (I). Antecedentes del movimiento obrero organizado en Huelva (1870–1912). [Arias Montano, 117.] Universidad de Huelva; Puerto de Huelva, Huelva 2014. 432 pp. Ill. € 19.00; $20.70.
Huelva, a port and mining town in Andalusia, Spain, became economically important in the period between 1870 and 1912 and attracted a large labour force. In this book Professor De Paz Sánchez presents a history of the labour movement in Huelva during that period, providing data on the working and living conditions of miners, examining industrial relations with employers such as the Río Tinto mining company, and discussing different types of labour associations, the influence of anarchism, and labour conflicts and protests. The appendix contains lists of mining companies, workers’ associations, and labour disputes.
Pérez Ledesma, Manuel. La construcción social de la historia. Alianza Editorial, Madrid 2014. 269 pp. € 24.00.
In this volume Professor Pérez Ledesma brings together six essays originally published between 1987 and 2007. In one essay he considers Marx’s claims about the revolutionary character of the proletariat; in the next the social structure of nineteenth-century Spain. In the third essay he examines reciprocal perceptions of the bourgeoisie and the working classes during the First Spanish Republic; in the fourth the “cultural construction” of the Spanish working class. In the fifth article he focuses on the republican and anti-clerical journalist José Nakens (1841–1926); in the final essay he analyses the discourse of citizenship in contemporary Spain.
Puigsech Farràs, Josep. Falsa leyenda del Kremlin. El consulado y la URSS en la Guerra Civil española. [Colleción Historia Biblioteca Nueva.] Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid 2014. 309 pp. € 20.00.
Drawing on recently declassified Russian, Spanish and British archival documents, Professor Puigsech Farràs in this book investigates the role of Soviet consular activity in the Spanish Civil War, aiming – without glossing over Stalin’s efforts to thwart the POUM – to disprove the often repeated assertion (the “legend of the Kremlin”) that Stalin used the Russian consulate in Barcelona to gain military and political control over the Republic. The book is fully annotated, but has no index. See also Daniel Kowalsky’s review in this volume, pp. 498–501.
Represión, tolerancia e integración en España y America. Extranjeros, esclavos, indígenas y mestizos durante el siglo XVIII. Ed. David González Cruz. Ediciones Doce Calles, Aranjuez 2014. 350 pp. € 28.85.
Investigating processes of integration and repression as well as highlighting instances of tolerance, the thirteen essays in this volume about the situation of foreigners and other marginalized ethnic groups (indigenous, slaves, and mestizos) in the multi-ethnic eighteenth-century Spanish empire include contributions on Italian immigrants in Spain and Spanish America; the presence and integration of foreigners in Galicia, Andalucía, and Seville, respectively; the integration of descendants from African and indigenous slaves in Spanish Florida and Louisiana; the roles of mestizo intermediaries in Araucanía, Chile; and the situation of manumitted slaves in south-west Spain.
Rico Gómez, María Luisa. La formación profesional obrera en España durante la dictadura de Primo de Rivera y la Segunda República. [Biblioteca de historia, 79.] Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid 2014. 376 pp. € 27.00.
Under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–1930) the corporatist state introduced technical and industrial training for Spanish workers. In this detailed study Dr Rio Gómez examines this educational project, which was intended not only to bring about a skilled labour force qualified to meet the requirements of the market but also as a conduit toward social and political incorporation of the working class. During the Second Republic (1931–1936), however, corporatist-motivated educational policies made way for a more democratic and liberal policy of alphabetization.
Switzerland
Fayet, Jean-François. VOKS. Le laboratoire helvétique. Histoire de la diplomatie culturelle soviétique durant l’entre-deux-guerres. Georg Éditeur, Chêne-Bourg 2014. 598 pp. Sfr. 35.00; € 24.00.
VOKS (Vsesojuznoe Obščestvo kul’turnoj svjazi s zagranijcej, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries) was founded in 1925 to promote international cultural contacts with the Soviet Union and to improve the image of the New Russia by distributing publications, organizing conferences and exhibitions, and establishing organizations with Soviet sympathies. This detailed study of VOKS in Switzerland highlights the role of Soviet diplomat S.Y. Bagotsky, reveals Swiss resistance to Soviet propaganda, and offers insight into Swiss politics, culture, and science during the interwar period.
