Naval dockyards have been largely neglected by labour historians, a surprising omission given their importance as industrial workplaces with a distinct culture of labour and labour relations. This article considers labour politics in Karlskrona dockyard, Sweden, in the light of a growing body of research on work and labour relations in the British and other European dockyards. Evidence from Karlskrona suggests that, rather than being repressed by military discipline or bought off by generous state benefits, the dockyard workforce drew on aspects of its unique relationship with the national state to improve working conditions. Particular attention is given to the role of the dockyard trade union in creating a sense of workforce identity as state employees. This is in contrast to the British dockyards where unionism was founded on the rigid division of labour in the shipbuilding industry.

This article analyses female labour in Spanish mines during the golden age of the sector in Spain between 1860 and 1936. Although they were a small percentage of total employment, women accounted for a significant share of the workforce in certain Spanish districts. On the one hand, the study quantifies work performed directly by women, who were mostly engaged in preparation and concentration of the minerals, as well as the extent of female child labour. This has been done by using official statistics, analysing the share of women employed for each type of mineral extracted, the mining area where this activity took place, and other variables. In the article, the authors seek to identify possible causes of such a heterogeneous distribution of female labour in the mining industry in Spain. This situation was common in the sector throughout the world. On the other hand, the article analyses attitudes of institutions, unions, and the like that limited employment opportunities for women in mining (banning them from performing underground tasks and other activities) and even proposed excluding them altogether, responding to workers’ demands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We examine the objectives pursued by these institutions, which in some cases related to protection (physical and moral) of female workers but overall aimed mainly to preserve the social role of women (particularly reproduction) and exclude them from the workforce. The pressure on female workers was the most pronounced in the workplace. These factors gave rise to a global setback in female employment, especially among the youngest workers. Given this situation, the quantitative data used, together with information drawn from different sources, reveal that women resisted giving up these jobs, particularly in the districts with a larger share of female workers.

With the imprisonment of many activists throughout the year, the rejection of the first National Petition in July, the dissolution of the Convention in September, and the catastrophe of the ill-fated Newport Rising in November, early Chartism ended in failure in the second half of 1839. One of the most common reasons given in the literature for the failure has been the lack of internal cohesion in the movement, usually illustrated by reference to the political conflicts between physical- and moral-force groups. Despite the analytical inadequacy of such generic terms it is indisputable that Chartism was deficient in natural unity. It was a coalition of many different radical associations and personalities with a multiplicity of varied experiences, traditions and beliefs. As a consequence, the early Chartist movement only made progress by adopting certain symbols of unification: the National Petition and Rent, and a commitment to a National Convention. These symbols then became specific goals of Chartism. However, little consideration has previously been given to asking whether Chartism was an efficient instrument in itself for achieving these objectives, or if the organization of the Convention undermined the political credibility of the movement. This article attempts to illustrate Chartism's need for organization and leadership from the Convention, and suggests that inefficient organization was an important cause of the relative failure to achieve its immediate objectives, and for the progressive abdication of leadership by the Convention.

This article analyses the Algerian inquiries of Pierre Bourdieu. It begins by retracing the most pervasive, medium- and long-term interventions of French colonial power in Algerian society: the introduction of capitalism and the internment of civilians in the centres de regroupement. Next, it outlines the social subjects studied by the young agrégé of philosophy and his representation of labour. Subsequent sections deal with shifts in the public stance of Bourdieu regarding the revolutionary propensity of these people. On this tricky testing ground, Bourdieu engaged with and critically confronted the ideas of Germaine Tillion and Frantz Fanon. His position is reviewed from a historical-philological approach in order to set the texts in their temporal and spatial contexts, establish parallels and/or divergences, and verify the effects such comparisons produced. The conclusions emphasize the richness and originality of Bourdieu’s inquiries given the era in which they were made and highlight, in light of the recent global reorientation of labour history, some of the vital viewpoints expressed on the origins of capitalism in the colony.

Comparisons between the English and German labour movements have a long tradition in historiography. In Germany they were primarily discussed in the context of the “German Sonderweg”, a debate which was opened in the 1920s and continues in the 1980s. The article presented here analyzes the methodological problems of Sonderweg comparisons of labour history and confronts the major arguments with the results of empirical research. It concludes that many old Sonderweg arguments can not withstand this confrontation. Nevertheless, the article proposes that the debate should be continued, since empirical research focuses on new aspects and supports the diagnosis of two different paths of labour history.

Arthur Henderson was the only member of the industrial working classes to lead a British political party. He was the only trade unionist to lead the Labour Party, and, as well, one of only two active Christians to do so. In the history of the Labour Party's first thirty years he seems to have a centrality shared by no other man. But what constitutes his centrality is a genuine problem, and both his contemporaries and his colleagues were aware of it. J. R. Clynes once wrote: “I would not class Mr. Henderson as a type, but as one quite unlike any other of his colleagues.” In this article I would like to test this judgement, to examine both Henderson's “typicality” as a historical figure in the labour movement, and the significance of his career as a labour leader.

Wie kaum ein anderer Theoretiker des Austromarxismus hat sich Otto Bauer eingehend mit dem Faschismus beschäftigt. Sein Beitrag zur gedanklichen Durchdringung des historischen Rohmaterials hat auch heute kaum an Aktualität verloren. Zwar hat der Geschichtsprozeß seit den Analysen Bauers neue „Fakten” gehefert, die er wohl nicht geringer geschätzt hätte, als er es in seinen theoretischen und praktisch-politischen Arbeiten tat, die auch manche Einzelheiten seiner Darstellungen korrigieren oder ergänzen; zu einer grundsätzlichen Revision seiner Begriffsbestimmung des Faschismus in seinen letzten Lebensjahren sind weder Optimismus bezüglich der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung in den ehemals faschistischen Ländern noch der Stand der heutigen Faschismusdiskussion Anlaß genug. Bauers Faschismus-interpretation beschränkt sich nicht auf die vorgeblich „objektive” Aneinanderreihung deskriptiver Satze - solche sind gewiB auch nötig –, sie hat vielmehr den Vorzug, im Rahmen einer exfliziten Theorie der Gesellschaft zu stehen und einen echten Erklärungsversuch anzuvisieren. Faschismus bleibt so nicht ein letztlich Unerklärbares, er wird aber auch wegen Bauers hoher Apperzeptionsfähigkeit nicht zur leeren Formel, die einerseits den historisch-empirischen Befund negiert, andererseits jede Form terroristischer Unterdrückung oder alle Formen bürgerlicher Herrschaft überhaupt gleichsetzt. Bauer hütet sich auch meist vor dem polemischen Gebrauch des Wortes Faschismus, der gerade in den letzten Jahren wieder auf der bürgerlichen Seite, aber auch bei der Linken nicht selten zu beobachten ist, obwohl gerade er nach 1934 alien Anlaß gehabt hätte; auch in der tiefsten Verbitterung nach der Niederlage der österreichischen Sozialdemokratie ist er im Stande, zwischen dem eigentlichen Faschismus in seiner italienischen und deutschen Spielart und halb- oder scheinfaschistischen Dikta-turen wie dem „christlichen Ständestaat” Dollfuß' zu differenzieren.

The following article attempts to trace the course of working-class living standards in Britain in the comparatively neglected period between 1870 and the First World War. A considerable body of historical opinion sees this period as a time of marked improvement in standards of life, an improvement based essentially on rising real wages. Studies of this period have owed a considerable debt to the pioneering work of A. L. Bowley and G. H. Wood, which produced an invaluable collection of indices for wages and real wages, upon which most general accounts of living standards in the later nineteenth century have drawn. Wood's contention that real wages, in the years roughly between 1874 and 1900, rose by 36 per cent lies at the heart of an interpretation which sees the late-Victorian period as a time of crucial economic and social amelioration. The data are sufficiently comprehensive to show these improvements to be common to all occupations and to lead to the inescapable conclusion that “industrialization paid off generally in higher real wages for all groups in society in the second half of the nineteenth century”.

The Kuzbass coalmining region in western Siberia (Kuznetsk Basin) was explored, populated, and exploited under Stalin’s rule. Struggling to offset a high labour turnover, the local state-run coal company enrolled deportees from other regions of Russia and Siberia, who were controlled by the secret police (OGPU). These workers shared a common experience in having been forcibly separated from their place of origin. At the same time, foreigners were recruited from abroad as experts and offered a privileged position. In the years of the Great Terror (1936−1938) both groups were persecuted, as they were regarded by the state as disloyal and suspicious. After the war, foreigners were recruited in large numbers as prisoners of war. Thus, migrants, foreigners, and deportees from other regions and countries constituted a significant part of the workforce in the Kuzbass, while their status constantly shifted due to economic needs and repressive politics.

A crucial aspect of the regulation of domestic service is the regulation of people's status. Because of its emphasis on freedom and equality, the French Revolution is particularly interesting. “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on considerations of the common good.” These principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (26 August 1789) did not seem to leave room for slavery and master/servant hierarchies. Yet, their impact on slaves and servants was ambivalent, as I shall show by focusing on France and its Caribbean colonies. Dependency, race, and gender are crucial in my analysis. After sketching the features of servants, serfs, slaves, and indentured servants at the end of the Ancien Régime, I will analyse how the Revolution affected them, focusing on serfs and servants in metropolitan France, on black colonial slaves, and on female slaves and servants. While I investigate the “French imperial nation-State”, I will also provide some comparison with the American case. The Revolution led to a feminization of dependence both in metropolitan France and in the French Caribbean, making dependence more gendered. It abolished serfdom and slavery, and enfranchised male domestiques. Thus, on the one hand, it was really revolutionary; on the other, colonial slavery was first replaced by bonded labour and then reintroduced. Male domestiques were enfranchised briefly and only on paper; they would be enfranchised when slavery in the French colonies was abolished (1848). Women were excluded: mistresses and maids had to wait until 1944 to become full citizens. This makes it impossible to establish clear-cut distinctions between pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary times, and in part challenges the difference between metropole and colonies.

This article investigates Chinese women labour models (or labour heroines) of the early 1950s as actors and symbols of socialist transformation. It centres on the example of Shen Jilan (1929–2020), who was one of the most prominent women labour models of the time. Shen rose to fame through her struggle for equal pay for equal work in her native village, became a delegate to China's National People's Congress, and even participated in the Third World Congress of Women in Copenhagen in 1953. The article critically engages with the concept of “state feminism” and proposes a shift in focus from state–society relations to work as a means to understanding the transformation of women's lives under socialism. Socialist society was a society of producers and work shaped people's daily lives; it was central to identity formation and constituted the regulating mechanism of social relations. Indeed, women labour models, together with related categories of working women, came to typify the new Chinese woman, who was integral to and symbolic of socialist modernity. They epitomized communist theory about women's participation in production being the mechanism of their liberation. The article has three main parts, each of which addresses a different level (local, national, international), different constellations of actors and agency, and different aspects of the relationship between working women and socialist transformation. By tracing Shen Jilan's activities in various contexts, the article reveals the complexity, contradictions, multilayered nature, and also incompleteness of socialist transformation.

Karl Friedrich Köppen was born on the 28th of April, 1808, at Niedergörne, the son of a clergyman. After having attended the Latin School (“Gymnasium”) at Stendal and the Latin Convent school (“Klostergymnasium”) of Magdeburg, he took up the study of divinity in Berlin in the year 1827, but eventually became a teacher. In 1833 he was appointed at a Berlin school. Four years later he wrote a “Literary Introduction into Nordic Mythology” which has retained its value to the present day and the anti-clerical tendency of which revealed him as one of those radical diciples of Hegel who grouped themelves around A Ruge's “Hallische Jahrbücher” Their aim was: “Away from the Christian state and from State-Christendom'” In the “Doktorklub”, the Berlin center of these Young-Hegelians, Köppen mixed with Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx. Under the influence of Marx, the pen of this most prolific of contributors, to the “Jahrbücher” quickly increaed in sharpness. A jubilant publication of 1840, dedicated to his “friend K. H. Marx of Trier”, entitled “Frederick the Great and his adversaries”, proved a publicistic masterpiece which supplied Marx with suggestionss and gained Köppen the recognition of Engels. This publication focussed its secret hopes in the ascent to the throne by Frederick William IV; the Reaction, however, which set in soon after the change of government, crushed the buds of Young-Hegelian idealism.

The place of Etienne Cabet in the history of French and European socialism has been misunderstood and its real importance diminished in part due to the only detailed study of his life and thought, Jules Prudhommeaux's Icarie et son fondateur Etienne Cabet (Paris: Cornély, 1907). This work possesses many merits but is limited by the framework made explicit in its subtitle: “a contribution to the study of Experimental Socialism”. The author is principally concerned with Cabet as the creator of a communist colony in the backwoods of America. This emphasis relieved Prudhommeaux of the task of investigating the role of Cabet in the turbulent politics of France before and during the Revolution of 1848. By ignoring this period of Icarian history, he inadvertently strengthened the impression that Cabet's historical significance was as the Utopian archetype. Such was not the unique image of the father of Icarian communism during the 1840's, however.

Most histories of the nineteenth-century labour movement give some account of George Potter's conflict with the men the Webbs called the Junta; and it is generally recognised that one main bone of contention was control of the Bee-Hive newspaper. But there has been little real analysis of this quarrel, and even less of the eventual reconciliation. It is true that some of the old generalisations are no longer accepted. Nowadays, most labour historians agree that the Webbs, writing under Applegarth's influence, dismissed Potter too contemptuously. There is also some recognition of the fact that Raymond Postgate's Builders' History, although more accurate on Potter's early position in the labour movement, gives a completely false impression of his later career and the changes that took place in the Bee-Hive. But through it all, Potter has remained a rather shadowy figure, and in published works the Bee-Hive's own history has been surprisingly neglected. Even a recent work in which the author avowedly sets out to correct the record on Potter – B. C. Roberts's The Trades Union Congress, 1868–1921 – is in many ways unsatisfactory. Roberts does make an attempt to analyse the conflict, and on the whole he sums up Potter's aims and achievements more accurately than either the Webbs or Postgate did. But in trying to give Potter due credit for his part in founding the TUC, Roberts has over-estimated his contribution, and minimised his weaknesses. Above all, he has paid too little attention to the Bee-Hive itself. As a result, the consequences of the way in which the paper was founded and conducted, and the relationship between Potter's other activities and the Bee-Hive's successive changes of ownership, editorship and policy, are either disregarded or mistakenly interpreted. Potter's career in the labour movement, and the development of the Bee-Hive, were completely interwoven, and neither can be fully assessed without the other.

The Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 saw the first appearance of workers' and soldiers' councils, called Soviets. In 1917 the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, acting for all the Russian Soviets, became the chief competitor of Kerensky's Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks, employing the slogan “All Powers to the Soviets”, used the Petrograd Soviet in their drive for power. In the October Revolution the Soviets, dominated by the Bolsheviks, replaced the Provisional Government as the government of Russia.

In 1907, the Second International adopted a resolution on migration that rejected restrictions on the free movement of workers. In this article, we contend that, despite this official stance, the issue of migration was a highly controversial one for the international socialist community. We present a multi-level analysis, in which we detail the migration debate as it took place on the platforms of the Second International (roughly between 1903 and 1907) and the way in which this debate played out domestically for the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands and the Socialist Party of America – two parties that openly rooted for restrictions at the international level. We discern three ideal-typical stances on immigration – internationalism, on the one hand, and protectionist nativism and xenophobic nativism, on the other – and argue that it was the incompatibility of the internationalist and nativist positions that caused internal divisions to arise during the debates. Apart from speaking to the classic historiography on the Second International, which deals with the incompatibility of internationalism and nationalism, this article traces the influence of additional racist and culturalist ideologies on the debate and further historicizes it within the broader context of the modern international migration system that was taking shape at the time.

Un registre de copies de télégrammes des archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères français jette des lueurs vives, par les textes qu'il contient, sur les conditions dans lesquelles furent discutées par Jules Favre et Bismarck les clauses du traité de Francfort. Il s'y révèle les hésitations des deux partenaires, l'un à recourir à la force prussienne pour avoir raison de la Commune, l'autre à tirer parti de la conjoncture défavorable pour la cause allemande. Les textes gravitent d'abord autour du sort du fort d'Issy, occupé par la Commune et dont la position commandait l'avenir du second siège de Paris, puis ils évoluent à propos de la question des prisonniers français en Allemagne, dont la réincorporation dans l'armée régulière devait faciliter la répression de l'insurrection algérienne et grossir les effectifs d'une masse de combattants forcément hostiles aux gardes nationaux dont la résistance retardait leur libération définitive. Sans la sommation du général prussien de Fabrice, sans le recours aux prisonniers, le sort de la capitale n'eût sans doute pas été différent, il eût été vraisemblablement prolongé.