Historical accounts of the First, Second and Third Internationals, i.e., those organizations that attempted to realize some sort of supranational working-class solidarity, have traditionally been presented in terms of congresses, programs and personalities. Invariably scholars have focused on the public and private debates at this or that international meeting and/or how Marx, Engels, Lenin or some other leading figure influenced or reacted to some specific development. In short, the history of the International has been looked at almost exclusively from the “top down”. There is not anything wrong with this approach per se, but it might be of some value to consider, occasionally at least, the people whom the various Internationals were supposed to be serving, in other words to examine the International not only from the “top down” but also from the “bottom up”.

This article chronicles the genesis, process and forms of collective protests by the unemployed in Iran immediately following the revolution of 1979. It analyzes the dynamics of jobless mobilization in demanding employment and social protection by exploring its complex relationships with the Islamic government, the opposition forces and the broader revolutionary process. In developing countries, an organized struggle of the unemployed for jobs and protection is extremely rare, notwithstanding high rates of open and concealed joblessness. Family, kinship, patron-client relationships and especially the informal sector provide essential mechanisms for protection and survival; lack of ‘organization generally prevents the emergence of sustained protest movements. I argue that the conjuncture-based articulation of resources and political opportunity underlying the movement set the Iranian case apart. The resources included the post-revolutionary massive and sudden loss of jobs along with the rise of a revolutionary ideology among the jobless.

In September 1782, a violent and partly successful mutiny of Balinese slaves shocked the Dutch East India Company (VOC). This article will reconstruct the history of the mutiny of the Mercuur, tracing its significance in the context of slavery, labour, war, and the series of “Asian mutinies” that occurred in the 1780s. The revolt of the Balinese sheds light on the development of amok as a tradition of resistance. The purpose of calling amok cannot only be explained as a direct, impulsive response to perceived injustice or violation of codes of honour. It functioned as a conscious call to arms, signalling the start of collective and organized resistance. The Balinese mutiny was both similar to and different from other European and Asian forms of revolt.

The 27th of January 1941 was a memorable day in the bizarre history of the Amsterdam International Institute of Social History during the German occupation. Within the scope of activity of his “Office for the Occupied Territories”, NSDAP Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg placed the Lieutenant-Commander and Nazi publisher Eberhard Kautter “in charge” of the IISH: “It is your duty to be responsible for the organizational supervision and the deployment of those staff members who qualify for the utilization of the institute. Your mission is to be carried out in agreement with the head of the Netherlands work group of the task force from my office, Oberbereichsleiter Schirmer.” On the same day, the bustling chief of the self-named Einsatzstab (task force), in his function as “Commissioner of the Führer for the Supervision of all Mental and Ideological Training and Education”, approached Robert Ley, the Reichsorganisationsleiter of the NSDAP and head of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF – German Labor Front). He had a letter sent to him that Eberhard Kautter had drafted already in early January and had obviously withheld until Kautter had been named to the post of IISH administrator. Rosenberg reminded Ley that, in a decree from 29 January 1940, Hitler had entrusted him with all of the preparations for the establishment of a Hohe Schule (Supreme School), that was to be the “central site of National Socialist research, instruction and education”. Thus, he was “setting up a number of branch institutes of the Supreme School”. Among these was an “academy”, the task of which would be to work out the close connection between the “National Socialist Weltanschauung” and the “practical way of structuring life” both for the present and the future. Now he was contacting him, since Ley was also interested in “the relationship between Weltanschauung and social structuring” in his function as Reichsleiter of the DAF and had certainly run up against similar problems within the scope of the extensive “economic-statistical work” of his office.

Das Sozialistengesetz zerstörte, zehn Jahre nach ihrer Entstehung, die Gewerkschaftsbewegung, die 1868 so eifrig begonnen hatte. Die Entwicklung, die damit verschleppt und aufgeschoben war, kam nach Aufhebung des Sozialistengesetzes zum Austrag. Der durch sie her-aufbeschworene Konflikt von Gewerkschaft und Partei 1906 ist als ein Bestandteil der Industrialisierung Deutschlands aufzufassen. Die Überordnung der Partei über die Gewerkschaften gehörte der Zeit an, in der Deutschland verglichen mit England ein industriell unter-entwickeltes Land war. Die Umkehrung des Verhältnisses und die Angleichung an das Modell der gleichzeitig in England entstehenden Labour Party trat mit dem endgültigen Durchbruch zum Industriestaat ein.

Lorsque la guerre franco-allemande éclata, Michel Bakounine, rentré en Europe le 27 décembre 1861 après onze ans de prison et d'exil, avait, depuis cinq ou six années, donné une forme définitive aux idées qui sont restées pour toujours associées à son nom.

Marcel van der Linden has championed Global Labour History (GLH) as a solution to the decline of Labour History as an academic field. His 2008 Workers of the World (and other writing) strives to transcend methodological nationalism and provides a new global framework to study labour through the ages. This British liberal-pluralist critique argues that Van der Linden’s version of GLH is essentially a re-packaging of Marxism that narrows the conceptual foundations of the field and overlooks both the full political crisis of state-socialism and its limited historical appeal to working people. The article concludes by defending a national approach centred on civil society institutions, as represented in the 2016 collection edited by P. Ackers and A.J. Reid, Alternatives to State-Socialism in Britain: Other Worlds of Labour in the Twentieth Century.

Studies of the history of leisure have emphasized the separation between work and leisure which developed with the growth of industrial society. Only scant attention has been devoted by historians and sociologists of leisure to the continuing links between work and leisure throughout the nineteenth century, as reflected in recreational activities organized by employers for their employees. Such attention as has been paid to the subject has concentrated on industrial workers, largely ignoring the more systematic and extensive provision of leisure in work organizations belonging to the public sector. In an attempt to explore linkages between work and leisure in this emerging sector, the article focuses on the English police force and will address the following questions. What did the authorities aim to achieve in imposing control through leisure? How did the policemen react to such policies and was this strategy successful? What prompted the social and economic elite to become involved in moulding entertainment for police employees, and what was the impact of police leisure on the community at large?

The last few decades of the twentieth century witnessed a rapid development in information and communication technologies (ICT), which has contributed to such drastic economic, social, and cultural changes that they are commonly referred to as the “Information Revolution”. This Information Revolution is believed by many to be so influential and comprehensive that it is bringing about an epochal rupture in global economic, social, cultural, and political history comparable to the previous major historical shifts of the Agrarian Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Naturally, a development so pervasive has been analysed by a great number of scholars from various disciplines, among whom social theorists, in all their diversity, have been the most numerous. Here is not the place for even a concise overview of the rich variety of theorizing and analysis of the Information Revolution and the resulting Information Society, but much of the theorization of the relationship between work and the most recent information revolution can still be traced to the initial statements about “postindustrial society”, “de-industrialization” and “globalization”.

With the release of the Cabinet Papers for the Lloyd George post-war coahtion government and the opening of the Lloyd George papers in the Beaverbrook Library, the basis for a reinterpretation of the man and his era was made possible. And, indeed, several studies have been published already, most notably, by Americans. The thrust of these new works is to make a more sympathetic character of Lloyd George. Thus, Susan Armitage tells us, had he only not been so busy at peace conferences, Lloyd George would have seen to it that the labor disputes of the post-war years were less disruptive, that the grievances of the trade unions were given due consideration, and that more of the promises of the post-war Reconstruction Committee were realized. In the latter, she follows the lead of Paul Johnson, who was one of the first to plow the murky waters of the Public Records Office's offerings. Pointing a heavily accusing finger at Austen Chamberlain and the Treasury for withholding their blessing on “homes fit for heroes” and other Reconstruction plans, Johnson asks whether “an honest effprt” might have “headed off the militant strike activity” that denied Lloyd George's reconstruction plans the means of success. Thus Lloyd George appears as the victim of circumstances beyond his control – a paragon of pragmatic rationality who is opposed by reactionary Cabinet Ministers and bedevilled by stubborn trade-union leaders who refuse to understand why the promised paradise is not forthcoming.

Examining intra-colonial punitive relocations during the first decade of US occupation in the Philippines, this article shows how colonial police and prison officials used incarceration and transportation in tandem to suppress incipient populist revolutionary movements. They exploited historic regional and religious tensions in their effort to produce new modes of racialized and gendered prison and labor management. Finally, while colonial officials sought to brand certain imprisoned subjects as criminal outlaws, rather than political prisoners, many of these anticolonial fighters actually sharpened their ideas about freedom through their experience of being criminalized, incarcerated, and forcibly relocated.

This article contributes to the debate on the persistence of forced labour within capitalist development. It focuses on Spain, which has been deeply rooted in the global economy, firstly as a colonial metropolis, and later as part of the European Union. In the first place, I analyse the different modalities of unfree labour that are included in the taxonomy established by the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations, taking into account the different political regimes in which they are inserted. Therefore, the legal framework regarding unfree labour is analysed for four different political contexts: liberal revolution with colonial empire (1812–1874); liberal parliamentarism with colonial empire (1874–1936); civil war and fascist dictatorship, with decolonization (1936–1975); and parliamentary democracy within globalization (1975–2014). The article goes on to deal with the importance of the main economic reasons driving the demand for forced labour: relative labour shortage and the search for increasing profits. In the conclusion, and taking the Spanish case as a basis, I suggest a series of challenges for furthering the global debate on the role of forced labour under capitalism.

In the autumn of 1883 a small, anonymous penny pamphlet bearing the provocative title The Bitter Cry of Outcast London appeared in the London bookstores. Its impact was so immediate and cataclysmic that it must be considered one of the great pieces of Victorian reform literature. According to contemporary opinion the pamphlet provoked an “immense interest” in and “drew attention universally to the subject” of the dwellings of the working classes, and by the winter of 1883 it was unanimously agreed that urban slum conditions had “assumed the dimensions of a primary question” and had become “the subject of the day”. Alfred Spender, the editor of the Westminster Gazette, stated in 1913 that it was almost impossible to recapture “the sensation which such a pamphlet as ‘The Bitter Cry of Outcast London’ made when it was first produced”. Suddenly, almost overnight, it seemed, England awoke to the grim facts of the slums. “The revelations concerning ‘Outcast London’”, commented Reynolds Newspaper, “cause a tremendous sensation and thrill of horror through the land…” In January 1884 the Pall Mall Gazette wrote that The Bitter Cry had been echoing from one end of England to the other, and commented, ”We shall have to go back a long time to discover an agitation on any social question in England which has produced so prompt, so wide-spread, and, as we believe, so enduring an effect.” Two years after its publication it was reported that The Bitter Cry “rang through the length and breadth of the land. It touched the hearts of tens of thousands, and awoke deep feelings of indignation, pain, and sympathy in every direction.”

The French republican calendar, dictated by the National Convention, has had its forerunners. The most important among them was Sylvain Maréchal, a highly original and remarkable figure.

In 1788 Sylvain Maréchal issued the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, dated “Fan premier de la Raison” (the first year of Reason), in which the names of the days of the week, the Christian festivals and the table of Saints were omitted. It was this almanac, modified in accordance with the circumstances, that served as the prototype for the republican calendar. Maréchal was put into prison, and afterwards exiled from Paris. His calendar was impounded and burnt by order of the Parliament. Later on Maréchal issued other almanacs and fought in the press for the reform of the calendar. All this is dealt with in the present study, and the name of Marechal will forthwith be linked to those of Romme and Fabre d'Eglantine, the two members of the Convention to whom the republican calendar is due.

Comparative analyses of labour often assume a dividing line between free and forced labour which is universally applicable. The contributions to this special theme argue that the tensions between “freedom” and “unfreedom” may be identified more precisely as those between multiple notions and practices of contract, status, and social conditions. Free and unfree labour on the one hand, status and contract on the other, are historically determined categories. This introduction argues that those histories do not run in parallel but are strictly intersected. From that point of view, social and economic inequalities are mutually linked to legal entitlements; a modification in legal entitlements strongly influences the economic and social equilibrium, and vice versa. Underlying this conclusion is a perspective that is resolutely non-Eurocentric and global. We do not endeavour to find the “missing” freedom of contract in the “periphery”, nor do we consider the “cultural” and economic domination of “the West” as a starting point. We stress instead the mutual connection between “peripheries” and “core” categories and practices. Such a bilateral circulation of ideas and practices contrasts with the argument according to which “the West” invented “freedom” and coercion as well.

The importance of the “Lavrists” or “Vperedovtsy”, named after the publication Vpered (Forward) (1873–1877) founded and edited by Peter Lavrovich Lavrov, in the evolution of the socialist ideas and groups in Russia has been recognized by historians from Alphonse Thun to Franco Venturi. The journal's role in the dissemination of the socialist credo among Russian Jews has never been seriously disputed, although seldom recorded in concrete terms.

In 1917, in the midst of war, the internationalist ideals of the old Second Socialist International came close to achieving an unparalleled diplomatic triumph of non-governmental initiative by bringing together responsible political leaders of the left from the countries of opposing belligerents to discuss peace terms with neutrals on neutral ground at Stockholm.

This article analyses free and unfree labour in mining centres in the Andes during early Spanish colonial times. It focuses on two themes: the condition of indigenous or “native” people as “free labourers”, and the mita system of unfree labour. For that purpose I shall consider the cases of Potosí, the most important mining centre in the Andes, and San Antonio del Nuevo Mundo in southern Bolivia, a large mine unaffected by the mita system of labour obligations.