1. The major English language journal of course was the Economic History Review. Its rather more eclectic counterpart in France was the Revue d'Histoire Economique et Sociale.

2. The dominant themes are well reflected in Eric Hosbawm's famous collection, Labouring Men (London, 1964). The earlier chapters overlap with the “standard of living” debate which dominated English labor historiography for a while and proved ultimately fruitless, a dialogue des sourds between two sides, each taking their stand on evidence and arguments of markedly different order.

3. It is interesting to note Hobsbawm's recent attempt to make amends for his neglect of the subject (“Men and Women in Socialist Iconography,” History Workshop Journal, No. 6 (1978), 121–139). He only succeeds, however, in showing how wide is the gap which has opened up between old and new practitioners of labor history, with respect to the history of female workers, at least.

4. See in particular articles by Geary, Dick, “The German Labour Movement 1848–1919,” European Studies Review, 6 (1976), 297–330CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Radicalism and the Worker,” in Evans, R.J., ed., Society and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany, (New York 1978), 267–287Google Scholar; also S.Hickinbotham's current Oxford D.Phil, thesis on the working-class in the Eastern Ruhr area, 1870–1914.

5. Two examples of this pattern in Italy are Craveri, Piero, Sindicato e istituzioni nel dopoguerra (Bologna, 1977)Google Scholar, which deals with recent years, and Riosa, Alceo, Il sindicalismo rivoluzionario in Italia e la lotta politica nel Partito Socialista dell' eta giolittiana (Bari, 1976)Google Scholar. For France, see, most recently, Julliard, Jacques, Fernand Pelloutier et les origines du syndicalisme d'action directe (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar, and Guin, Yannick, Le mouvement ouvrier Nantais (Paris, 1976).Google Scholar

6. See, inter alia, Hinton, James, The First Shop Stewards' Movement (London, 1977).Google Scholar

7. It is not easy to isolate “workerism” in the literature, since it reflects an approach rather than a genre or a method. There is a hint of it in some of the contributions to Mouvement Social (see, especially, the debate printed in no. 100, 1977), and a rather uncritical approach to anything pertaining to workers and their experience informs the pages of History Workshop Journal. In a different mould, the English Dictionary of Labour Biography (edited by Bellamy and Saville) and the French Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier (edited by Maitron) are the products of this rather blinkered approach, whatever their virtues and uses. See GeoffCrossick's comments on the Dictionary in Mouvement Social, no. 100 (1977), 101–121.

8. I have argued this case at considerable length in an article on the state of social history published in History Workshop Journal, no. 7, 1979.

9. Archetypical of much that is best and worst in this sort of work is the collection by Thuillier, G., Aspects de l'économie nivernaise au XIX^e siècle (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar. The most prominent synoptic study of working women is by Tilly, Louise and Scott, Joan, Women, Work, and Family (New York, 1978)Google Scholar, but see the important and very critical review by Pat Hilden in this issue of ILWCH.

10. On this, see Gray, R.Q., The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976);Google ScholarCrossick, G., “The Labour Aristocracy and its Values,” Victorian Studies, 19 (1976), 301–328Google Scholar; Moorhouse, H.F., “The Marxist Theory of the Labour Aristocracy,” Social History, Vol. 3, i (1978), 61–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of perhaps greater interest is the work of Raphael Samuel. See in particular his article, “The Workshop of the World,” in History Workshop Journal, no. 3 (1977), 6–73, and the collection edited by him, Miners, Quarrymen and Saltworkers (London, 1977).

11. Whereas young U.S. historians of Germany have shown a marked interest in regional studies of labor (see, inter alia, the work of David Crew and Mary Nolan), English students of Germany have branched out in to other fields—the history of women, the study of pressure groups, the political role of the church, and of course the regional origins of national socialism. The exception, of course, is Tim Mason, whose massive study of labor and labor policy under the Nazis puts him in a class of his own, not least for his capacity to set the study of labor firmly in its political context. See Mason, , Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft. Dokumente und Materialien zur Deutschen Arbeiterpolitik 1936–39 (Opladen, 1975)Google Scholar. Also Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich (Opladen 1977).

12. See Foster, John, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perrot, Michelle, Les ouvriers en grève (Paris, 1974, 2 vols)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duveau, Georges, 1848, the Making of a Revolution (London, 1967)Google Scholar. Two interesting critiques of Foster's work are by Musson, A.E., “Class struggle and the labour aristocracy,” in Social History, 3 (1976) 335–356CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jones, Gareth Stedman, “England's first proletariat,” New Left Review, 90 (1975), 35–69.Google Scholar

13. See e.g. Giorgetti, Giorgio, Contadini e proprietari nell' Italia moderna (Turin, 1974)Google Scholar, a remarkably ‘Tawnian’ account of Italian rural capitalism since the early modern period.

14. Trempé, Rolande, Les Mineurs de Carmaux 1848–1914 (Paris, 1971, 2 vols)Google Scholar. Another excellent but more limited example from France might be Gossez, Rémi, Les Ouvriers de Paris: l'Organisation 1848–1851 (Paris, 1967).Google Scholar

15. In Hobsbawm's case see his writings on peasants, from 1959 to the present. The point is even more apposite in Thompson's case, since he has recently undertaken a full-scale dismantling of the highly theoretical work of Althusser, Louis in The Poverty of Theory (London 1978)Google Scholar. If this seminal and beautifully written piece does not end Althusser's appeal to a number of young labor historins in Britain and the US, this will only be because of the essentially irrational nature of the unholy alliance they have formed with him. On the other hand, Althusser needs this anglophone admiration. Social historians in France and elsewhere on the continent are oblivious now to the siren calls of his “scientific history.”

16. See Foster op. cit., and Anderson, Michael, Family Structure in Nineteenth-Century ancashire (Cambridge, 1971).Google Scholar

17. Lequin, Yves, Les ouvriers de la région lyonnaise 1848–1914: i. La formation de la classe ouvrière régionale; ii. les intérêts de classe et la République (Lyon, 1977).Google Scholar

18. I have in mind New Left Review, History Workshop Journal and Marxist Perspectives. See, in particular, EugeneGenovese, “Editorial Note,” M.P. no 5 (1979), 5–7. Clearly Minerva's wl is having some difficulty with the Atlantic passage.

19. See Hindness, and Hurst, , Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (London, 1975)Google Scholar, a pathetic it accurate account of what Althusserian history looks like as practised, and Johnson, Richard, “Thompson, Genovese and Socialist-Humanist History,” History Workshop Journal, no 6, (1978), 79–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a not-much-more successful attempt to state in theory what Hindess and Hurst were unwise enough to do in practice.

20. See Brown, K. (ed), Essays in Anti-Labour History (London, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a reminder in its turn of the very old-fashioned material collected by Briggs and Saville in their Essays in Labour History (London 1960 and 1971).

21. The most promising development are perhaps in Italy, where the example of Paolo Spriano has been so important. See, among his many works, Socialismo e classe operaia a Torino 1892–1913 (Turin 1958); Torino operaio nella Grande Guerra (Turin 1960). More recent works include Nascimbene, Adalberto, Il movimento operaio italiano tra spontaneita e organizzazione, 1860–1890 (Milan, 1976)Google Scholar; and Gestri, Lorenzo, Capitalismo e classe operaia in provincia de Massa-Carrara. Dell Unita d'Italia all eta giollittiana (Florence 1976)Google Scholar. The French continue to work within more traditional parameters, as in regional studies of a complete industry, on the model of the work of Gillet, (Les charbonnages du Nord de la France au dix-neuvième siècle, Paris 1973)Google Scholar or Fridenson in his studies of the history of Renault. The result is nevertheless frequently more informative for the history of labor than the work of the Annales school on working-class mentalités, etc. In Britain it is themes which determine the character of the subject, so that we should not be surprised to find the Chartists again at the forefront of new approaches to the subject, no less in the recent work of Jones, D. (Chartism and the Chartists, London 1975)Google Scholar than in the original contributions of the Hammonds. Attention should be drawn to the work of Joaquin Romero Maura, whose recent study of the workers of Barcelona is very theoretically suggestive: La Rosa de Fuego. Republicanos y anarchista: la politico de los obreros barceloneses entre le desastre colonial y la Semana Tragica, 1899–1909 (Barcelona, 1975).