South Africa

Le Roux, Elisabeth. A Social History of the University Presses in Apartheid South Africa. Between Complicity and Resistance. [Library of the Written Word, vol. 43; The Industrial World, vol. 4.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2016. xi, 237 pp. Ill. € 110.00; $142.00.

In this book, based on her PhD research, Dr Le Roux examines scholarly publishing history, academic freedom and knowledge production during the apartheid era. Using archival materials, comprehensive bibliographies, and political sociology theory, she analyses the origins, publishing lists, and philosophies of university presses, often associated with anti-apartheid publishing and the promotion of academic freedom, revealing greater complicity of both in this work. The author demonstrates that the university presses cannot be considered oppositional, because they did not resist censorship and operated within the constraints of the higher education system, although their publishing strategies became more liberal over time.

Argentina

Caruso, Laura. Embarcados. Los trabajadores marítimos y la vida a bordo. Sindicato, empresas y estado en el Puerto de Buenos Aires, 1889–1921. [Collección Archivos, vol. 5.] Imago Mundi, Buenos Aires 2016. xxxv, 283 pp. Ill. $350 ARS.

In this book, originally written as her doctoral thesis, the author examines workers in the port of Buenos Aires, their daily duties, organizations, struggles, and political demands. The first chapter depicts the particular world of maritime work, its conditions, legislation, and demands. Employers are explored in the second chapter, with a special section dedicated to the Mihanovich firm, the largest shipping company in the country. The third part covers the emergence and consolidation of the first maritime trade unions. The fourth is about union control, the struggles and problems of the workers and their union. The final chapter addresses the relationship between maritime workers and the national state.

Caribbean

Bassi, Ernesto. An Aqueous Territory. Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater Caribbean World. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 2016. xiii, 345 pp. Ill. Maps $94.95. (Paper: $26.95.)

In this book, Professor Bassi traces the configuration of what was known as the trans-imperial Greater Caribbean between 1760 and 1860. Focusing on the Caribbean coast of New Granada (present-day Colombia), the author shows that the lives of the region’s residents were not confined by geopolitical borders. The cross-border activities of sailors, traders, revolutionaries, indigenous peoples, and others revealed that they perceived the Caribbean as a trans-imperial space, where trade, information, and people circulated, both conforming to and defying imperial regulations. A geographic space that was lived and experienced but was not necessarily filled with the patriotic sentiment of nation-states complicates the theory of the violent but straightforward transition from colony to nation.

Cuba

Randall, Margaret. Exporting Revolution. Cuba’s Global Solidarity. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2017. x, 270 pp. $94.95. (Paper: $25.95.)

Why has the Cuban healthcare system trained foreign doctors and responded to health crises around the globe? What drives Cuba’s international adult literacy programs? How has Cuban poetry become so influential in the Spanish-speaking world? The author explores the Cuban Revolution’s impact on the outside world, tracing Cuba’s international outreach in health care, disaster relief, education, literature, art, liberation struggles, and sports, and combines personal observations and interviews with literary analysis and examinations of political trends to argue how Cuban foreign aid differs from aid offered by large imperialist nations, placing the origins of the former long before the Revolution.

Peru

The Peculiar Revolution. Rethinking the Peruvian Experiment under Military Rule. Ed. by Carlos Aguirre and Paulo Drinot. University of Texas Press, Austin (TX) 2017. vii, 353 pp. Ill. Maps. $29.95.

In 1968, a military junta led by Velasco took over the government of Peru. Velasco’s Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces set in motion a left-leaning nationalist project aimed at radically transforming Peruvian society and placing the destiny of Peruvians in their own hands. Though short-lived, the Velasco regime had a transformative effect on Peru. The thirteen contributions in this volume consider social and cultural processes, in particular the cultural policies of the regime. The three sections in this book highlight the era’s cultural politics; specific policies and key institutions; and the local and regional dimensions of the social reforms promoted.

United States of America

Jameson, Fredric. An American Utopia. Dual Power and the Universal Army. Ed. by Slavoj Žižek. Verso, London [etc.] 2016. viii, 328 pp. £48.00. (Paper: £16.99; E-book: £16.99.)

This volume brings together Jameson’s pathbreaking essay An American Utopia and responses from philosophers and political and cultural analysts, as well as an epilogue by Jameson. The essay, revised for this edition, radically questions standard leftist notions of what constitutes an emancipated society, advocating, for example, universal conscription, full acknowledgement of envy and resentment as a fundamental challenge to any communist society and acceptance that the division between work and leisure is impossible to bridge. The authors conclude that creating a new world will require changing the way we envision the present one.

Bean, Christopher B. Too Great a Burden to Bear. The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas. [Reconstructing America.] Fordham University Press, New York 2016. 309 pp. $140.00; £108.00. (Paper: $40.00; £31.00.)

In its seven-year existence, the Freedmen’s Bureau became the epicentre of the Reconstruction debate. The Bureau protected freedpeople’s labour and established their right to set up a household, recognized their marriages and tried to confirm their rights as parents of their children, as well as ensuring the right of the former slaves to an education and their right of mobility. This book focuses on the Bureau’s personnel. Professor Bean describes the type of man Bureau officials regarded as qualified to oversee the freedpeople’s transition to freedom. Officials in Texas desired those able to meet emancipation’s challenges as bureau personnel, which meant northern-born, mature, white men from the middle and upper-middle class and generally with military experience.

Bowman, Timothy Paul. Blood Oranges. Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands. Foreward by Sterling Evans. [Connecting the Greater West Series.] A&M University Press, College Station (TX) 2016. xv, 266 pp. Ill. Maps. $43.00.

This book examines the gap between wealthy corporate agribusinesses in citrus and winter vegetables and the utterly impoverished ethnic Mexican labour force in the South Texas borderlands in the twentieth century. The key to this development, Professor Bowman finds, was a modern colonization movement. Beginning in the twentieth century, Anglo-Americans from the Midwest emigrated to this region and transformed it from a culturally Mexican space with a cattle-based economy into one dominated by commercial agriculture focused on citrus. As Anglos gained political and economic control in the region, they consolidated their power along racial lines with laws and customs akin to the system of southern segregation.

Brophy, Alfred L. University, Court, and Slave. Pro-slavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts, and the Coming of Civil War. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2016. xxvi, 373 pp. Ill. £25.99.

Pre-Civil War southern universities owned people and profited from their labour, while many were physically abused on their campuses. Education was often paid for through the profits from slave labour. University faculty and students also promoted the institution of slavery. They wrote about the history of slavery and its central role in the southern economy and developed a political theory that justified keeping some people in slavery. University faculty echoed the discourse of those who made the laws in southern states, of economic utility, history and philosophy. The extensive writings promoting slavery are the sources Professor Brophy studied to understand how southern politicians and judges viewed slavery.

Callahan, Mat. The Explosion of Deferred Dreams. Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965–1975. PM Press, Oakland (CA) 2017. xxx, 308 pp. Ill. $22.95.

During a ten-year period, San Francisco became a focus of world attention due to massive growth of art (music) and revolutionary politics. The author, a musician and San Francisco native, offers a critical re-examination of interwoven political and musical happenings and explores the dynamic links between the Black Panthers and Sly and the Family Stone, the United Farm Workers and Santana, the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the New Left and the counterculture. Based on original interviews, primary sources and personal experiences, the author shows how the interplay of artistic and political movements put San Francisco briefly at the vanguard of a worldwide revolutionary upsurge.

Faue, Elizabeth. Rethinking the American Labor Movement. [American Social and Political Movements of the Twentieth Century.] Routledge, New York [etc.] 2017. xi, 233 pp. £100.00. (Paper: £25.99; E-book: £20.99.)

The labour movement, like other social movements, is rife with divisions in identifying goals and how to achieve them. While the efforts of the American labour force to bring about greater wealth parity have often been contested, the struggle has embraced a broad vision of more equitable distribution of wealth and a desire for workers to have greater control over their lives. In this study, Professor Faue examines the foundations of trade unionism, the rise and success of industrial unionism, the opportunities offered by social movements and the growth of public employee unionism and surveys the contemporary developments and future of the labour movement in the current political culture.

Holder, Michelle. African American Men and the Labor Market during the Great Recession. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2017. xvii, 95 pp. Ill. $54.99. (E-book: $39.99.)

This book analyses the status and position of African American men on the American labour market prior to, during and after the Great Recession (first decade of the twenty-first century). Using a model of occupational crowding, Professor Holder outlines the decline of the representation of African American men in major occupational categories during the recent recession, even as white men maintained their occupational representation. Using US Census Bureau data, the author illustrates how African American men sought to protect their group from job losses by attaining higher levels of education. However, this strategy did not spare this group from disparate job losses, as African American men became progressively marginalized in the workforce.

Kohler-Hausmann, Julilly. Getting Tough. Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America. [Politics and Society in Modern America.] Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2017. xiv, 305 pp. $35.00; £27.95.

When social movements and the slowing economy destabilized the US welfare state in the 1970s, politicians reacted by repudiating the commitment to individual rehabilitation that had governed penal and social programs for decades. The architects of these tough strategies insisted that such programmes were necessary, given the failure of liberal social programmes and the supposed pathological culture within poor communities. Professor Kohler-Hausmann traces this process through three legislative cases: New York’s adoption of the 1973 Rockefeller drug laws, attempts by Illinois and California to reform welfare through criminalization and work mandates, and Californian enactment of a 1976 sentencing law that abandoned rehabilitation as an aim of incarceration.

Mackaman, Thomas. New Immigrants and the Radicalization of American Labor, 1914–1924. McFarland & Company, Jefferson (NC) 2017. v, 212 pp. Ill. $35.00.

Through comparative case studies of coal mining in Illinois, steel mining in the Calumet Area (Chicago) and iron mining in Minnesota, Professor Mackaman argues that new immigrant workers from Southern and Eastern Europe had a critical role in major changes in the working class, industry, and politics. From the bottom of the industrial hierarchy, immigrants pushed forward the greatest wave of strikes and struggles in American labour history, typified by long, violent, and whole-community fights. In response, government and industry launched a campaign of 100 per cent Americanism. They drafted new labour and immigration policies that led to the 1924 National Origins Act, halting mass European immigration.

Warren Wendy. New England Bound. Slavery and Colonization in Early America. Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York 2016. xi, 345 pp. Ill. Maps. $29.95. (Paper: $18.95.)

Based on seventeenth-century sources, Professor Warren shows how the institution of slavery was linked with the first century of English colonization of New England, examining the complicity of New England’s leading families (e.g. the Winthrops and the Pynchons), demonstrating how the region’s economy derived its vitality from the slave trading ships, as the people invested heavily in the West Indies, and bringing to light the lives of the thousands of reluctant Indian and African slaves forced onto construction projects or banished to sugar islands.

China

Ang, Yuen Yuen. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. [Cornell Studies in Political Economy.] Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2016. xvi, 326 pp. Ill. Maps. $27.95.

Before markets opened in 1978, China was an impoverished planned economy governed by a Maoist bureaucracy. Over the next three decades the country evolved into the world’s second-largest economy and is presently guided by highly entrepreneurial bureaucrats. In this study, Professor Ang charts a new, dynamic framework for understanding development broadly. She contends that successful development is a coevolutionary process, involving adaptation by markets and governments alike. In mapping this coevolution, the author concludes that poor and fragile countries grow by harnessing weak institutions to build markets. Ang identifies how Chinese reformers crafted enabling conditions for effective improvisation and highlights several universal impediments to adaptation.

Maoism at the Grassroots. Everyday Life in China’s Era of High Socialism. Ed. by Jeremy Brown and Matthew D. Johnson. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 2015. vi, 468 pp. $49.95; £39.95; € 45.00.

The Maoist state’s dominance over Chinese society, achieved through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, is well known. This study re-examines this period by considering individuals in villages, neighbourhoods, and factories from the bottom up. In thirteen essays scholars from China, Europe, North America, and Taiwan reveal the diversity of individual viewpoints and local experiences during China’s years of high socialism. Focusing on the period from the mid-1950s to 1980, the authors provide insights into the everyday lives of citizens across social strata, ethnicities, and regions. Heterogeneity, limited pluralism, and tensions between official and popular culture were persistent features of Maoism at the grass-roots level. See also Susanne Stein’s review in this volume, pp. 559–561.

Pun, Ngai. Migrant Labor in China. Post-Socialist Transformations. [China Today Series.] Polity, Cambridge 2016. xi, 204 pp. £50.00; € 69.33. (Paper: £15.99; € 22.16; E-text: £15.99; € 22.16; E-book: £11.99; € 18.99.)

Over the past thirty years, China has achieved an economic miracle. Professor Ngai Pun charts the rise of China and the emergence of a new labour force as a world workshop. Dismantling the collective economy and the state retreat from the countryside perpetuated deep poverty in rural China, forcing large numbers of people to migrate. The role of the state and transnational interests in forming a new migrant workforce are analysed in this book. Deprived of many rights and social protection, workers increasingly voice their discontent through strikes and protests, instigating new challenges for the Party-State and the global division of labour. See also Limin Teh’s review in this volume, pp. 561–564.

Von Glahn, Richard. The Economic History of China. From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016. xiv, 461 pp. Maps. £24.99.

In this synthetic narrative of the development of the Chinese economy, Professor von Glahn examines the institutional foundations, continuities and discontinuities in China’s economic development from the Bronze Age to the early twentieth century. The Chinese Empire prospered economically throughout the preindustrial era, with the Chinese economy sharing some of the features (e.g. highly productive agriculture and sophisticated markets) found in the most advanced regions of Europe. Still, China’s preindustrial economy diverged in many ways from the Western path of development, from the central importance of irrigated rice farming to family structure, property rights, the status of merchants, the monetary system and the imperial state’s fiscal and economic policies.

India

Bradley, Tamsin. Women and Violence in India. Gender, Oppression and the Politics of Neoliberalism. I.B. Tauris, London 2017. xiii, 288 pp. £69.00, $110.00.

India’s gender-based violence has been subject to international scrutiny and has elicited waves of domestic protest. In this research, the author argues that, in many parts of the world, including India, a sharp swing to the right has coincided with the rise of conservatism and a patriarchist attitude towards women, but also attributes the violence to the failure of established state structures to take a clear stand against abuse of women. She examines how different groups in India conceptualize violence against women, revealing beliefs about religion, caste, and gender that render aggression socially acceptable, and analyses the role of neoliberalism and consumerism in reducing women to commodity objects.

The Land Question in India. State, Dispossession, and Capitalist Transition. Ed. by Anthony P. D’Costa and Achin Chakraborty. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2017. xxi, 335 pp. Maps. £65.00.

India, with its particular form of democratic practices, provides a rich landscape marked by the pronounced conflict between the social obligation of the state to protect its vulnerable small farmers and growing demand for land for non-agricultural purposes. In this volume, distributional conflicts, arising from acquisition of land by the state for capital accumulation, on the one hand, and its commodification on the other, highlight the role of the state in driving dispossession of peasants through direct expropriation for development purposes, such as acquisition of land by local states for infrastructure development and to support accumulation strategies of private business through industrialization.

Japan

Walker, Gavin. The Sublime Perversion of Capital. Marxist Theory and the Politics of History in Modern Japan. [Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2016. xvi, 245 pp. $89.95. (Paper: $24.95.)

In this book, based on his dissertation, Professor Walker examines the Japanese debate about capitalism between the 1920s and 1950s to consider current discussions of uneven development and contemporary topics in Marxist theory and historiography. The author locates the debate’s culmination in the work of Uno Kozo, whose research on the development of capitalism and commodification of labour power are essential for rethinking the national question in Marxist theory. The analysis of Uno and the Japanese debate strips Marxist historiography of its Eurocentric focus, showing how Marxist thought was globalized from the start.

Middle East

Nordenson, Jon. Online Activism in the Middle East. Political Power and Authoritarian Governments from Egypt to Kuwait. [Library of Modern Middle East Studies, 191.] I.B. Tauris, London 2017. xiv, 402 pp. £69.00; $110.00.

This study, based on Dr Nordenson’s PhD thesis, investigates the use of online platforms among activists in the Middle East and their importance in effecting change. The author provides empirical analyses of the day-to-day use of online platforms by activists in Egypt and Kuwait, based on cases in the Arab countries with the most prominent online and offline activism. In the context of Kuwait, oppositional youth groups struggling for a constitutional, democratic monarchy in the emirate are examined, while in Egypt the focus is on groups and organizations active against sexual violence and harassment. The book features appendices on Twitter debates, coding categories and timelines of the Egyptian and Kuwaiti cases.

Sri Lanka

Jayawardena, Kumari [and] Rachel Kurian. Class, Patriarchy and Ethnicity on Sri Lankan Plantations. Two Centuries of Power and Protest. Orient Black Swan, Hyderabad [etc.] 2015. xi, 348 pp. Ill. Rs 825.00.

Focusing on the coffee, tea, rubber, and coconut plantations of Sri Lanka from the early nineteenth century onwards, this book describes the lives and struggles of Sri Lankan plantation workers. The authors examine colonial-era labour practices, the legacy of slavery and other forms of coerced labour, employment of Indian Tamil workers, trade unionism on the plantations and the influence of civil society organizations and women activists in struggles for democratic rights and ethnic conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils.

Austria

Deutsch, Julius. Antifascism, Sports, Sobriety. Forging a Militant Working-Class Culture. Ed. and transl. by Gabriel Kuhn. PM Press, Oakland (CA) 2017. viii, 114 pp. Ill. $14.95.

At the heart of the Austro-Marxist experiment was the conviction that a socialist revolution had to entail a cultural one. With the Fascist threat increasing, the physical aspects of the Cultural Revolution became ever more central. This book contains an introductory essay by Gabriel Kuhn about Red Vienna, its working-class culture, and its eventual defeat in 1934, as well as a selection of writings on the physical aspects of workers’ culture by Julian Deutsch, a leader of the workers’ militias, president of the Socialist Workers’ Sport International, and prominent spokesperson for the Austrian workers’ temperance movement. A short biography of Deutsch and a select bibliography are included.

France

Kalter, Christoph. The Discovery of the Third World. Decolonization and the Rise of the New Left in France, c.1950–1976. (Transl. from German by Thomas Dunlap). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016 (2011). xviii, 498 pp. Ill. £74.99.

From the 1950s through the mid-70s, the concept of the Third World emerged in France alongside a new leftist movement. Using the Third World concept to revitalize anti-colonial solidarity, advocates supported the Algerian FLN, the Cuban Revolution, and the liberation movements in Vietnam and Portuguese Africa, promoting new forms of cooperation with developing countries and immigrant workers. Examining the work of French leftists in publications such as Partisans, archives from parties such as the PSU and associations like the CEDETIM, the author sheds new light on a crucial moment in France’s history, the instigating global contexts, and its worldwide ramifications.

Loughlin, Michael B. From Revolutionary Theater to Reactionary Litanies. Gustave Hervé (1871–1944) at the Extremes of the French Third Republic. [Studies in Modern European History, vol. 71.] Peter Lang, New York [etc.] 2016. xx, 1136 pp. Ill. € 135.95; £94.00; $138.95.

This biography is about the French politician Gustave Hervé (1871–1944). In thirty-one chronological chapters Professor Loughlin elaborates in extensive detail on his life and political career. Drawing on vast published and unpublished material the author traces lines of history from 1901, when, as a young socialist journalist and teacher, Hervé gained notoriety following an article that appeared to depict the tricolour planted in a dung pile, through the anti-militarist movement bearing his name, the founding of the newspaper La Guerre Sociale, to his evolution towards national socialism and leftist fascism. The book includes a historiographic introduction.

Vigna, Xavier. L’espoir et l’effroi. Luttes d’écritures et luttes de classes en France au XXe siècle. La découverte, Paris 2016. 318 pp. € 24.00. (E-book: € 14.99.)

The twentieth century brought the working class to its peak in France, where strikes, trade unions, and political organizations raised both hope and fear that workers could radically change the social order. This ambiguous sentiment has been expressed in writings, representing the State through police and labour inspectors. Employers expressed themselves in Catholic organizations and through scholars who became workers for periods of time to evaluate the working class and its morality. Workers replied in leaflets, testimonies, and novels relating their work, life, and struggles. Professor Vigna explores both sides through their texts, sometimes in the form of archives, sometimes published.

Germany

Jones, Mark. Founding Weimar. Violence and the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016. xx, 380 pp. Ill. Maps. £64.99.

The German Revolution of 1918–1919 was a transformative moment in modern European history. This Revolution saw extreme levels of mass mobilization and political violence, including the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and the violent suppression of strikes and the Munich Councils’ Republic. The author reveals how the Revolution’s political cultures were defined by violence, rumours, and fears, including those emerging from the shattered empires across Central and Eastern Europe and the ongoing Russian Civil War. In a series of micro studies, the author shows how state-sponsored violence conveyed the message that the new state was strong enough to restore order.

Limbach, Jutta. “Wahre Hyänen”. Pauline Staegemann und ihr Kampf um die politische Macht der Frauen. Dietz, Bonn 2016. 120 pp. Ill. € 18.00.

Pauline Staegemann (1838–1909), social democrat and founder of the first Berlin workers’ “union and girls” association, was the great-grandmother of the author, who in this biography relates how Staegemann paved the way for future generations of women in politics and education. Despite the Prussian Association Act excluding women from organized political activity, Staegemann, a former domestic servant and mother of four, persistently struggled for political power for women and was even imprisoned for this pursuit. The author also describes advances in family law, policy on women, and gender equality from the 1870s to the present.

Rote Fahnen, bunte Bänder. Korporierte Sozialdemokraten von Lassalle bis heute. Im Auftr. des Lassalle-Kreises hrsg. v. Manfred Blänker, Axel Bernd Kunze. Dietz, Bonn 2016. 319 pp. Ill. € 22.90.

Leading social democrats and theorists in social democracy were members of student associations, including Ferdinand Lassalle, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Eduard David, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Fritz Bauer, Ludwig Bergsträsser, and Detlef Carsten Rohwedder. In their view, the SPD and the student associations represented similar principles, such as solidarity, a democratic discussion culture, and lifelong companionship. This volume documents this close relationship between social democrats and student associations in twenty-three short biographies, opening with an essay by Peter Brandt on the legacy of student groups and reporting on today’s relationship between the SPD and student groups, culminating in the final chapter with a presentation of the Lassalle circle, which was the driving force behind this edition.

Solidarität im Wandel der Zeiten. 150 Jahre Gewerkschaften. Hrsg. Willy Buschak. Klartext, Essen 2016. vi, 320 pp. Ill. € 29.95.

In 1865, organizing workers in unions entered a new stage with the establishment of the Allgemeinen Deutschen Cigarrenarbeiterverreins (ADCAV) in Leipzig, where the 150th anniversary of the event was celebrated by a conference in September 2015. The thirteen contributions in this volume show why trade unions have emerged in Leipzig, and how the struggle against inequality, preservation of own values and cross-border solidarity have become the main themes in trade union history. Also included is the first comprehensive biography of trade union founder Friedrich Wilhelm Fritzsche, one of the most important social democrats of the nineteenth century.

Great Britain

Cooper, Sam. The Situationist International in Britain. Modernism, Surrealism, and the Avant-garde. [Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, vol. 39.] Routledge, London 2017. 185 pp. Ill. £85.00. (E-book: £24.49.)

The Situationist International manifested as the culmination of the twentieth century avant-garde tradition. Dr Cooper constructs its long cultural history, beginning in the interwar period with the arrival of Surrealism to Britain, covering the countercultures of the 1950s and 1960s and finally surveying the present directions in Situationist theory and practice. Combining historicism with a range of archival materials, including newspaper reports, underground pamphlets, psycho-geographical films, and experimental novels, he sheds light on a productive period of British avant-garde practice and demonstrates how this subterranean activity helps us understand post-war culture, late modernism, and the complex internationalization of the avant-garde.

Dumas, Paula E. Proslavery Britain. Fighting for Slavery in an Era of Abolition. Palgrave Macmillan, New York [etc.] 2016. x, 223 pp. Ill. € 90.94. (E-book: € 69.99.)

Abolition was not a universal goal among all Britons. By concentrating on the pro-slavery position, this study exposes and explores opposition to abolitionism in the British Empire. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from art, poetry, and literature, to propaganda, scientific studies, and parliamentary papers, Dr Dumas explores how slavery’s defenders helped shape the processes of abolition and emancipation. She observes that proslavery arguments and rhetoric were multifaceted and could be adapted to reflect personal experience and external events and were crafted to justify slavery, defend the colonies and attack the abolitionist movement at the height of the slavery debates.

Hitchcock, David. Vagrancy in English Culture and Society, 1650–1750. [Cultures of Early Modern Europe.] Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2016. x, 236 pp. Ill. £84.99. (E-book: £26.99.)

Outcasts, wandering destitutes, disabled veterans, aged labourers, solitary pregnant women on the road, and those referred to as vagabonds and beggars are all explored in this comprehensive study. Using a rich array of archival and literary sources, Dr Hitchcock offers not only a history of the experiences of vagrants, but also of how the settled “better sort” perceived vagrancy. He examines how vagrancy was culturally represented in both popular and elite literature as a shadowy underworld of dissembling rogues, gypsies, and pedlars, and how these representations powerfully affected the lives of the vagrants.

Ives, Martyn. Reform, Revolution and Direct Action amongst British Miners. The Struggle for the Charter in 1919. [Historical Materialism Book Series, vol. 123.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2016. x, 351 pp. € 139.00; $167.00.

While the general strike of 1926 is often regarded as the height of industrial struggle in interwar Britain, it was only an aftermath of the more insurgent militancy of 1919–1921. Dr Ives reveals a remarkable number of unofficial mass strikes in the coalfields (Fife and Lanarkshire, Nottinghamshire, South Wales, and Yorkshire), waged against mine owners, government and trade union leaders alike. Led by revolutionaries and infused with political radicalism, this mass movement offered a glimpse of an alternative road to socialism, based on the organized power of the working class. The author has researched many thousands of editions of local newspapers, which ran highly detailed reports of strikes and mass meetings.

McDowell, Linda. Migrant Women’s Voices. Talking About Life and Work in the UK since 1945. Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2016. xii, 265 pp. Ill. £90.00.

Between 1945 and the new century, millions of migrant women joined the labour force in the UK. These changes are brought to life through the stories of seventy-four migrant women, collected between 1992 and 2012. Common themes are disruption, dislocation and rebuilding their lives, at home and in the workplace alike. The chapters are ordered chronologically and provide insight into the lives of migrant women and also reflect the economic trend of the decline of manufacturing and rise of the service sector, as over this sixty-year period the women worked in factories and hospitals, banks, care homes, shops, and universities.

Popular Culture and Political Agency in Early Modern England and Ireland. Essays in Honour of John Walter. Ed. by Michael J. Braddick and Phil Withington. [Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History, vol. 26.] Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge [etc.] 2017. xiv, 309 pp. $99.00.

John Walter is an influential historian on categories of elite and popular politics and analysis of political agency by ordinary people. The fourteen essays in this volume, published in recognition of his 65th birthday, address central issues of Walter’s work, ranging from the politics of poverty, dearth and household, through popular political consciousness and practice to religion and politics during the English revolution. The authors consider, from a variety of perspectives, the relationship between popular political consciousness and political agency, between national politics and the everyday negotiation of power, as well as how those outside circles of elite power shaped political action.

Shave, Samantha A. Pauper Policies. Poor Law Practice in England, 1780–1850. Manchester University Press, Manchester 2017. xiv, 300 pp. Maps. £75.00.

In the late-eighteenth, early-nineteenth centuries England experienced industrial and agricultural revolutions, instigating great social and economic change. Poor relief was essential to the survival of the labouring classes, and the complexity of social policies under the poor laws for the agrarian counties of the South of England is revealed in this book. Through a “policy process approach” developed by social scientists, the author demonstrates in six thematic chapters that social policies under the poor laws were a myriad of laws and practices conceived and exchanged between those in positions of power and the poor.

Walker, Graham. The Labour Party in Scotland. Religion, the Union, and the Irish Dimension. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2016. vii, 103 pp. £45.00. (E-book: £35.99.)

This study is intended as an intervention in the debate about the current political ferment and uncertain constitutional future of Scotland. Professor Walker examines Labour’s historical development there, exploring how religion has shaped politics and the social and cultural profile. He is concerned about the recent debate about sectarianism in Scotland and the crucial role of Irish influences in Scottish life and the close relationship with Northern Ireland, assessing in this book the impact of the new political circumstances of devolution from the end of the last century and the decomposition of what had become a traditional pattern of class-based politics.

Greece

Apoifis, Nicholas. Anarchy in Athens. An Ethnography of Militancy, Emotions and Violence. [Contemporary Anarchist Studies.] Manchester University Press, Manchester 2017. 196 pp. £70.00. (Paper: £19.99; E-book: £19.99.)

The Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement’s public protests and battles against the Greek state, police, and capitalist institutions are easily visible. This book, which concerns this movement, its contemporary form, dynamics, and internal constitution, is aimed primarily at conveying the complexities of this milieu, where varying anarchist tendencies and ensuing disagreements are overcome, in most cases, involving violent street protests. After sketching Greece’s contemporary economic, political, and social turmoil and providing a theoretical and methodological outline, the author discusses Greek anarchist history and the contemporary tensions within the Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian space, based largely on extensive ethnographic fieldwork.

Italy

Nani, Michele. Migrazioni bassopadane. Un secolo di mobilità residenziale nel Ferrarese (1861–1971). [Migrazioni e Lavoro, vol. 1.] NDF, Palermo 2016. 323 pp. Ill. Maps. € 25.00.

This book focuses on different kinds of mobility (international, internal, local) in the Italian province of Ferrara (located in the Po Valley) during the century following national unification. This flat area, dominated by modern agriculture and a low grade of urbanization, experienced intense residential mobility and vast rural migrations. Quantitative explorations of aggregate data reveal the large variations of different types of migration in time and space. The first part of the book explores population growth, in terms of natural and migration balances throughout the region, while the second part focuses on Bondeno, a small town in this region.

The Netherlands

Klooster, Wim. The Dutch Moment. War, Trade and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2016. 419 pp. Ill. Maps. $35.00.

In the middle decades of the seventeenth century, the Dutch left their mark on the wider Atlantic world. The pivotal colony in the Dutch Atlantic was Brazil. Notwithstanding its brief lifespan, Dutch Brazil (1630–1654) had a lasting impact on the Atlantic world and was the largest inter-imperial conflict of the seventeenth-century Atlantic. Brazil was the start of Dutch involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, in which they soon became dominant. The entire colony ultimately reverted to Portuguese rule, in part because Dutch soldiers, plagued by poverty, famine, and misery, refused to take up arms. As the imperial dimension waned, the inter-imperial commercial dimension gained strength.

Poland

Goldstein, Bernard. Twenty Years with the Jewish Labor Bund. A Memoir of Interwar Poland. Transl. by Marvin S. Zuckerman. Preface by Victor Gilinsky. Intr. by Emanuel Sherer. [Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies.] Purdue University Press, West Lafayette (IN) 2016. xxxi, 424 pp. Ill. $59.95. (E-book: $50.99.)

In Interwar Poland, the Jewish Labour Movement was more popular than Zionism. Bernard Goldstein, an ordinary worker who rose to prominence in the Jewish Labor Bund, provides in this book a representation of Jewish life in Poland before World War II. In eighty-two short chapters, he portrays Jews as worldly, modern individuals, dedicated to their folk culture and the survival of their people. Many Jews supported secular political journalism and the establishment of a secular school system in Yiddish. The Jewish Labor Bund was a strong political factor in Poland and fought for workers’ rights and benefits. See also Daniel Soyer’s review in this volume, pp. 564–566.

Portugal

Accornero, Guya. The Revolution before the Revolution. Late Authoritarianism and Student Protest in Portugal. [Protest, Culture & Society Series, vol. 18.] Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2016. xv, 169 pp. $90.00; £64.00.

During the authoritarian Estado Novo regime, the Portuguese institutions faced strong waves of contention, as students became increasingly prominent from the mid-1950s and second half of the 1960s. Dr Accornero combines empirical research with a clear theoretical framework, using concepts such as the “Political Opportunity Structure” and the “Protest Cycle” to convey the different phases of the Portuguese student movement and its progressive politicization and radicalization. The author stresses ongoing features of the mobilizations, the pluralization of political forces on the eve of the revolution, and the growing importance of resistance in the colonial war as the main common denominator among the different opposition groups.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Smith, S.A. Russia in Revolution. An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2017. vii, 455 pp. Ill. Maps. £25.00; $34.95.

This book is written for a general readership, as a synthesis of recent research by Russian and Western scholars and an attempt to question some familiar interpretations. Dr Smith offers a comprehensive account of the main events, developments and personalities in the former Russian empire from the late-nineteenth century through the onset of the first Five-Year Plan and forced collectivizations in 1928, when Stalin unleashed a revolution from above. Drawing on recent archive-based scholarship, the author pays particular attention to the impact of the Revolutions on the various groups in society: peasants; workers; non-Russian nationals; the army; women and the family; young people; and the Church.

The Soviet Gulag. Evidence, Interpretation, and Comparison. Ed. by Michael David-Fox. [Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies.] University of Pittsburg Press, Pittsburg (PA) 2016. xi, 434 pp. Ill. $49.95.

Modern research is developing a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the Gulag. There was a wide range of camps, many not isolated in remote Siberia; prisoners often intermingled with local populations and the forced labour system was not completely distinct from the “free” labour of ordinary Soviet citizens. The first part of the book features seven essays about the camps in the Gulag. These studies illuminate the interrelationship and importance of the Gulag to the larger Soviet political and economic system. The second part of the book contains seven comparative essays on British concentration camps, Chinese forced labour systems, North Korean re-education camps and the camp system of Nazi Germany. See also Zhanna Popova’s review in this volume, pp. 566–569.

Yarov, Sergey. Leningrad 1941–42. Morality in a City under Siege. (Transl. from Russian by Arch Tait.) Polity Press, Cambridge 2017 (2012). xiii, 409 pp. £35.00.

The aim of this book is to show the full tragedy of the siege of Leningrad and the impact the terrible conditions in which the majority of the population lived and died had on their attitudes, behaviour, and psyche. Documents, letters, diaries, memoirs, and interviews retrieved from family archives are reproduced here, some with introductory notes. Professor Yarov thus shows various aspects of life in the besieged city. Leningrad changed, as did the morals, customs and habits of Leningraders, who wanted at all costs to survive. Their notes about the siege reflect a drama that cost one million lives.

Spain

Amat, Jordi. La primavera de Múnich. Esperanza y fracas de una transición democrática. Tusquets, Barcelona 2016. 479 pp. Ill. € 22.90.

During the first week of June 1962, 118 Spanish anti-Francoists, from within Spain and in exile, met to draw a road map that would bring democracy to Spain and integration into the European project. Dr Amat reconstructs the origin, meeting and outcome of this capital episode of democratic culture and relates it to the ideological debates of the Cold War. Through the participation of Julián Gorkin and Dionisio Ridruejo, the Munich Spring offered a solid alternative to the Francoist tyranny. Using primary sources, the author describes the intellectual activities launched and explores the origins of the transition.

Salanova, Santiago de Miguel. Republicanos y socialistas. El nacimiento de la acción política municipal en Madrid (1891–1909). [Estudios de historia social, no. 7.] Catareta, Madrid 2016. 175 pp. Maps. € 16.50.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Madrid’s urban limits expanded, while the working class languished in dismal conditions. Facing the disinterest of the monarchical parties during the Restoration, Republicans and Socialists understood the importance of municipal politics and tried to cope with e.g. corruption, nepotism, mismanagement, social gaps between neighbourhoods, and failure of hygiene and sanitation policies. Dr Salanova traces the pioneering contributions of Republicans and Socialists in the Town Hall since 1891, from the establishment of universal male suffrage to 1909, when the Republican-Socialist Conjunction won, and the opposition achieved a representative majority and the possibility of consolidating a new municipal policy.

Simón, Luis Díaz [Prólogo de Luis Enrique Otero Carvajal]. Los barrios bajos de Madrid 1880–1936. Catareta, Madrid 2016. 270 pp. Ill. € 18.00.

In this book, based on his doctoral thesis, the author reconstructs the social, labour and sanitary landscape of the poor neighbourhoods of the old city in a key stage of the formation of Madrid as a major city. The evolution of this urban space is traced over fifty years, in which its people went from living besieged by misery, illness and premature death, to the years prior to the civil war, when their living conditions, health and work showed significant improvement. By using numerical data, the author provides insight into the social and economic development of the neighbourhoods.

Sweden

Svanberg, Johan. Migrationens kontraster. Arbetsmarknadsrelationer, Schleswig-Holstein-aktionen och tyskorna vid Algots i Borås under 1950-talet. Nordic Academic Press, Lund 2016. 474 pp. 252 SEK.

This book concerns Swedish industrial relations in the 1950s from the perspective of migration and is aimed mainly at examining how the Swedish labour market was reproduced and altered by actors at different levels of society in conjunction with migrations and at studying how migrations affected the working lives of the people concerned. The author focuses on the female-dominated clothing industry, highlighting German migrants who came to Sweden to work as seamstresses. The special recruitment drive, known as the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, is pivotal in this account, based, in part, on the assumption that these migrations were structured by mutually impacting international, national, and local labour relations.