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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Catharina Lis ,
Jan Lucassen  and
Hugo Soly
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We have called this collection of essays Before the Unions. What exactly do we mean by (trade) unions and what preceded them? Exactly a hundred years ago Beatrice and Sydney Webb defined a trade union as “a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment”. These permanent organizations of wage earners of the same occupation, according to most labour historians, started at a local level and tended to develop into national and sometimes even international unions and they formulated political as well as economic demands.

Type
Introduction
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 39 , supplement S2: Before the Unions. Wage earners and collective action in Europe, 1300–1850 , August 1994 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1994

References

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3 Dobson, Masters and Journeymen, pp. 151–152 and Rule, J., British Trade Unionism 1750–1850 (London and New York, 1988), p. 22Google Scholar.

4 Tenfelde, K. et al. , Geschichte der deutschen Gewerkschaften von den Anfängen bis 1945 (Cologne, 1987), pp. 17ff.Google Scholar; Tenfelde, K. and Volkmann, H. (eds), Streik. Zur Geschichte des Arbeitskampfes in Deutschland während der Industrialisierung (Munich, 1981), pp. 18–19Google Scholar; also see Husung, H.-G., Protest und Repression im Vormärz. Norddeutschland zwischen Restauration und Revolution (Göttingen, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Lenger, F., “Beyond Exceptionalism: Notes on the Artisanal Phase of the Labour Movement in France, England, Germany and the United States”, International Review of Social History, 36 (1991), pp. 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotation on p. 2.

6 For excellent surveys of the literature, see Cannadine, D., “The Past and the Present in the English Industrial Revolution, 1880–1980”, Past and Present, 103 (1984), pp. 131–172CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hudson, P., The Industrial Revolution (London, 1992), pp. 9–36Google Scholar. See also the thought-provoking article of Sabel, C. and Zeitlin, J., “Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Industrialization”, Past and Present, 108 (1985), pp. 133–176CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the comparative study of Crafts, N. F. R., “British Industrialization in an International Context”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 19 (1989), pp. 415–428CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 Moch, L. P., Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe since 1650 (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1992)Google Scholar; compare Lucassen, J., “The Netherlands, the Dutch, and Long Distance Migration, in the Late Sixteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries”, in Canny, N. (ed.), Europeans on the Move. Studies on European Migration, 1500–1800 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 153–191CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 Boch, R., “Zunfttradition und frühe Gewerkschaftsbewegung. Ein Beitrag zu einer beginnenden Diskussion mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Handwerks im Verlagssystem”, in Wengenroth, U. (ed.), Prekäre Selbständigkeit. Zur Standortbestimmung von Handwerk, Hausindustrie und Kleingewerbe im Industrialisierungsprozess (Stuttgart, 1989), pp. 37–69Google Scholar; Reith, R., “Arbeitsmigration und Gruppenkultur deutscher Handwerksgesellen im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert”, Scripta Mercaturae, 1–2 (1989), pp. 1–35Google Scholar.

12 Reininghaus, W., “Die Migration der Handwerksgesellen in der Zeit der Entstehung der Gilden (14./15. Jahrhundert)”, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 68 (1981), pp. 1–22Google Scholar; Bade, K. J., “Altes Handwerk, Wanderzwang und Gute Policey: Gesellenwanderung zwischen Zünftökonomie und Gcwerbereform”, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 69 (1982), pp. 1–37Google Scholar; Grieβinger, A., Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewuβtsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/M., 1981)Google Scholar.

13 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (rev. ed., Harmondsworth, 1968)Google Scholar, and idem, “The Politics of Theory”, in Samuel, R. (ed.), People's History and Socialist Theory (London, 1981), pp. 405–406Google Scholar. See also the comments by Sewell, W. H. Jr, “How Classes are Made: Critical Reflections on E. P. Thomspon's Theory of Working-Class Formation”, in Kaye, H. J. and McClelland, K. (eds), E. P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 50–76Google Scholar, and Kirk, N., Labour and Society in Britain and the USA. Vol. 1 Capital, Custom and Protest, 1780–1850 (Aldershot, 1994), pp. 7–12Google Scholar.

14 For a critique, see Palmer, B. D., “Critical Theory, Historical Materialism, and the Ostensible End of Marxism: The Poverty of Theory Revisited”, International Review of Social History, 38 (1993), pp. 133–162CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Mayfield, D. and Thome, S., “Social History and Its Discontents: Gareth Stedman Jones and the Politics of Language”, Social History, 17 (1992), pp. 165–188CrossRefGoogle Scholar, the responses by J. Lawrence and M. Taylor, “The Poverty of Protest: Gareth Stedman Jones and the Politics of Language”, and Joyce, P., “The Imaginary Discontents of Social History”, Social History, 18 (1993), pp. 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 81–85, and the reply by Mayfield, D. and Thorne, S., Social History, 18 (1993), pp. 219–233CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See especially Cannadine, D., “The Way We Lived Then”, Times Literary Supplement, 7–13 09 1990, pp. 935–936Google Scholar; Gorz, A., “The New Agenda”, New Left Review, 184 (1990), pp. 37–46Google Scholar; Price, R., “The Future of British Labour History”, International Review of Social History, 36 (1991), pp. 249–260CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose, S. O., “Gender and Labor History: the Nineteenth-Century Legacy”, in van der Linden, M. (ed.), The End of Labour History? (Supplement 1 of International Review of Social History; Cambridge, 1993), pp. 145–162Google Scholar.

16 Noiriel, G., Workers in French Society in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York [etc.], 1990)Google Scholar.

17 Hudson, The Industrial Revolution, p. 216.

18 Such views continue to be the predominant tendency in recent work. See, for examples, the statements by Hudson, The Industrial Revolution, pp. 205–206, and Kirk, Labour and Society, I, pp. 19–22; For Germany see Tenfelde and Volkmann, Streik, p. 19, where a sharp distinction is made between the positively appreciated “strike” in the industrial period and the derogatory “social protest” in the time before.

19 See especially Rule, J., The Experience of Labour in Eighteenth-Century Industry (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Kaplan, S. L. and Koepp, C. J. (eds), Work in France. Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice (Ithaca, 1986)Google Scholar; Sonenscher, M., Work and Wages. Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar.

20 Levine, D. and Wrightson, K., the Making of an Industrial Society: Whickham 1560–1765 (Oxford, 1991), p. 404CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Turner, H. A., Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy: A Comparative Study of the Cotton Unions (London, 1962), p. 51Google Scholar.

22 More study needs to be done on the remarkable fact, stressed by many labour historians, that trade unionism implies regular payments, in particular time wages. Therefore, it is maintained, unions are always hostile to “bargain”-systems (Samuel, R., “Mineral Workers”, in Samuel, R. (ed.), Miners, Quarrymen and Saltworkers (London, 1977), pp. 1–97Google Scholar, especially pp. 74–75). However, Jones has shown that this was not always the case (M. Jones, “Y chwarelwyr: The Slate Quarrymen of North Wales”, in Samuel, Miners, pp. 99–135, especially pp. 105–106); a balanced view is presented in Bernhard, L., Die Akkordarbeit in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1903), p. 137Google Scholar.

23 It is perhaps not a coincidence that those trades with formal apprenticeships knew pseudo-familial institutions like the houses of call in France run by mères (mothers).

24 Also see Snell, K. D. M., Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 263–265Google Scholar.

25 This suggestion is consonant with the concluding remarks of Lenger, “Beyond Exceptionalism”, pp. 20–23. Compare Birnbaum, P., States and Collective Action: The European Experience (Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See also H. Zwahr, “Class Formation and the Labour Movement as the Subject of Dialectic Social History”, in van der Linden, The End of Labour History?, pp. 85–103.

27 Perlin, F., “Proto-Industrialization and Pre-Colonial South Asia”, Past and Present, 98 (1983), pp. 30–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.