In its long history Iran has experienced many eventful moments. The past century was far from exceptional in this respect: the country was ravaged by three major wars (1914–1918, 1941–1945, 1980–1988) in which hundreds of thousands of people died; two coups (1921, 1953) transformed power relations within the political and military elite; and two revolutions (1905–1911, 1978–1979) led to radical changes in social, cultural, and political relationships. The country's appearance has changed completely since the end of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a large proportion of the population lived in tribal communities; by the end of the century the central state was omnipresent. The capital, Tehran, expanded from a city of around 100,000 inhabitants in 1890 to a metropolis of over ten million.

After the discovery of oil in Masjed-Soleyman by employees of the D'Arcy Concession in 1908, the Anglo Persian Oil Company (APOC) was incorporated in London. The oil cities of Abadan, Masjed-Soleyman, and at least seven other sister towns designed and constructed by the APOC in the first quarter of the twentieth century in Khuzestan, were the first modern and industrial towns in Iran and the Middle East. This essay studies Abadan and Masjed-Soleyman – company towns with, on the one hand, a modern and authoritarian structure and organization, and on the other hand, thanks to the heterogeneity and energy of their population, as well as the forbidding scale the cities had reached despite the company's wishes, a conditional modernity. The result of these contradictions were cities and urban cultures that were energetic and dynamic, but also eclectic and hybrid.

The present essay studies the Iranian migrants residing on the margins of the Tsarist empire. The article deals with the social forces causing migration; the formation of the Iranian subaltern community in the Caucasus; the community's social structure (gender, ethnicity and age); the migrants' working and living conditions; and their political culture.

This article discusses the working and living conditions of unskilled labourers in South Tehran, and pays particular attention to the workers of the brick-kiln factories of Khatunabad. The brick-kiln workers, mostly transient rural workers, were among the poorest of the Iranian labour class. At the same time, in terms of sheer numbers they represented 5 per cent of the population of Tehran in 1960. They lived and worked under appalling conditions but, nevertheless, they only seldom went on strike. The brickworkers' main concern was not so much their working conditions, but rather to get and hold a job. This was difficult, because (1) they were seasonal labour; (2) they had no representative workers' organization to speak for them; (3) the way their industry was organized left them with little power; and (4) there was strong competition from other unskilled and unemployed labourers. Finally, the six known strikes by the brick-kiln workers will be highlighted, and used to discuss the context in which all Iranian workers had to operate.

Keep on Knocking: A History of the Labour Movement in Zimbabwe, 1900–97. Ed. by Brian Raftopoulos and Ian Phimister. Baobab Books on behalf of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Harare 1997. xx, 164 pp.

Striding Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe 1980–2000. Ed. by Brian Raftopoulos and Lloyd Sachikonye. Weaver Press, Harare 2001. xxvii, 316 pp., £14.95; $24.95.

Rebellion, Repression, Reinvention. Mutiny in Comparative Perspective. Ed. by Jane Hathaway. Foreword by Geoffrey Parker. Praeger, Westport (Conn.) [etc.] 2001. xix, 282 pp. Maps. £56.95.