The postwar welfare state, as epitomized by Beveridge's Plan, seemed to mark a major departure from social policy's traditional Bismarckian ambition to ameliorate and preserve existing social circumstances. Many have found the reason for this turnabout in the power that parties of the Left achieved in the immediate postwar years, in Britain and especially in Scandinavia where reform was most pronounced. The article questions this political pedigree by examining the origins of postwar reforms, in this case in Sweden, in the ambitions and interests of the bourgeois parties and by analyzing the initial reluctance of the Social Democrats to follow the new reforming initiatives coming from the parties of the middle classes.

During the last 15 years or so, the study of Chinese history in the United States and Europe has been transformed through new foci of interest as well as the employment of social science methodologies. This article surveys a selected number of recent publications and categorizes them according to five themes: “commoners, women, and outsiders”, “the structural approach”, “state and society”, “China and l'histoire globale”, and “China and the West”. It is demonstrated that the continuities within Chinese development, including the progressive demographic expansion of the Chinese population, the formulation and exercise of gentry rulership, the general vigour of the economy, and increased regional and subregional agricultural/industrial production and distribution are not confined to specific dynastic periods and should be viewed in a long-term context.

During the conference of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (Paris 1986) Lars Wessman, a member of the Scandinavian delegation, asked me to make an informal speech on the reorganization of the IISH. Since I hardly expected anyone to be interested in this subject, I felt no reservations and was pleased to agree. After consulting our Parisian host, Prof. Alain Prost, we informed all those present that there was to be an exchange of ideas on the IISH reorganization.