Revolutions need people. How do these people connect with each other, and how can the revolutionary message pass from one person to another? This article aims to answer these questions by examining the revolutionaries who participated in the Finnish Civil War on the rebellious Red side in 1918. We have chosen Red women from a particular district in Finland in order to analyse their connections and the networks created by membership of the labour movement, place of residence, and kinship. In order to see the layers of those connections, we utilize historical social network analysis rooted in digital history. This allows us to observe the significance and impact of regional, social networks and improves our understanding of structural factors affecting the intra-group dynamics among these revolutionary women. Our results support the claim that historical network analysis is a suitable tool for exploring interaction patterns and social structures in the past, and to gain new insights into historical phenomena.

The waterfront in the nineteenth century was notorious for its complex and fragmented labour market. The stevedores on board ship and the porters on the shore were always quite distinct. In London, there were then further divisions, between quay and warehouse workers, between the export and import trades. And within these broad divisions, workers would concentrate upon a particular commodity. Specialisation was rife: the labour-force was a complex body, lacking cohesion because of the diversity of products and functions, the variety of employers, and a casual system which restricted workers to particular localities and types of work. This clearly created problems when unionisation occurred. Each specialism tended to organise separately, and the result would be a plethora of unions somewhat overlapping and competing. In London, again, there was “an endless proliferation of small societies”.1 And quite apart from the complexity of union organisation amongst the dock workers there were the external relations with on the one side the seamen, and on the other railwaymen and carters. This is all to say that one of the key elements in labour relations on the waterfront before 1914 was inter-union relations.

The paper centers on the question of how widespread was the impact of the lively discussion of housing and household reform during the Weimar Republic. Therefore the focus is on the experiences of working-class women. Against the background of material conditions in proletarian households, it analyzes which norms and standards concretely shaped working women's everyday housework in the urban working-class milieu in the 1920s, and how these norms and standards arose. The paper demonstrates the substantial reservations and resistance with which even better-off working women approached all efforts at rationalizing their housework in the 1920s. They wanted better living conditions and new household appliances, but the vast majority could not afford both. The specific norms and standards against which a “good” housewife was measured, norms and standards which corresponded more to the “old” model of the “economical, clean and tidy” housewife, also blocked acceptance, however.

Wissenschaft von der Politik kann so wenig an die Stelle von Politik treten wie Literaturwissenschaft an die Stelle von Literatur. Aber, wie sich im Laufe der Zeit die Reflexion über Probleme der Literatur von dieser loslöste, so mußte auf einer bestimmten Stufe der Entwicklung des gesellschaftlichen und politischen Lebens auch die Reflexion über das Gemeinwesen und über politisches Handeln ein selbständiger Gegenstand der Forschung werden. Was vermag wissenschaftliche Besinnung über politische Probleme zu leisten? Vor allem kann sie – wie Wissenschaft überhaupt – dazu beitragen, die Elemente der uns umgebenden Wirklichkeit nüchtern und rational zu sehen und unsere politischen Urteile aus der Sphäre vorschneller, unbegründeter Meinungsbildung und gefühlsmässiger Voreingenommenheiten auf eine Ebene vernünftiger Erwägungen und begründbarer Erwartungen heben. Sie kann das politische Urteil klären und schärfen und damit die Voraussetzungen für politische Entscheidungen verbessern, diese selbst jedoch vermag sie weder zu ersetzen, noch zu bewirken. Zu einer solchen klärenden Besinnung sollen auch die vorstehenden Überlegungen über Marxismus und Bürokratie beitragen.

As is well known the advocacy of pacifism is almost as old as war itself although organized attempts to outlaw war date only from the middle nineteenth century, and among these the Congrès de la Paix of 1867 played a unique rôle. First it foreshadowed the permanency of Geneva as its logical seat, at least in the all-important area of Europe, and secondly, it dared attack the immediate conditions which predisposed nations to eventual belligerency. In a way, the United Nations could be considered as a realization of some of the ideals which inspired the daring initiative taken by the 1867 Congress, even though it was attacked as being anarchistic and revolutionary at that time. In fact the ̓67 Congress ended in a furore over this issue and although it continued its work until World War I it was practically obliged to confine its efforts along the less explosive lines of arbitration and international jurisdiction.

The keelmen, who transferred coal in keels or barges from the river banks to the waiting colliers at the ports of the north-eastern coalfield, had a history of industrial unrest during the eighteenth century, particularly on Tyneside. So early as 1671 there is an entry in Gateshead parish books which reads: “Paide for powder and match when the keelemen mutinyed 2s.”, and five strikes occurred between 1738 and 1771. As a relatively powerful economic group, which, in the absence of any other method of transporting the coal from the inland pits to the colliers bound chiefly for London, could almost put a stop to the coal trade, the keelmen were often successful in obtaining consent to their demands, especially in the field of wages, where they were well-paid as compared with other labouring groups. In spite of this they had a continuing grievance, with regard to the overloading of the keels, which it was difficult to satisfy, even although an Act of Parliament, passed in 1787, to establish a permanent fund for the support of sick and aged keelmen, had contained the following:

“…. in order that the keels used on the River Tyne may be fairly and justly loaded, after the due and accustomed rate of eight chaldrons to each keel, be it enacted …. that no person or persons shall …. be capable of acting as an offputter or offputters at any coal staith upon the said river, until he or they respectively shall have taken and subscribed an oath ….”

The grass-roots activities of the Independent Labour Party have been the subject of increased scrutiny from historians over the past few years, especially in the pages of this journal. Consequently we can now be a little surer about the contribution of the party to the development of an independent labour movement in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, though with every fresh case-study a different local strategy seems to come to light. The one outstanding profile in this field is the closely observed account of the ILP in Bradford by J. Reynolds and K. Laybourn, who identify several key features in the party's growth in that city, notably the reformist nature of ILP socialism and the close associations with local trade unionism. “From the outset”, they tell us, “Bradford trade unionism and the Bradford ILP were seen as two aspects of a single homogeneous labour movement aimed at the emancipation of the working class from poverty and exploitation.”

Wir haben uns heute so sehr an die Tatsache gewöhnt, in einer Massengesellschaft zu leben, daß es uns schwer fällt, die besonderen Gefühle, die das Stichwort „Masse” jahrzehntelang ausgelöst hat, nachzuempfinden. Das „tiefe Erschrecken vor dem Auftreten der Massen auf der Bühne der Weltgeschichte” ist inzwischen abgeklungen und einer sachlicheren Einstellung zu den Problemen der modernen Gesellschaft gewichen. Dennoch erfreuen sich, abgesehen von der nun schon beinahe legendären „Psychologie der Massen” des französischen Gelehrten Gustave Le Bon, solche einseitigen Darstellungen wie José Ortega y Gassets „Aufstand der Massen” noch einer großen Verbreitung, so daß es nicht ganz belanglos sein dürfte, sich zu vergegenwärtigen, welche Ansichten ursprünglich über den Charakter der Massen bestanden haben und welche Traditionen sich hierfür anführen lassen.

With the abolition of the guild system and the rise of a new legal regime based on free contract, a central dilemma emerged in Europe: how to enforce labour control in this new era of individual economic freedom. This article examines how this issue was addressed in the State of Milan, where ideas about freedom of contract championed by state reformers such as Pietro Verri and Cesare Beccaria were met with continued requests from merchant-manufacturers to apply corporal punishment and threat of imprisonment to ensure workers’ attendance. Analysing the new regulations, the ideological credos of the new regime, and the effectiveness of the reforms as they played out on the ground in the silk industry, this article shows that the chance that labour relations could be managed within a civil law regime appeared to be in direct contrast with the dominant conception of workers’ conditions, in particular their lack of propriety and good faith. As credit-debt bonds and limitations to weavers’ mobility stood as the most effective means to ensure labour coercion, a closer look at the daily interactions in the workshop allows us to shed new light on the rationality of workers’ practices like Saint Monday, cast by contemporary commentators in merely moralistic terms.

This paper discusses Pietro Gori’s charismatic leadership of the Italian anarchist movement at the turn of the nineteenth century and, in particular, the characteristics of his political communication. After a discussion of the literature on the topic, the first section examines Gramsci’s derogatory observations on the characteristics and success of the communicative style adopted by anarchist activists such as Gori. The second investigates the political project underpinning the kind of “organized anarchism” that Gori championed together with Malatesta. The third section unveils Gori’s communication strategy when promoting this project through those platforms considered by Gramsci as being primary schools of political alphabetization in liberal Italy: trials, funerals, commemorations, and celebrations. Particular attention is devoted to the trials, which effectively demonstrated Gori’s modern political skills. The analysis of Gori’s performance at the trials demonstrates Gramsci’s mistake in identifying Gori simply as one of the champions of political sentimentalism.

The social history of work and workers is currently in the paradoxical position of having defined the subject of study in all its rich complexity as never before – a fact borne out by some excellent works – yet fewer and fewer social historians are working on the subject.

The processes of control and collection are prominent themes throughout pharaonic history. However, the extent that the central regime attempted to administer agricultural fields to collect revenues directly from the farmer who actually worked the land is unclear during the pharaonic period (c.2686–1069). Relations between those involved in agricultural cultivation and local headships of extended families and wider kinship groups were deeply embedded within a broad range of interpersonal discourses, behaviours, and practices. Village headmen and officials at all levels of an impersonalized “state” hierarchy were themselves landholders who drew income from the land and were held responsible for collecting revenues from their fields. It is therefore necessary to define, with a focus on the imperatives of a subsistence economy, who was working the land and what the relationship was between them, the headmen, and those from within outside power structures (in the context of direct intervention against specific groups of the population). To address these points, I will focus on revenue extraction as a “state” process, how it was connected to the role of punishment, and its impact on local hierarchies (the targets of revenue extraction).

This review introduces the broad themes and methods of Maarten Prak's Citizens without Nations and focuses on the author's portrait of actual practices of citizenship in early modern cities of Europe. It highlights the strengths of Prak's study in formidable archival work and broad comparative reading. It points out the central place of practices of poor relief to the building of urban networks of citizenship, drawing out the importance of women in participating in these informal yet critical practices of citizenship. Taking the relationship between provisioning for the poor and community building seriously, and building on Prak's view of Britain's relatively smooth transition from early modern to modern practices of citizenship, the essay speculates on whether England's unusual nationwide poor law (born in the early modern period and exemplifying ideals of citizenship usually associated with “urban republicanism”) played its own critical role in the rise of an integrated nation there.

A prevailing image of the British trade-union movement is that it was insular and slow-moving. The Anglo-Russian Advisory Council of the mid-1920s is an episode apparently difficult to reconcile with this view. In the absence to date of any fully adequate explanation of its gestation, this article approaches the issue biographically, through the TUC's first full-time secretary, Fred Bramley (1874–1925). Themes emerging strongly from Bramley's longer history as a labour activist are, first, a pronouncedly latitudinarian conception of the Labour movement and, second, a forthright labour internationalism deeply rooted in Bramley's trade-union experience. In combining these commitments in the form of an inclusive trade-union internationalism, Bramley in 1924–1925 had the indispensable support of the TUC chairman, A.A. Purcell who, like him, was a former organizer in the small but militantly internationalist Furnishing Trades’ Association. With Bramley's early death and Purcell's marginalization, the Anglo-Russian Committee was to remain a largely anomalous episode in the interwar history of the TUC.

Military labor played a key role in conquering and preserving ports as nodes in trading networks. This article treats the military labor of the British occupation of Manila from 1762 to 1764, during the Seven Years War. It examines the motley crew that formed the British forces, exploring British categories of military laborers sent from Madras. The particular combination of forces composed for this expedition had more to do with the East India Company's concerns in Madras than with what was thought to be needed to take and hold Manila. These military laborers were sometimes unruly, insisting on better pay, and deserting when it was not forthcoming. The story of the British occupation of Manila highlights how ideas about desertion traveled along with military laborers from one port city to another in the Indian Ocean world, and what happened when they did.

In 1905, dockworkers in Rotterdam harbour organized a great strike against the introduction of machines for the transhipment of grain. The initial success of this strike was a profound shock to the leaders of political parties and national labour organizations, who, in spite of many differences of opinion, shared a positive attitude towards mechanization and regarded strikes against machinery as reactionary. The conflict in Rotterdam provoked a national debate about the implications of mechanization, which clearly exposed the strains and contradictions in this “dominant ideology of technology”. The article shows how several local labour leaders questioned the legitimacy of this ideology and why they failed in the end to persuade their superiors.

At the University of Pisa, where he studied law, Buonarroti had been acquainted with the i8th century social philosophers especially Helvetius, Mably, Rousseau and Morelly, who had moulded his social and political ideology. When the French Revolution broke out he was among the most courageous protagonists to defend its ideas: “J'attendais depuis longtemps le signal, il fut donné”. In October 1789 he left his native Tuscany, “ivre de l'amour de la liberté, épris de la courageuse entreprise des Français, indigné centre la tyrannic, et las de l'inquisition et des persécutions du despotisme”, as he said later in his defence at Vendôme. In Corsica he published an Italian paper in defence of the French Revolution, the Giornale Patriottico, and in November 1790 he obtained a post in the administration of the island as head of the “Bureau des domaines nationaux et du clergé”. In this capacity he had to deal with the administration and sale of landed property. The rural economy of the island was based on a nearly equal distribution of very small holdings, there were hardly any labourers, and there existed a strong tradition of common interests and collective rights. In his Survey of Corsica Buonarroti wrote: “La communalité des biens semble garantir partout au pauvre le sentiment de son indépendance: partout les communes des campagnes réclament des biens que la tyrannic génoise et française ravit au peuple pour récompenser les crimes de ses favoris. Les grands propriétaires sont en très petit nombre: l'homme sans terre est rare, comme celui sans courage”.