General Issues
SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
Bidet, Jacques (transl. from French by Steven Corcoran). Foucault with Marx. Zed Books, London 2016. [French ed. 2015]. xv, 272 pp. £9.09.
In this book, Professor Bidet examines Marxian and Foucauldian critique of capitalist modernity. Marx held the intersection between capital and the market to be crucial and regarded property owners as the true ruling class. Foucault argued that organizational elements of capital were key, and that managers were therefore socially dominant in power and knowledge. Labelling these two sides of the capitalist coin as “market” and “organization”, the author shows how each leads to specific forms of social conflict. By this comparative theoretical analysis he seeks to reconcile what has become a long-standing dichotomy between the “old left” and the “new social movements”.
Foster, John Bellamy [and] Paul Burkett. Marx and the Earth. An Anti-Critique. With the ed. ass. of Ryan Wishart. [Historical Materialism Book Series, vol. 115.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2016. x, 316 pp. € 115.00; $149.00.
A decade and a half ago, Foster and Burkett introduced a new understanding of the ecological foundations of Marx’s thought, demonstrating that his conception of the universal metabolism of nature and social metabolism prefigured much of modern systems ecology. Ecological relations were shown to be central to Marx’s critique of capitalism, including his value analysis. The authors now elaborate on this analysis in response to recent ecosocialist criticisms of Marx. The result is an anti-critique, pointing to the crucial roles of dialectics, open-system thermodynamics, intrinsic value and aesthetic understandings in the original Marxian critique, presenting the possibility of a new red-green synthesis.
Hegel, Marx and the Contemporary World. Ed. by Kaveh Boveiri, Emmanuel Chaput, and Arnaud Theurillat-Cloutier. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2016. vii, 249 pp. £47.99.
The aim of this book is not only to introduce readers to the historical relation between Hegel’s and Marx’s understandings of the world we live in, and how we relate to it, but also to explore the methodological problems and theoretical instruments for a proper critical apprehension of contemporary reality to reach a diagnosis and suggest new ways to think of emancipation in today’s society. This book arises from a conference held in April 2014 at the University of Montreal, discussing the relevance of the work of Hegel and Marx in today’s world. It contains twelve essays, six in English and six in French.
Jones, Gareth Stedman. Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion. Allen Lane, London [etc.] 2016. xvii, 750 pp. Ill. Maps. £25.95; $35.00; €31.50.
This biography explores how Marx devised his revolutionary ideas in an age dominated by the challenges of the industrial revolution and new notions about God, human capacities, empires and political systems. The author aims to depict Marx in his nineteenth-century surroundings, before twentieth-century inventions transformed him into communism’s patriarch. In twelve chronological chapters, Professor Stedman Jones describes Marx’s life and writings and his milieu and development and shows how he considered the contemporary philosophies of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and others in his revolutionary ideas. The author highlights not only Marx’s views, but also those of the people with whom he contended. See also Lucia Pradella’s review in this volume, pp. 329–331.
Magnusson, Lars and Bo Stråth. A Brief History of Political Economy Tales of Marx, Keynes and Hayek. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham [etc.] 2016. xxix, 165 pp. £70.00.
Investigating the ideological dimension and exploring the continued impact of Marx, Keynes and Hayek, the authors demonstrate how these three economic narratives became entangled over time and, amid increasing complexity, overlapped, and competed. The book reflects on the historical legacy of the three narratives and investigates their significance in the contemporary world of global economics and a changing political order. All three narratives outlined prospects for a better, more economically efficient world with increased social justice. Professors Magnusson and Stråth argue that they constitute a legacy on which a new economic tale must be based.
O’Rourke, David K. Servants, Masters, and the Coercion of Labor: Inventing the Rhetoric of Slavery, the Verbal Sanctuaries Which Sustain It, and How It Was Used to Sanitize American’s Slavery’s History. [Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics, 91.] Peter Lang, New York [etc.] 2016. ix, 171 pp. £49.00; € 72.88; $78.95.
This book reveals how language has figured in developing and maintaining a society based on coerced labour. Focusing on differences in the roles of masters and servants from society to society, the author considers especially the use of rhetoric in describing master/servant relationships. Colonial masters frequently resorted to purposefully constructed rhetoric to establish their right to be master. The goal of this study is to investigate the development of coercive language used to force large numbers of people into lives as coerced workers, in response to the need for coerced labour.
Social Movement Studies in Europe. The State of the Art. Ed. by Olivier Fillieule and Guya Accornero. [Protest, Culture and Society, vol. 16.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2016. xviii, 508 pp. $120.00; £75.00.
Bringing together over forty scholars, this volume examines the evolution and current practice of social movement studies in a specifically European context in twenty-five essays. The comparative chapters of the first half offer reflections on different kinds of social movements, the state of the art of specific issues or movements and on analyses of them through increasingly transnational and comparative research. The second half assembles focused national studies that cover most major European states. Throughout, these contributions are guided by a shared set of historical and social-scientific questions with an emphasis on political sociology, thus offering a cohesive survey.
HISTORY
Beauvois, Frédérique (transl. from French by Andrene Everson). Between Blood and Gold: The Debates over Compensation for Slavery in the Americas. [European Expansion & Global Interaction, vol. 10.] Berghahn Books, New York 2017 [French ed. 2013]. xii, 282 pp. $130.00; £92.00.
The idea of monetary reparations for former slaves and their descendants is controversial. In the nineteenth century, payments to slaveholders deprived of their labour were common. This comparative study analyses debates about compensation within France and Great Britain through statistical interpretation of parliamentary sources on the main questions raised during parliamentary debates. Dr Beauvois groups the various arguments into three main categories: legal, economic, and political. The goal is to understand how the issue of compensation arose, and how it subsequently became a pressing concern for participants in the abolition process.
Blunden, Andy. The Origins of Collective Decision Making. Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2016. ix, 257 pp. €110.00; $142.00.
The author contends that there are two general options available in collective decision-making. One is by majority vote, where the largest group makes the decision, overruling the minority. In consensus decisions all groups deliberate, until they reach a decision. Blunden traces the history of these decision-making practices in historical examples and finds that majority decision-making dates to mediaeval times. After the English Revolution in the 1640s, consensus decisions became more prevalent and were fully embraced by Quakers, the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement.
De Zwart, Pim. Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence. Intercontinental Trade and Living Standards in the Dutch East India Company’s Commercial Empire, c.1600–1800. [Global Economic History Series.] Brill, Leiden 2015. x, 290 pp. €109.00.
In this dissertation, the author examines the Dutch East India Company’s intercontinental trade and its effects on living standards in various regions of the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dr De Zwart investigates whether globalization and colonialism contributed to the Great Divergence in the early modern period, and what influenced this connection. Establishing evidence of globalization, he determines when the gap in economic performance between Western Europe and the rest emerged, and which factors may have influenced the unequal development. He investigates how variations in colonialism have affected living standards, and how they relate to globalization.
DuPlessis, Robert S. The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650–1800. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016. xvii, 351 pp. Ill. Maps. £24.99.
In this richly illustrated book, Professor DuPlessis describes the fabrics and attire that became available to consumers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He traces the styles and occasions of their acquisition, interprets the meanings of their introduction and explains how these developments affected global textile industries. As a result of European settlement and the commercial networks formed across the Atlantic, people from different ethnicities, social classes, and occupations fashioned their garments from materials old and new, familiar and strange, and attributed novel meanings to different fabrics and modes of dress.
The European Canton Trade 1723: Competition and Cooperation. Ed. by Marlene Kessler, Kristin Lee, and Daniel Menning. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2016. 433 pp. Ill. €49.95; $70.00; £37.99.
This source edition, which includes a critical commentary, contains the commercial directions, merchant diary, and naval log of four East India Company ships that sailed from London to Canton, China, in 1723, as well as the travelogue of another contemporary trader that sailed from Ostend. These ships were selected to highlight the roles of cooperation and competition between these and other European companies. The texts provide a general impression of the everyday lives of European merchants and mariners, shedding new light on the history of East Indies trade during the eighteenth century and its role in encouraging early modern globalization.
Explorations in History and Globalization. Ed. by Cátia Antunes and Karwan Fatah-Black. Routledge, London [etc.] 2016. xix, 258 pp. £95.00. (Paper: £24.99; E-book: £17.49.)
This volume engages with the concept and methodology of globalization, challenging traditional divisions of space and time to offer a range of perspectives on how globalization has affected social, economic, political, and cultural history. Each of the thirteen chapters covers a specific theme, discussing how globalization has shaped these themes, and how they, in turn, figure in globalization throughout history. Including topics such as ecological exchanges, trade, exchanges of knowledge, migration, empire, and urbanization, this volume explains historical trajectories through a global analytical framework and provides tools for research on questions about historical globalization. The aim is to highlight continuities and showcase comparisons, rather than to underline local specificities.
Global Histories of Work. Ed. by Andreas Eckert. [Work in Global and Historical Perspective, vol. 1.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2016. vi, 367 pp. Ill. €69.95; $98.00; £52.99.
This collection of selected reprinted articles, written by leading scholars in different disciplines, provides both an introduction to and insights into themes, debates, and methods of Global Labour History, as they have developed in recent years. The book is divided into four sections, each comprising three articles. The contributions to the volume discuss crucial historiographical developments; present different professions that have gained new attention in the context of an emerging Global Labour History; critically engage the boundaries of “free” labour and the ambiguities contained in this concept; address state intervention in labour regulations and take on and historicize current debates about the end of work society.
Van Leeuwen, Marco H.D. Mutual Insurance 1550–2015: From Guild Welfare and Friendly Societies to Contemporary Micro-Insurers. [Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance.] Palgrave Macmillan, London 2016. xiii, 321 pp. $120.00. (E-book: $89.00.)
In the modern Western world, we tend to be insured by the state or for-profit insurers. Yet, mutual and micro-insurance is becoming increasingly important in the Western and non-Western worlds alike. This book traces the track record of mutual insurance from 1550 to the present, examining provisions for burial, sickness, unemployment, old age, and widowhood. Professor Van Leeuwen seeks to address such topics as the type of risks micro-insurance covered between 1550 and 2015; how it was organized throughout its history; who provided the coverage; how contributions, benefit levels, and conditions have changed; and why this system has functioned continuously and has endured the test of time.
Slavery Hinterland. Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680–1850. Ed. by Felix Brahm and Eve Rosenhaft. [People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History, vol. 7.] Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2016. xii, 262 pp. Ill. £17.99. (E-book: £17.99.)
The essays in this volume explore the implication of transatlantic slavery for the continental European hinterland, German-speaking Europe, Switzerland, Denmark, and Italy, focusing on territories not directly involved in the traffic in Africans, but still linked in various ways to the transatlantic slave business. One contributor demonstrates how closely the Silesian textile industry was interwoven with the Atlantic slave trade, while other contributors examine the flows of people, for example a German hinterlander who became a surgeon on a slave ship. A key theme of the volume is the question of conscience or awareness of becoming morally implicated in an immoral enterprise.
COMPARATIVE HISTORY
Consumption and Gender in Southern Europe since the Long 1960s. Ed. by Kostis Kornetis, Eirini Kotsovili, and Nikolaos Papadogiannis. Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2016. xvi, 280 pp. Ill. £21.99.
This edited volume offers an in-depth analysis of the relationship between gender and contemporary consumer cultures in post-authoritarian Southern European societies. In fourteen original case studies, international scholars in social sciences explore social and cultural changes in Spain, Portugal, and Greece since the 1960s. Focusing on gender and consumer practices, these scholars examine similar political and socioeconomic experiences of these countries in the shift from authoritarianism to democracy. This comparative analysis is a contribution to the field on the social origins of the contemporary economic crisis that Spain, Portugal, and Greece have undergone simultaneously.
De Gier, Erik. Capitalist Workingman’s Paradises Revisited. Corporate Welfare Work in Great Britain, the USA, Germany and France in the Golden Age of Capitalism, 1880–1930. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2016. 202 pp. Ill. €79.00.
In this book, Professor De Gier compares the development and performance of the vanguard of corporate welfare work in the four most important capitalist countries between 1880 and 1930: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. He shows how the influence of utopian socialist, religious, and craft-based ideas on programmes for welfare work and education offered by paternalistic businesses differed from nation to nation. While Britain was the cradle of corporate welfare capitalism, in the United States the company towns established were almost infinite. The author brings the book up to date with a comparative review of contemporary welfare capitalism in our highly flexible working world.
Gordon, Stewart. Shackles of Iron: Slavery beyond the Atlantic. [Critical Themes in World History.] Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis (IN) 2016. xxix, 142 pp. Ill. $49.00.
Slavery has been a multi-faceted and nearly universal phenomenon for thousands of years. This introduction to slavery in world history depicts slavery from the perspectives of history and anthropology and is deepened by four chapters that underscore the pervasiveness of slavery across cultures and time, while illustrating the variety of situations the enslaved have faced. The first case study is on ancient Athens. East African slave trade from Zanzibar forms the second case, while the third study is about slavery in the North African States, known as Barbary, from 1500–1800, and the last study is on slavery around the world in the twenty-first century.
Grubačić, Andrej and Denis O’Hearn. Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid. University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2016. xvi, 319 pp. $29.95; £22.95.
Since the origins of states, groups of people either escaped or were exiled. As capitalism advanced, people tried to escape capitalist constraints connected with state control. This book examines three communities living at the edges of capitalism: Cossacks on the Don River in Russia; Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico; and prisoners in long-term isolation since the 1970s. Following the tradition of Kropotkin, Braudel, and Wallerstein, the authors seek to understand possibilities for establishing self-governing communities by investigating how people leave spaces and structures, whom they identify as the enemy, and how they practice mutual aid and solidarity in communities or organize mainly as individual households.
Incarceration and Regime Change: European Prisons During and After the Second World War. Ed. by Christian G. De Vito, Ralf Futselaar and Helen Grevers. Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2017. vi, 178 pp. $95.00; £67.00.
Political instability nearly always coincides with fuller prisons, and this was particularly true during a “long” World War II, when military mobilization, social disorder, wrenching political changes, and shifting national boundaries swelled the ranks of the imprisoned and broadened the carceral reach of the state. This volume brings together theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich studies of key transitional moments that transformed the scope and nature of European prisons during and after the war. It depicts the complex interactions of both penal and administrative institutions with the men and women interned, imprisoned, and detained at a time when these categories were in perpetual flux.
Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700: Micro-studies in the History of Crime. Ed. by Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash. Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2017. xii, 324 pp. Ill. £19.79.
Selected in-depth narrative micro-studies feature in this book to explore the potential for this approach to the history of crime and legal history. Case studies, most from Great Britain, but also from France and the United States, cover incidents relating to crime, law, and deviant behaviour since 1700. The volume consists of four sections. The first, on criminality, state, and society, shows how criminality leads states and cultures to decide how to construct norms and laws. Violence is the subject of the second session. The third section illuminates the history of police and policing, while imprisonment and incarceration are investigated in the fourth section.
Migrant Domestic Workers and Family Life. International Perspectives. Ed. by Maria Kontos and Glenda Tibe Bonifacio. [Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2015. xi, 341 pp. €98.79; $100.00. (E-book: €79.99; $79.00.)
This edited volume delivers a comprehensive analysis of the non-recognition of the right to family life of migrant domestic workers, its causes, and its consequences for the well-being of workers and their families all over the globe. In sixteen essays, the contributors combine legal, sociological, and social policy perspectives to offer an interdisciplinary approach to legal frameworks, the political economy of globalized reproductive labour, and the experience and coping strategies of migrant domestic and care workers. Highlighting ideological, imagined, and constructed responses to life away from home, it offers theoretical, empirical, and international perspectives on the right to family life of migrant domestic workers.
Neoliberal Capitalism and Precarious Work. Ethnographies of Accommodation and Resistance. Ed. by Rob Lambert and Andrew Herod. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham [etc.] 2016. xi, 336 pp. £81.00.
Since the renaissance of global market politics, precarious work has become pervasive. The first section of this book analyses different forms of precarious work over the past thirty years in the Global North and South alike. Case studies include: sweatshops; day labour; homework; unpaid contract work of Chinese construction workers; insecure contracting in the Korean automotive industry; and the Brazilian cane cutters. In the second part, the editors and contributors detail how precarious workers seek to improve their situations by attempting to counter the growth of precarity, efforts that involve exploring forms of resistance to work, restructuring, and the failures of traditional trade unions to fully engage with increases in precarious work.
New Frontiers of Slavery. Ed. and with an Introd. by Dale W. Tomich. [Fernand Braudel Center: Studies in Historical Social Science.] SUNY Press, Albany (NY) 2016. ix, 257 pp. $80.00.
The essays presented in this volume address slavery in the nineteenth century within the framework of the modern world economy. They call attention to new zones of slave production formed over the course of global economic and political restructuring. These ten chapters, written by a group of international historians, economists, and sociologists, examine the global dynamics of slavery and various aspects of master-slave relations in the new zones. They emphasize how certain slave regimes, particularly in Cuba and Brazil, formed as specific local responses to global processes, industrialization, urbanization, market integration, formation of national states, and the emergence of liberal ideologies and institutions.
On Coerced Labor. Work and Compulsion after Chattel Slavery. Ed. by Marcel van der Linden and Magaly Rodríguez García. [Studies in Global Social History, vol. 25.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2016. xiii, 373 pp. Maps. €135.00; $175.00.
This study, arising from a conference of the International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH) in Linz (September 2014), covers types of work between free labour and slavery. The context is the observation that, although chattel slavery has largely been abolished over the past two centuries, other forms of coerced labour have persisted in most parts of the world. The volume consists of three clusters, jointly comprising eleven case studies from India, North and Latin America, Japan, and Belgian Congo. The first cluster discusses legal definitions of unfree labour. Convict and military labour is examined in the second cluster, while the third cluster considers coerced labour in agriculture and industry.
Studies on Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. Ed. by Laura da Graca and Andrea Zingarelli. Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2015. x, 322 pp. €126.00; $163.00.
This book comprises analyses of a variety of historical problems related to pre-capitalist societies and explores both the concepts and the range of modes of production arising from the writings of Marx and Engels. The seven contributions come from historians of Argentina and Great Britain and are arranged in chronological order: ancient Egypt; the Roman Late Republic and Empire; the Roman Germanic kingdoms and Leon and Castille from the ninth to the eleventh century; Iceland and Norway in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; Southern India from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century; and Castille from the late Middle ages. Most contributions also address the problem of social transformation.
Van Arsdale, David G. The Poverty of Work. Selling Servant, Slave and Temporary Labor on the Free Market. [Studies in Critical Social Sciences, vol. 90.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2016. xiii, 213 pp. €115.00; $138.00.
Labour trading, employment agencies, and temporary work are the topics of this book. This type of work is growing rapidly, despite being dreadfully insecure. Professor Van Arsdale demonstrates what it is like to work through employment agencies, defines their origins, and shows how they have functioned historically by illustrating their move from England to North America during the colonial period, where they sold workers into deprived employment statuses, including servitude and slavery. The author explains the evolution of employment agencies in relation to the changing nature of work until today’s economy. Left largely unregulated, employment agencies today are powerful corporations generating revenue by selling flexible, on-demand temporary workers.
Williams, Eric. The Economic Aspect of the Abolition of the West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery. Ed. by Dale Tomich, with an Introd. by William Darity Jr. [World Social Change.] Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham (MD) [etc.] 2014. xxiv, 253 pp. $92.00; £65.00. (E-Book: $89.99; £60.00.)
In his influential and widely debated Capitalism and Slavery (1944), Eric Williams examined the relation between capitalism and slavery in the British West Indies. The dissertation he defended in 1938 was never published as a book. Based on two typed manuscript versions, readers will note that the content differs from the book of 1944. In his dissertation, for example, Williams provided a detailed analysis of slave emancipation that was not included in his later work. Conversely, none of the material concerning the role of slavery in the emergence of capitalism appears in the dissertation. See also Pepijn Brandon’s review essay in this volume, pp. 305–327.
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
Protest Cultures: A Companion. Ed. by Kathrin Fahlenbrach, Martin Klimke, and Joachim Scharloth. [Protest, Culture and Society Series, vol. 17.] Berghahn, New York 2016. xi, 554 pp. Ill. $170.00.
Protest is a richly varied social phenomenon, expressed not only in social movements and political organizations, but also in grassroots initiatives, individual action, and creative works. While research on cultural impacts of protest focuses mainly on social movements as key actors, the editors of this volume recognize that, currently, the structures of social movements have generally shifted towards loose connections, but have also become relevant in mainstream culture in Western societies. This book, consisting of fifty-seven essays, is an attempt to offer a theoretical and methodological introduction to scholarly analysis of protest culture and combines synthesizing essays with accessible case studies.
Rivetti, Paolo. Les syndicats dans la restructuration européenne (2008–2015) et en annexe. Considérations sur les luttes politiques en France (2006–2012). [trad. de l’italien], Editions science Marxiste, Montreuil-sous-Bois 2016. xix, 623 pp. €20.00.
This volume brings together articles published in Lotta Comunista (Milan) between March 2008 and May 2015 and in L’Internationaliste (Paris) between March 2006 and June 2012. The chronicles gathered in this volume begin in 2008, when the financial crisis started. The crisis and the response of the European Union, affected by global tensions and competition, are the topics of the articles in Lotta Comunista. The headlines served to provide a monthly update on the global confrontation and its consequences, in all the powers and especially in Europe. They express substantive assessments that shed light on the daily political struggle.
Wakeman, Rosemary. Practicing Utopia: An Intellectual History of the New Town Movement. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL) 2016. xiv, 376 pp. $45.00.
This study is about the new town movement as a global phenomenon, with the years 1945–1975 being golden age of new towns all over the world. Professor Wakeman has selected specific new towns across geography and the various intellectual cross-currents that spawned them. The author focuses on the intellectual, cultural, and political expressions of new towns, and the ways these places represent an imagined Utopia. She provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the new town movement and explores its intellectual and ideological foundations, examining what they suggest about the politics of modernization and urban planning and understanding the urban world.
Yilmaz, Ferruh. How the Workers Became Muslims: Immigration, Culture, and Hegemonic Transformation in Europe. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor (MI) 2016. xvi, 238 pp. $80.00. (Paper: $34.95.)
Right-wing hegemonic strategy, Professor Yilmaz argues, has led to reconfiguration of internal fault lines in European societies. Taking the Danish immigration discourse as his primary case study, Yilmaz illustrates the transformation of socio-political space in the last three decades, destabilizing group classification to emphasize cultural, rather than economic attributes. According to this point of view, traditional European social and political cleavages are jettisoned for new “cultural” alliances, pulling the political spectrum to the right, against the presence of Muslim immigrants, whose own social and political variety is flattened into an illusory sameness.
Continents and Countries
AFRICA
Keese, Alexander. Ethnicity and the Colonial State. Finding and Representing Group Identifications in a Coastal West African and Global Perspective (1850–1960). [Studies in Global Social History, vol. 22.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2016. ix, 377 pp. Maps. €135.00; $175.00.
In this study, Professor Keese analyses three West African communities, Wolfe (Senegal/ Gambia), Temne (Sierra Leone), and Ewe (Ghana/Togo), and explores the issues of ethnic identification and community building in the period 1850–1960. The central goal is to understand to what extent labelling groups was a purely top-down process, fuelled by the colonial administration. The author uses various primary sources to reconstruct how African communities, in particular their elites and spokesmen, manifested in their interactions with the European administration, and under which circumstances they invoked ethnic labels. These results are presented amid a panorama of global patterns concerning the use of ethnic claims. See also Carola Lentz’s review in this volume, pp. 334–337.
Strickrodt, Silke. Afro-European Trade in the Atlantic World. The Western Slave Coast c. 1550–c.1885. [Western Africa Series.] James Currey, Woodbridge 2015. xiv, 266 pp. Maps. £45.00; $80.00.
Dr Strickrodt focuses in this study on two states on the West African slave coast: Hula (now in Benin) and Ge (now in Togo), which were pivotal in the Atlantic slave trade, as well as in trade in ivory and agricultural products, from the mid-sixteenth to the late nineteenth century. Providing a detailed reconstruction of political and commercial developments in this area, this book also positions the region in the wider trans-Atlantic trade network and reveals how cross-cultural partnerships were negotiated; the trade’s impact on African coastal “middlemen” communities; and its relative importance for the history of a region or community.
Congo
Seibert, Julia. In die globale Wirtschaft gezwungen. Arbeit und kolonialer Kapitalismus im Kongo (1885–1960). Campus, Frankfurt [etc.] 2016. 247 pp. Ill. Maps. €39.95.
Farmers and craftsmen in the Belgian Congo in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were forced to become wage labourers in mines, on plantations, and in construction of infrastructure. In this study, Dr Seibert describes this process as the history of integration of Central Africa in the global economy and shows the significance of African labourers for the European economy. In the first part, she describes the context of the Belgian expansion and its social, economic, and political impact, while in the second she argues how violence was central in mobilizing workers. The third part addresses the transition to more stable and less enforced employment conditions since the late 1920s.
See also Meike de Goede’s review in this volume, pp. 337–339.
Nigeria
Vaughan, Olufemi. Religion and the Making of Nigeria. [Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 2016. xi, 311 pp. Maps. $94.95. (Paper: $25.95.)
In this interdisciplinary book, Professor Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures have provided the social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria. Using a wealth of archival sources, the author traces Nigeria’s social, religious, and political history from the early nineteenth century to the present. In the two sections in this book, the first analyses the impact of Islam and Christianity on the three major Nigerian regions, while the second provides a detailed analysis of how the recurring crisis of sharia in postcolonial Nigeria essentially reflects the structural imbalance between emirate Northern Nigeria on the one hand, and Nigerian Middle and South on the other.
AMERICA
New Countries: Capitalism, Revolutions, and Nations in the Americas, 1750–1870. Ed. by John Tutino. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 2016. x, 397 pp. Ill. Maps. $99.95. (Paper: $28.95.)
The aim of this study is to rethink the origins of the New World nations in a context of global transformation. The dramatic changes that marked the emergence of the United States, Mexico, and Haiti illustrate the complex emergence of countries across the Americas and their divergence, while industrial capitalism shaped the nineteenth-century world. Some former colonies joined to form the United States, while others fragmented into small nations as in Central America. After describing the processes that impacted histories across the Americas, four essays analyse the emergence of new countries in the slave societies, while four other essays consider nation making in Mesoamerica and the Andes.
Remes, Jacob A.C. Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) 2016. xi, 283 pp. Ill. Maps. $95.00. (Paper: $30.00.)
In the aftermath of two disasters along the United States–Canada border (the Salem Fire of 1914 and the Halifax Explosion of 1917), working-class survivors turned to friends, neighbours, co-workers and family members for succour and aid. At the same time, the governments attempted to help and control the situations. Professor Remes examines the responses of individuals and formal organizations to the fire and explosion, and how these experiences shaped their relationships with the developing state. The book reveals how the state’s obligations complemented and conflicted with expectations for support on the part of individuals, and how democratic demands from citizens intersected with the coercive power of the welfare state.
Rothstein, Jeffrey S. When Good Jobs Go Bad: Globalization, De-unionization, and Declining Job Quality in the North American Auto Industry. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (NJ) 2016. xi, 185 pp. $80.00. (E-book: $26.95.)
Focusing on three General Motors plants assembling SUVs, Professor Rothstein shows how global competition has made non-stop, monotonous, standardized routines crucial for the survival of a plant and explains why workers and their local unions struggle to resist. General Motors forced workers to accept intensified labour by threatening to close plants, which led local unions to set keeping the plant open as their main goal. Rothstein’s comparative analysis, which incorporates the viewpoints of workers, union officials, and management, sheds new light on labour’s loss of bargaining power in recent decades and highlights the negative impact of globalization on even the most valued of blue-collar jobs.
Wätzold, Tim. Der Libertäre Atlantik. Unsere Heimat ist die ganze Welt. Barrikade Verlag, Hamburg 2015. 357 pp. Ill. € 24.80.
In this study, Dr Wätzold relates the emergence of labour movements in South America to mass European migration. Analysing the socio-cultural transformation processes from a transnational historical perspective, he examines the development of institutions and political and cultural practices in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in the period 1870–1920. In addition to the establishment of trade unions, he presents related cultural institutions, such as schools, theatres, libraries, and daily and leisure activities. The evolution of migration, industrialization, and urbanization formed the context for the emergence of labour movements in the libertarian Atlantic.
Canada
Mills, Sean. A Place in the Sun. Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec. [Études d’histoire du Québec-Studies on the History of Quebec, 31.] McGill-Queen’s University Press, London [etc.] 2016. xiv, 304 pp. Ill. £21.99; $26.96.
From the 1930s onwards, French-Canadian and Haitian elites forged close intellectual bonds. Through these encounters, French-Canadian intellectuals came to view Haiti as the French-speaking counterpart in the Americas. In the 1960s and 70s, increasing numbers of migrating Haitians became immersed in Quebec’s intellectual and political life. They arrived at a crucial moment in Canadian history and participated actively in debates about nationalism, democracy, and language. By examining the ideas and activities of Haitian taxi drivers, exiled priests, dissident intellectuals, and feminist activists, Professor Mills reconsiders the historical actors of Quebec and demonstrates the importance of migrants in Quebec history.
Chile
Craib, Raymond B. The Cry of the Renegade. Politics and Poetry in Interwar Chile. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2016. xiii, 271 pp. Ill. Maps. $35.00; £22.99.
On 1 October 1920, in Santiago, Chile, tens of thousands stopped work and their daily activities to join the funeral procession of José Domingo Gómez Rojas, a young university student and writer of poems such as “The Cry of the Renegade”. Long before the student movements of 1968, as Professor Craib demonstrates, university students and workers were active political collaborators in interwar Chile. Members of the “capacious” Left shared a wide-ranging interest in works of sociology, politics, and poetry and embraced anarchist, socialist, and communist principles and practices. They also jointly experienced repression, which marked a new generation of political agitators, including Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda.
Cuba
Finch, Aisha K. Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba. La Escalera and the Insurgencies of 1841–1844. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2015. xiv, 298 pp. $32.95. (E-book: $27.99.)
Envisioning La Escalera – an underground rebel movement composed largely of African slaves living on farms and plantations in rural western Cuba – in the broader context of the long emancipation struggle in Cuba, Professor Finch demonstrates in this study how organized slave resistance became critical to unravelling not only slavery, but also colonial power structures during the nineteenth century. The author seeks to understand what happened in rural black communities during the years leading up to the 1844 repression. She pays special attention to the roles of slave women and non-elite men, and shows how slave insurgencies emerged. See also Jonathan Curry-Machado’s review in this volume, pp. 339–341.
Kruijt, Dirk. Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America: An Oral History. Zed Books, London 2017. xvi, 287 pp. £13.99.
This book traces the influence of Cuba’s revolutionary generation in Latin America and the Caribbean from 1959 until the first decade of the twenty-first century. This analysis of the internationalizing process of the Cuban Revolution in the region and of the objectives and perspectives of the revolutionary leaders draws on original testimonies, including interviews with Cuban officials and former combatants. Professor Kruijt examines the pivotal role of veterans and the post-revolution fidelista generation in shaping Cuba. He also reveals the story of the Departamiento América, a clandestine and largely undocumented organization that was instrumental in exercising Cuban influence abroad.
Mexico
Alexander, Anna Rose. City on Fire. Technology, Social Change, and the Hazards of Progress in Mexico City, 1860–1910. [History of the Urban Environment.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh (PA) 2016. x, 224 pp. Ill. $26.95.
In this urban environmental history, Professor Alexander reveals how Mexico City changed in response to the growing threat of fire. By the mid-nineteenth century, modernization and industrialization had the unintended consequence of increasing fire risk. This fear was, on the one hand, a catalyst for social change, as residents mobilized to confront the problem. Conversely, the rise of fire-profiteering industries was a detrimental side effect for many who could not afford these services. Hydrants and water systems were concentrated in more affluent areas. This study reveals how both public and private engagement with fire risk demonstrate the evolving inequality in Mexican society.
Bönsch, Jessica. Die mexikanische Arbeiterschaft und die kulturelle Globalisierung. Die Rolle der städtischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter im Porfiriat, Mexiko 1876–1911. Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2016. 262 pp. Maps. €29.95.
In this study, defended as a dissertation in 2012 at Hamburg University, Dr Bönsch investigates the role of urban female workers in Mexico City as actors of globalization in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. Her research covers four themes. The first is material culture: consumption of global goods such as beer. The second is access to different forms of leisure, such as bowling and theatre. Work is the third theme and includes wages, housing, protection at work, and training. The fourth theme is statements in the press, in terms of both quantity and content.
Lear, John. Picturing Proletariat: Artists and Labor in Revolutionary Mexico, 1908–1940. [Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture.] University of Texas Press, Austin (TX) 2017. xiii, 366 pp. Ill. $29.95.
In this richly illustrated study, a history of artistic representations of Mexican workers on public walls and in labour publications is intertwined with that of the artists who produced them. In the wake of Mexico’s revolution, artists were fundamental in constructing a national identity centred on working people and were hailed for their contributions to modern art. Professor Lear examines the parallel paths of organized labour and artists’ collectives, relations between these groups, and the state and visual narratives of the worker. Showcasing many artworks in various media, the author explores how artists and labour unions participated in the revolutionary transformation from 1908 through 1940.
United States of America
Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. Solidarity Forever? Race, Gender, and Unionism in the Ports of Southern California. Lexington Books, Lanham (MD) [etc.] 2016. xi, 205 pp. $85.00.
The struggle by a group of black and women leaders for racial and gender equality in the ports of Southern California is highlighted in this study. Drawing on in-depth interviews, archival oral history research, and ethnographic observation, Professor Alimahomed argues that institutional and cultural forms of racial and gender inequality are embedded within US trade union locals, with possibly deleterious consequences for unions. Erosion of trust and solidarity among workers, especially workers of colour and women workers, will undermine the democratic potential of participation in union politics. Another risk comes from discrimination lawsuits, which might burden unions with millions of dollars in legal fees.
Kolin, Andrew. Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham (MD) 2017. xxxv, 399 pp. $110.00.
This book investigates the complex history of capital-labour relations, from the settler-colonial state to the present era, by examining the determination of capital and the ruling class to assert dominance and hegemony over a frequently restive and militant working class. Dr Kolin selects specific points in time, when capital repressed labour, to demonstrate that repression can be seen an expression of class struggle. He examines the role of government along with the growth of American capitalism to analyse the capital-labour conflict and aims to explain how and why labour has continued to confront repression in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Lawrie, Paul R.D. Forging a Laboring Race. The African American Worker in the Progressive Imagination. [Culture, Labor, History Series.] New York University Press, New York 2016. xi, 231 pp. $50.00.
Twenty-first century thinkers tend to view race as a social construct, while their Progressive Era (1880–1920) predecessors viewed race as a physiological and historical fact. Professor Lawrie tells the story of the black workers in the Progressive imagination and of how a collection of thinkers across the natural and social sciences considered the role of black workers in the nation’s industrial past, present, and future. In five chronological chapters, the author analyses how ideas of race, work, and the “fit” or “unfit” body informed the political economy in early twentieth-century industrial America.
LeFlouria, Talitha L. Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South. [Justice, Power and Politics.] University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2015. xiii, 257 pp. Ill. Maps. $24.95. (E-book: $19.99.)
In 1868, the state of Georgia began to make its population of prisoners available for hire. Professor LeFlouria argues that the presence of African American women within the convict lease and chain-gang systems of Georgia helped modernize the South by creating a new and dynamic set of skills for black women. After outlining the contours of African American life in post-bellum Georgia, the author underscores the centrality of prison labour in modernization and industrial prosperity. Based on primary sources, she charts the transition of women prisoners from railroad camps, brickyards and mines to feminine, gender-exclusive settlements, and chronicles the private world of Georgia’s female chain-gang workers.
The Pew and the Picket Line. Christianity and the American Working Class. Ed. by Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, and Janine Giordano Drake. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) [etc.] 2016. xiv, 249 pp. $95.00; £20.99.
This collection of essays builds on Gutman’s argument that understanding America’s industrial order requires considering the religious lives of working people. The contributors focus in part one on the role of working people in driving the creation of new theologies that shaped both the American religious landscape and the industrial age. The essays in part two explore ways that working-class believers shaped the contours of industrial capitalism. The vivid essays show Pentecostal miners preaching prosperity while seeking miracles in the depths of the earth, meanwhile, above ground, black sharecroppers and white Protestants established credit unions to pursue a joint vision of cooperative capitalism.
Women, Work, and Worship in Lincoln’s Country: The Dumville Family Letters. Ed. by Anne M. Heinz and John P. Heinz. University of Illinois Press, Champaign (IL) 2016. xviii, 219 pp. Ill. $40.00.
Family correspondence can be informative about daily life. These ninety-four letters written by the Dumville family members and twenty-three letters sent to them by neighbours, soldiers in the Civil War, and Methodist clergy tell the story of the ordinary lives of a mother and her three daughters in the rural Midwest from 1851 to 1863. The letters shed light on how the Dumvilles saw and felt the ravages of disease and the vicissitudes of weather governing their finances as crops flourished or failed, population growth driven by the wave of new immigrants, the abolition movement, and the technical innovations that transformed the norms and social structure of their towns.
ASIA
Middle East
Chalcraft, John. Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016. xvii, 594 pp. Maps. £64.99; $99.99. (Paper: £18.99; $29.99.)
Professor Chalcraft’s primary aim is to write the history of transgressive mobilization in the Middle East and North Africa since the eighteenth century, with the intention to explain the many ways protest has influenced the political struggles and dynamics in the making of the modern region. He shows how contentious mobilization has contributed to patterns of historical change, and in what measure they may be seen here as innovative and creative, revealing that contentious mobilization relates closely to ideas and intellectual labour, translocal appropriation, normative commitments, leadership strategies, and contingent interactions. See also Roel Meijer’s review in this volume, pp. 342–344.
Contentious Politics in the Middle East. Popular Resistance and Marginalized Activism beyond the Arab Uprisings. Ed. by Fawaz A. Gerges. [Middle East Today.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2015. xii, 566 pp. $119.00; $42.00.
In the years 2010–2012, waves of protests spread across Arab lands. The people demanded social justice, economic opportunities, less repression, and more political freedom. In this edited volume, containing twenty-one essays, contributors seek to contextualize the uprisings in a broader historical and global sense, rejecting teleological notions of development. The contributors focus empirically and analytically on particular episodes to understand the diversity of social changes and unfolding turmoil in the region. This book preferences this approach for discerning whether the Arab Spring has brought about any social transformation, and whether contentious politics may be perceived as a form of emancipation.
EUROPE
Evans, Richard J. The Pursuit of Power, Europe 1815–1914. [The Penguin History of Europe, vol. 7.] Penguin Books, Allen Lane 2016. xxiv, 819 pp. Ill. £35.00.
In this addition to the Penguin History of Europe series, covering the period from the fall of Napoleon to the outbreak of World War I, Evans’s narrative covers a century of change. Each of the eight chapters in this book is subdivided into ten sections. Four chapters are on political history, two on cultural history, and two on social and economic history. The chapters on social and economic history elaborate on the emancipation of serfs in many parts of the continent, peasant revolts, the hungry forties, new transport means, the industrial revolution (textile, coal, iron, etc.), and the making of the European working class.
Belgium
Les classes sociales en Belgique. Deux siècles d’histoire. Sous la dir. de Guy Vanthemsche. CRISP, Brussels 2016. 461 pp. €29.00.
Social classes remain a crucial element in understanding the evolution of contemporary society. This book offers a synthesis of current knowledge on the history of the various socio-economic groups in Belgium, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each chapter describes one of the social classes and is documented by a Belgian specialist at one of the country’s universities. The chapters address employees in general and their relations with the labour market, civil servants, factory workers, farmers, self-employed persons, small traders and artisans, the liberal professions, and the economic elites.
Eire – Ireland
Voices from the Easter Rising. Ed. by Ruán O’Donnell, Mícheál Ó hAodha. Merrion Press, Sallins, Co. Kildare 2016. xiii, 202 pp. £12.99; €14.99.
This volume is a collection of eyewitness accounts of the events of Easter Week 1916. Testimonies from the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan, the British Army, and members of the public and civil servants reveal how the rising took shape and developed in Dublin and in a range of other Irish cities, towns, and villages. Previously unpublished letters, diaries, memoirs, and statements from the Bureau of Military History provide a direct and compelling portrayal of the actions and emotions of the revolutionaries and the forces they battled. The publication comprises twenty-four stories from inside Dublin and eight stories from other parts of the country.
France
Götze, Susanne. Die Neue französische Linke von 1958–1968. Engagement, Kritik, Utopie. Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2015. 480 pp. €34.95.
In 1958 France, the socialists lost political power, while the communists struggled with Stalin’s heritage. Dissatisfied communists and socialists created a new left movement, welcoming communists, socialists, and Trotskyists as well as artists, philosophers, and writers. The aim of this book is to shed light on the ideological orientations, programmatic concepts, and political strategies of the New Left. A main theme is the political and philosophical tradition of the New Left and the extent to which neo-Marxism was an important concept. The author charts other thinkers who influenced the design of a new socialism and explores which discourses were central, and how they developed over the years.
Le Porho, Gaëtan. Syndicalisme révolutionnaire et éducation émancipatrice. L’investissement pédagogique de la fédération unitaire de l’enseignement 1922–1935. Noir et Rouge, Paris; EDMP; Émancipation syndicale et pédagogique 2016. 397 pp. Ill. €20.00.
In the 1920s and 30s, activists of the Fédération Unitaire de l’Enseignement (FUE) sought, beyond improvement of material conditions, better education for their members. In this book, the author studies the commitment of the FUE to the emancipatory education in support of social change. His study is based on the handwritten sources of correspondence by trade unionists on education. The sources presented remain as close as possible to the texts, while disclosing explanatory elements through more global theories and contexts. The conclusion is that the FUE helped break down barriers to enable emancipatory education.
Parry, Richard. The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists, 2nd ed. [first ed. 1986.] PM Press, Oakland (CA) 2016. xxii, 254 pp. Ill. $18.95.
This is the second edition of this book; the first appeared in 1986. The story of the Bonnot Gang of notorious French anarchists remains popular, and in this new edition the author has corrected some earlier inaccuracies. The gang is known as bank expropriators and the inventors of the motorized “getaway”. The author shows how the anarchist taste for illegality developed into illegalism, and how young anarchists met in Paris in the years before World War I, determined to live their lives to the fullest, regardless of the consequences. The book contains a list of short biographies of the principal characters.
Pelletier, Philippe. La critique du productivisme dans les années 1930. Mythe et réalités. Noir et Rouge, Paris 2016. 178 pp. €14.00.
The radical ecologist movements in our society are increasingly emphasizing their anti-productivist thoughts. Geographer Pelletier goes back to the 1930s and notes the critique by intellectual circles such as La Jeune Droite, l’Ordre Nouveau and many other non-conformist groups. The author firmly rejects the philosophy of these groups, not only because of their links with pre-war fascism and its moral values, but also because their ideas impede understanding the true nature of capitalism, i.e. not to produce for production, but for sale, and to devise a logic of market and profit progressing through the stages of economic exploitation, political domination, and social oppression.
Germany
Adam, Thomas. Philanthropy, Civil Society, and the State in German History, 1815–1989. [German History in Context.] Camden House, Rochester (NY) 2016. x, 223 pp. Ill. $90.00; £60.00.
Philanthropy in nineteenth and twentieth-century German society was characterized by private initiative and a vibrant civil society. Public institutions and charities relied heavily on support from wealthy donors. In six chapters, Professor Adam illustrates the competition between nobility and bourgeoisie for dominance and power in funding education at universities and high schools, bringing about art museums and providing social housing. Actions undertaken by state authorities were supplemental and covered only a fraction of the costs, and were often surpassed by efforts by individuals or private committees. Private support for public institutions was essential to their existence and survival.
Gebhardt, Miriam (transl. from German by Nick Somers). Crimes Unspoken: The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War. Polity, Cambridge 2017 [German ed. 2015.] vi, 252 pp. £20.00; €25.58. (E-book: £13.99; €21.99.)
This study explores the experiences of circa 860,000 German women who were raped by Allied soldiers in the aftermath of World War II. Discussions in recent years have focused almost exclusively on crimes committed by Soviet soldiers, while Dr Gebhardt shows in this book that crimes were committed as much by the Western Allies – American, French and British – as by the members of the Red Army. One further aim of this book is to show the degree to which raped women were subsequently at the mercy of doctors (who arbitrarily granted or refused abortions) and welfare workers (who placed pregnant women in homes).
Kiepe, Jan. Für die Revolution auf die Schulbank. Eine alltagsgeschichtliche Studie über die SED-Funktionärsausbildungen in Thüringen. [Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Band 101.] Dietz, Bonn 2016. 413 pp. Ill. €48.00.
The aim of this study is to examine the role of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) cadre schools by investigating the case study of the school in Thuringen in 1953. In these schools, future heads of the party were trained to apply Marxist-Leninist theory in political practice. The schools were not just indoctrination facilities, as teachers and participants alike appeared as actors who interpreted and implemented the instructions in their own ways. Using a wealth of archival material, Dr Kiepe shows how Marxist-Leninist ideals and theory entered society via these cadre schools.
The Nuclear Crisis: The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s. Ed. by Christoph Becker-Schaum et al. [Protest, Culture and Society Series, vol. 19.] Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2016. xvii, 374 pp. Ill. $120.00; £85.00.
In 1983, more than one million Germans protested NATO’s deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe. The Euromissiles controversy was the chief topic of political debate in the early 1980s. Downplaying the confrontation between the political establishment on the one hand and the peace movement on the other would mischaracterize the complexities on both sides. In nineteen essays, this edited volume provides a comprehensive reference work on the Euromissiles crisis, as experienced by its various protagonists, analysing NATO’s diplomatic and military manoeuvring and tracing the political, cultural, and moral discourses that surrounded the missile deployment in East and West Germany.
Wildt, Michael. Volk, Volksgemeinschaft, AfD. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2017. 157 pp. €12.00.
In this book, Professor Wildt explores the ambivalences and abysses of the political concept of “the people”: who belongs to the people, and who does not? The representation of an ethnically homogenous nation led minorities to be excluded and destroyed. The people turned into a racist, anti-Semitic populist community. The author pays special attention to the utterances of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which embody a vehement appeal to the people. In the analysis of the AfD and its reference to the people, basic law is mentioned, and, in order to show the fluidity of the concept, he does not avoid self-reflection or self-critique.
Great Britain
1956: John Saville, E.P. Thompson and The Reasoner. Ed. by Paul Flewers and John McIlroy. Merlin Press, London 2016. xix, 444 pp. £20.00; $29.99.
When Khrushchev denounced Stalin in his Secret Speech in 1956, the leaders of the Communist Party of Great Britain (GPGB) attempted to carry on as normal. Protests from many party members gave rise to the dissident magazine The Reasoner, produced by John Saville and E.P. Thompson. This book features annotated reproductions of the texts from all three issues and selected articles by party leaders. The introduction provides readers with the background to the events of 1956. The book also contains two essays: one explores Saville’s experience in the CPGB and his attitude to Stalinism; the second examines Thompson’s attempts to grapple with the meaning of Stalinism and the nature of Soviet society.
Barker, Hannah. Family & Business During the Industrial Revolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2017. xv, 262 pp. Ill. £60.00.
Small businesses were at the heart of the economic growth and social transformation characteristic of the industrial revolution in Britain. In cities in north west England before 1820, the urban and economic landscape was altered not by large factories and mills, but by the proliferation of small shops and workshops. In this book, Professor Barker examines these small businesses and the men, women, and families who worked there. Cooperation, family-strategy, constitution, and hierarchical structures of households are explored through archival sources. The home, shop, and workplace as the combined embodiment of the commercial and the domestic also figures in this study.
Neuheiser, Jörg. Crown, Church and Constitution. Popular Conservatism in England, 1815–1867. (transl. by Jennifer Walcoff Neuheiser). [Studies in British and Imperial History, vol. 4.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2016. [Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2010.] viii, 310 pp. $110.00; £68.00.
Conservatism from below is analysed in this English translation of a German study from 2010. It explores patriotism, royalism, and the role of religion in three cities (transl. in England, Bolton, Leeds, and London, representing three different types of cities, industrial structures, and mentalities. This book is divided into three thematic parts. The first section deals with phenomena associated with loyalism and patriotism. The second part examines the role of anti-Catholic sentiments and conflicts between Protestant groups in the manifestation of conservative tendencies among the lower classes. The third section discusses aspects of popular conservatism associated with social justice and conservative morality.
Steinberg, Marc W. England’s Great Transformation. Law, Labor, and the Industrial Revolution. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL) [etc.] 2016. xiii, 233 pp. $35.00; £24.50.
Building his argument on three case studies – the Hanley pottery industry, Hull fisheries and Redditch needlemakers – the author examines how employers turned to the law as a staple of their control of the labour market and workplace. Professor Steinberg makes this claim to revise the thesis in Polanyi’s landmark The Great Transformation, which held that England quickly moved towards a modern labour market, where workers were free to shift from employer to employer in response to market signals. Steinberg finds, on the contrary, that labour contracts, centred on master-servant laws, allowed employers and legal institutions to work in tandem to keep employees in line.
Williams, Annie. A Detested Occupation? A History of Domestic Servants in North Wales 1800–1930. Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, Llanwrst 2016. 141 pp. £7.50.
Hundreds of women worked in domestic service throughout the nineteenth century. Most servants endured harsh experiences in households employing only one or two servants. Significant numbers of young women were employed by family members, for example upon the death of a sister, and were expected to perform all the functions of the deceased wife. Women servants were hidden from view and remained outside the influence of trade unions and legislation. This book contains chapters on servants with the landed gentry and on servants working in the middle-class, as well as a chapter on wages and conditions of service.
Greece
Potamianos, Nikos. Oi Noikokuraioi. Magazatores kai biotechnes stēn Athēna 1880–1925. [Istoria kai koinōnia.] Panepistēmiakes ekdoseis Krētēs, Ērakleio 2015. xvi, 547 pp. Ill. €17.50.
Drawing on government publications, newspapers, and documents from tradespeople’s associations, Dr Potamianos examines changing living conditions among shopkeepers and artisans in Athens between 1880 and 1925. He describes: the geography and spatial organization of the city; the economy of small businesses; professional organizations in Athens; tradespeople’s ideas; values and attitudes; local politics; popular culture; the emergence of workers’ unions and economic; and labour legislation.
The Netherlands
Brandon, Pepijn. War, Capital, and the Dutch State (1588–1795). [Historical Materialism Book Series, vol. 101.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2015. xiii, 447 pp. € 135.00.
In this dissertation, Dr Brandon traces the interaction between state and capital in the organization of warfare in the Dutch Republic from the Dutch Revolt of the sixteenth century to the Batavian Revolution of 1795. The central question in this thesis is why brokerage structures for organizing warfare were so persistent in the Dutch Republic, and how this, in turn, affected the development of Dutch capitalism and the state. The author has examined original sources on the role of the Dutch East India and West India Companies in the inner workings of Amsterdam’s naval shipyard and sources ranging from state policy to the role of private intermediaries in military finance.
Van Groesen, Michiel. Amsterdam’s Atlantic: Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (PA) 2017. 265 pp. Ill. Maps. $45.00 £39.00. (E-book: $45.00; £29.50.)
In 1624, the Dutch West India Company established the colony of Brazil. Thirty years later, the Dutch Republic handed over the colony to Portugal. Because Dutch Brazil was the first sustained Protestant colony in Iberian America, the tumultuous events there became major news in early modern Europe and instigated a lively print culture. Amsterdam served as Europe’s main hub for news from the Atlantic world, with breaking news from Brazil as a major source of excitement in the city. By focusing on this flow of information, Professor Van Groesen provides a history of the rise and fall of the Dutch West India Company’s largest and most important colony in South America.
Poland
Jarska, Natalia. Kobiety z marmuru. Robotnice w Polsce w latach 1945–1960. Instytut Pamięci Narodowej; Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, Warsaw 2015. 343 pp. Ill. €29.45.
The author analyses the employment policy of the authorities in communist Poland to involve women in the labour market and to accelerate their accession. Dr Jarska also investigates the cultural, social, and economic obstacles women encountered, and how they dealt with the new conditions, discussing both paid labour and non-professional work and political activity. The aim of this book is to see whether and how this active employment policy in communist Poland brought about gender equality on the Polish labour market.
Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Kucherenko, Olga. Soviet Street Children and the Second World War. Welfare and Social Control under Stalin. Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2016. vi, 245 pp. Ill. £85.00.
In this book, largely based on archival research, the author investigates the plight of more than a million street children in the Soviet Union during World War II. The overarching theme in this study is the discrepancy between the theory and practice of the state’s childhood policies. The first part of the book explores the role of the state in curbing child displacement and crime. Part two concentrates on state actions driving youngsters to the margin of society. The third part focuses on children’s everyday existence in correction institutions and the conditions of internment that gave rise to a juvenile delinquent subculture.
Merridale, Catherine. Lenin on the Train. Allen Lane, London 2016. xi, 353 pp. Ill. £25.00.
By 1917, the European war seemed to be endless. Both sides in the fighting sought new weapons, tactics, and ideas to break a stalemate. A small group within the German government had the idea of escorting Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, then in exile in neutral Switzerland, home to Russia, to further destabilize an increasingly chaotic Russia. Most Germans thought he would rapidly be imprisoned or killed, and that he had few followers and even less influence. Dr Merridale re-enacts Lenin’s extraordinary train journey, using a range of contemporary eyewitnesses, observing Lenin as he travelled back to a country he had not seen for many years.
Robarts, Andrew. Migration and Disease in the Black Sea Region: Ottoman-Russian Relations in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2017. ix, 268 pp. Ill. Maps. £85.00; $114.00.
Drawing upon Ottoman, Russian and Bulgarian archival sources, Professor Robarts explores the nexus between the environment, epidemic diseases, human mobility, and the centralizing initiatives of the Ottoman and Russian states in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In response to significant increases in human mobility and the spread of epidemic diseases, Ottoman and Russian officials coordinated their efforts to manage migratory movements and check the spread of disease in the Black Sea region by constructing quarantine sites. Human mobility was pivotal in defining administrative responsibilities and jurisdictional reforms at local, provincial, and imperial levels.
Teichmann, Christian. Macht der Unordnung. Stalins Herrschaft in Zentralasien 1920–1950. [Studien zur Gewaltgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts.] Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2016. 287 pp. Maps. €28.00. (E-book: €21.99.)
The Soviet water building programme began in 1920 with Lenin’s plan for electrification of the country and culminated in 1950 with Stalin’s Plan for the Transformation of Nature. A key element in this transformation was Stalin’s cotton-autarky project, which was to integrate the Central Asian periphery in the Soviet Union. To this end, new borders and institutions and mass mobilization of the population were necessary. Artificial irrigation was to enable industrial cotton production to make the Soviet Union independent from imports of this important cash crop. Dr Teichmann demonstrates, in nine chronological chapters, the results of this policy, which was guided by terror, arbitrariness, and chaos.
Scandinavia
Ports of Globalisation, Places of Creolisation. Nordic Possessions in the Atlantic World during the Era of the Slave Trade. Ed. by Holger Weiss. [Studies in Global Slavery, vol. 1.] Brill, Leiden 2016. xi, 315 pp. Ill. Maps. €115.00; $149.00.
The ten contributions to this edited volume address and analyse the transformation of interconnected spaces and spatial entanglements in the Atlantic rim during the era of the slave trade, focusing on the Danish possessions on the Gold Coast and their Caribbean islands of Saint Thomas, Saint Jan, and Saint Croix, as well as on the Swedish Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy. The first part of the anthology addresses interconnectedness in West Africa, in particular the relationship between Africans and Danes on the Gold Coast. The second part of this volume examines various aspects of interconnectedness, Creolization, and experiences of Danish and Swedish slave rule in the Caribbean. See also Pernille Røge’s review in this volume, pp. 347–349.
Spain
Interrogating Francoism. History and Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century Spain. Ed. by Helen Graham. Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2016. viii, 275 pp. £21.99.
In nine essays, leading historians examine twentieth-century Spain in the light of the Franco dictatorship and its legacy by looking at the old regime, the civil war, and the forging of Francoism; the nature of the Franco dictatorship; and the “history wars” that have since taken place over this legacy. Social, political, economic, and cultural historical approaches are integrated throughout, and political analysis is incorporated along with social perspectives. The book places Spain and Francoism in a comparative European context and relates the historical debates to present-day political and ideological controversies in Spain. The book includes an interview with Professor Paul Preston and a comprehensive bibliography of his work.
Ranz, Francisco Arriero [prólogo de Pilar Díaz Sánchez]. El movimiento democrático de mujeres. De la lucha contra Franco al feminismo (1965–1985). Catarata, Madrid 2016. 302 pp. €19.00.
Arising in the mid-1960s at the behest of the Communist Party, the Women’s Democratic Movement (MDM) was founded as a support group for political prisoners. In spite of their communist origins, their ideologues soon understood the need to promote a plural, inter-classist, and intergenerational feminist mass movement. The movement succeeded in integrating both progressive Catholics and militants of the radical left, middle-class women, working women, and housewives in working-class neighbourhoods. This book, based on a great many oral sources, traces the history of the movement and its evolution throughout the twenty years it existed.
Ukraine
Blackwell, Martin J. Kyiv as Regime City. The Return of Soviet Power after Nazi Occupation. [Rochester Studies in East and Central Europe.] University of Rochester Press, Rochester (NY) 2016. xiv, 239 pp. Ill. £65.00.
Based on the records of the Ukrainian Communist Party, this study charts the resettlement of Kyiv after the Nazi occupation. Professor Blackwell focuses on the efforts of Soviet rulers to regain legitimacy in the Ukrainian capital. This book reveals how the socially and ethnically diverse milieu reassembled. The Ukrainian Communists successfully guarded accession to their privileged ranks and monitored the masses’ mood towards their superiors in Moscow. Party failure to conscript a labour force and rebuild houses to accommodate the flood of unorganized evacuees led the Stalin regime to adopt new tactics to legitimize itself among the large Ukrainian and Jewish populations.
