Algeria

Surkis, Judith. Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930. [Corpus Juris: The Humanities in Politics and Law.] Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2019. xvi, 335 pp. Ill. Maps. $115.00. (Paper: $29.95; E-book: $14.99.)

During the colonial rule over Algeria, the French state shaped and reshaped the meaning and practice of Muslim law. In this book, Professor Surkis traces how colonial authorities constructed Muslim legal difference and used it to deny Algerian Muslims full citizenship. In disconnecting Muslim law from property rights, French officials increasingly attached it to bodies, beliefs, and personhood. The author argues that powerful affective attachments to the intimate life of the family and fantasies about Algerian women and the sexual prerogatives of Muslim men shaped French theories and regulatory practices of Muslim law. Women's legal status in particular came to represent the dense relationship between sex and sovereignty in the colony. See also Mary Lewis's review in this volume, pp. 310–313.

Egypt

Shechter, Relli. Rise of the Egyptian Middle Class. Socio-Economic Mobility and Public Discontent from Nasser to Sadat. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2019. xv, 269 pp. Ill. £75.00. (Paper: £24.99; E-book: $26.00.)

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Egypt experienced swift economic growth resulting from a regional oil boom, hardly registered in Egyptian public discourse, which continuously claimed that the country was experiencing multiple economic, social, and cultural crises. Dr Shechter investigates this discrepancy by documenting the massive socio-economic mobility in Egypt. He analyses statistical data, indicating the changes in the employment structure and the spread of mass consumption. Examining cultural resources, such as Egyptian academic writing, the press, the cinema, and the literature, the author offers a local version of a wider Middle Eastern and international story: the global formation of middle-class societies that succeeded only in part in their pursuit of respectable lives.

Tanzania

Becker, Felicitas. The Politics of Poverty. Policy-Making and Development in Rural Tanzania. [African Studies Series, Vol. 143.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2019. vii, 366 pp. Ill. Maps. £90.00. (Paper: £24.99; E-book: $26.00.)

In this book, Professor Becker traces the dynamics of rural poverty based on the exportation of foodstuffs and examines what has kept the development industry going despite its failure to break this cycle. She argues that development planners often exaggerated their prospects to secure funding, repackaged old strategies as new to maintain the appearance of their promise, and shifted blame to rural Africans for failing to meet the expectations they had raised. Focusing on the role of environmental, practical, financial, and political limitations in shaping development intervention, the author reveals overarching patterns in policy implementation, offering accounts of the attitudes of villagers towards poverty and inequality, giving readers an understanding of their priorities.

Argentina

Poy, Lucas. El Partido Socialista argentino 1896–1912. Una historia social y politica. Ariadna Ediciones, Santiago de Chile 2020. 287 pp. Maps. € 22.74. (Open Access.)

In this book, the author analyses the origins of the Partido Socialista, examining initial experiences with building an independent workers’ political party in Argentina, encouraged by the Argentine working class itself, very early in its history. Although he pays attention to theoretical and programmatic issues, as well as to organizational developments, Dr Poy's main goal is to understand the place of the PS in structuring the class consciousness of the Argentine proletariat. He examines this process in the framework of a capitalist economy, in the formation of its organizations of combat and in the context of its relationship with the political groups active in the left.

Canada

Langford, Will. The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada. Development Programs and Democracy, 1964–1979. [Rethinking Canada and the World, Vol. 7.] McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2020. xi, 412 pp. Ill. Maps. Can. $130.00. (Paper: Can. $39.95.)

In this book, Dr Langford explores the relationship between poverty, democracy, and development during the 1960s and 70s, in the midst of the Cold War and decolonization movement, analysing three Canadian development programmes that unfolded on local, regional, and international scales. It reveals the interconnections of anti-poverty activism carried out by the Company of Young Canadians among Métis in northern Alberta and francophones in Montreal, by the Cape Breton Development Corporation and by Canadian University Service Overseas in Tanzania. In dialogue with the New Left, liberal reformers committed to development programmes they believed would empower the poor to confront their own poverty and thereby foster a more meaningful democracy.

Rutherford, Scott. Canada's Other Red Scare. Indigenous Protest and Colonial Encounters During the Global Sixties. [Rethinking Canada in the World, Vol. 6.] McGill Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2020. viii, 208 pp. Ill. Maps. Can. $110.00. (Paper: Can. $29.95.)

Indigenous activism put Northwestern Ontario and Treaty Three territory on the map in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on archival documents, media coverage, published interviews and memoirs, as well as on his own lived experience growing up in Kenora, Dr Rutherford reconstructs a period of turbulent protest and the responses it instigated, from support to disbelief to outright hostility. Indigenous organizers advocated for a range of issues, from better employment opportunities to the recognition of nationhood, using tactics such as marches, cultural production, community organizing, journalism, and armed occupation. Inspired by global currents, from black American freedom movements to Third World decolonization, they challenged the inequalities and racial logics that shaped settler-colonialism and daily life in Kenora.

Caribbean

Shaffer, Kirwin R. Anarchists of the Caribbean. Countercultural Politics and Transnational Networks in the Age of US Expansion. [Global and International History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020. xiv, 318 pp. Ill. Maps. £39.99. (E-book: $40.00.)

Anarchists who supported the Cuban War for Independence in the 1890s launched a transnational network linking radical leftists from the revolutionary hub in Havana to Florida, Puerto Rico, Panama, and beyond. Over the course of three decades, anarchists migrated around the Caribbean and back and forth to the US, promoting their projects and transferring money and information across political borders for a variety of causes. In response, US security officials forged their own transnational anti-anarchist campaigns with officials across the Caribbean. In this book, Professor Shaffer illustrates how men and women throughout the Caribbean and beyond sought to shape a counter-globalization initiative to challenge the emergence of modern capitalism and US foreign policy whilst rejecting nationalist projects and Marxist state socialism.

Cuba

Fitz, Don. Cuban Health Care. The Ongoing Revolution. Monthly Review Press, New York 2020. 303 pp. Ill. $95.00. (Paper: $26.00; E-book: $19.00.)

Cuba has transformed its healthcare to the extent that this “Third-World” country has been able to maintain a First-World medical system at a fraction of the cost. Weaving together complex themes in Cuban history, Don Fitz describes how Cuba set up a unified system of clinics and pioneered the family doctor–nurse teams that became a model for poor countries throughout the world, as well as how Cuba survived the scourge of AIDS and the increasing suffering that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union and went on to establish the Latin American School of Medicine, which still brings thousands of international students to the island.

Jennings, Evelyn P. Constructing the Spanish Empire in Havana. State Slavery in Defense and Development, 1762–1835. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge (LA) 2020. xii, 283 pp. $45.00.

Examining the political economy surrounding the use of enslaved labourers in the capital of Cuba from 1762 to 1835, Dr Jennings demonstrates that the policies and practices of Spain in owning and employing enslaved workers after 1762 helped bring about a rapidly expanding plantation economy in the nineteenth century, and that the composition of workforces assigned to public projects depended on the availability of enslaved workers on various interconnected labour markets. As plantation production emerged as the most dynamic sector of Cuba's economy by 1810, and Atlantic networks for obtaining enslaved workers became increasingly strained, colonial officials expanded the state's authority to force deserters, vagrants, and fugitives to labour in public works to offset the reduced access to enslaved labourers.

Ecuador

Becker, Marc. The CIA in Ecuador. [American Encounters/Global Interactions.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 2020. xi, 317 pp. Ill. Maps. $104.95. (Paper: $27.95.)

Drawing on recently released US government surveillance documents on the Ecuadorian left to chart social movement organizing efforts during the 1950s and emphasizing the competing roles of the domestic ruling class and grassroots social movements, the author details the struggles and difficulties that activists, organizers, and political parties faced. He shows how leftist groups, including the Communist Party of Ecuador, navigated disagreements over tactics and ideology, and how these influenced shifting strategies in support of rural Indigenous communities and urban labour movements, noting the failure of the CIA to understand that the Ecuadorian left was rooted in local social struggles rather than bankrolled by the Soviet Union.

Mexico

Rivera Mir, Sebastián. Edición y comunismo. Cultura impresa, educación militante y prácticas políticas (México, 1930–1940). [Historia y ciencias sociales.] University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2020. ix, 286 pages. Ill. $30.00. (E-book: $12.99.)

Among many militants on the left, publishing accounts for an important part of their activities. Learning to use the mimeograph, hand out books, write articles, sell brochures, and distribute loose leaves, among many other practices, have accompanied the left throughout its history. Professor Rivera Mir focuses in particular on the challenges that Mexican communist militants faced in the 1930s in printing their own editions. The chapters concern aspects such as government censorship, transnational editorial dynamics, disputes with anti-communism, or the actions of militants, who found a way to make the revolution in print. Ultimately, the author analyses how these efforts reconfigured not only daily life, but also the scope of political projects.

United States of America

Kettler, Andrew. The Smell of Slavery. Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xxvii, 229 pp. Ill. £29.99. (E-book: $32.00.)

In the Atlantic World, different groups were aromatically classified in opposition to other ethnic, gendered, and class assemblies. The African subject was defined as a scented object, appropriated as filthy to establish levels of ownership through discourse that marked African peoples as unable to access spaces of Western modernity. Embodied cultural knowledge was potent enough to alter the biological function of the five senses to create a European olfactory consciousness made to sense the African other as foul. Demonstrating that the roots of racism transgressed intellectual and political arenas, Dr Kettler explains that concerns with pungency within the Western self were emitted outward upon the freshly dug outhouse of the mass slave grave called the Atlantic World.

China

Elfstrom, Manfred. Workers and Change in China. Resistance, Repression, and Responsiveness. [Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xviii, 232 pp. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

Strikes, protests, and riots by Chinese workers have been increasing over the past decade. While the state has addressed a number of grievances, civil society groups pushing for reform experience increasing repression. Using extensive fieldwork and statistical analysis, Professor Elfstrom examines why these two seemingly conflicting developments are occurring simultaneously, adopting a holistic approach encompassing national trends in worker–state relations, local policymaking processes, and the dilemmas of individual officials and activists. Instead of taking a stand in the debate over whether non-democracies such as China are on the verge of collapse, the author explores the daily evolution of autocratic rule, proposing a new model of bottom-up change within authoritarian systems.

Factory Politics in the People's Republic of China. Ed. by Joel Andreas. [Rethinking Socialism and Reform in China, Vol. 5.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020. x, 189 pp. Maps. € 132.00; $159.00. (E-book: € 132.00; $159.00.)

Over the past seven decades since the 1949 Revolution, every aspect of Chinese society has been profoundly transformed multiple times. The eight contributions contained in this volume focus on the tumultuous twists and turns in the industrial sector, especially on aspects of industrial relations that involve contention and power, that is, factory politics. They were selected among articles that have appeared in the Chinese journal Open Times (开放时代) over the past decade. Arranged in approximate chronological order, all articles address changes in labour processes, labour relations and labour management, factory hierarchies, social cleavages and conflicts, and power and contention for power within industrial enterprises. See also Ju Li's review in this volume, pp. 313–316.

Yukyung, Yeo. Varieties of State Regulation. How China Regulates Its Socialist Market Economy. [Harvard East Asian Monographs, 436.] Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2020. xiv, 202 pp. $49.95; £39.95; € 45.00. (Paper: $22.00; £17.95; € 20.00.)

Since the 1990s, as major state firms in China were spun off from the ministries that managed them, the nature of the state in governing the economy has been transformed into that of a regulator. Drawing on over a hundred interviews conducted with Chinese central and local officials, firms, scholars, journalists, and consultants, Professor Yeo demonstrates that forms of central state control vary considerably across leading industrial sectors, depending on the dominant mode of state ownership, conception of control, and governing structure. By contrasting the regulation of the automobile industry, a relatively decentralized sector, with the highly centralized telecommunications industry, he reveals how China's central party state maintains regulatory authority over key local state-owned enterprises.

Iran

Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, Eskandar. Revolution and its Discontents. Political Thought and Reform in Iran. [The Global Middle East.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2019. xiii, 441 pp. £105.00. (Paper: £24.99.)

The death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iran–Iraq War and the marginalization of leading factions within the political elite had severe intellectual and political repercussions for the Iranian state and society. These events created the conditions for the emergence of Iran's post-revolutionary reform movement. Dr Sadeghi-Boroujerdi examines the rise and evolution of reformist political thought in Iran and analyses the complex network of publications, study circles, and think tanks that encompassed a range of prominent politicians and intellectuals in the 1990s. In his meticulous account of the relationships between the post-revolutionary political class and intelligentsia, he explores a panoply of political and ideological issues still vital for understanding Iran's revolutionary state.

Korea

Stories that Make History. The Experience and Memories of the Japanese Military Comfort Girls–Women. The Research Team of the War & Women's Human Rights Center (Ed.), Transl. [from Korean] by Angella Son. [Genocide and Mass Violence in the Age of Extremes, Vol. 3.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin [etc.] 2020. xxiii, 301 pp. Ill. Maps. € 68.95. (Open Access.)

The experiences of Korean comfort girls–women are a paradigmatic example of how military sexual violence can obliterate the dignity of women and shame them into non-existence. Examining how their innocence was turned into inadequacy – actively by the Japanese government and passively by the Korean government – until Kim Hak-sun broke the silence in 1991 with the support of Korean activists, this book, written by a research team of seventeen members, features the voices of twelve Japanese military comfort girls–women. Dealing with issues as incongruent stories, the narrow nationalism in Korean society, and the contradictory sexual ethics of the Korean patriarchy, the interviewers provided the women with a platform for justice and healing.

Middle East

Karam, Jeffrey G. The Middle East in 1958. Reimagining a Revolutionary Year. I.B. Tauris, London 2021. xix, 226 pp. Ill. £76.50. (E-book: £61.50.)

The revolutionary year of 1958 epitomizes the height of the social uprisings, military coups, and civil wars that erupted across the Middle East and North Africa, amidst waning Anglo-French influence, growing US–USSR rivalry and competition, and alignments between Arab and non-Arab regimes. The fifteen contributions in this book explore this pivotal year in its global, regional, and local contexts and from a wide range of declassified and multilingual archives, reports, memoirs, and newspapers, shedding new light on topics such as the Suez War, Turkey's position in the regional Cold War, the internationalization of the Algerian War of Independence, and the influence of Iran and Saudi Arabia in the revolutionary storms across the region.

Khalili, Laleh. Sinews of War and Trade. Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. Verso, London [etc.] 2020. xvi, 352 pp. Ill. Maps. £20.00. (Paper: £11.99; E-book: £20.00.)

On the map of global trade, China is the factory of the world. Much of the materials shipped from China are transported through the ports of Arabian Peninsula. This book details what the making of new ports and shipping infrastructure has meant for the Arabian Peninsula itself, the region, and the world beyond. Professor Khalili examines how maritime transportation is not simply an enabling companion of trade but central to the very fabric of global capitalism. The ports that serve maritime trade, logistics, and hydrocarbon transport bring about racialized hierarchies of labour, engineer the lived environment, aid the accumulation of capital regionally and globally, and carry forward colonial regimes of profit, law, and administration. See also Marten Dondorp's review in this volume pp. 319–322.

Pratt, Nicola. Embodying Geopolitics. Generations of Women's Activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. [Simpson Imprint in Humanities.] University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2020. xii, 308 pp. Maps. $85.00; £70.00. (Paper, E-book: $29.95; £25.00.)

When women took to the streets during the mass protests of the Arab Spring, the subject of feminism in the Middle East and North Africa returned to the international spotlight. In this book, relations of power in regional and international politics are explored to understand women's struggles for their rights. Based on over a hundred extensive personal narratives, Professor Pratt traces women's activism of different generations in the region. Each of the seven chapters addresses a significant geopolitical period in the histories of Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, from independence to the Arab uprisings, and considers the ways in which gender is part of the bigger picture of geopolitical upheaval.

Pakistan

Armytage, Rosita. Big Capital in an Unequal World. The Micropolitics of Wealth in Pakistan. [Dislocations, Vol. 29.] Berghahn Books, New York 2020. x, 195 pp. $120.00; £89.00. (E-book: $29.95.)

In this ethnography of the micro-politics of elite lives, Dr Armytage examines the networks, social practices, marriages, and machinations of the elite in Pakistan and the personal relationships, daily lives, and family histories of Pakistan's most prominent and wealthiest business families, demonstrating how an elite group can shape and determine the economic and political structures of the nation, and how private interactions define the opportunities available to the broader population. As Pakistan's elite becomes increasingly adept at managing processes of regional trade and foreign investment, these practices remain central in the allocation of national wealth, along with those who are excluded from partaking in it.

Philippines

Umali, Bas. Pangayaw and Decolonizing Resistance. Anarchism in the Philippines. Ed. by Gabriel Kuhn. PM Press, Oakland (CA) 2020. 116 pp. Ill. $15.00. (E-book: $8.95.)

Activist–author Bas Umali demonstrates in this book that anarchist ideas are still alive in the Philippines, a country that he would like to see renamed an “archipelagic confederation”.

Pangayaw refers to indigenous ways of maritime warfare. Umali relates traditional forms of communal life in the archipelago to modern-day expressions of anti-authoritarian politics. His provocative essays address crucial questions on liberation, such as who are the agents, and what are the means? In weaving together independent research and experiences from grassroots organizing, the author sketches a course of resistance in the Global South that relies not on Marxist determinism and Maoist people's armies but on the self-empowerment of the masses. See also Rosanne Rutten's review in this volume, pp. 316–319.

Woods, Colleen. Freedom Incorporated. Anticommunism and Philippine Independence in the Age of Decolonization. [The United States in the World.] Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2020. ix, 267 pp. Ill. $49.95. (E-book: $24.99.)

In this broad historical account, Professor Woods demonstrates how, in the mid-twentieth-century Philippines, US policymakers and Filipino elites promoted the islands as a model colony. Despite this propaganda, radical movements in the Philippines highlighted US hegemony over the Philippines, threatening American efforts to separate the US from sordid histories of imperialism and the colonial racial order. By linking political struggles over local resources, including the Hukbalahap Rebellion in central Luzon, to a war against communism, American and Filipino anti-communists legitimized the use of violence as a means to capture and contain alternative forms of political, economic and social organization.

Belgium

Inequality and the City in the Low Countries (1200–2020). Ed. by Blondé, Bruno (et al.) [SEUH. Studies in European Urban History (1100–1800), Vol. 50.] Brepols, Turnhout 2020. 409 pp. Ill. Maps. € 99.00. (Open Access.)

Across the globe, at least half the world population lives in urban agglomerations, and urbanization continues to expand. This book engages with the complex interplay between urbanization and inequality by concentrating on the Low Countries, one of the oldest and most urbanized societies of Europe and questioning whether the historic poly-nuclear and decentralized urban system of the Low Countries contributed to specific outcomes in social inequality. Included are twenty-three essays and case studies on cultural inequalities, the relationship between social and consumption inequality, the politics of (in)equality, and the impact of shocks and crises, as well as the complex social relationships across the urban network and between town and countryside.

Eastern Europe

Labor in State-Socialist Europe, 1945–1989. Contributions to a History of Work. Ed. by Marsha Siefert. [Work and Labor. Transdisciplinary Studies for the 21st Century, Vol. 1.] Central European University Press, Budapest [etc.] 2020. xv, 466 pp. $105.00; € 90.00; £85.00.

Labour regimes under communism in East-Central Europe were complex, shifting, and ambiguous. This collection of sixteen essays offers new conceptual and empirical ways to understand their history from the end of World War II to 1989. The authors reconsider the history of state socialism by re-examining the policies and problems of communist regimes and recovering the voices of the workers who built them while exploring the often contentious relationship between politics and labour policy, dealing with diverse topics, including worker safety and risks, labour rights and protests, working women's politics and professions, migrant workers and social welfare, attempts to control worker behaviour and stem unemployment, and cases of incomplete, compromised, or even abandoned processes of proletarianization.

Outside the “Comfort Zone”. Performances and Discourses of Privacy in Late Socialist Europe. Ed. by Tatiana Klepikova and Lukas Raabe. [Rethinking the Cold War, Vol. 5.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Boston 2020. vii, 388 pp. € 86.95. (E-book; € 86.95.)

This volume offers explorations of diversified performances and discourses of privacy by various actors embedded in the culturally, economically, and politically specific constructions of late socialism in individual states of the Warsaw Pact. While the experience of socialism varied across the Bloc, some reactions to socialism and some adverse responses by socialist regimes to these reactions appeared in all states. The thirteen contributions to this volume document paradigms of the construction and transformation of the private spheres that overcame the national borders of individual states and left an imprint across the Eastern Bloc, thereby contributing to rethinking Cold War rhetoric in regard to these states.

France

Margot, Beal. Des champs aux cuisines. Histoires de la domesticité en Rhône et Loire, 1848–1940. [Sociétés, espaces, temps.] ENS Éditions, Lyon 2019. 235 pp. € 28.00. (Open Access.)

This book on paid domestic service in mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century France focuses on the Rhône and Loire region. Based on a PhD thesis, the author examines, through a feminist lens, how the state and the employer class alike devised the “domestic worker” category as a preferred means of exploiting women and the working classes and discusses the wages and working and living conditions of and the degree of freedom available to domestic workers, in comparison with other manual workers and farmers. Using legal, administrative, and private sources, Dr Beal looks beyond the obedient and helpless female domestic worker by describing the lives of domestic workers and analysing the exploitation to which they were subjected.

Boulouque, Sylvain. Julien Le Pen. Un lutteur syndicaliste et libertaire. Atelier de Création Libertaire, Lyon 2020. 371 pp. € 18.00.

This collection of texts, congress speeches, and press articles illustrates the history of an important part of the libertarian movement. Julien Le Pen (1878–1945) belonged to a generation that became militant around World War I. Joining the union split from the General Confederation of Labour in 1921 and founding the CGT-Unitaire the following year, he pursued a minority route in the libertarian movement. As the most representative of his trade unionist group, Le Pen conveyed a message at the crossroads of two contradictory political social cultures: reformists among revolutionaries and revolutionaries among reformists, highlighting the diversity of trade union cultures.

Michel, Louise. Mémoires 1886. Ed. établie, présentée et annotée par Claude Rétat. [Collection folio histoire, no. 4.] Gallimard, Paris 2021. 576 pp. € 9.70. (E-book: € 9.49.)

Louise Michel (1830–1905), a heroine of the Paris Commune (1871), wrote her memoirs in 1886. We discover her to be a funny teenager, feminist teacher, licensed revolutionary deported to New Caledonia, anarchist fighter, and passionate about art and science. This is the first scholarly edition of the memoirs, presented by Claude Rétat. In addition to the text, this edition offers an impression of the early works of Louise Michel, the text of the interrogations in 1871, a selection of unpublished letters and poems, as well as of articles published in Révolution sociale (1881) and in newspapers now difficult to access, the press kit of Mémoires in 1886 and some tributes paid to Louise Michel.

Germany

Bonnell, Andrew. Red Banners, Books and Beer Mugs. The Mental World of German Social Democrats, 1863–1914. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 220.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020. viii, 225 pp. € 135.00; $163.00. (E-book: € 135.00; $163.00.)

The German Social Democratic Party was the world's first million-strong political party and was the driving force pushing for the democratization of Imperial Germany before World War I. In this book, the themes around which the party organized its mainly working-class membership are examined and the experiences and outlook of rank-and-file party members as well as the party's press and publications analysed. Key themes include: the Lassalle cult and leadership, nationalism, and internationalism, attitudes to work, the politics of subsistence, the effects of military service, reading and diffusion of Marx's ideas, cultural organizations and socialism and republicanism under the Imperial German state. Before 1914, the party succeeded in simultaneously addressing workers’ everyday concerns and offering the prospect of a better future.

Hellwege, Philip. From Guild Welfare to Bismarck Care. Professional Guilds and the Origins of Modern Social Security Law in Germany. [Comparative Studies in the History of Insurance Law/ Studien zur vergleichenden Geschichte des Versicherungsrechts, Vol. 8.] Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2020. 348 pp. € 109.90. (E-book: € 98.90.)

German literature on the history of insurance stresses the importance of professional guilds in shaping insurance and insurance law. Similarly, scholars researching the genesis of Germany's social security argue that guilds served as predecessors of social security. In this analysis of the support offered by professional guilds from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, Professor Hellwege concludes that modern literature is generally correct in the premise that German social security is rooted in guild welfare. Medieval guild support, however, underwent phases of transformation in the early modern period and in the nineteenth century before it was apt as a model for Bismarck's social security legislation.

Langelüddecke, Ines. Alter Adel – Neues Land? Die Erben der Gutsbesitzer und ihre umstrittene Rückkehr ins postsozialistische Brandenburg. Wallstein, Göttingen 2020. 379 pp. € 41.10.

In the Brandenburg manor villages, aristocratic families who returned from the West after 1990 had to find a modus vivendi with the socialist village population from whom they had been separated for over forty years since the expropriation in 1945. In Gutsdorf, specific problems and dynamics that had been occurring all over eastern Germany became visible as if held under a magnifying glass. Ines Langelüddecke examines the difficulties after the return of the nobles, redefining the positions and dealing with social changes for both the nobles and the villagers. In addition, the author contributes to understanding the conflict situation of the present, with differences and contradictions between East and West persisting more than thirty years after 1989/1990.

Safley, Thomas Max. Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. The Business, Bankruptcy and Resilience of the Höchstetters of Augsburg. [Routledge Explorations in Economic History.] Routledge, Abingdon [etc.] 2020. xii, 287 pp. Maps. £96.00. (E-book: £29.59.)

This study follows the fortunes of the Höchstetter family, merchant–manufacturers and financiers of Augsburg, Germany, in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries and sheds light on the economic and social history of failure and resilience in early modern Europe. Carefully tracing the chronology of the family's rise, fall, and transformation, Professor Safley moves from the micro to the macro-level, making comparisons with other contemporary mercantile families to reach conclusions and suggest insights into issues such as social mobility, capitalist organization, business techniques, market practices, and economic institutions. The result is a microhistory that offers macro-conclusions about the lived experience of early capitalism and capitalistic practices.

Selgert, Felix. Macht und Kontrolle im Unternehmen. Die politische Ökonomie des Aktionärsschutzes im Deutschen Reich, 1870–1945. [Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft, Bd. 240.] Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2020. 352 pp. € 65.00.

Between 1870 and 1937, the corporate control system in the German Empire changed fundamentally. While the authorities emphasized protection of shareholders and minority shareholders, shareholders forfeited their co-decision rights in the 1920s and were compensated with stricter disclosure regulations. At the same time, the stock corporation transitioned from a business run by the owner to a large, management-run firm. Examining the political and social negotiation process that led to these results, Dr Selgert demonstrates that the outcome of the negotiations between political decision-makers was influenced by conditions such as financial and economic crises, as well as by coalitions of advocates.

Great Britain

Griffin, Emma. Bread Winner. An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy. Yale University Press, New Haven (CT) [etc.] 2020. xi, 389 pp. Ill. £20.00.

Nineteenth-century Britain experienced remarkable economic growth and a rise in real wages. But not everyone shared in the nation's wealth. Unable to earn sufficient income themselves, working-class women were reliant on the “breadwinner wage” of their husbands. When income failed or was denied or squandered by errant men, families could be plunged into desperate poverty from which there was no escape. Professor Griffin unlocks the homes of Victorian England to examine the lives and finances of the people who lived there. Drawing on over 600 working-class autobiographies, including more than 200 written by women, this book tells the story of how ordinary families made ends meet in the Victorian era.

Hindmarch-Watson, Katie. Serving a Wired World. London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital. University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2020. xi, 270 pp. Ill. $29.95; £25.00. (E-book: $29.95; £25.00.)

In the public imagination, Silicon Valley embodies the vanguard of social networks and globally interconnected lives. This situation mirrors an earlier generation of labourers in the London workforce that launched and shaped the massive telecommunications systems at the turn of the twentieth century. As Professor Hindmarch-Watson shows, the administrators and engineers who crafted these telecommunications systems formed networks according to conventional gender perceptions and social hierarchies, modelling the networks between master and servant. Despite attempts to render telegraphists and telephone operators invisible, these workers were aware of their crucial role in modern life, and they posed creative challenges to their marginalized status, from organizing labour strikes to participating in deviant sexual exchanges.

Kenway, Emily. The Truth about Modern Slavery. Pluto Press, London 2021. ix, 215 pp. £75.00. (Paper: £14.99; E-book: £7.99.)

“Modern slavery” is a broad concept that refers to situations of exploitation in which a person cannot refuse or leave an exploitative situation. Emily Kenway disagrees partly with this definition and reveals how, in her opinion, modern slavery has been created as a political tool by those in power, as the British Conservative Party called it one of the great human rights issues of our time while ignoring the exploitation of those at the bottom of the economic pile. She argues that anti-slavery action acts as a moral cloak, hiding the harms the hostile environment inflicts on migrants and legitimizing exploitation of the poorest workers by major brands.

Trafford, James. Empire at Home. Internal Colonies and the End of Britain. Pluto Press, London 2021. xiv, 204 pp. £75.00. (Paper, E-book: £19.99.)

Modern Britain has been forged through the redeployment of structures that facilitated and legitimized slavery, exploitation, and extermination. This “empire at home” is inseparable from the strategies of neocolonial extraction and oppression of subjects abroad. In this book, Dr Trafford develops the notion of internal colonies, arguing that methods and structures used in colonial rule are re-deployed internally in contemporary Britain to recreate and solidify imperial power relations. Based on examples including housing segregation, targeted surveillance, and counter-insurgency techniques used in the fight against terrorism, he reveals Britain's internal colonialism to be a reactive mechanism to retain British sovereignty.

Yerby, George. The Economic Causes of the English Civil War. Freedom of Trade and the English Revolution. [Routledge Research in Early Modern History.] Routledge, New York [etc.] 2020. ix, 420 pp. Ill. £96.00. (E-book: £29.59.)

This book presents the economic basis of revolutionary change in sixteenth- and early-seventeenth century England, tracing a transformation in the agrarian economy and the decisive scale on which this took place to show how the new forms of occupation and practice on the land related to changes in commercial activity. An integrated, self-regulating national market generated new imperatives, particularly the demand for freedom of trade. This took political force, and new associations emerged, such as a merchant-gentry alliance, seeking to establish freedom of trade and representative control of public finance through parliament. These ambitions led to the first revolutionary measures of the Long Parliament in early 1641, establishing automatic parliaments and the normative force of freedom of trade.

Italy

Carnevale, Francesco. L'epopea dell'amianto. Una mortale pandemia di lunga durata. [Biblioteca di medicina & storia, 19.] Edizioni Polistampa, Florence 2020. 472 pp. Ill. € 28.00.

Parallel to the social advantages and economic interests of asbestos for some groups was the damage to health, long undervalued and concealed. Using testimonies from workers and their families, doctors and epidemiologists, sociologists and psychologists, writers, artists, and historians, Professor Carnevale focuses on the various phases of the asbestos epic, lasting more than a century up to the current one, even after the ban. Attempts by industry, politicians, institutions, technicians, mass social movements, and, in particular, by trade unions and workers to adequately manage the problem have proved ineffective.

Di Qual, Anna. Eric J. Hobsbawm tra marxismo brittannico e comunismo italiano. [Studi di storia, 14.] Edizioni Ca'Foscari, Venice 2020. 337 pp. Ill. Open Access.

Developing the biographical genre though a “translocal micro-history” approach, in this book Dr Di Qual aims to study the figure of Eric J. Hobsbawm by focusing on his elective affinity with Italy and examines how the English historian encountered this country and his repeated introductions from the 1950s until the new millennium. First, the author analyses the relationships networks Hobsbawm formed in Italy and with Italians worldwide; second, she considers the results that these interactions brought about in terms of scholarly output and political reflection while trying at the same time to capture the transformations that his political identity underwent in contact with the Italian Communist Party.

The Netherlands

Martens, Piet. Visserij in Noord-Brabant. Uitgeverij Verloren [etc.], Hilversum [etc.] 2020. 223 pp. Ill. Maps. € 25.00.

Intensive and large-scale professional fishing has taken place for centuries in the waters marking the west and north borders of the province of North Brabant. Each chapter captures a fishing technique combined with the type of fish caught. The fishermen from Moerdijk on Hollands Diep and Haringvliet, for example, invented the technique of “anchor pitting”, which required stable heavy ships to catch eel. This method was exported upstream. Dr Martens offers an overview of the history of professional fishing in North Brabant and demonstrates that although most fishermen were poor, the business has been of great importance in places such as Bergen op Zoom, Moerdijk, Geertruidenberg, and Woudrichem.

Schmidt, Ariadne. Prosecuting Women. A Comparative Perspective on Crime and Gender before the Dutch Criminal Courts, c.1600–1810. [Crime and City in History, Vol. 4.] Brill, Leiden 2020. 285 pp. Ill. € 105.00; $126.00. (E-book: € 105.00; $126.00.)

In the early modern period, women figured prominently in crime. In this book, Professor Schmidt analyses the relation between female crime and the urban context by comparing prosecution patterns in various Dutch cities. Discussing issues such as urbanization and economy, administration of justice, and the typology of prosecuted crimes, the life cycle and demographic context of early modern women in the Republic and examining the personal circumstances of criminal women, showing how women's illegal activities were linked to the socio-economic context of the locality and varied over time, the author analyses the trial records of port cities, industrial cities, and peripheral towns while highlighting the differences between them. See also Jonas Roelens's review in this volume pp. 322–324.

Wester, Rudi. Bestaat er een raarder leven dan het mijne? Jef Last 1898–1972. Prometheus, Amsterdam 2021. 565 pp. Ill. € 34.99.

Novelist, poet, essayist, sinologist, painter, journalist, translator, provo, speaker: Jef Last (1898–1972) defies classification. He roamed the globe, fought in the Spanish Civil War, and was a courageous member of the resistance. All his life he fought for freedom and justice, standing up for the underdog in society. In this biography, drawn from his unpublished memoirs, Rudi Wester provides a glimpse of his turbulent life. The book is divided into three parts: “De Tijd der Zekerheden” [Time of Certainties] is about his younger years; “De Tijd der Illusies” [Time of Illusions] describes his work and political actions; and “De Tijd der Onzekerheden” [Time of Uncertainties] demonstrates his struggle to retain his citizenship of the Netherlands and examines his literary work.

Poland

Lingelbach, Jochen. On the Edges of Whiteness. Polish Refugees in British Colonial Africa during and after the Second World War. Berghahn Books, New York, 2020. xii, 295 pp. Ill. Maps. $135.00; £99.00. (E-book: $34.95.)

From 1942 to 1950, nearly 20,000 Poles found refuge from war-torn Europe in camps within Britain's African colonies, including Uganda, Tanganyika, Kenya, and Northern and Southern Rhodesia. The presence of white refugees contradicted the conventional image of societies, where whites ruled and profited, while Africans were exploited. Dr Lingelbach tells their story, tracing the manifold complex relationships that developed among refugees, their British administrators, and their African neighbours. Intervening in key historical debates across academic disciplines, such as the exile, immigrant and colonial debate, this book also gives an accessible and memorable account of survival and dramatic cultural dislocation against the backdrop of global conflict.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Rüthers, Monica. Unter dem Roten Stern geboren. Sowjetische Kinder im Bild. Böhlau, Köln [etc.] 2021. 278 pp. Ill. € 45.00. (E-book: € 37.99.)

Children and childhood figured prominently in Soviet collective thought. Pictures of children acted as social cement, representing cohesion of the empire, mobilizing people to build a new society, motivating them to sacrifice and showing utopian promises. Soviet pictorial formulas drew on the cultural repertoire of European art history and Christian iconography. The representations and metaphors of Soviet childhood encompassed a broad spectrum, from the promise of collective prosperity to that of individual happiness. Professor Rüthers illustrates the nostalgic practices of remembering “Soviet childhood”, as well as their political exploitation, demonstrating the lasting effect of this symbolic politics, which shaped strong normative ideas.

Suny, Ronald Grigor. Red Flag Wounded. Stalinism and the Fate of the Soviet Experiment. Verso, London [etc.] 2020. 266 pp. £70.00. (Paper, E-book: £25.00.)

Tracking the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, this book brings together eight essays covering the controversies and debates over the fraught history of the Soviet Union from the revolution to its disintegration. Those monumental years were marked not only by violence, mass killings, and the brutal overturning of a peasant society, but also by modernization and industrialization, the victory over fascism, and the slow recovery of society after the nightmare of Stalinism. Whether analysing biographies of Stalin or the trials and errors of Gorbachev, the essays by Professor Suny bring novel insights to a history that has often been misunderstood, countering Cold War stereotypes and assumptions.

Spain

Iberian Empires and the Roots of Globalization. Ed. by Ivonne del Valle, Anna More, and Rachel Sarah O'Toole. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville (TN) 2020. x, 356 pp. Ill. $69.95. (Paper: $34.95).

From research sites throughout the early modern Spanish and Portuguese territories and from distinct disciplinary approaches, the eleven essays collected in this volume investigate the economic mechanisms, administrative hierarchies, and art forms that linked the early modern Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe, demonstrating that early globalization was structured through diverse networks and their mutual and conflictive interactions within overarching imperial projects. The authors explore how specific products, texts, and people bridged ideas and institutions to produce multiple centres within Iberian imperial geographies, outlining the Iberian imperial models that provided templates for future global designs and simultaneously detail the negotiated and conflictive forms of local interactions that characterized that early globalization. See also Alejandro García Montón's review in this volume, pp. 325–327.

Rappe, David. Espoirs déçus. Engagements antifranquistes et libertaires durant la «transition démocratique» espagnole. Atelier de Création Libertaire, Lyon 2020. 157 pp. Ill. € 12.00.

This study is structured around the militant “Spanish” activist Bernard Pensiot (1948–2018). In the 1970s, Pensiot led the movement for prisoners of Spain pursuing general amnesty (COPEL) and trying to reconstruct the CNT (National Confederation of Labour) through a combination of voluntarism and memory re-emergence. Rappe offers an enlightening vision of this restless fringe of a CNT, recycling practices from 1968, correlated with a certain mood for spectacle and armed struggle. From solidarity with anti-Franco Spain in 1970–1975, the movement tried to reinvent itself during the democratic transition of Spain, ending in disillusionment by the failure to restore anarchist beliefs.

Simpson, James and Carmona, Juan. Why Democracy Failed. The Agrarian Origins of the Spanish Civil War. [Cambridge Studies in Economic History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xviii, 299 pp. Maps. £69.99. (Paper: £22.99; E-book: $24.00.)

In this new history of the origins of the Spanish Civil War, professors Simpson and Carmona address the hotly-debated issue of why Spain's democratic Second Republic failed. They explore the interconnections between economic growth, state capacity, rural social mobility, and the creation of mass competitive political parties. Specifically they examine how these limited the effectiveness of the new republican governments, especially their attempts to tackle economic and social problems within the agricultural sector, demonstrating how political change during the Republic had a major economic impact on the different groups in village society, and how individuals with moderate political views became disillusioned with the Second Republic and were driven towards the political extremes.