General Issues

HISTORY

Gerrits, André W. M. The Myth of Jewish Communism. A Historical Interpretation. [Gods, Humans and Religions, No. 16.] Peter Lang, Bruxelles [etc.] 2009. 220 pp. € 33.90.

This book offers a historical analysis of the identification of Jews with communism, an extremely sensitive issue, as the myth of “Jewish communism” has turned traditional anti-Jewish sentiments into virulent anti-Semitic campaigns. Dr Gerrits traces the origins of the myth as well as the reasons why Jews were disproportionately present in the revolutionary movement. He explores both the crucial role the myth has played in eastern European Stalinist and post-Stalinist politics and the controversies that Jewish participation in the communist movement has generated among Jewish observers, communists, and historians alike. See also Mario Kessler’s review in this volume, pp. 521–524.

Kiple, Kenneth F. A Movable Feast. Ten Millennia of Food Globalization. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2007. xvi, 368 pp. £15.99; $27.00.

This study aims to provide a historical overview of the globalization of food from the period of the hunter-gatherers some 10,000 years ago to the present. Based largely on the recently published, multi-volume The Cambridge World History of Food (2000) which he edited, Professor Kiple covers the establishment of agriculture, domestication of animals, and diffusion of farming cultures; gives central attention to the “Columbian exchange” from 1500 onward that led to revolutionary global demographic change; and concludes with the impact of industrialization of food production, processing, and distribution.

Manfredonia, Gaetano. Anarchisme et changement social. Insurrectionnalisme, syndicalisme, éducationnisme-réalisateur. Atelier de Création Libertaire, Lyon 2007. 347 pp. € 20.00.

Dr Manfredonia, who has published on anarchist songs in France and on the history of anarchism in Europe (see IRSH, 44 (1999), p. 523; and 48 (2003), pp. 317f.), aims to offer in this study a revision of the history of anarchism in the nineteenth century. He departs from a new typology of anarchism as a form of social reformism and revolutionary ideology not focused on its history of ideas or its organizational forms and development but defined by the militant practice of its adherents. He emphasizes the plurality within anarchism, distinguishing three main types: insurrectionist, syndicalist, and “educationalist-realizationist”.

Many Middle Passages. Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World. Ed. by Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus, [and] Marcus Rediker. [The California World History Library, vol. 5.] University of California Press, Berkeley [etc.] 2007. x, 263 pp. £35.00.

Based on concepts developed in Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s seminal The Many-Headed Hydra (2000) (see IRSH, 46 (2001), p. 491), the eleven contributions to this volume aim to reveal the relevance of the concept of the middle passage – originally denoting the voyage of slave ships from Africa to the Americas – to a range of coerced labour migrations from the eighteenth to the twentieth century in and between various parts of the world that figure within a global process of capitalist development. Topics covered include: the slave trade in the Indian Ocean and in the Sulu Archipelago; bonded soldiers on VOC ships; convict passages to Australia; Chinese coolies; and the Melanesian labour trade.

Ross, Robert. Clothing. A Global History. Or, the Imperialists’ New Clothes. Polity Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2008. 221 pp. Ill. £15.99.

Covering the period from the sixteenth century to the present, Professor Ross investigates in this study the globalization of dress and dressing style by exploring how clothing was produced, distributed, used, exchanged, and given social and cultural meaning, and how over the long term Western sartorial styles have become dominant in the process. He aims to show how the adoption, adaptation, or rejection of European-style dress has always been a political act, in which class, gender, and regional differences are clearly discernible. See also Beverly Lemire’s review in this volume, pp. 513–515.

Shlapentokh, Dmitry. The Proto-Totalitarian State. Punishment and Control in Absolutist Regimes. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick [etc.] 2007. 167 pp. € 26.56.

Challenging standard analyses of totalitarian rule as deriving from specific ideologies, this study argues that (semi-)totalitarian regimes have resulted largely from social conditions, in particular a state of increasing “asocial disorder” leading to a societal meltdown. Professor Shlapentokh, who in 1997 published a study about the influence of the French Revolution on Russian anti-democratic views (see IRSH, 44 (1999), pp. 535f.), believes that in France this process is rooted between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the social disorder in the aftermath of the Hundred Years War gave rise to a brutal absolutist state that bore a striking resemblance to totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union and China.

Seascapes. Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges. Ed. by Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Kären Wigen. [Perspectives on the Global Past.] University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, Hawaii 2007. x, 261 pp. $52.00.

The fourteen essays in this volume, based on papers presented at a conference on seascapes, littoral cultures, and trans-oceanic exchanges, organized in February 2003 at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, centre on historical issues arising from maritime regions around the world. The first group of contributions addresses the material, cultural, and intellectual constructs that inform these maritime historical experiences; the second set of essays focuses on the political and military control over maritime regions; the third set covers social history aspects, such as labour organization; and the final section deals with piracy and efforts to control this phenomenon in various parts of the globe.

Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery. A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2007. 273 pp. £19.95; $29.95; € 25.50.

This study of the Atlantic slave trade focuses on the perspective of the Africans who were captured and transported across the Atlantic by British slave traders from the Gold Coast between 1675 and 1725. Drawing on source material from the Royal African Company and elsewhere, Professor Smallwood aims to reveal how these captives experienced the process of enslavement in the ports and fortresses on the Gold Coast, on board the slave ships, and in the slave markets and plantations across the Atlantic, describing a process of commodification of human beings that alienated them from their social and cultural identity.

Stutje, Jan Willem. Ernest Mandel. Rebel tussen droom en daad 1923–1995. Houtekiet, Amsab ISG, Antwerpen [etc.] 2007. 475 pp. € 32.50.

This is the first comprehensive biography of the Belgian revolutionary Marxist theorist and economist, Ernest Mandel (1923–1995), author of such seminal works as Der Spätkapitalismus (1972). Dr Stutje, who previously wrote a biography of the Dutch communist leader, Paul de Groot (see IRSH, 46 (2001), p. 516), explores in this chronologically organized biography the relation of Mandel’s personal life to his political ideas and activities as a radical militant in the Trotskyist Fourth International, against the background of the development of mid- and late twentieth-century capitalism, Mandel’s popularity in 1968, and the demise of Soviet communism and rise of neo-liberalism in the 1990s.

Wiarda, Howard J. The Dutch Diaspora. Growing up Dutch in New Worlds and the Old. The Netherlands and Its Settlements in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Lexington Books, Lanham [etc.] 2007. xi, 237 pp. £46.00.

In this history of Dutch colonialism and the varied development of its colonies and diaspora in the world, Professor Wiarda (of Dutch descent) investigates the impact of the Dutch Calvinist tradition on the society and politics of the countries and regions that once were colonized by the Dutch. The author adopts as the foundation for his analysis the thesis of the historian Louis Hartz, who argued that colonies of the European powers tended to reflect the nature of the mother countries at the time of colonization and, regarding their historical development, remained locked in institutions and cultures from the founding period.

Women’s Labor in the Global Economy. Speaking in Multiple Voices. Ed. by Sharon Harley. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey [etc.] 2007. ix, 265 pp. £15.38.

The twelve essays in this volume, written by a multi-disciplinary team of women scholars of colour, examine how women of colour in the United States and in developing countries in the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia have responded and are responding to the economic, political and social effects of globalization. The contributors all take as common perspective that for this group of working women, globalization historically has been a reality to deal with long before the recent wave of economic globalization.

Zwangsarbeit im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bewältigung und vergleichende Aspekte. Hrsg. von Hans-Christoph Seidel und Klaus Tenfelde. [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen. Schriftenreihe C: Arbeitseinsatz und Zwangsarbeit im Bergbau, Band 5.] Klartext Verlag, Essen 2007. 253 pp. € 29.90.

In the aftermath of a large research project on forced labour in the German mining industry (see IRSH, 53 (2008), p. 174), the ten essays in this volume address two broader issues surrounding the place of forced labour in the twentieth-century history of Europe: coming to terms and remembrance. Included are essays on, for example, the issue of compensation in relation to truth finding; Jewish displaced persons in postwar Germany; and comparisons of forced-labour regimes in the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, as well as in Germany and Japan.

Comparative history

Global Labour History. A State of the Art. Ed. by Jan Lucassen. [International and Comparative Social History, vol. 9.] Peter Lang, Bern [etc.] 2006. Maps. 790 pp. € 87.70.

The eighteen essays in this volume, based in part on a conference organized in 2000 in Amsterdam by the International Institute of Social History, assess the globalization of the field of labour history in recent decades. After two general theoretical and historiographical essays, by Marcel van der Linden and the editor, ten essays offer overviews of recent trends in the labour historiography of western and eastern Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, south Asia, China, Japan, and Australasia. Six case studies of a variety of occupations and economic sectors examine the worldwide and comparative aspect of global labour history.

Greenlees, Janet. Female Labour Power. Women Workers’ Influence on Business Practices in the British and American Cotton Industries, 1780–1860. Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2007. xx, 244 pp. £55.00.

Comparing the first two countries with mechanized cotton manufacturing and with major employment of women outside the domestic environment, this study aims to explain and interpret the role of women in this industrial process of both Great Britain and the United States. Dr Greenlees argues that, lacking set factory management styles, gender divisions of labour, patterns for organizing workers, wage rates, working hours, and basic working conditions, the workers, both male and female, must have deeply influenced patterns of industrial development during the transition from domestic manufacturing to the factory production of thread and cloth.

Schröder, Joachim. Internationalismus nach dem Krieg. Die Beziehungen zwischen deutschen und französischen Kommunisten 1918–1923. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2007. 455 pp. € 32.00.

Focusing on relations between French and German leftist socialists and communists from the end of World War I until 1923 (the year of the occupation of the Ruhr and the subsequent thaw in Franco-German relations), this study examines the new form of socialist internationalism that emerged and developed in the Comintern. Dr Schröder looks at the different political positions of the French and German communists, and examines the various international contacts and meetings in this context to show how the different national traditions and ideological characteristics, as well as wartime experiences, determined the varied positions of the protagonists involved.

Strikes around the world, 1968–2005. Case-studies of 15 countries. Ed. by Sjaak van der Velden, Heiner Dribbusch, Dave Lyddon [a.o.]. Aksant, Amsterdam 2007. 384 pp. € 39.90.

Based on a workshop organized in Amsterdam by the International Institute of Social History, the seventeen contributions to this volume compare strike activity in the period 1968–2005 in fifteen countries around the world: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The editors conclude that, after the resurgence of class conflict in the late 1960s and a related rise in strike activity, the past decades show both a relocation and a “tertiarization” and feminization of strikes, reflecting the changing social and geographical patterns in employment.

Sugarlandia Revisited. Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800–1940. Ed. by Ulbe Bosma, Juan Giusti-Cordero, and G. Roger Knight. [International Studies in Social History, vol. 9.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2007. 233 pp. € 37.50.

This collection of eight contributions on the relation of sugar and colonialism in the Caribbean and south-east Asia in the post-1800 colonial era aims to question several assumptions about this relationship, in particular with regard to its periodization, the relation between field and factory and the comparative position of these regions in the global sugar economy. Included are essays that examine and compare sugar plantations and manufacturing and their related political economy, labour regimes and cultures on Java, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.

Contemporary issues

Xiang Biao. Global “Body Shopping”. An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry. [Information Series.] Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2007. xxii, 181 pp. Ill. £12.95.

Based on ethnographical case studies in Hyderabad, India and Sydney, Australia in 2000–2001, this study explores how the global labour recruitment and management system works in the globalized IT industry, and how it sustains global inequalities and divisions. Dr Xiang Baio examines the unique Indian practice where consultancies (body shops) recruit IT workers (bodies) for placement as project-based labour anywhere in the world, using the massive labour pool of trained workers from Andhra Pradesh. The author aims to show how the complex interplay of three processes of ethnicization, individualization, and transnationalization result in intensified inequalities inside the industry and inside India.

Continents and Countries

Zambia

Larmer, Miles. Mineworkers in Zambia. Labour and Political Change in Post-Colonial Africa. [International Library of African Studies, 18.] Tauris Academic Studies, London [etc.] 2007. ix, 270 pp. £57.50.

This study of Zambia’s copper mineworkers and miners’ unionism in the postcolonial period ties in with a longstanding and rich tradition in social science research into African industrialization and urbanization based on the development of the Zambian Copperbelt. Based on extensive archival research and a great many interviews, Dr Larmer addresses what he sees as an apparent contradiction between the common depiction of the miners as conservative and “apolitical” and the active participation by mineworkers and their union in the movement for multi-party democracy in the 1970s and 1980s. See also Jan-Bart Gewald’s review in this volume, pp. 524–527.

America

Abraham, Sara. Labour and the Multiracial Project in the Caribbean. Its History and Its Promise. [Caribbean Studies.] Lexington Books, Lanham [etc.] 2007. xv, 242 pp. £49.00.

In this study, Abraham analyses the position and the problems associated with multi-racial policies in Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago. The most important contrast addressed is the one between African and Asian population groups. The abolition of slavery and the immigration of Indian indentured labour gave rise to the ethnic diversity. The study covers four periods where multi-racialism was important: the 1930s, the 1950s, 1960–1970 and the 1980s. The multi-racial struggle for independence derived strong support from the labour movement. The post-colonial election process had a deeply divisive impact, although multi-racialism is nonetheless a firmly embedded social force. Chapter 6 features three stories from activists, including that of Mrs Doolin Nankisoor, General Secretary of the Trinidad Island Cane Farmers’ Association in the 1970s.

Jones, Cecily. Engendering whiteness. White women and colonialism in Barbados and North Carolina, 1627–1865. [Studies in Imperialism.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2007. xi, 237 pp. £55.00.

Comparing colonial societies in Barbados and North Carolina in the era of slavery, this study explores the multiple white female experiences and identities in the complex interweaving of race, gender, social class, and sexuality. Professor Jones argues that white women were integral to the construction and reproduction of whiteness within these plantation societies, in particular as biological reproducers of whiteness. Consequently, there were subjected to patriarchal measures to limit and control their social and sexual freedoms.

Brazil

Political Economy of Brazil. Recent Economic Performance. Ed. by Philip Arestis and Alfredo Saad-Filho. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2007. xi, 224 pp. € 60.00.

These twelve contributions analyse the social-economic achievements of President Lula in his first term of office (2003–2006). The first contribution, which is by the editors of the collection, is primarily a political analysis of the rise and transformation of the PT from a non-communist leftist party into an “ethical”, centrist one. All contributions stress how the neo-liberal policy was continued under Lula. In chapter 5 the author examines why Lula did not keep his campaign promises. Surprisingly, the blame falls on politician Lula, rather than on the social-economic foundations. Topics of subsequent contributions include e.g. inflation targeting, fiscal policy and interest rates.

Chile

Frazier, Lessie Jo. Salt in the Sand. Memory, Violence, and the Nation-State in Chile, 1890 to the Present. [Politics, History, and Culture.] Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2007. xvii, 388 pp. £60.00. (Paper: £14.99.)

This study combines history and ethnography to examine the crucial role of contending memories and histories of state violence in the formation of the Chilean nation-state. Focusing on the northern region of Tarapacá as a site of military glory during the period of national conquest, violently repressed labour strikes and massacres in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and state detention and violence during the twentieth century, Professor Frazier aims to show how various actors used the politics of memory and oblivion to serve their own political objectives.

El Salvador

Lindo-Fuentes, Héctor, Erik Ching, and Rafael A. Lara-Martínez. Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador. The Insurrection of 1932, Roque Dalton, and the Politics of Historical Memory. [Diálogos.] University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 2007. xviii, 411 pp. Ill. $29.95.

In January 1932 a relatively minor uprising in western El Salvador was violently repressed, claiming between 10,000 and 30,000 lives. Miguel Mármol, co-founder of the Salvadoran CP survived execution in the process. In the 1960s he told his story to Roque Dalton. Miguel Mármol became the defining text on El Salvador’s modern history. The right justified the repression of the uprising by blaming the communists, who claimed to be at the vanguard of the incident. This study examines the construction of this communist causality. The authors gained access to the personal papers of Dalton and to Comintern documents released after 1990.

Haiti

Toussaint L’Ouverture. The Haitian Revolution. Intr. by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ed. by Nick Nesbitt. Verso, London [etc.] 2008. xlv, 123 pp. £7.99.

This book comprises English translations of twenty-six texts from and about the Haitian revolution. Most are letters and texts by Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian revolution. The memoires of L’Ouverture, which he wrote during his imprisonment by the French, appear in translation as well. Also included are three texts by Napoleon Bonaparte, who reintroduced slavery in the French colonies in May 1802. The collection is preceded by an introduction by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest and former president of Haiti.

Mexico

Healy, Teresa. Gendered Struggles against Globalisation in Mexico. [Gender in a Global/Local World.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2008. x, 184 pp. £55.00.

The constitution of post-revolutionary Mexico had an ambiguous effect on labour relations. Workers had rights and the trade union federation (CTM) considerable strength, although it operated within an interventionist corporatist state. Patriarchal relations permeated society, and the caudillismo model prevailed within the trade unions as well. In three successive case studies about conflicts within the automotive industry (Nissan, Ford, and Volkswagen), the author reveals how globalization undermined the “worker–father” position. The CTM locked horns with the union opposition and lost power. Workplaces increasingly employed women, and men had no choice but to accept these more flexible and poorly paid jobs as well.

Padilla, Tanalís. Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata. The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax-Priísta, 1940-1962. Duke University Press, Durham [etc]. 2008. x, 285 pp. Ill. £55.00. (Paper: £12.99.)

This study of agrarian mobilization in the period 1940–1968 in the Mexican state of Morelos, the homeland of Emiliano Zapata, and the life of agrarian leader Rubén Jaramillo (1900–1962) aims to show that the mid-twentieth-century history of Mexico included far more political instability, popular discontent, and state repression than is often assumed. Professor Padilla argues that the Jaramillistas, the movement of the rural poor, used and transformed the legacy of Zapatismo, but were ultimately pushed into armed struggle by government repression. See also Norman Caulfield’s review in this volume, pp. 527–529.

Venezuela

Revolution als Prozess. Selbstorganisierung und Partizipation in Venezuela. Hrsg. von Andrej Holm und Gruppe MovimentoR. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2007. 169 pp. € 10.80.

Supported by the German trade-union organization Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, the research group MovimentoR examined in the period April 2005–April 2007 the strategies employed by Venezuelan social movements under the revolutionary regime of Hugo Chávez against global neo-liberalism. The eight contributions to this volume feature an initial sampling of the outcome of this project. Included are essays on urban development; the evolution of collective property forms and workers’ self-management; educational and healthcare development; media policy; the role of the specific Venezuelan interpretation of Bolivarianism; and the economic policy of the Chávez regime.

United States of America

The Black Worker. Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation. Ed. by Eric Arnesen. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2007. 319 pp. $60.00. (Paper: $25.00.)

This volume brings together eleven essays, four of which were previously published between 1988 and 2003, on the African-American working-class experience and the role of black workers in shaping the politics and history of labour and race in the United States from the end of the Civil War to the 1960s. Examining workers engaged in a wide array of jobs and economic sectors in both the South and the North, contributors deal with subjects such as black migration, strikebreaking, black conservatism, gender, multiple forms of employment discrimination, and state policy.

Dessens, Nathalie. From Saint-Domingue to New Orleans. Migration and Influences. [Southern Dissent.] University Press of Florida, Gainesville [etc.] 2007. xiv, 257 pp. $65.00.

Some 15,000 whites, slaves and free people of colour fled Saint-Domingue and settled in Louisiana, concentrated in New Orleans, following the slave rebellion that gave birth to the Haitian Republic in 1804. This study explores this refugee community in Louisiana, consisting of three almost equal population groups, and investigates the reception and integration into New Orleans, how they influenced the economy, society, politics and culture in the “Creole capital”, and how local race relations took shape.

Fowler, Josephine. Japanese and Chinese Immigrant Activists. Organizing in American and International Communist Movements, 1919–1933. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey [etc.] 2007. xiv, 272 pp. £18.18.

A hitherto largely neglected group in the history of twentieth-century American communism is that of Japanese and Chinese immigrant communist activists. Applying concepts of global labour history and labour geography, Professor Fowler traces in this study the encounter of Japanese and Chinese immigrant workers with racial anxiety and organized labour, the origins of left-wing and communist Japanese and Chinese activism in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, their transnational networks across the Pacific, and their relation with international communist organizations such as the Comintern and the Profintern.

Gaffney, Dennis. Teachers United. The Rise of New York State United Teachers. State University of New York Press, Albany 2007. x, 273 pp. $25.00.

This study chronicles the origins and development of New York State’s largest union, the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), from the rise of teacher militancy in the 1960s to the present. Based on interviews with rank-and-file teachers and union leaders, Mr Gaffney explores the initial controversies between city and upstate teachers, inflamed by the antagonism between rivalling national teacher unions, and describes how these controversies were eventually overcome to merge into the NYSUT, and how the union has progressively gained political influence.

Jung, Moon-Ho. Coolies and Cane. Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2006. x, 275 pp. Ill. $25.00.

Focusing on sugar plantation workers in Louisiana in the post-emancipation era, this study explores how, after the abolition of slavery, large numbers of Chinese indentured workers were imported from Cuba. Professor Jung analyses the historical origins and the local, national, and transnational forces that transformed the image of the coolies in American culture and argues that the evolution of the ambiguous image of the coolies somewhere between and beyond slavery and freedom was central to the reconstruction of racial and national boundaries and hierarchies in the final decades of the nineteenth century. See also Ulbe Bosma’s review in this volume, pp. 520–521.

Mandell, Daniel R. Tribe, Race, History. Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780-1880. [The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science.] The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2008. xx, 321 pp. Ill. $55.00.

Focusing on the southern New England states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the period between the American Revolution and the Reconstruction, this study seeks to reconstruct the development of Native American communities and relations with their non-Indian neighbours with regard to labour, land-holding, government, religion, and marriage practices. Considering the issues of race and class, Professor Mandell examines how Native Americans in this region were affected by migration between reserves and cities and the abolition of slavery, while remaining socioeconomically marginalized in general.

Martelle, Scott. Blood Passion. The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey [etc.] 2007. x, 266 pp. Ills. £16.78.

The Ludlow Massacre and its aftermath in April 1914 is considered to be one of the deadliest labour conflicts in American history: at least seventy-five people, among them women and children, were killed. Mr Martelle, a journalist on the Los Angeles Times, offers an account of the events and their background in what he labels a blend of journalism and historic inquiry that aims “to come up with something close to an objective rendering of events”. He argues that the strike also marked the beginning of the modern era of labour disputes, in which employers and workers alike started to use the media to sway public opinion.

Palmer, Bryan D. James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890–1928. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2007. Ill. xviii, 542 pp. £50.00.

In this extensive biographical study of the American revolutionary James P. Cannon (1890–1974), founder of American Trotskyism, Dr Palmer uses the study of Cannon’s early life and growth to political maturity in working-class radicalism and early American communism as a lens through which he explores the formation and development of the American revolutionary left up to 1928. In assessing his role in this development, the author stresses the importance of Cannon’s own working-class background and his “revolutionary largesse”, which led him away from Stalinism and towards support for Trotsky’s Left Opposition.

Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs. Citizen and Socialist. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2007. xx, 437 pp. $24.95.

Twenty-five years after it was originally published in 1982, this is the second edition of Professor Salvatore’s biography of American labour activist and long-time leader of the Socialist Party, Eugene V. Debs (see IRSH, 30 (1985), p. 245). In his preface to this edition, the author analyses the epochal changes that have occurred between these two editions in the state of actual socialism worldwide and in socialist ideology in the United States and globally. He argues that Debs’s specific American ideas of socialism and economic and political democracy nonetheless remain as relevant now as they were in 1982.

Sernett, Milton C. Harriet Tubman. Myth, Memory, and History. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2007. xi, 409 pp. Ill. £14.99.

This biographical portrait of the famous African-American abolitionist Harriet Tubman (c.1822–1913) examines her life story and her heroic role in rescuing slaves through the Underground Railroad in connection with the extensive historiography and hagiography that emerged around her from the end of her life onward. Exploring children’s literature, film, painting, and theatre, Professor Sernett analyses the reasons for this prolonged canonization process of Harriet Tubman, and what it reveals about the American self-image over the course of the past century.

Slavery in the United States. A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia. Volume 1 and 2. Ed. by Junius P. Rodriguez. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara (Calif.) [etc.] 2007. Xxxi, 740 pp. Ill. Maps £122.46.

Ten years after editing The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997, see IRSH, 45 (2000), p. 134), Professor Rodriguez has brought together in this encyclopaedia 300 entries on the economic, social and political background to slavery in the United States, from colonial times to 1877, in alphabetical sequence. Preceding the entries, written by over 100 contributors, are 10 thematic essays by the editor, dealing with themes such as the origins of African slavery; early slavery in the colonies; the economics of slavery; the end of the slave trade and abolitionism; African-American culture; and the Civil War and Reconstruction. An extensive chronology, a collection of 150 source documents and many illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography are included.

Wilson, Jan Doolittle. The Women’s Joint Congressional Committee and the Politics of Maternalism, 1920–30. [Women in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2007. x, 245 pp. $40.00.

Following the passage of the nineteenth amendment to the United States constitution granting women the right to vote, the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee (WJCC) was founded in 1920 as an umbrella organization to coordinate women’s reform. This study offers a comprehensive history of the WJCC’s campaigns, strategies, and rhetoric. Professor Wilson aims to explain the initial success of the campaigns for far-reaching progressive reforms and the subsequent reaction of the business-led coalition that ultimately curtailed the influence of the programmes that the women envisioned.

Zieger, Robert H. For Jobs and Freedom. Race and Labor in America since 1865. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 2007. x, 276 pp. Ill. $37.50.

This study offers a historical overview of the struggle by African Americans for equal opportunities and rights in the workplace and in the labour movement and organized labour’s often problematic relationship with black workers, from the abolition of slavery to the present. Covering important historical landmarks in this relationship, such as the foundation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and its affiliation with the American Federation of Labor, Professor Zieger argues that struggles by African Americans in the workplace and labour movement constituted a key component of the broader quest for racial equality.

Asia

India

Chowdhuri, Satyabrata Rai. Leftism in India, 1917–1947. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2007. xiii, 254 pp. € 50.00.

Professor Chowdhuri aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the various Leftist movements in India in the period between the Russian Revolution and India’s Independence and to describe the Left’s relation with the mainstream of the Indian national movement. He focuses on the external and internal elements contributing to the emergence and development of the many different socialist and communist movements, their ideologies, their role and part in the India’s movement for independence, and the influence of and relations with foreign parties and movements.

Kidambi, Prashant. The Making of an Indian Metropolis. Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920. [Historical Urban Studies.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2007. xix, 268 pp. £55.00.

In this micro-study of the social history of the city of Bombay in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, a period of “imperial globalization”, Dr Kidambi considers the varied ways in which the city’s population negotiated, appropriated, and sometimes resisted the turbulent changes brought about by the introduction of European modernity. He aims to show how a more interventionist approach to city governance in the 1890s led to an increasingly fractious relationship with local society and the emergent Indian civil society, and how the historical legacy of these developments influenced urban society and politics in postcolonial Bombay.

Mufti, Amir R. Enlightenment in the Colony. The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2007. xiii, 325 pp. £11.95.

Connecting to the work of scholars such as Hannah Ahrendt on the interconnections between the development of colonial racism and anti-Semitism since the nineteenth century, Professor Mufti analyses in this study a broad body of contemporary literary and other sources to reveal the similarities between the history of the “Jewish question” and the identity of the Muslim minority and the crisis of the partition in India. He aims to show how the origins of this conflict in late nineteenth-century India can be seen as an early example of the re-inscription of Enlightenment ideas on the position of minorities in non-Western society experiencing modernization under colonial rule.

Mukherjee, Arun Prosad. Maoist ‘Spring Thunder’. The Naxalite Movement (1967–1972). K P Bagchi & Company, Kolkota 2007. ix, 319 pp. Ill. Rs595; £35.00.

This study offers a chronological account of the activities of the Naxalite Maoist insurgent movement, in the Indian Naxalbari region during 1967–1968, and in Calcutta and its suburbs in the years 1969–1972, when the movement attempted a fierce offensive to overthrow the regional government. As high-ranking police officer personally involved in the handling of this movement by the Indian authorities in this period, Dr Mukherjee offers a descriptive account of the contentious events, quoting extensively from police reports of the time and including interrogation reports and statements from arrested Naxalite leaders.

Indonesia

Lane, Max. Unfinished Nation. Indonesia Before and After Suharto. Verso, London [etc.] 2008. viii, 312 pp. £60.00.

In this study of the twentieth-century history of Indonesia, Dr Lane argues that mass action politics, launched by an organized political group, which was central in bringing down the Suharto dictatorship (1965–1998), also derived from an extended tradition of anti-colonial struggle. Being an active participant in the struggle against the dictatorship since the mid-1970s, the author has based his analysis largely on the concept of an unfinished revolution, as developed by the Indonesian novelist and activist Pramoedya Ananta Toer and the People’s Democratic Party (PRD). See also Ken Setiawan’s review in this volume, pp. 529–532.

Iran

Malm, Andreas and Shora Esmailian. Iran on the Brink. Rising Workers and Threats of War. Pluto Press, London [etc.] 2007. xix, 262 pp. £17.99.

Based in part on their journalistic work for the Swedish weekly Arbetaren (The Worker), the authors of this study offer an overview of the recent history of the Iranian working class since the Islamic revolution in 1979. In the first section of the book, Mr Malm and Mrs Esmailian examine in what measure the promises that the popular revolution would bring about a just society have been fulfilled from the perspective of the mostafazin, the poor and the workers in Iran. In the second part they assess Iran’s position in international politics.

North Korea

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. Exodus to North Korea. Shadows from Japan’s Cold War. [Asian Voices.] Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham [etc.] 2007. x, 290 pp. £19.99.

From 1959 onward, over 90,000 Koreans, who lived as an unwelcome ethnic minority in Japan, migrated to North Korea as a result of a political deal involving the governments of Japan, North Korea, the Soviet Union and the United States. This is one of the first studies of this remarkable “repatriation scheme” that was presented as a humanitarian venture under the auspices of the International Red Cross but in fact resulted in tragedy for most of the migrants concerned. Professor Morris-Suzuki examines the personal stories and background behind this extraordinary chapter in Cold War history.

Syria

Grehan, James. Everyday Life and Consumer Culture in 18th-Century Damascus. [Publications on the Near East.] University of Washington Press, Seattle [etc.] 2007. xvi, 320 pp. $50.00; £30.00.

This study explores material culture in the city of Damascus, a centre of commerce and learning, in the eighteenth century. Based on the city’s extensive literary tradition as well as on Islamic court records, Professor Grehan examines the economic infrastructure, social customs and consumer behaviour to sketch the overall standard of living, consumption patterns, and notions of taste, power, and class in a city that figured prominently in shaping the economy and culture of the Middle East on the brink of modernization of the economic and political order.

Australia and Oceania

Europe

Berend, Iván T. From the Soviet Bloc to the European Union. The Economic and Social Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe since 1973. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2009. xv, 299 pp. £55.00; $99.00. (Paper: £19.99; $37.99.)

This volume is devoted to the economic and social history of post-communist transformation of the seventeen countries in central and eastern Europe. The author uses the 1973 oil crisis to frame his explanation of the collapse of state socialism in 1989 in these countries and charts the transformation process and subsequent economic and social restructuring. Special attention is paid to the crucial role of the European Union in this process. This book is a continuation and, for the period 1973–1993, a re-examination of the author’s 1996 publication, also at Cambridge University Press, Central and Eastern Europe 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery (see IRSH, 42 (1997), p. 123f.).

Bettler in der europäischen Stadt der Moderne. Zwischen Barmherzigkeit, Repression und Sozialreform. Hrsg. von Beate Althammer. [Inklusion/Exklusion, Band 4.] Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2007. vi, 337 pp. € 52.80.

Based on papers presented at the Seventh International Conference on Urban History, organized in Athens in October 2004, the ten essays in this collection deal with begging and beggars in eight modern cities in the period 1830–1930. Included are case studies on Oxford (Richard Dyson and Steven King); St Petersburg (Hubertus Jahn); Athens (Vassiliki Theodorou); Rome (Taina Syrjämaa); Aachen and Düsseldorf (the editor); Berlin (Bettina Hitzer; Astrid Mignon Kirchhof); and Vienna (Sigrid Wadauer). Helmut Bräuer contributes an essay on begging in early modern European cities, and Maria Kudryavtseva describes present-day begging in St Petersburg.

Eichengreen, Barry. The European Economy since 1945. Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond. [The Princeton Economic History of the Western World.] Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2007. xx, 495 pp. £22.95.

In this history of the remarkable economic recovery and growth of Europe after 1945, Professor Eichengreen aims to show how western Europe in particular was so economically successful because of its traditional set of institutions: solidarity-centred trade unions, cohesive employers’ associations and growth-minded governments. Together, these institutions made for a form of coordinated capitalism that was highly conducive to the economic recovery and expansive growth until 1973, but much less suitable for the subsequent stage of intensive growth, which called for greater flexibility and innovation.

Enzyklopädie Migration in Europa. Vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. by Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer, Leo Lucassen [u.a.]. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn [etc.]; Wilhelm Fink, München 2007. 1156 pp. € 78.00.

This bulky volume offers a historical encyclopaedia of migration in Europe from the seventeenth century to the present, encompassing all sustained migration movements within and from outside Europe, highlighting those involving multi-generational settlement and successive integration processes. Opening with an introduction by the editors explaining the conceptual and theoretical basis of the encyclopaedia, followed by an essay by Dirk Hoerder, Jan Lucassen, and Leo Lucassen on terminology and concepts in migration research, the rest of the volume is organized in 2 main sections. One encompasses 17 essays offering overviews of the migration history of all larger European regions and countries. The next and largest section covers 219 different migrant groups, in alphabetical order. Groups have been included based on: the primary migration destination or motives and aims of the migrants; religious, political, and other reasons for departure in the case of refugees and forced migration; and the legal and administrative status of migrants in the host countries/regions in relation to the aim or duration of their stay. Indexes on forms of migration and on countries, regions, and places are appended.

Hahn, Sylvia. Migration, Arbeit, Geschlecht. Arbeitsmigration in Mitteleuropa vom 17. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Mit zahlreichen Tabellen. [Transkulturelle Perspektiven.] V&R Unipress, Göttingen 2008. 282 pp. € 34.90.

This Habilitationsschrift (Universität Salzburg, 2004) offers a comprehensive analysis of labour migration in central Europe from the seventeenth until the early twentieth century. Professor Hahn explores the manifold forms of labour migration, its relation to household structures, gender and life course, and the emergence of a transnational labour market at various geographic levels. She also examines the responses from the various local, regional, and national authorities to labour migrants, as well as the changes in these responses with the process of modernization and national state building. See also Suzanne Sinke’s review in this volume, pp. 516–518.

Kümin, Beat. Drinking Matters. Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe. [Early Modern History. Society and Culture.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2007. xx, 283 pp. £55.00.

This study of public houses (inns, taverns, alehouses, etc.) in pre-industrial central Europe argues that they evolved in this period into one of the institutional foundations of European communities and experienced their heyday in the early modern period. Based on case studies of Berne and Bavaria, Professor Kümin argues that, contrary to standard stereotypes of public houses as static and old fashioned, they were in fact crucial both as communication spaces for a wide variety of social groups and as venues for socializing in local communities.

Zwangsmigrationen im mittleren und östlichen Europa. Völkerrecht, Konzeptionen, Praxis (1938–1950). Hrsg. von Ralph Melville, Jirí Pesek und Claus Scharf. [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz. Abt. Universalgeschichte. Beiheft 69.] Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2007. xv, 463 pp. € 51.00; Sfr. 80.50.

This volume brings together twenty-four essays based on papers presented at an international colloquium, organized in September 2002 in Prague, by the Institut für Europäische Geschichte Mainz on forced migration in central and eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The first eight chapters deal with the concept of forced migration as an instrument in international and nationalist politics. The other contributions offer explorations of the historiography on this theme and case studies of forced migration between and inside central and eastern European nation-states in the period 1938–1950.

Zwischen Erziehung und Vernichtung. Zigeunerpolitik und Zigeunerforschung im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts. Hrsg. von Michael Zimmermann. [Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Gewerkschaftsbewegung, Band 3.] Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2007. 591 pp. Ill. € 80.00.

The twenty-two contributions to this volume, based on an international conference organized in Autumn 2004 in Bonn, analyse the changing discourses on gypsies, the continuities and discontinuities in the policies towards gypsies in Germany and other European countries, and the role of academic research in this respect. The first section offers an overview of nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments in discourse and policies; the second features essays on Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, France, and Spain; the third focuses on the Nazi persecution of gypsies; and the fourth deals with the role of criminology and other sciences in postwar German policies towards gypsies.

Czech Republic

Weiner, Elaine. Market Dreams. Gender, Class, and Capitalism in the Czech Republic. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2007. xi, 155 pp. £15.62.

Based in part on interviews with twenty-six female managers and forty-eight female factory workers, this study analyses the effects of the transition from state socialism to neo-liberal capitalism after 1989 for ordinary citizens in the Czech Republic. Considering free-market capitalism not only as a set of economic practices but also as a “metanarratively expressed discourse”, Professor Weiner analyses how these two groups, who for reasons of gender and class are supposed to be either only qualified winners or outright losers of this transition, have experienced and assessed the past decades.

France

Les années 68. Un monde en mouvement. Coord. Caroline Apostolopoulos, Geneviève Dreyfus-Armand, and Irène Paillard. Éditions Syllepse, BDIC-MHC, Paris [etc.] 2008. 428 pp. Ill. € 22.00.

Initiated by the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC), this richly illustrated volume brings together twenty-six contributions offering a broad variety of international perspectives on the history of May 1968, its origins from the early 1960s onward, and its global impact up to the early 1980s. Included are contributions on the BDIC collections on 1968 (Geneviève Dreyfus-Arman); international movements for workers’ self-management in the 1960s (Frank Georgi); and various essays on how the protest movements related to the visual theatrical arts and a variety of social movements.

Burrows, Simon. Blackmail, Scandal, and Revolution. London’s French libellistes, 1758–92. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2006. xiv, 256 pp. £15.99.

Scandalous pamphleteering, as practised by French blackmailer-libellistes operating out of London between 1758 and 1789, has been heavily implicated in the origins of the French Revolution of 1789 in recent historiography. Dr Burrows examines in this study the activities, adventures, publications, and influence of these libellistes to conclude that political pornographic diatribes against living monarchs or their consorts were virtually unavailable to the public prior to 1789. The influence of the libellistes was therefore limited to their contribution to factional politics and the public stir caused by heavy-handed attempts to kidnap or silence them.

Davidson, Denise Z. France after Revolution. Urban life, Gender, and the New Social Order. [Harvard Historical Studies, vol. 155.] Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2007. vii, 257 pp. £32.95; € 42.50; $49.95.

Focusing on public festivals, theatres, and urban social life in provincial France in the Napoleonic period and during the Bourbon Restoration, this study explores how ordinary men and women in the French cities in the post-Revolutionary years fashioned new social norms, in particular new gender norms. Professor Davidson argues, based on this re-evaluation of the effects of the French Revolution that, contrary to recent views that the Revolution forced women from the public realm of informed political debate, women remained highly visible in urban public life, at least into the 1820s.

Dell, Simon. The Image of the Popular Front. The Masses and the Media in Interwar France. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2007. Ill. xiv, 201 pp. £45.00.

This study examines the French press coverage of several significant episodes in the political history of the French Popular Front government (especially usage of the new forms of photo-journalism) to explore how the mass media image of the Popular Front was constructed. Dr Dell argues that in this process of image building, the iconography of the Popular Front in turn resulted in recognition and affirmation of this fragile coalition.

Guide des sources de la traite négrière, de l’esclavage et de leurs abolitions. Établi sous la dir. de Claire Sibille. La documentation Française, Paris 2007. 625 pp. € 48.00

In recognition of the national commemoration of the abolition of slavery in France in May 2006, this comprehensive guide to French sources on the slave trade, slavery, and abolition was compiled. Included are source materials from all the national and territorial archives, foreign affairs and military archives, as well as the archives of the chambers of commerce of all major French port cities, encompassing both public and private archives. The period covered ranges from the seventeenth century to the formal abolition of slavery in 1848. A historical introduction, an extensive bibliography, a chronology, and a glossary are included.

Lalmy, Pascal-Éric. Le Parti Radical-Socialiste et le Front populaire 1934–1938. Essai. Mare et Martin, Paris 2007. 183 pp. € 19.00.

The French Popular Front between 1934 and 1938 entailed more than the political alliance between socialists and communists but also included the radically oriented middle classes organized in the Parti Radical-Socialiste, under the aegis of Édouard Daladier. Professor Lalmy examines the party’s reasons for joining the Popular Front, which can be summarized as the ambition to form a coalition of the socialist working class and the radical middle class to defend the French Republic against the extreme right. The author also explores the party’s role and influence in the Popular Front government.

Locklin, Nancy. Women’s Work and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Brittany. Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2007. 162 pp. £55.00.

With this study of women’s work in the early modern French province of Brittany, Professor Locklin aims to add to the recent historiographical debates on the social and economic position of working women in the early modern and modern periods. She argues that not only did women’s experiences differ regionally, but that women were also perceived through a variety of identities over the course of their lives. Participation by women in family, community and commercial affairs was thus far more complex than legal and ideological sources seem to suggest.

McHugh, Tim. Hospital Politics in Seventeenth-Century France. The Crown, Urban Elites and the Poor. [The History of Medicine in Context.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2007. 191 pp. £55.00.

In this study of the way French cities administered poor relief and charitable health care, Dr McHugh aims to revise the conventional impression of the roles of the national government and the local elites. He argues that Louis XIV’s policy on poor-relief reform and the creation of general hospitals in each town and city in the second half of the seventeenth century was attributable more to the active involvement of the Parisian elites than to initiatives by the Crown, and that the central government became more proactive in administering poor relief and charitable health care only after Louis XIV’s reign.

Ménard, Louis. Prologue d’une révolution février–juin 1848. Présenté par Filippo Benfante et Maurizio Gribaudi [Utopie et liberté.] La Fabrique éditions, Paris 2007. 299 pp. € 18.00.

This is a new edition of one of the best-known eyewitness reports of the revolutionary events between February and June 1848 in Paris. Louis Ménard (1822–1901) was a Republican poet and writer during the July Monarchy. Influenced by his experiences in 1848, especially the bloody repression of the June Days uprising, he became a radical socialist and set himself the task of recording the revolutionary events in this Prologue d’une revolution, originally published in 1849. The introduction by the editors places Ménard and his work in their historical context.

Wilson, Colette E. Paris and the Commune 1871–78. The politics of forgetting. [Cultural History of Modern War.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2007. xiii, 236 pp. £55.00.

In this study of representations of the Paris Commune of 1871, Dr Wilson aims to demonstrate how the governments of the early Third Republic have attempted to efface the memory of the bloody events of May 1871, as well as the tendency of recent historiography of the Commune to focus predominantly on writers, artist and other chroniclers who were either Communards or sympathetic to the Communard cause. Instead, she examines a wide range of cultural expressions (illustrated press, socio-historical texts, memoirs, literary fiction and photography) from conservative, counter-revolutionary and reactionary perspectives.

Germany

Berkowitz, Michael. The Crime of My Very Existence. Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality. University of California Press, Berkeley [etc.] 2007. xxix, 321 pp. Ill. £35.00.

An important part of Nazi ideology and propaganda was the association of Jews with criminality. This study investigates this dimension of the Nazi persecution of the Jews and analyses its role in stimulating and rationalizing violence against and murder of Jews by the Nazis, while considering the Jewish response to the “Jewish criminality” charge as well. Professor Berkowitz traces the myths and realities around the discourse on “Jewish criminality” from the eighteenth century through the Weimar Republic and explores how this critical dimension of anti-Semitism became instrumental in the conception and perpetration of the Holocaust.

Fichter, Tilman P. [und] Siegward Lönnendonker. Kleine Geschichte des SDS. Der Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund von Helmut Schmidt bis Rudi Dutschke. 4. überar. und erg. Aufl. Mit einem Bildteil von Klaus Mehner. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2007. 255 pp. Ill. € 15.95.

This is the fourth, substantially revised and expanded edition of the history of the Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund, the German socialist student organization, originally published in 1977, from its foundation in 1946 to its dissolution in 1970. Identifying four generations, Drs Fichter and Lönnendonker, both active participants in the SDS organization in the 1960s, review how the SDS evolved from an organization loyal to the SPD into an increasingly radicalized, anti-capitalist group that was pivotal in the social-protest movement in Germany culminating in May 1968. The authors have used hitherto inaccessible materials and new interviews to compile this new edition.

Föcking, Friederike. Fürsorge im Wirtschaftsboom. Die Entstehung des Bundessozialhilfegesetzes von 1961. [Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, Band 73.] R. Oldenbourg Verlag, München 2007. vii, 556 pp. € 74.80.

This revised edition of a dissertation (Ludwig-Maxilimilians-Universität Munich, 2002) explores the origin of the German Bundessozialhilfegesetz (BSHG) of 1961, which offered a comprehensive legal basis for social security in the broadest sense. As a major foundation of the postwar German welfare state, it was one of the most important social-political reforms of the Adenauer era. Dr Föcking examines the BSHG’s origins in the Weimar era and the political developments in the western occupation zones in the early postwar years and traces the progression toward social security as a basic right.

Jung, Christian. Geschichte der Verlierer. Historische Selbstreflexion von hochrangigen Mitgliedern der SED nach 1989. Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2007. 378 pp. € 39.00.

This dissertation (Universität Heidelberg, 2006) aims to give a comparative analysis of reflections of high-ranking members of the East German SED on their own past, the demise of the communist regime and the GDR past as a whole, set against the general image of the GDR past as created by contemporary historians. Dr Jung bases his findings on the many and manifold autobiographical writings, memoirs and written statements in court cases by or from leading GDR officials.

Klassenkampf und Solidarität. Geschichte der Stuttgarter Metallarbeiter. Hrsg. Theodor Bergmann. Verfasst von Tom Adler, Ursel Beck, Theodor Bergmann [u.a.]. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2007. 386 pp. € 26.80.

The six authors of this volume offer a chronologically ordered overview of the history of workers’ and labour organizations in the Stuttgart metal industry from the origins of the first trade-union organizations around1900 to the present. The well-known radical historian Professor Bergmann edited this volume and co-authored together with five younger historians the thirteen chapters that sketch and analyse the distinctive role and reputation of Stuttgart’s metalworkers and their organization as a comparatively radical socialist and relatively autonomous one.

Kluge, Arnd. Die Zünfte. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2007. 522 pp. € 49.00.

This study offers a comprehensive overview of the history of guilds in Germany and German-speaking parts of Europe from their origins in the twelfth century to their abolition in the nineteenth century, emphasizing their structural and organizational development. Following recent trends in the historiography of guilds, Dr Kluge aims to revise the traditionally negative image of guilds and to trace the influence they have had on the subsequent development of artisan and trade associations, cooperatives, and trade unions.

Reichel, Peter. Robert Blum. Ein deutscher Revolutionär 1807–1848. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007. Ill. 232 pp. € 19.90.

Published in recognition of the 200th anniversary of his birth, this is a biographical essay on the life and historical significance of the German revolutionary and national-liberal politician Robert Blum (1807–1848). The author offers a concise chronological overview of Blum’s unobvious and swift rise to political prominence in the national-liberal circles in Saxony in the early 1840s, his subsequent embrace of the March 1848 upheavals and leading role in the Frankfurt National Assembly, and his tragic, untimely death by summary execution in the aftermath of the 1848 upheavals in Vienna, while placing his life history in its historical and contemporary context.

Saunders, Anna. Honecker’s children. Youth and patriotism in East(ern) Germany, 1979–2002. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2007. xii 252 pp. € 50.00.

This study examines the relationship between young people and the two successive states in East(ern) Germany where they grew up between 1979 and 2002. Including the period of and after the reunification of Germany, Dr Saunders explores not only the process of socialization in the GDR and its impact on the generation born after the separation of Germany but also how this has influenced the position and attitudes of young people in Eastern Germany after the reunification. She concludes that for many the divisions between the GDR state and society, as well as between dissent and conformity, were less distinct than often assumed.

Schmidt, Oliver. “Meine Heimat ist – die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung”. Biographische Studien zu Richard Löwenthal im Übergang vom Exil zur frühen Bundesrepublik. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2007. 390 pp. € 52.80.

This dissertation (Universität Osnabrück, 2006) offers an intellectual and political biography of Richard Löwenthal (1908–1991), one of the leading theorists and ideologues of the German SPD in the postwar period, in particular in the field of international relations and foreign policy. Dr Schmidt gives a comprehensive overview of Löwenthal’s early engagement with radical Marxism, his extended exile and the effects on his political position and his subsequent conversion to social democracy after 1945.

Zatlin, Jonathan R. The Currency of Socialism. Money and Political Culture in East Germany. [Publications of the German Historical Institute.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2007. xx, 377 pp. £45.00; $80.00.

In this study of the economic and cultural function of money in East Germany, Professor Zatlin explores the origins of the antipathy toward money among the communist leadership and its relation to the socialist planned economy in the GDR to argue that, with this attempt to eliminate money, the communist regime undermined the political authority of socialism and added to the material conditions for its eventual demise. The SED’s decision in the 1970s to introduce capitalist, West German currency and commodities into the GDR undermined not only the East German currency but socialist moral authority as well.

Great Britain

Blackburn, Sheila. A Fair Day’s Wage for a Fair Day’s Work? Sweated Labour and the Origins of Minimum Wage Legislation in Britain. [Studies in Labour History.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2007. xii, 232 pp. Ill. £55.00.

Sweated labour, characterized by long working hours, poor working conditions, and low pay, is traditionally considered in Britain to be merely a London or gender-related problem. In this study, Professor Blackburn offers a broad national and long-term overview of the issue from the mid-nineteenth century onward to show that by the early twentieth century a widespread and constantly shifting pattern of sweated labour existed across the country, encompassing up to one-third of the British workforce. She examines how sweated labour relates to the minimum-wage legislation issue, leading to the 1909 Trades Board Act as the cornerstone of low-pay legislation.

Callaghan, John. The Labour Party and Foreign Policy. A history. [Politics and International Relations.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2007. 346 pp. £23.99.

In this textbook, Professor Callaghan offers a chronologically ordered overview of British Labour Party ideas on foreign and defence policies and international relations during the twentieth century. Assessing the party’s record in achievements and failures in this field for the periods they were in power, and analysing the foreign and defence policies in relation to its domestic programme and achievements, the author aims to show what was distinctive in Labour’s foreign policy in theory and practice.

Holton, Sandra Stanley. Quaker women. Personal life, memory and radicalism in the lives of women Friends, 1780–1930. [Women’s and Gender History.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2007. Ill. xiii, 288 pp. £80.00.

Based on research in a substantial archive of private papers with letters and diaries, this study examines the relationship between the personal and public lives of Quaker women around the kinship circle created by the marriage in 1839 of Elizabeth Priestman to the future radical Quaker statesman, John Bright. Covering a period from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, Dr Holton explores issues such as the significance of kinship and church membership for building extensive Quaker networks, how Quaker religious values related to women’s participation in civil society, and radical politics and the women’s rights movement.

Hurren, Elizabeth T. Protesting about Pauperism. Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-Victorian England, 1870-1900. [Studies in History New Series.] The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2007. xii, 296 pp. £50.00.

The last three decades of the nineteenth century saw an important change in Britain’s policies on poor relief, when the central government started a crusade against outdoor relief aimed at halting all welfare payments at home. In this study, Dr Hurren examines the effects of this new policy for the impoverished men and women who struggled to live independently outside the workhouse without welfare. Based on a local case study, she explores the harsh experiences of these new poor-relief policies, and demonstrates how increasing democratization in this period gave the labouring poor the means to win control of the Poor Law.

Jackson, Ben. Equality and the British Left. A study in progressive political thought, 1900–64. [Critical Labour Movement Studies.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2007. x, 259 pp. £60.00.

This study examines the ideas and ideals on egalitarianism among British social democrats during the first six decades of the twentieth century. Dr Jackson examines how theorists and politicians of the British left define equality, how they argued for a more egalitarian society, and how they thought their egalitarian ideals could best be advanced. Exploring the concept of equality in relation to other core ideals of the left, such as social justice, liberty and community, the author focuses on a broad range of famous individuals in the British left, such as J.A. Hobson, R.H. Tawney, George Orwell, and Anthony Crosland.

Jennings, Rebecca. Tomboys and bachelor girls. A lesbian history of post-war Britain, 1945–71. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2007. 209 pp. £50.00.

This study offers a detailed examination of lesbian identity and culture in postwar Britain until 1971. Based on oral histories and archival sources, Dr Jennings argues that contrary to the conventional picture of the postwar decades as a period of austerity and conservative femininity, a vibrant lesbian scene emerged in Britain, particularly in London, but also across the country, through lesbian magazines and social organizations.

Jeremy Bentham. Ed. by Frederick Rosen. [International Library of Essays in the History of Social and Political Thought.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2007. xxii, 621 pp. £150.00.

This volume brings together twenty-five essays, published between 1966 and 2004 and offering a broad overview of recent and older scholarship on the life and ideas of the English utilitarian philosopher and social reformer, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Themes covered are: the utilitarian tradition; liberty and justice; sovereignty and the state; polity and economy; society; the French Revolution and political radicalism; and revolution in government. In his introduction the editor, formerly Director of the Bentham Project, reviews recent trends in scholarship on Bentham’s enormous oeuvre.

Kenefick, William. Red Scotland! The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, c. 1872 to 1932. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2007. x, 230 pp. £60.00. (Paper: £19.99.)

In this study of the development of the radical left in Scotland from the 1870 to the 1930s, Dr Kenefick identifies, within this time-frame, various periods with distinct characteristics of the labour and socialist movements, including the emergence of industrial radicalism and new unionism; successful efforts to include the unskilled in the labour movement; increasing radicalization and growth of radical socialism in the years before World War I; and the emergence of an anti-war movement and the rise of revolutionary politics after 1918. One of the causes the author suggests for the fragmentation of the radical movement is the large-scale emigration of Scottish radicals in the 1920s.

Kirk, Neville. Custom and Conflict in the ‘Land of the Gael’. Ballachulish, 1900–1910. Merlin Press, London 2007. 172 pp. £25.00.

This study describes and explains the conflicts that arose in the remote Scottish highland community of Ballachulish between 1902 and 1905 between the local slate quarries company on the one hand and the quarrymen and local community on the other over workers’ grievances, in particular over the dismissal of the local medical officer. Dr Kirk uses the case study of these local labour conflicts to criticize what he considers to be an overly restrictive perspective offered by resource mobilization and a rational-choice approach, and delivers a more holistic explanation that addresses questions of agency, motivation, and consciousness, as well as resources and their organization.

McIvor, Arthur J. and Ronald Johnston. Miners’ Lung. A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining. Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2007. xviii, 355 pp. £ 60.00.

Occupation-induced respiratory disease (pneumoconiosis, bronchitis, and emphysema) in coalmining represented the largest occupational health disaster in British history. This study explores the backgrounds and context of this public health disaster by tracing the rise of the coalmining industry, advances in medical science, the related industrial politics and the personal experiences of the miners. Using a systematic oral history project, Drs McIvor and Johnston consider the problems of respiratory diseases from the perspective of the workers themselves, including the interplay of a production-oriented managerial culture and the persistence of a machismo, high-risk work culture among miners.

Medicine, Charity and Mutual Aid. The Consumption of Health and Welfare in Britain, c. 1550–1950. Ed. by Anne Borsay and Peter Shapely. [Historical Urban Studies]. Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2007. 269 pp. £60.00.

Based on a session organized at the Fifth International Conference of the European Association of Urban Historians held in Berlin in 2000, the twelve essays in this volume examine recipients of medical care and charity in Britain, rather than conveying the usual perspective on donors and institutions. Focusing mainly on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, additional chapters are included on the early modern period, the eighteenth century, and the post-1945 period. Common themes include the changing relationship between providers and recipients, as priorities shifted away from charity towards greater reliance on public finance, workers’ contributions, and mutual aid.

The Rise and Rise of Meritocracy. Ed by Geoff Dench. Blackwell Publishing, in assoc. with The Political Quarterly, Malden [etc.] 2006. X, 272 pp.

The twenty-four contributions to this collection are based on papers presented at a conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Institute of Community Studies, founded by the influential British sociologist and politician Michael Young (1915–2002) and his well-known sociological satire The Rise of the Meritocracy, written in 1956, but published only in 1958. In this book, Young coined the term meritocracy. Among the contributions are retrospectives on the book’s origin and contemporary reception, including an interview with the author from 1994; essays on the book’s relevance to modern Britain and its analytical value; and on the future of meritocracy and Labour views on merit and equality.

Twells, Alison. The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792–1850. The ‘Heathen’ at Home and Overseas. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2009. xiv, 353 pp. Ill. £55.00.

This study explores the new popular missionary movement that emerged in the wake of the evangelical enthusiasm of the 1790s, and which in the first half of the nineteenth century became an important national and global movement aimed at cultural transformation. Focusing on missionary practice in Britain, Ireland, West Africa, and the South Pacific and on the links between the overseas civilizing mission and social movements in England, Dr Twells looks at how missionary activities infused domestic life, religious culture, social networks, and political campaigns and influenced the development of new provincial middle-class and civic cultures. See also Richard Price’s review in this volume, pp. 518–520.

Italy

Degl’Innocenti, Maurizio. Garibaldi e l’Ottocento. Nazione, popolo, volontariato, associazione. [Società e Cultura, vol. 50.] Piero Lacaita Editore, Manduria [etc.]. 2008. 267 pp. € 10.00.

The first two chapters from this collection contain the transcriptions of five lectures and congress contributions from 2007 on Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) and are entitled “Garibaldi and Volunteer Status” and “Garibaldi, the International and the Social Issue”. The author investigates the impression of, and the myth surrounding, Garibaldi that came about in the nineteenth century and represented four defining moments from this century: nation, people, volunteer status, and association. Along these lines, he examines the origins of collective symbols and charismatic figures as well. The third and final chapter is about Aurelio Majani.

Fusco, Felice. Carlo Pisacane e la spedizione di Sapri. Lotte risorgimentali nel Cilento meridionale e nel Vallo di Diano dalla Repubblica Napoletana all’Unità d’Italia. Galzerano Editore, Casalvelino Scalo 2007. xii, 450 pp. Ill. € 20.00.

In 1857 Carlo Pisacane (1818–1857) launched a guerrilla movement from southern Italy, not only to liberate Italy from the Bourbon yoke but also to introduce socialism. Pisacane was influenced by the ideas of the French Utopian socialists. This study is about the area where Pisacane’s expedition was supposed to land: the preceding history from 1799 onward, the events that followed the landing, and the subsequent course of events culminating in the unification of Italy. The author uses extensive archival data to shed new light on the events leading up to the death of Pisacane. The notes span nearly 200 pages.

Gaggio, Dario. In Gold We Trust. Social Capital and Economic Change in the Italian Jewelry Towns. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2007. xvi, 352 pp. £26.95.

This study analyses the social, economic, and political processes behind the remarkable development of three small northern Italian towns that, from the 1960s onward, grew into world leaders in the production and export of gold jewellery. Analysing these local industries from the perspective of the political economy of small-scale industrialization in twentieth-century Italy, Professor Gaggio examines how the remarkable economic success of the towns is based on frequently contradictory features of localized but globally connected informal economies, in which the distinction between private interests and public goods is blurred.

Giachetti, Diego. Un sessantotto e tre conflitti generazione, genere, classe. [Cultura storica, vol. 32.] BFS Edizioni, Pisa 2008. 157 pp. € 13.00.

Although the cycle of conflicts that began with “1968” was initially a generational issue, it soon evolved into a class and a gender conflict as well. The younger generation did not aspire to the power positions of their elders, nor did the women want those of the men or the workers those of the bourgeoisie: they wanted to change society. In this social-historical essay that focuses on the Italian situation, Mr Giachetti addresses these three conflicts, the groups that formed, and their political insertion in the New Left.

L’influenza del comunismo nella storia d’Italia. Il PCI tra via parlamentare e lotta armata. Atti del convegno organizzato dalla Fondazione Magna Carta e da “L’Ircocervo”, 22 marzo 2007, Roma. A cura di Fabrizio Cicchitto. [Le ragioni degli storici, vol. 13.] Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2008. 245 pp. € 15.00.

This collection comprises the ten contributions to a colloquium convened in 2007 in Rome at the initiative of the Fondazione Magna Carta and the journal, L’Ircocervo. The editor Fabrizio Cicchitto is a former socialist and presently an MP for Berlusconi’s Popolo delle Libertà party. The contributions are written by historians specialized in Italian communism, such as Gaetano Quagliariello, Andrea Guiso, Victor Zaslavsky, and Aldo G. Ricci, and cover subjects including: the Italian communists in 1940s Moscow (Giancarlo Lehner), the fear of civil war within De Gasperi’s council of ministers (Ricci), and the fellow travellers of the PCI (Guiso).

Leda Rafanelli tra letteratura e anarchia. A cura di Fiamma Chessa. Biblioteca Panizzi, Archivio Famiglia Berneri, Aurelio Chessa, Reggio Emilia [etc.] 2008. 287 pp. Ill. € 16.00.

This anthology comprises the eight contributions to a workshop dedicated to Leda Rafanelli (1880–1971), held in 2007 in Reggio Emilia at the initiative of the Archivio famiglia Berneri-Aurelio Chessa, where her archive is kept. The contributions, all by specialists in this field, address the different aspects of her personality: her activities in the individual-anarchist circles of Milan and related to the Casa Editrice Sociale in the early twentieth century, her conversion to Islam, and her literary endeavours. Alessandra Pierrotti has compiled an extensive bibliography of works by and about Rafanelli, while a photographic autobiography concludes the book.

Le origini del movimento sindacale in Italia e la nascita della Confederazione Generale del Lavoro. Atti del Convegno di Studi. A cento anni dalla nascita della CGdL (1906–2006). A cura di Carlo Antonio Barberini.[Testi e Studi, vol. 205.] Edizioni Unicopli, Milano 2008. 217 pp. € 15.00.

This collection comprises the nine contributions to a colloquium organized in 2006 by the Centro Filippo Buonarroti in conjunction with the Camera di Lavoro of Milan and the Archivio del Lavoro in recognition of the centenary of the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGdL). Three contributions describe the social, economic, and political circumstances in Milan around the time that the CGdL was established, two review the origins of the Camera di Lavoro and the CGdL, three are international comparisons (France, Germany, and Switzerland), and one is about the vicissitudes of Catholic syndicalism in the same period.

Scriboni, Mirella. Abbasso la guerra! Voci di donne da Adua al Primo conflitto mondiale (1896–1915). [Cultura storica, vol. 33.] BFS Edizioni, Pisa 2008. 158 pp. € 15.00.

In this book the author aims to reconstruct anti-war journalism by Italian women in the period from the colonial wars in Libya until the start of World War I. She follows the trail of the female protagonists of the peace movement, such as e.g. the socialists Anna Kuliscioff and Fanny Dal Ry and the anarchists Maria Rygier, Leda Rafanelli, and Nella Giacomelli, by examining excerpts from their writings in the feminist, socialist and anarchist press, including periodicals such as Eva, La Difesa delle lavoratrici and La Donna libertaria. Two appendices (1887–1899; 1900–1915) comprise articles, appeals and the like from the relevant press organs.

Tappi, Andrea. Un’impresa italiana nella Spagna di Franco. Il rapporto FIAT-SEAT dal 1950 al 1980. Crace, Perugia 2008. 173 pp. € 15.00.

This revised edition of a dissertation (University of Perugia, 2003) is about the Spanish SEAT division, which was a joint venture between FIAT and the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Industria. The company arose as a consequence of the adoption of the Fordist production method by the Turin branch, and of the labour relations under the Francoist regime, which did not tolerate free trade unions or strikes. The author hypothesizes that these labour relations were conducive to rationalizing labour processes, and relates his research to studies about the rise of the international automotive industry.

Zucchetti, Eugenio. Lavoratori e sindacalisti. Una ricerca sul settore delle costruzioni. Nuova edizione. FrancoAngeli, Milano 2009. 270 pp. € 29.00.

This book is the outcome of a sociological survey among 450 members and 208 shop stewards of the Christian construction workers’ union (Filca-Cisl). The objective was to gain insight into how technical and organizational changes affected working conditions at the companies; into the social and occupational characteristics of the members, especially as a consequence of immigration; into people’s reasons for joining the union; and into the performance of the shop stewards. The union leadership intended to use these data to make the organization more functional.

The Netherlands

Schotting, L. en H. Spiekman. Arm Rotterdam hoe het woont! Hoe het leeft! Reprint van een in 1903 uitgeg. brochure met een inl. van Sjaak van der Velden. Aksant, Amsterdam 2007. (Incl. CD-Rom.) clxvii. Ill. € 22.50.

This book offers a facsimile reprint of a pamphlet, published in 1903, that offers insight into the living and housing conditions among the poorest in Rotterdam’s working-class population around the turn of the century, written by a social democratic politician and a journalist. In an extensive explanatory introduction, Dr van der Velden provides the historical context of the urbanization and the subsequent expanding underclass in Dutch major cities at the time and of the emerging awareness about the social question. The CD-Rom included offers an interactive map of Rotterdam city centre with demographic and other information on the dwellings and dwellers mentioned in the pamphlet.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

A Dream Deferred. New Studies in Russian and Soviet Labour History. Ed. by Donald Filtzer, Wendy Z. Goldman, Gijs Kessler [etc.]. [International and Comparative Social History, vol. 11.] Peter Lang, Bern [etc.] 2008. 508 pp. € 70.30.

This volume of sixteen essays is based upon papers presented at the conference Labour History of Russia and the Soviet Union: Work in Progress, held at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, in 2005. The contributions cover three broad themes: workers and workers’ politics (from 1880 to the beginning of World War II), coercion and incentives within the industrial and rural workplace (from the 1930s to Stalin’s death), and household survival strategies (from 1884 to the present). The topics addressed include the motivations of women workers, oppositional activism, socialist tourism, and work discipline on the collective farms.

Kucher, Katharina. Der Gorki-Park. Freizeitkultur im Stalinismus 1928–1941. [Beiträge zur Geschichte Osteuropas, Band 42.] Böhlau Verlag, Köln [etc.] 2007. vi, 330 pp. € 54.90.

In this study of the history of the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure in Moscow, Dr Kucher explores how the genesis and development of the park – opened in 1928 – and its facilities and activities programmes reflected the political and socio-cultural goals of the Stalinist regime in the 1930s. The author argues that the park concept was designed to contribute substantially to the creation of the socialist “new man”, but that from around 1935 the conceptual and pedagogical ambitions gradually disappeared behind an emerging mass leisure culture, for which the park remained a central venue.

Maksimov, Grigorii Petrovich. A Grand Cause. The Hunger Strike and the Deportation of Anarchists from Soviet Russia. [Anarchist Library, Nr. 20.] Kate Sharpley Library, London 2008. x, 34 pp. £3.00.

G.P. Maksimov (1893–1950), a Russian anarcho-syndicalist leader, was arrested by the Bolsheviks several times from 1918 onward. In this publication he describes how he and other Moscow anarchists were imprisoned following the Kronstadt mutiny in 1921, and their hunger strike and deportation from Russia in 1922. The text is part of his sizable book The Guillotine at Work: Twenty Years of Terror in Russia (Data and Documents) (Chicago, IL, 1940). The Russian-language manuscript of this book, never actually published in Russian, is part of the G.P. Maksimov Papers at the International Institute of Social History. The biographical essay on Maksimov by Anatolij Dubovik, which precedes Maksimov’s text, is taken from the Memorial website, which is dedicated to the history of Russian socialists and anarchists under communist rule.

Rosenfeldt, Niels Erik. The “Special” World. Stalin’s power apparatus and the Soviet system’s secret structures of communication. Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen 2009. 2 vols. € 100.00

This extensive study (two volumes totalling over 1,100 pages) seeks to determine the structure, function and significance of Stalin’s power apparatus. Though focused primarily on the secret structures within the Soviet Communist Party’s central apparatus, it also covers a complex of ultra-secret sections, among them the “special departments” of the state security service OGPU/NKVD and the secret structures of the Comintern. Together they served Stalin as a crucial instrument for government and control, both internally and in relation to the global communist movement.

Die Russische Revolution 1917. Hrsg. Heiko Haumann. Böhlau Verlag, Köln [etc.] 2007. 182 pp. € 12.90.

The seven contributors to this textbook offer, in ten chapters, an overview of the history of the Russian Revolution of 1917 from the perspective of the everyday experiences of ordinary people. Chapters cover, for example: the causes of the revolution in the everyday circumstances in Tsarist Russia; the role of exiles in the revolution; the experience of revolution in cities, villages, and on the periphery; and the development of socialism and Stalinism in the first decades after 1917 and the related redirection of the revolution.

Werth, Nicolas. Cannibal Island. Death in a Siberian Gulag. Foreword by Jan T. Gross. Transl. from the French by Steven Rendall. [Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity.] Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2007. xx, 223 pp. £15.95.

In this English translation of L’Île aux cannibals 1933, une deportation-abandon en Sibérie (1996), Dr Werth, co-author of Le livre noir du communisme : crimes, terreur et repression (1997), describes and analyses a gruesome episode in the Stalinist campaign in the early 1930s to purge Soviet society from all deemed unfit, when in the spring of 1933 more than 6,000 deportees were dumped in a remote location without any food or shelter, leading to massive starvation and multiple incidents of cannibalism. Around two-thirds of the deportees died before the rest were relocated to slightly better equipped locations.

Spain

Izquierdo Martín, Jesús [and] Pablo Sánchez León. La guerra que nos han contado. 1936 y nosotros. Alianza Editorial, Madrid 2006. 320 pp. € 19.30.

This study aims to offer a historiographical and epistemological analysis of past and present approaches to the history of the Spanish Civil War, by professional historians as well as by others, in the context of recent political debates on the historical legacy and acceptance of this seminal caesura in twentieth-century Spanish history. In the first section, on the historiography, the authors explore how various forms of mythologization have developed on both sides of the political spectrum. They suggest alternative ways of approaching the past in the second section. See also Hanneke Willemse’s review essay in this volume, pp. 499–512.

A Social History of Spanish Labour. New Perspectives on Class, Politics and Gender. Ed. by José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén. Transl. by Paul Edgar. [International Studies in Social History, Vol. 11.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2007. vi, 330 pp. $90.00; £45.00.

This collection of fourteen essays aims to offer a representative showcase of social and labour history research in Spain over the past two decades. All the essays were previously published in Spanish after 1990, mostly in social and labour history journals, such as Historia Social. They deal with a broad range of topics and themes, covering the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries: working-class formation; women’s work; working-class mobilization and local and regional protests; the standard of living; the role of socialists and anarchists in republican Spain; the Civil War; and the working class and trade unionism under the Franco regime.