Social theory and social science

100 Years of Permanent Revolution. Results and Prospects. Ed. by Bill Dunn and Hugo Radice. Pluto Press, London [etc.] 2006. vi, 257 pp. £18.99.

In recognition of the centenary of the publication of Leon Trotsky’s Results and Prospects, the seventeen essays in this volume re-evaluate his theory of permanent revolution and the related concept of uneven and combined development. Well-known Trotskyist writers such as Daniel Bensaïd, Michael Löwy, Hillel Ticktin, Patrick Bond, and others discuss problems with Trotsky’s theory and reconsider its contemporary relevance for critical analysis of present-day, globalized capitalism.

Artous, Antoine. Marx et le fétichisme. Le marxisme comme théorie critique. [Mille marxismes.] Éditions Syllepse, Paris 2006. 205 pp. € 20.00.

This is a critical theoretical study of the concept of fetishism, in particular the concept of the fetishism of commodities, as a central element in Capital, the main theoretical work of Karl Marx. Mr Artous aims to show the enduring relevance of this central element in Marx’s ideas for a critical analysis of contemporary capitalism, and discusses the various ways theorists after Marx, both Marxists and others, have dealt with Marx’s use of the concept. These include, among others, Max Weber, Michel Foucault, and the French Marxist theorist, Jean-Marie Vincent.

Elliott, Gregory. Althusser. The Detour of Theory. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 13.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2006. xxiv, 410 pp. $116.00; €89.00.

This is the second edition of a study, originally published in 1987, in which the author examines the Marxism of the renowned French philosopher Louis Althusser (1918–1990), from his “return to Marx” in the mid-1960s, through his subsequent evolution and self-criticism to the proclamation of a “crisis of Marxism” at the end of his life, and assesses Althusser’s contribution to historical materialism. In this second edition, Dr Elliott has added a postscript reviewing the posthumous edition of Althusser’s work that appeared in the 1990s and appends a comprehensive bibliography of his work.

Gerstenberger, Heide. Die subjektlose Gewalt. Theorie der Entstehung bürgerlicher Staatsgewalt. [Theorie und Geschichte der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, Band 1.] Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2006. 665 pp. € 70.00; S.fr. 71.00.

This comprehensive theoretical and comparative analysis, originally published in 1990, offers an ambitious attempt to develop a general, Marxist-oriented theoretical model for the evolution of state power and related violence in the capitalist bourgeois state by a historical comparison of the evolution of the state in England and in France from the period of feudalism, through the era of the ancien régime to bourgeois capitalism. In this second edition, Professor Gerstenberger has revised only the section that addresses the earliest development of modern states as bourgeois states.

Kuhn, Rick. Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2006. xv, 332 pp. $60.00. (Paper $25.00.)

This is a biographical study of the life and work of the Polish-German Marxist economist and historian, Henryk Grossman (1881–1950), who joined the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt in 1925, fled to the United States in 1933, and returned to East Germany in 1949. Dr Kuhn aims to offer a detailed account of Grossman’s experiences in Poland and as an émigré, and discusses his work, in particular his politico-economic analysis of Marxian crisis theory, as elaborated in his book Das Akkumulations- und Zusammenbruchsgesetz des kapitalistischen Systems [The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System] (1929). See also Michael Krätke’s review in this volume, pp. 519–523.

McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues. Ethics for an Age of Commerce. University of Chicago Press, Chicago [etc.] 2006. xviii, 616 pp. $32.50; £20.50.

In her first major study since her memoirs Crossings, published in 1999, Professor McCloskey offers a broad philosophical treatise defending the ethical basis of bourgeois capitalism. Identifying seven essentially bourgeois virtues that are central to the working of capitalism (prudence, temperance, justice, courage, love, faith, and hope) and tracing their philosophical origins through the ideas of Adam Smith back to Plato, she challenges the assumptions generally accepted among European intellectuals from the mid-nineteenth century onward about capitalism’s moral poverty, arguing that capitalism and the market not only thrive in a virtuous atmosphere but can foster moral virtues as well.

Marx for the 21st century. Ed. by Hiroshi Uchida. With a special introduction by Terrell Carver. Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy. Routledge, London [etc.] 2006. xiv, 203 pp. £65.00.

This volume in the series “Collected Essays in English” from the Japan Society for the History of Economic Thought brings together fourteen essays by Japanese scholars on Marx, Marxist thought, and “Marxology” from a Japanese perspective. Contributors examine the contribution of Marx’s thought in analyses of contemporary problems; Marx’s economic theory and contemporary prospects for global socialism; contemporary problems in Marx studies, including a reappraisal of Marx’s theory of history; the reception of Marx in modern Japan; and prospects for Marx studies. In the concluding essay, Tadashi Shibuya discusses new perspectives on the cooperation between Marx and Engels in the context of his work on a new edition of The German Ideology.

History

Cherki, Alice. Frantz Fanon. A Portrait. Cornell University Press, Ithaca New York [etc]. 2006. x, 255 pp. $59.95.

In 2000, two biographies of the French psychiatrist, radical philosopher and revolutionary writer, Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), were published: besides Patrick Ehlen’s Frantz Fanon: A Spiritual Biography (see IRSH, 47 (2002), p. 321), Ms Cherki published the French original of this biography. The author was a close collaborator of Fanon when he worked at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital in French Algeria up until 1957, and later during his involvement in the Algerian independence movement. She aims to offer a personal assessment of Fanon’s complex personality, his psychiatric practice, and the sources of his anti-colonial activism, illuminating his continuing relevance for the study of colonialism and its effects.

Lebovics, Herman. Imperialism and the Corruption of Democracies. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2006. xx, 172 pp. Ill. £56.00. (Paper: £13.95.)

In the six essays that Professor Lebovics has brought together in this volume, of which half were previously published but have been substantially revised, the overarching theme is the threat that imperialism has posed in the past and present to the health of democracy in the British and French metropole. Included are essays on the authoritarianism that arises among administrators of empire; the split between sociology and ethnology, and the ways in which Pierre Bourdieu aimed to bridge it; John Locke’s discerning insight into how liberalism depends on imperialism to control democracy at home; and the reasons for American historians to turn to cultural history to study empire.

Maul, Daniel. Menschenrechte, Sozialpolitik und Dekolonisation. Die Internationale Arbeitsorganisation (IAO) 1940–1970. [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen. Schriftenreihe A: Darstellungen, Band 35.] Klartext, Essen 2007. 447 pp. Ill. € 39.90.

This study, based on a dissertation (Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich, 2005), explores the role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the decolonization process and the establishment of a postcolonial international political order after World War II. Dr Maul aims to show how the ILO’s own principles in the field of labour and social rights became accepted as universally valid human rights under the aegis of the UN. He focuses in part on the role of the ILO’s Technical Assistance programme, directed at developing countries.

Papanek, Hanna. Elly und Alexander. Revolution, Rotes Berlin, Flucht, Exil – eine sozialistische Familiengeschichte. Übersetzt von Joachim Helfer und Hannah C. Wettig. Vorwärts Buch, Berlin 2006. 579 pp. € 29.80.

In this study the German-American scholar Hanna Kaiser (Papanek) describes her family history, which is closely connected with that of the inner circles of German social democracy in the Weimar era and with the exile of the Jewish intelligentsia in the Nazi period. Daughter of Elly Kaiser and Russian exile Alexander Stein (Rubinstein), she sketches how her parents both rapidly became involved in the German social democratic movement, and after 1933 were forced into exile in Czechoslovakia, France, and ultimately the United States.

Police Detectives in History, 1750–1950. Ed. by Clive Emsley [and] Haia Shpayer-Makov. Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2006. viii, 255 pp. Ill. £47.50.

The ten essays in this collection investigate themes central to the history of police detectives in the Western world from the mid-eighteenth to the twentieth century. Considering police detectives as a distinct occupational group, with a unique occupational culture, contributors cover themes such as the incipient vague distinction between criminals and detectives; the establishment of colonial police forces and the role of detectives in them; the complex relationship between official and private law enforcement; the interaction between the fictional and real-life image of detectives; and the FBI in the United States and the Gestapo in Nazi Germany as instruments of state power.

Transnationale Geschichte. Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien. Hrsg. von Gunilla-Friederike Budde, Sebastian Conrad, [und] Oliver Janz. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006. 320 pp. € 24.90.

Bringing together an international group of leading historians in their fields, this Festschrift dedicated to the transnational historiography pioneer, Jürgen Kocka, in recognition of his sixty-fifth birthday, comprises twenty-three essays that aim to offer a critical account of the increasing internationalization and globalization in modern historiography and the growth of transnational perspectives and global connections. The first twelve contributions inventory the evolution of this perspective during the last century, whereas the last eleven essays cover main thematic fields where transnationalism has emerged, including the history of nationalism, Jewish history, intellectual history, cultural history, economic history, and labour history.

Comparative history

Birke, Peter. Wilde Streiks im Wirtschaftswunder. Arbeitskämpfe, Gewerkschaften und soziale Bewegungen in der Bundesrepublik und Dänemark. [Campus Forschung, Band 927.] Campus Verlag, Frankfurt [etc.] 2007. 376 pp. € 39.90; SFR 67.00.

This study aims to give a comparative overview of the “hidden” labour conflicts that took place in Germany and Denmark in the period 1950–1973 and have remained unnoticed or rather were omitted from official statistics on strikes. Dr Birke investigates connections between the wildcat strikes – often local occurrences – in this period of unprecedented economic growth, the emergence of the counter-culture movement of 1968, and the wave of wildcat strikes that erupted in 1973 at the beginning of the worldwide recession. See also Sjaak van der Velden’s review in this volume, pp. 523–525.

Circumpolar Lives and Livelihood. A Comparative Ethnoarchaeology of Gender and Subsistence. Ed. by Robert Jarvenpa and Hetty Jo Brumbach. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln [etc.] 2006. xii, 330 pp. Ill. £35.00.

Combining case studies of the Chipewyan hunter-fishers of Canada, Khanty hunter-fisher-herders of western Siberia, Sámi intensive reindeer herders of north-western Finland, and Iñupiaq maritime hunters of the Bering Strait of Alaska, the ten contributions to this volume explore the gendered nature of subsistence in northern hunter-gatherer-fisher societies. Applying the same task-differentiation methodology to examine the complexities of women’s and men’s involvement in food procurement, processing, and storage, and the relation to the built landscape, the authors aim to offer a comparative reassessment of the sexual division of labour in these communities.

Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe. Challenges to Communist Rule. Ed. by Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe. Berg, Oxford [etc.] 2006. xiii, 210 pp. £17.99.

In this history of popular protest and rebellion in eastern Europe during the Cold War, the eleven contributions cover East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Romania in the period from the Stalin–Tito split in 1948 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Adopting a comparative approach, the contributors explore the varying forms of popular protest and dissent in east European socialist states, the ways the different movements affected one another, the role of different social strata, the complex relationship between Moscow and the national communist parties, and forms of everyday resistance to state authority.

Contemporary issues

The Future of Organised Labour. Global Perspectives. Craig Phelan (Ed.). Peter Lang, Bern [etc.] 2006. 404 pp. € 64.30.

The thirteen essays in this collection study the present state and future prospects of organized labour worldwide, and aim to offer an analysis of the causes and extent of the movement’s current malaise. The volume combines eight national and regional studies, on China, Britain, France, the United States, eastern Europe, Brazil, Ghana, and Cameroon, with analyses of a number of global labour issues, including global corporate restructuring; the fight to achieve core labour standards; gender and diversity; the international labour movement; the relation between trade unions and NGOs; the response from the intellectual community to organized labour’s present situation; and labour’s role in the global social justice movement.

Africa

Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks. African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa. Ed. by Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts. [Africa and the Diaspora. History, Politics, Culture.] The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin 2006. viii, 332 pp. £27.63.

This volume brings together four contributions on French and five on British colonial Africa, together with two essays on South Africa, covering the formative period of the colonial empires (1800–1920), and the advanced stage (1920–1960). The introduction reviews the status of African colonial employees and analyses their ambivalent position, focusing on clerks and translators in government service. The dependence of the colonial authorities on these indigenous civil servants placed them in a position of power in European and indigenous settings alike. Colonial capriciousness was the main risk. The contributors show that members of this group were important cross-cultural brokers in colonial Africa.

Prempeh, E. Osei Kwadwo. Against Global Capitalism. African Social Movements Confront Neoliberal Globalization. Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2006. vi, 189 pp. £55.00.

This study explores forms of resistance and contestation in Africa against neo-liberal globalization, as they have manifested from the 1980s onward in various transnational civil societies and social movement groups, culminating in what the author labels the “movement of movements”. In addition to criticizing views that acknowledge no possible alternatives to globalization, he focuses on groups that aim to articulate a genuine alternative to globalization in the form of democratic anti-capitalism and deglobalization, such as those engaging with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and with the campaign for debt cancellation.

Namibia

Kössler, Reinhart. In search of survival and dignity. Two traditional communities in southern Namibia under South African rule. [ISSA Wissenschaftliche Reihe, Band 31.] IKO-Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Frankfurt am Main (etc.) 2006. xvi, 374 pp. Ill. € 24.90.

This study examines the experiences of traditional communities in southern Namibia from the period of South African occupation (1915–1990) until the early years of Namibian independence after 1990. Professor Kössler aims to show how the two traditional Nama communities responded differently to the South African reserve and homeland policies, with varying measures of resistance and accommodation, and how this history influenced the politics of identity and restitution, issues of survival and struggles over water, land, stock, labour, and finance in the period after independence.

Tanzania

The Practical Imperialist. Letters from a Danish Planter in German East Africa 1888–1906. Ed. by Jane L. Parpart and Marianne Rostgaard. [Sources For African History, Vol. 4.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2006. xvi, 235 pp. $59.00; € 59.00.

The Danish planter Christian Lautherborn (1860–1906) went to German East Africa, present-day Tanzania, to work as a plantation manager hired by the German East African Company from 1888 to his death in 1906. This volume makes available in English a selection of the letters he wrote throughout this period to his family in Denmark. Together, these letters offer unique information about running the daily operations of a colonial plantation in the early years of German East Africa. The editors characterize Lautherborn as a “practical imperialist”, with a keen awareness of both African everyday life and relations within the community of colonists.

Argentina

Auyero, Javier. Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina. The Gray Zone of State Power. [Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2007. xviii, 190 pp. £38.00; $70.00.

In December 2001, a wave of food riots and lootings of stores swept over Argentina, in the wake of the collapse of the Argentine economy. This study aims to provide an analytic description of the origins, course, meanings, and outcome of the lootings. Professor Auyero explores the role of Peronist party activists, who were particularly prominent in the riots, and the conspicuous absence of police officers. Drawing on the perspective of contentious politics, he focuses on the gray zone of clandestine connections between established political actors to explain the making of collective violence. See also the review by Peter North in this volume, pp. 530–532.

Canada

Vair, George. The Struggle against Wage Controls. The Saint John Story, 1975–1976. Ed. and intr. by David Frank. Foreword by Bob White. Canadian Committee on Labour History, St. Johns 2006. Ill. 136 pp. $19.95.

On 14 October 1976, one of the first general strikes in Canada was successfully organized as an outcome of the struggle of the trade-union movement against the imposition of wage controls by the Trudeau government. These are the memoirs of labour activist, George Vair, a leading trade-union organizer in the industrial centre of Saint John, New Brunswick. He recalls how in the industrial community of Saint John the campaign was launched against obstructing the free collective bargaining process, a campaign that culminated in the withdrawal of the wage controls.

Cuba

Farber, Samuel. The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered. [Envisioning Cuba.] University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2006. xi, 212 pp. £49.95. (Paper: £19.95.)

This study aims to explain why the Cuban anti-dictatorial, multi-class revolution became communist. The left has argued that US policy drove Fidel Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union. Conversely, the right has trivialized references to social polarization under Batista and invokes a communist conspiracy. The author suggests that Fidel and his cohorts embraced communism autonomously. As a proponent of left-wing authoritarian populism, Fidel opted for communism to retain the support of the PSP (the Cuban communists) led by his brother Raúl and because of his own interest in this type of social planning.

Ecuador

Benavides, O. Hugo. The Politics of Sentiment Imagining and Remembering Guayaquil. University of Texas Press, Austin 2006. xv, 185 pp. Ill. £12.99.

In the period 1890–1930 Ecuador experienced a combination of social, political and cultural developments crucial in shaping national identity, both in Ecuador and in transnational communities. Focusing on the port city of Guayaquil, Professor Benavides explores in this study the interplay between these developments, and aims to show how this modernization instigated a unique cultural history and ethnic affiliation. Using Raymond Williams’s hypothesis on the relationship between structures of feeling and hegemony, the author incorporates a study of the works by the Afro-Ecuadorian poet Medardo Ángel Silva, who personified, according to the author, the effects of modernism and its contradictions in Ecuador.

El Salvador

Lamperti, John. Enrique Alvarez Córdova. Life of a Salvadoran Revolutionary and Gentleman. Foreword by Charles Clemens. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson [etc.] 2006. v, 289 pp. Ill. £23.87.

This is a biography of the El Salvadorian politician, Enrique Alvarez Córdoba (1930–1950), who together with four other leaders of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), the country’s primary radical movement at the time, was murdered in November 1980 by an extreme rightist death squad acting on behalf of the military. Alvarez Córdoba, a descendant of the country’s ruling families, turned his own ranch into a workers’ cooperative and strove for democratic political and economic reform. Regarded by the rightist ruling class as a traitor of his own class, his death unleashed a civil war.

Puerto Rico

Hernández-Díaz, Arleen. Labor-Management Relations in Puerto Rico during the Twentieth Century. [New Directions in Puerto Rican Studies.] University Press of Florida, Gainesville [etc.] 2006. xxiv, 260 pp. $55.00.

In this study the author argues that the organizational characteristics of the labour relations in Puerto Rico resemble those in the United States. Any differences arise from the nature of the Puerto Rican economy, which was dominated by large American sugar plantations in the first half of the twentieth century. The trade-union movement derived much of its political strength from the Socialist Party. In the second half of the twentieth century, Puerto Rico became an industrial low-wage country. The Taft–Hartley Act and government policy aimed at keeping wages low presented the unions with major challenges. Moreover, the presence of US international unions made for stiff competition among the unions in the 1970s, leading to radicalization and fragmentation. From 1980 the position of the unions weakened in the private sector.

Trinidad and Tobago

Palmer, Colin A. Eric Williams & the Making of the Modern Caribbean. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2006. xii, 354 pp. Ill. € 24.00.

In this biographical study of Eric Williams (1911–1981), famous historian of the Caribbean and first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago after independence in 1962, Professor Palmer focuses on the period from 1956, when Williams founded the People’s National Movement, to 1970, when the February Revolution, inspired by Williams’s own anti-colonialist revolutionary thought, posed the first major challenge to his political power. The author aims to show how Williams, author of the seminal Capitalism and Slavery, was pivotal as a scholar and a politician in the evolution of Caribbean anti-colonial consciousness.

United States of America

Barman, Jean and Bruce McIntyre Watson. Leaving Paradise. Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787–1898. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, Hawaii 2006. xiii, 513 pp. Ill. $45.00.

From the end of the eighteenth century, a small group of native Hawaiians migrated to the Pacific north-west to work as seamen or workers in the fur trade. This study inventories what is known about these Hawaiian migrant workers and settlers, covering the period from their first arrival in 1787 to 1898, the year the Hawaiian Islands were annexed by the United States, and explores their central role in the fur trade. The authors have also included descriptive biographical entries on some 800 native Hawaiians who lived in the Pacific north-west around this period.

Black Power. In the Belly of the Beast. Ed. by Judson L. Jeffries. Foreword by Tiyi M. Morris. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2006. ix, 319 pp. £14.99.

The growing scholarly interest in civil-rights activism in the 1960s has not yet produced a comprehensive history of the Black Power movement, an important part of Black activism in that decade. The eleven essays in this volume seek to fill this void though in-depth investigations of the various well-known and more obscure movements and organizations that made up the Black Power movement from the founding of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) in 1963 to the demise of the Black Power movement in the mid-1970s. In his concluding essay, the editor assesses the Black Power movement’s legacy for the movement for racial equality as a whole.

Les États-Unis face aux revolutions: de la Révolution française à la victoire de Mao en Chine. Sous la dir. de Pierre Melandri et Serge Ricard. [L’Aire Anglophone.] L’Harmattan, Paris [etc.] 2006. 226 pp. € 20.00.

The eleven contributions to this collection, encompassing both French and English texts, investigate changes over time in the attitude of the United States towards revolutions worldwide. Starting with attitudes towards the French Revolution among the American founding fathers, the collection includes essays on the American reaction to the Haitian Revolution of 1791; the United States’ relations with France during the revolutionary 1840s; the Paris Commune in American eyes; the US role in the Mexican Revolution; the American intervention in the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in the years 1927–1933; and the American reaction to Mao Zedong’s rise to power in 1949.

Goldsby, Jacqueline. A Spectacular Secret. Lynching in American Life and Literature. University of Chicago Press, Chicago [etc.] 2006. 418 pp. $67.00; £42.50. (Paper: $25.00; £16.00.)

Exploring select cases of mob murders in combination with case studies of key literary works that deal with the topic and an investigation of the rising popularity of lynching photography and its aesthetics, this study of the history of lynching aims to reinterpret the history of lynching and mob violence against African Americans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Professor Goldsby argues that lynching was less a consequence of Southern racism or social and economic backwardness than a product of the abundance of mass culture, technological advancement and the rise of corporate-monopoly capitalism.

Green, James. Death in the Haymarket. A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. Pantheon Books, New York 2006. 383 pp. Ill. $26.95.

In this narrative history of one of the formative moments in the history of the labour movement in the United States, Professor Green explores the background to the Haymarket bombing in Chicago on 4 May 1886, and depicts the actual events and the ensuing consequences for the nascent organized labour movement. He aims to show how the trade-union movement stood at the brink of a victory in the struggle for the eight-hour day on the eve of the Haymarket tragedy, and how it was thrown back many years by the incident, in part by the strong reactions from the authorities and the right-wing press.

Helms, RobertP. George Brown, the Cobbler Anarchist of Philadelphia. [Anarchist Library Series, number 17.] Kate Sharpley Library, London 2006. 58 pp. $4.00; £3.00.

In this booklet, Mr Helms offers a biographical portrait of George Brown (1858–1915), an anarchist shoemaker, who played a modest role, predominantly as an eloquent speaker, in the burgeoning anarchist movement in Philadelphia in the 1890s. As Brown left behind very few writings, a complete picture of Brown’s life and his role in the anarchist movement is difficult to obtain; based on the sources available, he appears, according to the author, to have been typical of the many militants who made up the anarchist movement of the time.

Howard, Christopher. The Welfare State Nobody Knows. Debunking Myths about US Social Policy. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2007. xiv, 259 pp. $29.95; £18.95.

In this broad overview of the history of American social policy during the twentieth century, Professor Howard challenges a number of received opinions on the American welfare state. He argues that it is larger and more dynamic than often assumed, although much less reliant on social insurances and more on tax expenditures, loan guarantees and regulations than in mainland Europe. He aims to explain how US social policy benefits the middle and upper-middle classes far more than those whose needs are greatest, resulting in a higher level of poverty and greater inequality than in Europe.

Hudelson, Richard and Carl Ross. By the Ore Docks. A Working People’s History of Duluth. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis [etc.] 2006. xxii, 336 pp. $18.95.

In this history of the labour movement in the city of Duluth, Minnesota in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, Professor Hudelson and Mr Ross first review the roots of the labour movement in late nineteenth-century radicalism and syndicalism in the city’s developing steel, lumber, and shipping industries. Next, they focus on the emergence of the coalition of a communist-led Popular Front with the multi-ethnic labour movement, which from 1935 to 1948 seriously challenged the dominance of the city’s business interests.

Lau, PeterF. Democracy Rising. South Carolina and the Fight for Black Equality Since 1865. [Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century.] University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 2006. xiii, 334 pp. Ill. $40.00.

This study of the civil-rights struggle in the United States between the Reconstruction period and the formal end of the Jim Crow segregation in the mid-twentieth century is focused on South Carolina. Arguing that the civil-rights movement in the United States was shaped by local, national, and international circumstances, Professor Lau argues that African-American demands for civil rights have been inseparable from broader demands for a more equal distribution of social and economic power.

Leidenberger, Georg. Chicago’s Progressive Alliance. Labor and the Bid for Public Streetcars. Northern Illinois University Press, Dekalb 2006. viii, 202 pp. Ill. $35.00.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a coalition of the trade-union movement and middle-class reformers in Chicago constituted an influential Progressive alliance that turned the city into a short-lived laboratory of social reform. This study focuses on the debate and political struggles around municipal control of the city’s streetcars as a central issue in this period. Placing this debate in the broader context of public transport and urban development, Professor Leidenberger examines the role of the teamsters’ and teachers’ unions, the employers’ offensive against broad-based organized labour, and the ultimate demise of the coalition and its plans for municipal control over the streetcars.

Levine, BruceC. Confederate Emancipation. Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2006. viii, 252 pp. £17.99.

Near the end of the American Civil War, in March 1865, the Confederate military leaders decided, after lengthy debate, to arm and free slaves in order to fight for the Confederacy, but as the war ended within a few months, their decision was too late to affect the course of the war. In this study, Professor Levine explores the background to the debate around this issue within the Confederacy, a debate that, he argues, discloses the intrinsic paradoxes that abounded in the white slave-holding republic.

Rogers, Kim Lacy. Life and Death in the Delta. African American Narratives of Violence, Resilience, and Social Change. [Palgrave Studies in Oral History.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2006. Ill. x, 214 pp. £15.99.

Based on the Delta Oral History Project, this study brings together the narratives of twenty-eight civil rights activists in the movement in the Mississippi Delta region during the 1960s. Through the interviews, the author aims to offer insight into the perceptions of the historical actors, who lived through the period of oppressive structural violence and segregation, experienced the hardship of staggering poverty and economic exploitation, and struggled for civil rights and equal opportunities for the African-American population of the Delta region.

Williams, Vernon J. The Social Sciences and Theories of Race. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2006. 151 pp. £12.99.

The author, a professor of African-American studies, has brought together in this volume seven essays (of which six are revisions of articles previously published between 1995 and 2003) that deal with the work of key American scholars (both black and white) on race and culture. Including studies on Franz Boas, George W. Ellis, Booker T. Washington, Ulysses G. Weatherly, and Monroe N. Work, Professor Williams aims to reveal the social, cultural, and intellectual forces that influenced these scholars’ supposedly value-neutral scholarly ideas.

Zlolniski, Christian. Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists. The Lives of Mexican Immigrants in Silicon Valley. University of California Press, Berkeley [etc.] 2006. xiii, 249 pp. £29.95.

In this ethnographic study of Mexican immigrants employed in low-wage jobs in the world’s leading centre of information technology (Silicon Valley) at the end of the twentieth century, Professor Zloniski explores how specific labour relations, including subcontracting and other forms of flexible labour practices, have shaped working conditions and therefore the daily lives of these immigrant workers. He aims to demonstrate how the workers that he labels subproletarians have survived the regime of flexible employment through a transformation of local labour and community politics.

China

The Chinese Communist Party in Reform. Ed. by Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Zheng Yongnian. [Routledge Studies on the Chinese Economy.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2006. vi, 268 pp. £70.00.

The twelve essays in this volume examine the current state of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and how it deals with the many challenges it faces. Looking at the dynamics of development, party organization, recruitment, and management, and the CCP’s role in society at large, the contributors conclude that, despite the recent successful transformation of the party, to be able to remain in power it will need to solve many problems, including the pressures for democratization, the emergence of new social groups and increasing dissatisfaction among workers.

Georgia

Pelkmans, Mathijs Emiel. Defending the Border Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia. [Culture and Society after Socialism.] Cornell University Press, Ithaca [etc.] 2006. xvi, 240 pp. Ill. $59.95; £34.50. (Paper: $22.95; £12.95.)

This ethnographic study of everyday life in the Caucasian Republic of Georgia from the 1990s onward focuses on three towns in the southwest corner of Georgia to examine the ways in which people construct identity in a border region that underwent enormous political, economic, and social changes in the period after the demise of the Soviet Union. Dr Pelkmans argues that, contrary to what was expected after the fall of the Iron Curtain, attempts to re-create pre-Soviet identities after 1990 often grounded and reinforced constructions of Soviet identities in the process of overcoming the Soviet past.

India

Coolies, Capital and Colonialism. Studies in Indian Labour History. Ed. by Rana P. Behal and Marcel van der Linden. [International Review of Social History Supplements, 14.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. 286 pp. £17.99; $34.99.

The ten essays in this collection, which was also published as IRSH Supplement 14 (2006), showcase recent research on Indian labour history in the broadest sense. Transcending interest in the traditional, industrial working class alone, contributors pay attention to labour in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods and address pre-industrial labour; labour migrants and labour mobility; self-employment and informalization of labour; indentured labour and free and unfree labour; and gender issues. The volume is dedicated to Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, one of the most prominent Indian labour historians, who died unexpectedly in April 2006. The concluding essay is an unpolished draft of his chapter on the decline of the industrial labour recruiter (“jobber”) in the 1940s.

Ghosh, Durba. Sex and the Family in Colonial India. The Making of Empire. [Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge etc. 2006. xi, 277 pp. £48.00; $85.00.

Contradicting the conventional narrative about a progressive racializing of British colonialism, this study of the history of intimate relations between Britons and Indians in the eighteenth and nineteenth century argues that the process of growing social and sexual distance in the course of the building of the British Empire in India was not a straightforward or sequential process but was full of ambivalence. Professor Gosh examines the life stories of a number of mixed-race families, as well as the activities of indigenous female concubines, mistresses, and wives from various social backgrounds to show how these interracial relations affected the cultural, social, and political mores of the period.

Menon, Dilip M. The Blindness of Insight. Essays on Caste in Modern India. Navayana, Pondicherry 2006. xx, 168 pp. $25.00; Rs. 200.

The four essays Professor Menon has brought together in this volume, three of which were published before between 1997 and 2004, deal with the relation between caste, religion, and secularism and communalism. A central question in the first two essays is to what extent communalism and the concomitant deployment of violence are related to the central issue of violence and inegalitarianism within Hindu society, and in what measure they are related to the heritage of colonialism in Indian society. In the last two essays, the author examines intellectual and cultural activity by subordinated castes and dalits.

Israel

Rabkin, YakovM. A Threat from Within. A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism. Translation from French by Fred A. Reed with Yakov M. Rabkin, Fernwood Publishing, Blackpoint, Nova Scotia; Zed Books, London [etc.] 2006. ix, 261 pp. $85.00; £55.00. (Paper: $27.50; £17.95.)

This study, the English translation of a book originally published in French as Au nom de la Torah: Une histoire de l’opposition juive au sionisme (2004), aims to offer a comprehensive history of the Jewish opposition to Zionism that has developed over the last 120 years, from the birth of Zionism onward. Professor Rabkin includes in his overview the opposition to Zionism on the part of a variety of convictions and groups, both inside and outside Israel, who share in their views the centrality of Torah commandments and values in their assessment of Zionism and Israel.

Pakistan

Shaheed, ZafarA. The Labour Movement in Pakistan. Organization and Leadership in Karachi in the 1970s. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2007. xiii, 350 pp. £11.99.

In the mid-1960s and 1970s, an organized industrial labour movement emerged in Pakistan. This study focuses on the textile industry in urban Karachi to explore the rise of an organized labour movement, the position of the workers, the movement’s leadership, and their interaction with management and the state. Dr Shaheed has based this study on extensive fieldwork among the semi-skilled factory operators from the northern areas, and deals with the ethnic issues between these operators and the more skilled Urdu-speaking immigrants as well. See also Kamran Asdar Ali’s review in this volume, pp. 528–530.

Philippines

McKay, StevenC. Satanic Mills or Silicon Islands? The Politics of High-Tech Production in the Philippines. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York [etc.] 2006. xii, 253 pp. $21.95.

This study in industrial ethnography explores how in the past two decades four multinational electronics firms, located in Philippine export processing zones, have organized work, controlled labour and secured worker commitment by reaching beyond the factory floor into the workers’ lives and communities. Tracing the rise of privatized export processing zones, Professor McKay examines the role of the Philippine state in labour control, and workers’ strategies in negotiating factory discipline, on and beyond the shopfloor, to show that multinational firms in conjunction with the state use the political construction of the local labour market to secure production.

Austria

Lappin, Eleonore, Susanne Uslu-Pauer und Manfred Wieninger. Ungarisch-jüdische Zwangsarbeiterinnen und Zwangsarbeiter in Niederösterreich 1944/45. [Studien und Forschungen aus dem Niederösterreichischen Institut für Landeskunde, Band 45.] Im Selbstverlag des NÖ Instituts für Landeskunde, St. Pölten 2006. 248 pp. Ill. € 25.00.

The five essays in this volume cover various aspects of the fate of Hungarian-Jewish forced labourers in Lower Austria at the end of World War II. Dr Lappin offers an overview of the Hungarian-Jewish population in Lower Austria and of the events surrounding and consequences of the massacre at the Hofamt Priel Jewish refugee centre, where on 2 May 1945 over 200 Jewish refugees were murdered by an SS unit. Two other essays deal with the forced labour camp at St. Pölten-Viehofen and the persecution of Jewish forced labourers during the various death marches in Lower Austria at the end of World War II.

Belgium

Dobbeleer, Georges. Sur les traces de la revolution. Itinéraire d’un trotskiste belge. Préface d’Alain Krivine. Éditions Syllepse, Paris 2006. 349 pp. Ill. € 23.00.

In these memoirs the Belgian Trotskyite Georges Dobbeleer (1930) describes his entry and career in the Fourth International in the 1950s and 1960s. After being involved briefly with the Belgian communist movement around Emmanuel Mounier, he joined the Trotskyite movement in 1953 and became active in the youth movement of the Belgian Parti socialiste and in the weekly, La Gauche. Subsequently liaising with the Polish Trotskyites, he also became a special correspondent of the Fourth International for Japan, south-east Asia, and India. In the concluding chapter, he relates his experiences in Paris in May 1968.

France

Amicabile, Alain. Remercie la neige. Une histoire du Pays-Haut lorrain. Préface de Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont. [Le Présent Avenir.] Éditions Syllepse, Paris 2006. 231 pp. Ill. € 18.00.

This history of the iron and steel industry and the related labour movement and militancy in the French Lorraine region was written by the son of one of the many Italian immigrants who entered the region as anti-fascist refugees in the 1920s. Mr Amicabile offers a chronologically ordered overview, from his perspective as a dedicated trade-union activist and Trotskyite politician, of the origins, evolution, and ultimate demise of the iron and steel industry in the Lorraine region in the twentieth century, the central role of Italian migrant workers in it, and the development of a radical syndicalist movement among the metalworkers.

Besse, Jean-Pierre and Claude Pennetier. Juin 40, la négociation secrète. Editions de l’Atelier, Ivry-sur-Seine 2006. 207 pp. € 14.90.

Recently, a notepad was rediscovered in the Paris municipal archives, containing notes from leading members of the French communist party (the PCF) preparing secret negotiations with the Nazi occupying forces in France, to be held between June and August 1940. PCF members entered these negotiations to try to secure the continuation of the publication of the daily, l’Humanité, and legalization of PCF activities in occupied France. This study features the integral text of these notes, and a comprehensive history and analysis of these remarkable negotiations and their background. The negotiations proved fruitless.

CeamanosLlorens, Roberto. Militancia y Universidad. La construcción de la historia obrera en Francia. [Biblioteca Historia Social, 14.] Fundación de Historia Social, Valencia 2005. 345 pp. € 15.60.

The author, who has also published a study of the journals l’Actualité de l’Histoire and le Mouvement social (see IRSH, 51 (2006), p. 338), traces in considerable detail the development of French labour history from its beginnings among non-academic militants, whose use of history was often openly political, to the multidisciplinary approaches favoured by modern university departments. He discusses the impact of debates on the French Revolution, the role of Algerian independence and May 1968, attitudes towards communism, the importance of institutions like archives and journals, the changing relationship between historians and the political and social movements they study, as well as many other subjects. The book is based on a Ph.D. thesis defended at the University of Zaragoza in 2003.

Dewerpe, Alain. Charonne, 8 février 1962. Anthropologie historique d’un massacre d’Etat. [Collection Folio Histoire, 141.] Gallimard, Paris 2006. 897 pp. Ill. $18.82; € 16.29.

On 8 February 1962, a large demonstration against the terrorist campaign of the extreme rightist, secret military organization OAS was brutally suppressed by the Parisian police, causing nine deaths from suffocation amongst demonstrators who tried to hide in the Charonne metro station. This study examines the actual events of the Charonne massacre and the massive funeral demonstration in the aftermath in the broader context of state violence and its moral justification, and the role of public remembrance. Dr Dewerpe, whose mother was one of the victims, also discusses why the incident seems to have been largely forgotten in popular memory, despite the enormous impact it had at the time.

Dictionnaire biographique mouvement ouvrier, mouvement social. Tome I. Période 1940–1968. De la Seconde Guerre Mondiale à Mai 1968. Publié sous la dir. de Claude Pennetier, Jean-Pierre Besse, Paul Boulland [e.a.]. Les Editions de l’Atelier, Paris 2006. (Incl. CD-Rom.) 445 pp. € 65.00.

Dictionnaire biographique mouvement ouvrier, mouvement social. Tome 2. Période 1940–1968. De la Seconde Guerre Mondiale à Mai 1968. Publié sous la dir. de Claude Pennetier, Jean-Pierre Besse, Paul Boulland [e.a.]. Les Editions de l’Atelier, Paris 2006. (Incl. CD-Rom.) 445 pp. € 65.00.

These are the first two volumes of the Maitron, a new series of biographical dictionaries of the French labour and social movements, as the title indicates. For the first series, see IRSH, 46 (2001), pp. 145–146. Covering the period from the beginning of World War II and the German occupation of France to May 1968 as a major caesura in the social history of France, each volume offers 500 biographies. The CD-Rom included with each volume offers approximately 2,000 additional biographical annotations. The series is projected to comprise twelve volumes. In their introduction the editors explain the addition of social movements in the title, relating it to the changing position of the trade-union movement and the broader labour movement in the second half of the twentieth century.

Éclats du Front populaire. Coord. Daniel Grason, René Mouriaux, Patrick Pochet. Éditions Syllepse, Paris 2006. Ills. 230 pp. € 18.00.

The ten essays in this volume examine the lasting historical significance and influence of the French Popular Front by combining two distinct approaches. The first six contributions contemplate the local perspective by exploring social struggles in various Parisian banlieues and in Marseilles; the last four essays address the influence of the Popular Front in the fields of women’s emancipation, anti-fascism, culture, and international politics.

Heller, Henry. The Bourgeois Revolution in France 1789–1815. [Berghahn Monographs in French Studies, Vol. 5.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2006. ix, 172 pp. $60.00; £36.50.

Against the dominant revisionist conception of the French Revolution, which interprets it as a cultural and ideological rather than as a social and economic phenomenon, this study sets out to reassert the Marxist view that the French Revolution was a capitalist and bourgeois revolution. Analysing recent historiography, and using Marxist theories of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, Professor Heller aims to confute the main arguments of the revisionist school and to offer a revised Marxist narrative of the development of the Revolution.

Lahaxe, Jean-Claude. Les communistes à Marseille à l’apogée de la guerre froide 1949–1954. [le temps de l’histoire.] Publications de l’Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence 2006. 289 pp. Ill. € 28.00.

This thesis explores the French communist party (PCF) rank and file and leadership in the city of Marseilles during the intensification of the Cold War in the years 1949–1954. The author examines in what measure a distinctive communist counter-culture existed, and in what respect this had specifically local characteristics. To this end, he provides a prosopographic analysis of local political and trade-union leaders and their mutual relations, aiming to identify the extent of their autonomy from the centralized national organization in Paris.

Maury, Pierre. La résistance communiste en France 1940–1945. Mémorial aux martyrs communistes. Préf. de Louis Baillot. Le Temps des Cerises, Pantin 2006. 567 pp. € 30.00.

In this bulky volume, the author, a veteran militant of the PCF, the French communist party, combines a comprehensive history of the political, ideological, and armed struggle of the PCF during World War II and the German occupation of France with a memorial listing around 4,000 names of French communists who died in the resistance. In the first section, the author deals with the restructuring of the PCF after being prohibited by the Nazis; the role of various local, regional, and national organizations within the PCF in the resistance struggle; the organization of armed resistance; and the effects of Nazi repression. In the memorial section, separate listings of communist victims in the concentration camps are appended.

Stuart, Robert. Marxism and National Identity. Socialism, Nationalism, and National Socialism during the French Fin de Siècle. [SUNY series on National Identities.] State University of New York Press, New York 2006. x, 305 pp. $85.00.

In this analytical study of the long and troublesome engagement between French Marxism, in its embodiment in the Parti Ouvrier Français, and French nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century, Professor Stuart looks the Guesdists’ involvement in the often virulent nationalism and anti-Semitism during the time of the Boulanger crisis and the Dreyfus affair. He concludes that the Guesdists oscillated between cosmopolitanism and socialist nationalism, and that, under closer scrutiny, not all turned out to be as anti-Semitic as historians have often suggested.

Germany

Bollmus, Reinhard. Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner. Studien zum Machtkampf im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem. Mit einem bibl. Essay von Stephan Lehnstaedt. [Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, Band 1.] Oldenbourg, München 2006. 375 pp. € 49.80.

This is the second edition of a seminal study on the Amt Rosenberg, the Nazi agency headed by the chief NSDAP ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, and its power struggles with other parts of the Nazi hierarchy. The first edition was published back in 1969. This edition features a twelve-page bibliographical essay by Stephan Lehnstaedt, covering the extensive historical research conducted on this and related subjects since the publication of the first edition. In his afterword to this second edition, the author advocates a more balanced view of the Nazi past of his teacher, Werner Conze.

Brogi, Roberto. La socialdemocrazia tedesca e la questione delle riparazioni (1918–1924). [Studi e ricerche, 17.] Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Giuridiche, Politiche e Sociali, Siena 2006. 132 pp.

This study is about the German social democratic attitude toward reparations payments following World War I. As a consequence of domestic problems, the SPD paid little attention to foreign policy. The social democratic press, however, addressed the reparations payments extensively. The author has therefore based his work primarily on a broad range of press organs. Additional sources include German state archives and, as far as the Socialist International is concerned, published sources on the Second International (1918–1919) and the archives of the Sozialistische Arbeiter-Internationale/Labour and Socialist International (SAI/LSI), kept at the IISH.

Dietze, Carola. Nachgeholtes Leben. Helmuth Plessner 1892–1985. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2006. 622 pp. € 45.00.

This is a biography of the German philosopher Helmuth Plessner (1892–1985), who during the Weimar Era was one of the founders of philosophical anthropology. As a moderate, Plessner rejected radical views from the extreme right and the left alike. After 1933, he was forced to emigrate to the Netherlands, where he accepted a chair in philosophy at the University of Groningen. In 1951, he returned to Germany, as a professor at the University of Göttingen. In her biography, Dr Dietze analyses the impact of emigration and remigration on Plessner’s work and ideas.

Gruner, Wolf. Jewish Forced Labor Under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938–1944. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. xxiv, 322 pp. Ill. Maps. £40.00; $75.00.

In this study of Jewish forced labour under the Nazis in Germany, Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and Poland from late 1938 until the end of the war, Professor Gruner aims to refute the commonly accepted view that Jewish forced labour was organized only by the SS and was only an intermediate step on the way to the destruction of the Jews in Europe. He shows that from the end of 1938 onward, in Germany and annexed Austria and later in other German-occupied territories, compulsory labour for Jews was introduced under the aegis of the labour administration (i.e. civil administration) for predominantly economic reasons.

Handlungsspielräume von Frauen um 1800. Hrsg. von Julia Frindte [und] Siegrid Westphal. [Ereignis Weimar – Jena. Kultur um 1800. Ästhetische Forschungen, Band 10.] Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2005. vi, 453 pp. Ill. £58.00.

Revolving around the Handlungsspielraum (operating margin) concept, the twenty-three contributions to this volume, based on papers presented at a colloquium with the same title organized in June 2003 in Weimar, explore the opportunities available to German women around 1800 for various autonomous social, economic, and cultural activities. Included are essays on women in literary societies; midwifery and delivery assistance; the position of married women before the law; female entrepreneurs and merchants; and the growing prominence of women in the theatre.

Rerrich, MariaS. Die ganze Welt zu Hause. Cosmobile Putzfrauen in privaten Haushalten. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2006. 167 pp. Ill. € 16.00.

Based on interviews with a number of foreign women active as domestic servants, this study explores the everyday conditions under which increasing numbers of women from all over the world, but especially from low-income countries, work in German households, often illegally. Professor Rerrich aims to reveal the dependent position of these women in their lives and work, leading to a new form of inequality, and also shows how this phenomenon has been obscured through the perpetuation of a male-dominated division of labour.

“Schlagen gut ein und leisten Befriedigendes”. Zwangsarbeiterinnen und Zwangsarbeiter in Bonn 1940–1945. Hrsg. von Dittmar Dahlmann, Albert Kotowski, Norbert Schlossmacher [u.a.], mit Beiträgen von Jolante Altman-Radwanska, Julia Hildt, Britta Lenz [u.a.]. [Veröffentlichungen des Stadtarchivs Bonn, Band 65.] Stadt Bonn, Bonn 2006. 300 pp. Ill. € 19.00.

Since 1999, when the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” was launched, a wealth of local histories has been published about forced labour during World War II. The eight contributions to this collection deal with, for example, forced labour in the war economy in the city of Bonn. Contributions examine the living and working conditions of forced labourers from Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Poland, west European countries and Italy, and housing accommodations for forced labourers. One contribution discusses the use of local medical insurance company files as a source for historical research on forced labourers.

“Schwabinger Krawalle”. Protest, Polizei und Öffentlichkeit zu Beginn der 60er Jahre. Hrsg. v. Gerhard Fürmetz. [Villa ten Hompel, Schriften, Band 6.] Klartext Verlag, Essen 2006. 254 pp. Ill. € 22.90.

In June 1962, the city of Munich was startled by a series of disturbances and riots in the quarter of Schwabing, involving thousands of youths and students. The ten contributions to this volume aim to offer a complete analysis of the origins, actual events, and effects of these “Schwabing riots”. Included are essays on Munich youth culture, the role of the police and use of excessive violence, press coverage of the events, the civil rights movement stemming from the events, the relation with 1968, and the legal aftermath.

Schuhmann, Annette. Kulturarbeit im sozialistischen Betrieb. Gewerkschaftliche Erziehungspraxis in der SBZ/DDR 1946 bis 1970. [Zeithistorische Studien, Band 36.] Böhlau Verlag, Köln [etc.] 2006. 317 pp. € 39.90.

In the GDR an extensive cultural education programme was compiled in the period 1946–1970, directed in particular at the industrial workforce, aimed at promoting productivity and loyalty to the socialist principles. This study examines the role of the East German trade-union organization (FDGB), of the responsible party organizations, and of those employed in the industry in designing and implementing these cultural education activities. Dr Schuhmann aims to show how, in daily practice, this cultural work often was transformed by employees in directions that might not correspond with stated aims and intentions.

Uekoetter, Frank. The Green and the Brown. A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany. [Studies in Environment and History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. xv, 230 pp. $65.00; £40.00.

This study examines the nature protection movement in Nazi Germany, the forms of close cooperation, and the ideological and institutional lines between the conservation movement and the Nazi regime. In addition to analysing the roots of the conservation movement in the late nineteenth century, the gradual adaptation of racist and nationalist ideas and language among conservationists in the 1920s, and their distance from the Weimar Republic, Dr Uerkoetter considers how members of the conservation movement struggled in the postwar period to cope with their Nazi past.

Volkov, Shulamit. Germans, Jews, and Antisemites. Trials in Emancipation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. xiii, 311 pp. $70.00; £40.00. (Paper: $24.99; £14.99.)

In this collection of essays on the history of anti-Semitism in Germany and the life of German Jewry, an earlier version of which was published in Hebrew in 2002, Professor Volkov explores the dialectic nature of the assimilation of German Jewry in the nineteenth century in the context of general modernization processes in Germany. After discussing how Jewish contemporaries perceived the changing nature of modern, twentieth-century anti-Semitism, she elaborates on her earlier work on anti-Semitism as a cultural code, and concludes with seven essays on the assimilation of German Jews as a project of modernity.

Woyke, Meik. Albert Schulz (1895–1974). Ein sozialdemokratischer Regionalpolitiker. [Reihe Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Band 73.] Mit einem Vorwort von Helmut Schmidt. Dietz, Bonn 2006. Ill. 336 pp. € 28.00.

This is a biographical study of the German social democratic politician Albert Schultz (1895–1974), who throughout a large part of the twentieth century was active in SPD regional politics under five different political systems. Born in Rostock, Schultz became increasingly important in the local SPD administration during World War I and subsequently in the Weimar era. In 1945 he was active in the resurrected SPD and, following the merge with the KPD in the Soviet Occupation Zone in the SED, until he fled to West Germany in 1949. In the early 1950s he gradually embarked on a new career in regional politics in Schleswig-Holstein.

Great Britain

Dirks, NicholasB. The Scandal of Empire. India and the Creation of Imperial Britain. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. [etc.] 2006. xviii, 389 pp. $27.95; £18.95; € 23.80.

Using the famous impeachment trial of Governor-General Warren Hasting by Edmund Burke in 1788 as a window, in this study Professor Dirks explores the history of the British East India Company to show how the foundations of the British Empire arose from the exploits of the East India Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He argues that by the end of the eighteenth century the British government transformed the company’s image, and gave the impression that India was vulnerable and needed British assistance in order to justify the imperial project and provide an ideological basis for its expansion in India and beyond.

A Global Clan. Scottish Migrant Networks and Identities Since the Eighteenth Century. Ed. by Angela MacCarthy. [International Library of Historical Studies, vol. 36.] Tauris Academic Studies, London [etc.] 2006. 242 pp. £47.50.

The ten essays in this collection use personal testimonies – correspondence, diaries, memoirs – to explore the impact of Scottish migration on the political, economic, demographic, social, and cultural development in the British colonies, including India, New Zealand and Australia, and the Caribbean, from the eighteenth century onward. The contributors also aim to use the personal accounts to investigate how networks of kin and social groups figured in this Scottish migration.

Hernon, Ian. Riot! Civil Insurrection from Peterloo to the Present Day. Pluto Press, London [etc.] 2006. Ill. xiii, 303 pp. £19.99; $35.00; € 30.00.

Covering over twenty instances of violent public protest, this study gives a narrative history of riots and popular unrest in England and Wales from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Included are instances of popular unrest related to well-known nineteenth-century popular movements such as the Luddites, Captain Swing, and the Chartists, as well as a variety of twentieth-century riots. Mr Hernon argues that riots in Britain may have contributed more toward social and political change than is commonly acknowledged.

Hilliard, Christopher. To Exercise Our Talents. The Democratization of Writing in Britain. [Harvard Historical Studies, 150.] Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. [etc.] 2006. 390 pp. £19.95; $29.95; € 25.50.

In this literary history from below of Britain in the first half of the twentieth century, Dr Hilliard explores the rise of the so-called amateur writers’ movement of middle-class and lower-middle-class origins as it manifested from the 1920s onward, the working-class literary activity that blossomed in particular in the 1930s, and popular literary activities during World War II. He argues that, although most of these literary writers have left virtually no lasting traces in literary history, these three connected literary trends constituted an important element in the democratization of culture in Britain.

Huzel, JamesP. The Popularization of Malthus in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Martineau, Cobbett and the Pauper Press. [Modern Economic and Social History.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2006. xiii, 266 pp. £55.00.

In this study of the reception and impact of the work of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), Professor Huzel explores how his writings were both popularized and demonized, and how his work framed the terms of reference for debate on the problems of pauperism and population growth. The author argues that Malthus’s ideals paved the way for the New Poor Law of 1834, which led traditional forms of outdoor relief to be replaced by the harsh workhouse regime. Malthus’s ideas were thus pivotal in fostering the rise of a market economy, according to the author.

Jackson, LouiseA. Women Police. Gender, Welfare and Surveillance in the Twentieth Century. [Gender in History.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2006. Ill. ix, 220 pp. € 50.00.

This study examines the professional roles, identities, activities, and experiences of women employed within the United Kingdom police service since 1914. Using a broad range of oral history, documentary, and visual sources, Dr Jackson looks at women’s involvement in uniform, plainclothes, and undercover policing, as well as the special role of women police in detecting and preventing child abuse and neglect, investigating sexual violence, and regulating prostitution. In her conclusion, she assesses the differing concepts of equality that shaped women’s involvement in the police service in the previous century.

Lloyd-Jones, Roger and M.J. Lewis, Alfred Herbert Ltd and the British Machine Tool Industry, 1887–1983. [Modern Economic and Social History.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2006. x, 352 pp. £50.00.

This study aims to examine the development of the machine-tool industry in Britain over the twentieth century through the lens of the rise and decline of the industry’s largest firm, Alfred Herbert Ltd. of Coventry. Although relatively small, the machine-tool industry was a vital part of the country’s manufacturing sector, and its development an adequate indicator of the state of British industry as a whole. Specific to the sector were strong connections with other industries and the existence of extensive subcontracting arrangements.

Randall, Adrian. Riotous Assemblies. Popular Protest in Hanoverian England. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2006. x, 354 pp. £65.00.

In this study of popular disorder in England in the period 1714–1814, Professor Randall looks at both the well-known food riots, industrial protests, and political disturbances, and at less extensively studied occasions of popular disorder, such as tax riots, turnpike riots, and religious riots. Exploring the political and legal background to the riots, as well as the social, economic, and cultural contexts, he builds on the Thompsonian essentially bipolar concept of the moral economy to explain the stark rise of instances of popular disorder in this period.

Robins, Nick. The Corporation that Changed the World. How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational. Pluto Press, London [etc]. 2006. xv, 218 pp. $80.00. (Paper: $24.95.)

In this history of the British East India Company, intended for a general readership, Mr Robins aims to focus on the company’s poor social record as a corporation. He deals concisely with the company’s contested legacy and historical reputation, its origins as a spice trader, its governance and finance, its relation to the British state, the scandals with which it came to be associated and its ultimate integration in the imperial state. In his concluding chapter, the author discusses how a more critical analysis of the company’s legacy might help to ensure that modern global corporations are held accountable.

Shelmerdine, Brian. British representation of the Spanish Civil War. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2006. 185 pp. £50.00.

In this study of the reception of the Spanish Civil War in British popular culture, Dr Shelmerdine argues that traditional notions of Spain as a somewhat exotic country were pervasive in the rhetoric and imagery of supporters of both sides in the conflict. Looking at the different political perceptions of Spain in the 1930s, the role of the Catholic Church, and the influence of the mass media and fictional accounts of the War, the author concludes that although initially supporters of the Republican side predominated in the mass media, they failed to convince the British public of the need to become involved in the conflict.

Suffrage Outside Suffragism. Women’s Vote in Britain, 1880–1914. Ed. by Myriam Boussahba-Bravard. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2007. x, 262 pp. £50.00.

Looking at a range of political parties and reforming groups, this collection of ten essays explores suffrage activism outside the actual suffragism movement to see how these groups reacted to and accommodated the issues of suffrage. Examined are women in the Labour, Conservative and Liberal parties (Pat Thane, Lori Maguire, Linda Walker); in the National Union of Women Workers (Julia Bush); the Women’s Cooperative Guild (Gillian Scott); Socialist Women in Bristol (June Hannam); the Primrose League (Philippe Vervaecke); unionized women teachers (Susan Trouvé-Finding); and avant-garde feminists (Lucy Delap).

Greece

Avdela, Efi. Le genre entre classe et nation. Essais d’historiographie grecque. Préface de Michelle Perrot. [Nouvelles questions féministes.] Éditions Syllepse, Paris 2006. 205 pp. € 20.00.

Professor Avdela has brought together in this collection six essays, previously published in the 1990s, on the historiography of gender relations in the context of Greece. Greek society has a strong tradition of male dominance. Included are essays on the opposition between class relations and gender relations in modern Greek history; on gender, families and strategies of work; protective labour legislation towards women; the practice of labour protection as found in reports from labour inspectors; class, ethnicity, and gender in post-Ottoman Thessaloniki; and the relation between nationhood, citizenship, and gender in nineteenth and twentieth-century Greece.

Hungary

Everett, Martyn. War and Revolution. The Hungarian Anarchist Movement in World War I and the Budapest Commune (1919). [Anarchist Library Series, No. 14.] Kate Sharpley Library, London [etc.] 2006. 28 pp. £3.00.

Despite its small membership, the Hungarian anarchist movement mounted significant opposition to World War I and figured prominently in the revolution at the end of the war, which culminated in the short-lived Budapest Commune in 1919, according to the author of this booklet on the topic. Mr Everett describes how the anarchists joined the Hungarian Bolshevists in their opposition to the war but were gradually outshone by them and eventually crushed by the reaction against the Commune.

Italy

Da Fabriano a Montevideo. Luigi Fabbri. Vita e idee di un intellettuale anarchico e antifascista. A cura di Maurizio Antonioli e Roberto Giulianelli. [Biblioteca di storia dell’anarchismo, 17.] BFS edizioni, Pisa 2006. 263 pp. Ill. € 19.00.

This collection comprises the fourteen contributions to an international scholarly conference organized in November 2005 in Fabriano, the birthplace of Luigi Fabbri (1877–1935). Fabbri was a leading anarchist publicist, receptive to the ideological innovation of anarchism and to dialogue with like-minded movements and active in anti-fascist efforts. The contributions review his position within Italian anarchism, his political background, his attitude toward republicans and syndicalism, his lucid critique of Bolshevism, his analysis of fascism, his publicist activities, his archive and library (at the IISH and in Bologna) and his work with his daughter Luce. The same publisher issued an edition of letters by Fabbri around the same time (see IRSH, 52 (2007), p. 348f.).

Fascismo e antifascismo a Napoli (1922–1952). Sette lezioni. A cura di Sergio Muzzupappa e Alexander Höbel. [Archivio Storico del Movimento Operaio.] La Città del Sole, Napoli 2005. 123 pp. € 8.00.

This collection of seven articles arises from a series of discussion meetings convened at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in 2005. The objective was to examine anti-fascism in and around Naples based on frequently forgotten or underrated primary sources. Participants focused mainly on persons and organizations, hoping to highlight aspects of rift and continuity with the post-fascist period in Naples. Subjects addressed included: communism during and after fascism; political parties and the Comitato di Liberazione Napoletano; and the postwar Right.

Gianni, Emilio. Liberali e democratici alle origini del movimenti operaio italiano. I congressi delle società operaie italiane (1853–1893). Edizione Pantarei, Milano 2006. x, 336 pp. Ill. Maps. € 15.00.

This is the first in a series of works intended as a combination of a biographical dictionary and a prosopography of the Italian labour movement. The different volumes will not address the labour movement in general but will focus on various movements within it to identify their common characteristics. Detailed exposés of the Congresses of the Società Operaie dello Stato and the Società Operaie Italiane, as well as of their politico-social context, are followed by a few diagrammatic lists of the participants in those Congresses. The author also provides a register comprising brief biographies of these individuals.

Labriola, Antonio. Carteggio. V. 1899–1904. A cura di Stefano Miccolis. Bibliopolis, Napoli 2006. xxxi, 506 pp. € 60.00.

This is the fifth and final volume in the annotated edition of the correspondence of Antonio Labriola (1843–1904), published under the auspices of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici and the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples (see IRSH, 47 (2001), p. 168; 48 (2002), p. 327; 50 (2005), p. 147; and 51 (2006), p. 350, for the previous volumes). Collation of these handwritten letters has made it possible to correct errors that appeared in the three Epistolario volumes (Editori Riuniti) published in 1983. This volume comprises 404 letters, including 77 to Benedetto Croce, and 21 to Karl and Luise Kautsky. Of the 61 hitherto unpublished letters, 55 are from Labriola. A list of errata and various indexes (senders, recipients, letters mentioned in the correspondence but not found, listed periodicals and works by the author, published and unpublished alike) conclude the book.

Puglielli, Edoardo. Battaglie e vittorie dei ferrovieri abruzzesi. Sulmona, L’Aquila, Avezzano, Castellammare 1894–1924. [Biblioteca des “Pensiero”, 13.] Centro Studi Libertari Camillo Di Sciullo, Chieti 2006. 190 pp. Ill. € 10.00.

In early 1907 the Sindicato Ferrovieri Italiani (SFI) was formed from three railway workers’ trade unions, making it the largest railway workers’ trade union until it was disbanded in 1925. In this study based on archive materials and periodicals of the labour movement, the author traces the history of the trade-union organizations of railway workers since the establishment of the first such trade union in the late nineteenth century, and reviews the SFI, which was an important protagonist in the social struggle in Italy, albeit from the perspective of the community of Sulmona in the Abbruzzi, where Carlo Tresca figured prominently before fleeing to the United States in 1904.

Rodogno, Davide. Fascism’s European Empire. Italian Occupation During the Second World War. [New Studies in European History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. xxi, 504 pp. Ill. £60.00; $99.00.

This study, which was originally published in Italian in 2003 as Il nuovo ordine mediterraneo: Le politiche di occupazione dell’Italia fascista in Europe (1940–1943), aims to offer a revisionist history of the Mediterranean European territories annexed and occupied by Italy between 1940 and 1943 within the framework of fascist imperial ambitions. Exploring Italy’s plans for Mediterranean expansion, its relation with Germany, economic exploitation, the forced “Italianization” of the annexed territories, collaboration, repression and fascist policies towards refugees and Jews, Professor Rodogno concludes that, despite the failure of the Fascists’ imperial policies, studying the underlying fascist ideology remains important to improving our understanding of the history of Italian fascism.

Salvemini, Gaetano. Cronologia dei primi scritti mazziniani (1831–1834). A cura di Gabriele Paolini. Premessa di Cosimo Ceccuti. Pref. di Paolo Bagnoli. [Biblioteca della Nuova Antologia, no. 21.] Edizioni Polistampa, Fondazione Spadolini Nuova Antologia, Firenze 2006. 109 pp. € 14.00.

The manuscript of this bibliographical essay from 1935 was presented by Salvemini in 1947 to Alessandro Galante Garrone, who transcribed it and provided it to the present publisher. Salvemini aimed to date the development of the political ideas of Mazzini (1805–1872) from the period 1831 (the start of his exile) until the Savoye expedition (1834), based on his writings and letters. These were the same years that the journal Giovine Italia appeared. Salvemini expresses criticism of the edition of Mazzini’s Scritti editi e inediti (1906–1943) published by Galeati. Gabriele Paolini has written an extensive introduction.

Schirone, Franco. La gioventù anarchica. Negli anni delle contestazioni 1965–1969. Zero in Condotta, Milano 2006. 318 pp. € 15.00.

Anti-authoritarianism, anti-militarism, and the involvement of young adults in the social struggle were important in Italian society even before 1968. From 1965 a libertarian movement emerged among young adults that derived inspiration from the beat generation and the Dutch Provos and subsequently participated in the more general youth movement. In this history of the Federazione Giovanile Anarchica Italiana, the author aims to contribute to research on the reincarnation of the libertarian movement. He does this based on interviews with those involved, on an analysis of the periodical, Umanità Nova, and especially on a thorough examination of a vast document collection.

L’Unione anarchica italiana. Tra rivoluzione europea e reazione fascista (1919–1926). Massimo Oralli, Luigi Di Lembo, Giampietro Berti [e.a.]. Zero in Condotta, Milano 2006. 311 pp. € 15.00.

In 1919 the Unione Comunista Anarchica Italiana was founded; it was renamed the Unione Anarchica Italiana the next year. This collection comprises the fourteen contributions from historians to a scholarly conference held in 1999 in Imola at the initiative of the Archivo Storico della Federazione Anarchica Italiana. The subjects addressed were: the anarchist federalist tradition, the Programma Anarchico of the organization, relations with individualists, the attitude toward the Russian Revolution, opposition to fascism and local and regional developments. Two founding documents and various indexes (e.g. of organizations, periodicals and places) conclude the book.

The Netherlands

Pol, Lottevande. Der Bürger und die Hure. Das sündige Gewerbe im Amsterdam der Frühen Neuzeit. [Geschichte und Geschlechter, Sonderband.] Campus Verlag, Frankfurt [etc.] 2006. Ill. 263 pp. € 29.90; S.fr. 52.20.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the city of Amsterdam, the third-largest city in Europe, had a reputation as an important centre of prostitution. In this study, a German translation that was originally published in Dutch as De burger en de hoer: Prostitutie in Amsterdam (2003), Dr van de Pol examines the counterculture of prostitution in Amsterdam. She explores the various manifestations of the sex business, from the cheap brothels in the port district to chic gaming houses, the city government’s policy towards prostitution, and prosecution practices; the cultural discourse around prostitution and whoring; the varied clientele; and working conditions among prostitutes.

Portugal

Marques, JoãoPedro. The Sounds of Silence. Nineteenth-Century Portugal and the Abolition of the Slave Trade. [European Expansion and Global Interaction.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2006. xix, 282 pp. $75.00.

An abbreviated translation of a Ph.D. thesis defended at Lisbon’s Universidade Nova in 1999, this is a study of why Portugal, which started the transatlantic slave trade and administered the main slave importing and exporting countries (Brazil and Angola, respectively), was extraordinarily slow to abolish the trade or even to discuss publicly the possibility of its abolition. The author concentrates on an analysis of the ideological arena, in which abolitionist arguments were long absent or outdone by deep-rooted feelings about the “normalcy” of slavery as well as nationalist resentment of British pressure, until Portugal came to see abolition as a precondition for being considered an “honourable” nation.

Vidal, Frédéric. Les habitants d’Alcântara. Histoire sociale d’un quartier de Lisbonne au début du 20e siècle. [Histoire et Civilisations.] Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, Villeneuve d’Ascq 2006. 489 pp. Maps. € 25.00.

This is a detailed study of early twentieth-century Alcântara and in particular of the various forms of social cohesion that could be found in this popular quarter on the western side of Lisbon. The author puts the registry office (registo civil) to good use in reconstructing the population history of two streets, with careful consideration for family and gender relations, vocation, social mobility, migration and more. He pays special attention to the trades and professions, how people move in and out of them, and in what measure they influence a person’s social status. The book is based on a doctoral thesis (Université Lyon 2, 2003).

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Bukharin, Nikolai. Socialism and Its Culture. The Prison Manuscripts. Seagull Books, London [etc.] 2006. lxxviii, 258 pp. £55.00. (Paper: £16.99.)

This volume of the Prison Manuscripts, written by the leading Bolshevik intellectual and revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938) in 1937 in Moscow’s notorious Lubyanka prison, while awaiting his liquidation by Stalin, deals with cultural, ideological, and philosophical themes, including the realization of the concept of total man, the problem of freedom, the problem of equality and hierarchy, style in socialist culture, diversities in capitalism and socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the cultural revolution. Mr Shriver also translated into English Bukharin’s autobiographical novel and final work, How It All Began (1998) (see IRSH, 45 (2000), p. 361).

Wirtschafter, EliseKimerling. Russia’s Age of Serfdom, 1649–1861. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, Mass. [etc.] 2008. xiv, 287 pp. Ill. £55.00. (Paper: £22.99.)

This study aims to offer a broad historical overview of the social, political and cultural history of the Russian Empire from the time of serfdom’s codification in the mid-seventeenth century to its abolition in 1861. Adopting an explicit European perspective, Professor Kimerling Wirtschafter focuses on territories populated predominantly by ethnic Russian peasants. Organized in three chronological sections, the study reviews for each period the social developments, with an emphasis on the institution of serfdom, the political developments and the cultural developments, focusing on the ongoing Europeanization, and the emergence of political and cultural dissent. See also Alessandro Stanziani’s review in this volume, pp. 516–517.

Spain

Del hogar a la huelga. Trabajo, género y movimiento obrero durante el Franquismo. Ed. José Babiano, José Antonio Pérez, Nadia Varo Moral [a.o]. [Investigación y debate.] Catarata [etc.], Madrid 2007. 285 pp. € 18.00.

Five authors reconsider the role of women in the informal economy and the labour movement (or more specifically the Comisiones Obreras) in the Franco era. They argue that women have too often been made invisible and their actions overlooked or trivialized, as a result of political or gender bias. Three contributions focus on developments in specific regions, viz on domestic and informal work in the Bilbao area and on strike movements in Greater Barcelona and Asturias, respectively. In all cases, the authors have made extensive use of interviews.

De súbditos a ciudadanos. Una historia de la ciudadanía en España. [Historia de la Sociedad Política.] Dir. Manuel Pérez Ledesma. Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, Madrid 2007. 735 pp. € 32.00.

The result of a research project (2001–2003) on how subjects of the Spanish Crown became Spanish citizens, this book consists of two parts. In the first, thirteen authors trace the checkered history of citizenship in Spain, from the French Revolution and the Cortes of Cádiz to the present. They discuss the different views of conservatives, liberals, and socialists and of Catholics versus non-Catholics. Separate chapters deal with the Second Republic, Franquism, the Transición, and the prospects that Spain’s membership of the European Union offered. The second part, entitled “Inclusion and Exclusion”, contains eight contributions on various aspects of citizenship, including, for example, the citizen as taxpayer and conscript; women, peasants and immigrants as citizens; and the role of education.

EscriváMoscardó, Cristina. Los institutos para obreros. Un hermoso sueño republicano. Comercial l’Eixam, València 2008. Ill. (Incl. DVD.) 309 pp. € 30.00.

In November 1936 the government of the Second Republic decided to open the first Instituto Obrero in Valencia, which provided four semesters of paid secondary education to promising young male and female workers, in buildings where they were to live together with their teachers. In 1937 other institutos were established in Sabadell, Barcelona, and Madrid. Drawing on the memories of surviving alumni, the author reconstructs this brief educational experiment and reproduces contemporary documents, as well as a generous selection of images (in part on an accompanying DVD). Brief biographies of the teachers at the Valencia institute are included.

Fox, Soledad. Constancia de la Mora in War and Exile. International Voice for the Spanish Republic. [Sussex Studies in Spanish History.] Sussex Academic Press, Brighton 2007. xii, 219 pp. Ill. £35.00.

This is a biography, based on oral and archival sources, of a scion of the Maura family (Antonio was her mother’s father, Miguel her uncle) who became the spokesperson for the Spanish Republic towards the end of the Civil War, and whose book In Place of Splendor made her famous when it was published in New York in 1939. The author, however, argues convincingly that this “autobiography” was in reality written by Ruth McKenney, a fellow communist, as part of an effort to engage the United States on the side of the Republic. De la Mora’s life – she died in 1950 at age 44 – is depicted in the complicated context of the Spanish Civil War, Stalinist intrigues, and American politics.

Historia del PCE. I congreso, 1920–1977. Volumen I y II. Coords Manuel Bueno, Carmen [y] José Hinojosa. Fundación de Investigaciones Marxistas, Madrid 2007. € 42.00.

These volumes bring together the ninety-one contributions to the First Conference on the History of the Spanish Communist Party held at Oviedo in May 2004. They are grouped in five sections, two of them thematic and relatively short (on historiography and international relations), three chronological and much longer (on the years 1920–1939, 1939–1956 and 1956–1977); the last one fills the entire second volume. Each section is introduced by a major report, written by David Ginard, Natacha Lillo, Rafael Cruz, Hartmut Heine, Carme Molinero, and Pere Ysàs, respectively. As the editors note, the book is strong on institutional and local or regional studies, especially on the tardofranquismo, but the Civil War and ensuing repression are less well represented, and there is no separate contribution on relations with the Soviet Union either.

Luchas autónomas en los años setenta. Del antagonismo obrero al malestar social. Coord. Fundación Espai en Blanc. Traficantes de Sueños, Madrid 2008. Ill. 362 pp. € 18.00.

The book consists of two parts. The first contains eight contributions on the autonomous workers’ movement that emerged in the final years of the Franco regime and the early years of the Transición, with special reference to Barcelona, Granada, Gavà (the Roca works), and Azpeitia. The six contributions to the second part draw lessons for the present, including an analysis of the experience of the group Socialisme ou Barbarie. The book is part of a set that also comprises a DVD and a website (www.luchasautonomas.net) featuring original documents digitized from the Ruedo Ibérico collection at the IISH.

PeiratsValls, José. The CNT in the Spanish Revolution. Vol. 3. Ed. by Chris Ealham. Transl. by Paul Sharkey and Chris Ealham. The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies; ChristieBooks, Hastings 2006, 266 pp. Ill. £60.00. (Paper: £17.00.)

This is the third and final volume of the revised English translation of the classic anarchist account of the Spanish Revolution. The first volume was noted in IRSH, 49 (2004), pp. 572f; the original Spanish edition appeared in 1951–1953. Like the earlier volumes, this one is fully indexed and richly illustrated. It opens with a bibliographical note by Chris Ealham about English-language publications on the history of Spanish anarchism.

Raguer, Hilary. Gunpowder and Incense. The Catholic Church and the Spanish Civil War. Transl. from Spanish by Gerald Howson. [Routledge/Cañada Blanch studies on contemporary Spain, vol. 11.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2007. xix, 418 pp. £75.00.

A translation of La Pólvora y el Incienso (2001), this book by a Benedictine monk from Montserrat is a well-documented study of a topic that has proved hard to address objectively. The author notes how religion became a major factor in the uprising only after the rebels failed and introduced the “Crusade” concept to win broader support for their various Rightist causes. He discusses the evolving position of the Vatican, the repression in both the rebel and republican zones (including Franco’s repression of Basque nationalist priests), and the internal conflicts in what was to become the triumphalist church of the victors.

Rouges. Maquis de France et d’Espagne. Les guérilleros. Actes du colloque du Laboratoire de langues et littératures romanes de l’Université de Pau, 20 et 21 octobre 2005, Université de Pau et des pays de l’Adour. Jean Ortiz (coord.). Atlantica, Biarritz 2006. 487 pp. Ill. € 25.00.

The more than twenty contributions to this book tell the story of the communist guerilleros who tried to organize armed resistance in Spain after Franco’s victory in the Civil War. Their efforts peaked after the liberation of France, when the communist-led Unión Nacional Española’s operation “Reconquista de España” culminated in the deployment of several thousand men into the Spanish Pyrenees in October 1944. The authors deal with other attempts as well, chiefly during the 1940s and including fighting in Navarra, the centre, and the mountains of Málaga and Granada. The book reproduces and summarizes a number of memoirs, among them a note by Enrique Líster.

La sanidad en las Brigadas Internacionales. Coord.: Manuel Requena Gallego [y] Rosa María Sepúlveda Losa. [La luz de la memoria, no. 5.] Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca 2006. 224 pp. Ill. € 17.00.

Seven authors review the history of the health service of the International Brigades during the Civil War. Three of the contributions are memoirs, two by surgeons who were with the Brigades (José María Massons and Moisés Broggi) and one by a brigadista who was treated in the hospital of Benicàssim (Hans Landauer). This hospital is the subject of a separate article, as is another hospital in Alcoi founded with Swedish and Norwegian funding. Other topics include the work of the German psycho-analyst Max Hodann and the periodicals dedicated specifically to health issues. An introduction by José Martínez Pérez provides the medical-historical context.