Pub Date : 2023-07-12DOI: 10.1017/s0020859023000329
K. Candlin
{"title":"Karen Cook Bell. Running from Bondage. Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. viii, 248 pp. Ill. £18.99. (Paper: £14.99; E-book: $19.95.)","authors":"K. Candlin","doi":"10.1017/s0020859023000329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020859023000329","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84717753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-12DOI: 10.1017/S0020859023000366
B. Capp
{"title":"Michael Sturza. The London Revolution 1640–1643. Class Struggles in Seventeenth-Century England. Mad Duck Coalition, New York 2022. xvii, 224 pp. $25.00. (Paper: $20.00; E-book: $15.00.)","authors":"B. Capp","doi":"10.1017/S0020859023000366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000366","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88157834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-12DOI: 10.1017/S0020859023000275
Malika Ouacha
lectical relationship of human beings to nature” (pp. 151–192) provides the most advanced basis for dealing with today’s ecological problems of existence. It also follows from all this that demands for more environmental protection, or, for example, solar and innovative technologies, cannot solve the basic contradiction that has been grasped. In view of the driving logic of exploitation and the growth imperatives, “scientific-technical or political–legal measures”, even state intervention or nationalization, can only delay the catastrophe (p. 126). Finally, beyond world conflicts, there is the threat of humanity’s self-destruction, exterminism through weapons of destruction, and the irreversible destruction of the biosphere. In view of this, it is summed up: the “concrete utopia” of a radical change proves to be “the only horizon of hope for the continued existence of humanity” (p. 132). Even more, therefore, consistent efforts are needed in the “invariant direction” (Bloch) towards the “great project of conscious humanity” (p. 189), for which there is “no certainty” (p. 132) of success.
{"title":"Şebnem Eroğlu. Poverty and International Migration. A Multi-Site and Intergenerational Perspective. Policy Press, Bristol 2022. v, 126 pp. £47.00.","authors":"Malika Ouacha","doi":"10.1017/S0020859023000275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000275","url":null,"abstract":"lectical relationship of human beings to nature” (pp. 151–192) provides the most advanced basis for dealing with today’s ecological problems of existence. It also follows from all this that demands for more environmental protection, or, for example, solar and innovative technologies, cannot solve the basic contradiction that has been grasped. In view of the driving logic of exploitation and the growth imperatives, “scientific-technical or political–legal measures”, even state intervention or nationalization, can only delay the catastrophe (p. 126). Finally, beyond world conflicts, there is the threat of humanity’s self-destruction, exterminism through weapons of destruction, and the irreversible destruction of the biosphere. In view of this, it is summed up: the “concrete utopia” of a radical change proves to be “the only horizon of hope for the continued existence of humanity” (p. 132). Even more, therefore, consistent efforts are needed in the “invariant direction” (Bloch) towards the “great project of conscious humanity” (p. 189), for which there is “no certainty” (p. 132) of success.","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76660731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-12DOI: 10.1017/S0020859023000299
F. Ribeiro da Silva
{"title":"Mariana P. Candido Wealth, Land, and Property in Angola. A History of Dispossession, Slavery, and Inequality. [African Studies Series, 160.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. xiv, 323 pp. Ill. Maps. £85.00. (Paper: £26.99; E-book: $34.99.)","authors":"F. Ribeiro da Silva","doi":"10.1017/S0020859023000299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000299","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75209751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-05DOI: 10.1017/S002085902300024X
Xuduo Zhao
Abstract In the 1910s, guild socialism emerged as a response to the particular social and political problems of Britain and as a radical rebel against the established English socialist movement. From the beginning, guild socialism was characterized by its “Englishness”, and its global influences have largely been neglected. Through the case of Zhang Dongsun, a leading Chinese guild socialist, this article provides a transnational and comparative dimension of guild socialism and examines how its ideas were accepted, reinterpreted, and localized in a non-Western context. While English guildsmen propagated a strong anti-capitalist ideology and highlighted industrial democracy, mass self-government, and direct action, their Chinese comrades were advocating, at least temporarily, domination of the bourgeoisie and seeking to temper the radical social ethos motivated by the October Revolution. Guild socialism in China was deprived of its rebellious and militant elements and transformed into a moderate, wait-and-see theory that could, in Zhang's opinion, strike a perfect balance between elitism and mass democracy. Zhang's elitist interpretation of guild socialism showed his agency and ambition in pursuit of political modernity for China, but ironically it was his active reinterpretation that sealed the fate of Chinese guild socialism.
{"title":"Tempered Radicalism: Zhang Dongsun and Chinese Guild Socialism, 1913–1922","authors":"Xuduo Zhao","doi":"10.1017/S002085902300024X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S002085902300024X","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the 1910s, guild socialism emerged as a response to the particular social and political problems of Britain and as a radical rebel against the established English socialist movement. From the beginning, guild socialism was characterized by its “Englishness”, and its global influences have largely been neglected. Through the case of Zhang Dongsun, a leading Chinese guild socialist, this article provides a transnational and comparative dimension of guild socialism and examines how its ideas were accepted, reinterpreted, and localized in a non-Western context. While English guildsmen propagated a strong anti-capitalist ideology and highlighted industrial democracy, mass self-government, and direct action, their Chinese comrades were advocating, at least temporarily, domination of the bourgeoisie and seeking to temper the radical social ethos motivated by the October Revolution. Guild socialism in China was deprived of its rebellious and militant elements and transformed into a moderate, wait-and-see theory that could, in Zhang's opinion, strike a perfect balance between elitism and mass democracy. Zhang's elitist interpretation of guild socialism showed his agency and ambition in pursuit of political modernity for China, but ironically it was his active reinterpretation that sealed the fate of Chinese guild socialism.","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75227796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1017/s0020859023000214
Martin Bruegel
Ventilation emerged as an efficient technique to reduce the health impact of dust and gas in workspaces around 1900. However, this technical solution to a major sanitary problem collided with the human factor. When, in 1894, French law imposed shop-floor clearance during lunch to facilitate aeration, workers resisted the injunction as a disturbance of their daily eating routine. Authorities relied on labour inspectors to find solutions to contentious situations. The 1901 union-led strike in the high-fashion district in Paris propelled the issue to national attention. Striking women demanded the strict enforcement of the aeration rule. The executive obliged, but the newfound zeal subsequently rekindled antagonism towards the regulation. Reversing their claim, women workers launched a community-based petitioning campaign to return to pre-strike tolerance. Rumours of another walk-out by seamstresses, triggered by the enforcement of the regulation in 1902, precipitated a governmental volte-face. Authorities apprehended the power of the street and the threat of public disorder. Government yielded to the women's influence. A more relaxed version of the decree – it did not automatically require the evacuation of workspaces – appeared on 29 November 1904. It had taken ten years, and a zigzagging trajectory, to overcome the unanticipated consequences of purposive legislative action. The new rules proved to be very solid: they remained in place until Covid-19 pushed the government to temporarily authorize eating at one's workplace to prevent the spread of the virus in canteens and restaurants.
{"title":"Law, Labour and Lunch in France at the Turn of the Twentieth Century","authors":"Martin Bruegel","doi":"10.1017/s0020859023000214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020859023000214","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ventilation emerged as an efficient technique to reduce the health impact of dust and gas in workspaces around 1900. However, this technical solution to a major sanitary problem collided with the human factor. When, in 1894, French law imposed shop-floor clearance during lunch to facilitate aeration, workers resisted the injunction as a disturbance of their daily eating routine. Authorities relied on labour inspectors to find solutions to contentious situations. The 1901 union-led strike in the high-fashion district in Paris propelled the issue to national attention. Striking women demanded the strict enforcement of the aeration rule. The executive obliged, but the newfound zeal subsequently rekindled antagonism towards the regulation. Reversing their claim, women workers launched a community-based petitioning campaign to return to pre-strike tolerance. Rumours of another walk-out by seamstresses, triggered by the enforcement of the regulation in 1902, precipitated a governmental volte-face. Authorities apprehended the power of the street and the threat of public disorder. Government yielded to the women's influence. A more relaxed version of the decree – it did not automatically require the evacuation of workspaces – appeared on 29 November 1904. It had taken ten years, and a zigzagging trajectory, to overcome the unanticipated consequences of purposive legislative action. The new rules proved to be very solid: they remained in place until Covid-19 pushed the government to temporarily authorize eating at one's workplace to prevent the spread of the virus in canteens and restaurants.</p>","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0020859023000135
François Sennesael
{"title":"Yaniv Voller. Second-Generation Liberation Wars. Rethinking Colonialism in Iraqi Kurdistan and Southern Sudan [Intelligence and National Security in Africa and the Middle East.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. xiv, 271 pp. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)","authors":"François Sennesael","doi":"10.1017/S0020859023000135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000135","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73912373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1017/s0020859023000251
{"title":"The End of a Long Tradition","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0020859023000251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020859023000251","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75466336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0020859023000123
D. R. Egerton
{"title":"Andrea C. Mosterman Spaces of Enslavement. A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2021. xiii, 230 pp. Ill. $39.95. (E-book: $25.99.)","authors":"D. R. Egerton","doi":"10.1017/S0020859023000123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000123","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87853834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0020859023000093
Samuel K. Allen
Finkelstein motivates this ambitious narrative by prefacing this exploration of injury rates with a consequential and personal anecdote involving a clash among political powers within Chile’s workers’ compensation system. Thus, this mostly theoretical analysis is rooted in practical first-hand experience. Immediately, the reader is forced to recognize that Finkelstein’s analysis requires the unpacking of tightly interwoven components that include economic logic, countervailing incentives, ethical behavior, and important historical background. This serious and logically rigorous book requires substantial attention to detail, so the intended audience is one well-steeped in Marxist theory. From the outset, there is concern about the optics. Finkelstein observes directly that the “no-fault” workers’ compensation system (at least in Finkelstein’s experience in Chile, and perhaps elsewhere) still finds ways to lay blame, and place subjective valuations on the reality of injuries. Finkelstein’s mission is to elevate workplace injury rates beyond mere indicators, and instead he labels them a “new problematic”. He argues that there is an essential connection between injury rates and capitalism itself. Injury rates are couched in terms of “lost labor power for sale”, and, moreover, there is conflict among the market forces and behavioral response perspectives. Unlike a traditional economic approach, Finkelstein prefers to focus on “value” rather than prices (of workers’ compensation premia) as it pertains to laborers, whom he sees as bearing the brunt of the burden imposed by workers’ compensation insurance that necessitates the recording of injury rates. Finkelstein claims to have discovered the theoretical notion of “surplus lost value”. Here, he argues that capitalism (as a system, rather than capitalists per se) thrives on underpaying for injuries. Initially, this does not seem novel, rather it combines the usual rent-seeking behavior found in situations where some players have market power and possess an underlying need to make compensation arrangements incentive compatible, e.g. by not compensating 100 per cent of losses in order to mitigate problems of moral hazard. To establish the historical basis for these observations, Finkelstein focuses primarily on nineteenth-century Germany and the laws and underlying economic “preconditions” that result in the “worker question” and related problems. Here, the backstory is well-researched. Bismarck’s Germany represents an economic shuffle that is analogous to shifting tectonic plates. The transition from peasants working land owned by feudal lords to workers moving to industrial establishments without a connection to (either commons or private) land leads to problematic consequences that include unemployment, poverty, and the rise of injury-related complications.
{"title":"Rodrigo Finkelstein. Lost-Time Injury Rates. A Marxist Critique of Workers’ Compensation Systems [Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 216/ New Scholarship in Political Economy, Vol. 17.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2022. x, 236 pp. € 147.15. (E-book: € 147.15.)","authors":"Samuel K. Allen","doi":"10.1017/S0020859023000093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000093","url":null,"abstract":"Finkelstein motivates this ambitious narrative by prefacing this exploration of injury rates with a consequential and personal anecdote involving a clash among political powers within Chile’s workers’ compensation system. Thus, this mostly theoretical analysis is rooted in practical first-hand experience. Immediately, the reader is forced to recognize that Finkelstein’s analysis requires the unpacking of tightly interwoven components that include economic logic, countervailing incentives, ethical behavior, and important historical background. This serious and logically rigorous book requires substantial attention to detail, so the intended audience is one well-steeped in Marxist theory. From the outset, there is concern about the optics. Finkelstein observes directly that the “no-fault” workers’ compensation system (at least in Finkelstein’s experience in Chile, and perhaps elsewhere) still finds ways to lay blame, and place subjective valuations on the reality of injuries. Finkelstein’s mission is to elevate workplace injury rates beyond mere indicators, and instead he labels them a “new problematic”. He argues that there is an essential connection between injury rates and capitalism itself. Injury rates are couched in terms of “lost labor power for sale”, and, moreover, there is conflict among the market forces and behavioral response perspectives. Unlike a traditional economic approach, Finkelstein prefers to focus on “value” rather than prices (of workers’ compensation premia) as it pertains to laborers, whom he sees as bearing the brunt of the burden imposed by workers’ compensation insurance that necessitates the recording of injury rates. Finkelstein claims to have discovered the theoretical notion of “surplus lost value”. Here, he argues that capitalism (as a system, rather than capitalists per se) thrives on underpaying for injuries. Initially, this does not seem novel, rather it combines the usual rent-seeking behavior found in situations where some players have market power and possess an underlying need to make compensation arrangements incentive compatible, e.g. by not compensating 100 per cent of losses in order to mitigate problems of moral hazard. To establish the historical basis for these observations, Finkelstein focuses primarily on nineteenth-century Germany and the laws and underlying economic “preconditions” that result in the “worker question” and related problems. Here, the backstory is well-researched. Bismarck’s Germany represents an economic shuffle that is analogous to shifting tectonic plates. The transition from peasants working land owned by feudal lords to workers moving to industrial establishments without a connection to (either commons or private) land leads to problematic consequences that include unemployment, poverty, and the rise of injury-related complications.","PeriodicalId":46254,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83101893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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