Introduction
Rebels with a Cause
Exhibition commemorating the 75th anniversary of the IISH
The IISH was founded in the turbulent 1930s at a time when, following Hitler's seizure of power, many documents and archives of opposition movements were threatened with becoming irredeemably lost. Vital archives that were brought to safety in Amsterdam in the early years include: the archive of the German socialist movement (including the manuscripts of Marx and Engels), the archives of revolutionaries at risk from Stalin, and the archives of the Spanish trade unions, threatened with falling into Franco's hands.
After the end of World War Two, the IISH successfully continued collecting documents. With the exception of Dutch emancipation movements such as Provo, and internationally active movements such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International, endangered archives of organizations and individuals from countries like Turkey, Iran, Burma and Indonesia were safely housed at the Institute.
A selection of the unique documents that have been collected by the IISH in Amsterdam in the last 75 years is shown on this website. This fascinating collected history of one of the world's oldest and largest institutes in the field of social history will be displayed, organized around five themes: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Near- and Middle East, South- and Southeast Asia, and Globalization.
The documents were also exhibited in the building of Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam from 29 October 2010 until 30 January 2011.
The catalogue
A lavishly illustrated catalogue has been published by Aksant Academic Publishers, both in English and in Dutch.
240 Pages, € 29,50
>> More information
>> Order a copy
About the selection
The IISH collection, which spans fifty kilometres of shelf space, includes material for a wide variety of selections. What you will find here does not pretend to be the most representative, the most characteristic, the most interesting, the rarest, or even the most visually appealing sample, even though the representative or in fact unique nature, special properties, and visual effects of each item have been considered. Instead, we have based our choice on contemporary views about the history of labour and labour relations, representing the perspective of the entire world over the past half millennium. In this retrospective, we aim to reveal how the principles that defined the establishment in 1935 have been conveyed in the collection over the course of three quarters of a century.
Ideological considerations have played no role. Because of the nature of our collection development, social movements in their many manifestations have consistently figured prominently at the IISH. These groups and organizations reflect the widest possible variety of ideas and customs, which by definition cannot all please everybody. This is irrelevant to the Institute, which on the contrary aims to cover the social-political spectrum very broadly, including untruth, deception and fraud.
The selection has been divided into five ‘chapters’. The first is about Europe from around 1500, because this was the methodological foundation for social-economic history when the Institute was established. This entailed the process – especially the economic aspect of it – that had turned the West and its ideas into a world power. This chapter is twice as long as all the following ones, because the IISH collections are by far the best equipped in this area.
The second chapter addresses Eastern Europe, focusing on Russia and the Soviet Union. The history of this proximate region has consistently influenced that of Western Europe, especially after the October Revolution of 1917. Moreover, the Bolshevik regime had explicitly contributed to the circumstances that led the Institute to be established, as the collection amply shows.
The third and fourth chapters are about the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, respectively. This expresses the shift of the IISH collection area beyond Europe, which received a strong boost in the late 1980s from the building of a Turkish collection, and a decade later from the expansion of the activities to South Asia. This process coincided with a similar change in the research interests of the IISH.
The objective in these regional chapters has been to relate economic aspects more or less to social ones. The remaining parts of the world (East Asia, the Pacific, North and South America, and Africa) are by no means absent from the Institute’s collection; indeed, they surface sporadically in our selection. Except for the renowned selection of Chinese posters at the IISH, however, the collections about these regions tend to be less elaborate.
The fifth and final chapter reveals important aspects of the ‘globalization’ that rules the present. This is not just about labour but about the broader implications of increasing global entanglement and economic growth, such as migration, human rights, and environmental issues. All these and similar subjects have been well represented in the Institute’s collection since the 1990s, and in some cases long before.
More background information
Why is the manuscript of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, the chef d’oeuvre of one of the most widely known Germans ever, located in Amsterdam? The short answer is that it is there thanks to the establishment of the International Institute of Social History, now seventy-five years ago. A somewhat longer answer appears in the attached PDF file, which aims to explain the background to and reasons for the origin of the IISH, and how the Institute has progressed into one of the world’s largest and most renowned repositories concerning social and economic history.
The text by Jaap Kloosterman and Jan Lucassen was originally published in the exhibition catalogue, Rebels with a Cause, pages 7-28.
The title of the text is Working for Labour. Three quarters of a century of collecting at the IISH. It is followed by an extensive bibliogaphy.
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Exhibition at 'Special Collections'
The exhibition
29 October 2010 - 30 January 2011
Tuesday till Friday: 10:00 - 17:00 hours
Saturday, Sunday, national holidays: 13:00 - 17:00 hours
Closed on 25 December and New Year's Day.
Bijzondere Collecties Building
Oude Turfmarkt 129
1012 GC Amsterdam