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.