A Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations in the period 1500-2000

Project Description

1. Institutional setting

The main centre of research will be the International Institute of Social History (IISG), Amsterdam.

2. Subsidy term

The term of the project will be two years and three months. The intended starting date is 1 January 2007.

3. Research Groups

The project is a joint enterprise of two research groups:

Group 1. Of the IISG: the main applicant and Professors Karin Hofmeester, Jan Lucassen, and Jan Luiten van Zanden.

Group 2. Of the Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte (WISO) of the University of Vienna: Professors Josef Ehmer, Peter Feldbauer, and Andrea Komlosy.

The research groups will be advised by some of the world's foremost specialists in historical demography and the history of labour relations, including Professors Jean Batou (UNIL, Lausanne), Richard Jensen (Excelsior College, New York); Paul Lovejoy (York University, Toronto), Ralph Shlomowitz (Flinders) and Sir Tony Wrigley (Cambridge).

4. Project description

Main goals of the project

Globalization means that more and more of the world's people depend on waged or salaried labour for a living. This has far-reaching economic and socio-political consequences . Economic consequences because the economy more and more depends on labour motivation, productivity and migration, and social-political consequences, because the corresponding labour relations strongly define social position, and therefore also political behaviour. Labour relations are an essential element of 'civil society'. A profound understanding of these developments can only be obtained through global historical research of long-term processes.
Our goal is twofold: firstly, we aim to make an inventory of all types of labour relations worldwide, varying from slavery, indentured labour, sharecropping to free wage labour and self-employment in all its facets and combinations and to make a reconstruction of the developments of these types from 1500 up until today. To get an insight in the worldwide development from 1500 to now, we will first gather data on the occurrence of all types of labour relations in all parts of the world during five cross-sections in time i.e.: 1500, 1650, 1800, 1900 and 2000. To do so we will ask regional experts from different disciplines to co-operate with us, gathering and sharing their data and its critical annotations in a collaboratory (see below) and during meetings. The creation of this research infrastructure should lead us to the discovery of lacunae in our knowledge and analysis which can be solved through further research.
The second goal of our project is to develop an international research proposal aimed at explaining the rise and decline of types of labour relations in the period 1500-2000. Why was slavery much more frequent in the 17th and 18th century than it is today? Why was slavery abolished in Europe and subsequently introduced in the European colonies? Why is child labour still an issue today? Why did tenant farming sometimes disappear altogether, only to return later? Why did free wage-labour become more important in the course of time? To answer these kinds of questions, insight is needed on the one hand into the 'logic' of particular labour relations (e.g. what are the economic advantages and disadvantages of a given type of labour relationship for employers?), while on the other hand the mutual competition between types of labour relations needs to be explored, such as become visible in transitional situations, i.e. historical turning points when regionally the one type of labour relations gave way to another.

Planning/Activities

During the first three months two kinds of activities will be undertaken. Firstly, we will form an international network of researchers and set up a collaboratory. A collaboratory is a 'laboratory without walls'. It is a web-based network facility and an organizational entity that facilitates collaboration between researchers all over the world. All participants in the collaboratory are oriented to a common research area, they will collect data from a common ground. They will do so in close interaction (virtual as well as 'real') and they will share these data via joint databases that are published on the web portal of the collaboratory. Since gathering data on the development of all forms of labour relations worldwide from 1500 to now is a pioneer work and all data will have to be collected locally from archives all over the world and processed in a standardised way to make further research possible, a collabarotory is the most obvious way to co-operate in this project.
Secondly, the IISG and the WISO will by themselves immediately begin and collect some part of the data. This data will then be published on the website of the collaboratory which will be designed to optimize sharing large datasets. This start will help us discovering shortcomings of our data, it will set the agenda for discussions on the categories of labour relations and the practical issues of the collababoratory.
After three months a workshop will be organised. Here members of the international research network will meet face-to-face. During this first meeting we will discuss and (re)define the categories of labour relations and we will set up a common programme of data gathering, processing and sharing. In doing so we will not only serve the practical goal of the collaboratory but we will also help the conceptualisation of several forms of labour relations.
All participants will then start working in their own area. In the following 21 months we will keep in close contact with all researchers by organising a second workshop half way and by holding video and telephone meetings in between.
At the end of the second year we will organise a final meeting with all members of the research network and the members of our advisory board, to discuss the results of the data gathering activities. We will signal lacunae in our knowledge and analysis and we will formulate a research proposal which will try to explain the rise and decline of types of labour relations in the period 1500-2000. To do so two staff members of the IISG and one of the WISO will be freed from their normal duties for three months to write the proposal.

Programmatic cohesion

The project is firmly rooted in the research activities of the IISG and the WISO. The international network of researchers will co-operate very closely and will share the same premises which will guarantee the internal cohesion of the research project.

Quality of the research groups involved

The four IISG researchers have been collaborating already for many years, as has become visible in jointly organized conferences, co-authored books, etc. Lucassen just finished the manuscript for a massive edited volume on Global Labour History (forthcoming in 2006), while van Zanden during the last two years organized or coorganized several conferences on "Global Economic History". Lucassen and van Zanden are members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Van Zanden won the Spinoza Prize 2004.
The three Viennese scholars have been actively involved in the development of global history. Ehmer is one of Austria's foremost labour and family historians and a former president of the Austrian branch of the International Association of History and Computing; Feldbauer edited and wrote numerous books on aspects of global history; Komlosy participates in the "Erasmus Mundus Global Studies" (a joint project of the universities in Leipzig, Vienna, Wroclaw and the London School of Economics) and is editor in chief of the "Edition Weltregionen" (Vienna).

Importance and surplus value of the co-operation for the research groups

A research of this span in time and space can only be done by an international network of researchers. In discussing and sharing their views and their data they will help formulating new analyses and new research questions. Moreover, the individual researchers will help to integrate the main themes of this research in the research programme of their respective universities and research groups, thereby forming an integrative tendency in a fragmented field.

5. Intended results

The two research groups will together become the central node of an international collaboratory (a research infrastructure). An important result of this collaboratory will be a shared database, containing data on the worldwide occurrence of various forms of labour relations in the period 1500-2000. Based on these data, during the last three months of the project, an international research proposal will be formulated to further analyse the development of these labour relations. This research proposal will be written by Van der Linden, in collaboration with Ehmer and Hofmeester. A combined grant application will be submitted to the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Stockholm) and the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung (Cologne).