Volume 49 part 3 (December 2004)
Bibliography
General Issues
Continents and Countries
- Africa
Algeria | Nigeria | Rwanda - America
Brazil | Guatemala | Haiti | Mexico | United States of America - Asia
China | Sri Lanka - Europe
Eire - Ireland | France | Germany | Great Britain | Greece | Italy | The Netherlands | Poland | Russia - USSR | Spain | Switzerland
Book descriptions consist of: author, title, publisher, place and year of publication, number of pages, original price; followed by a brief summary of the contents.
All listed books are available in the IISH library.
General Issues
SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCECastoriadis, Cornelius. Sujet et vérité dans le monde social-historique. Séminaires 1986-1987. (La création humaine, 1). Texte ét., prés. et annoté par Enrique Escobar et Pascal Vernay. [La couleur des idées.] Éditions du Seuil, Paris 2002. 496 pp. € 27.00.
This volume is the first of a series, comprising a full transcription of the seminars that Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997) taught at the École des Hautes Études des Sciences Sociales in 1986/1987. In the transcriptions in this volume, edited by Professor Castoriadis himself and the foundation for his unfinished magnum opus La Création humaine, the philosopher and co-founder of the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie (1949-1965) deals with the closely related question as to the meaning of "the subject" in current society and the extent to which truth is a social-historical creation of the subject.
Rothschild, Emma. Economic Sentiments. Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2002. ix, 353 pp. £12.95.
Focusing on political economic thought of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and in particular of Adam Smith and Condorcet, Professor Rothschild aims to reconstruct the political, legal and philosophical context and disputes that gave rise to modern, laissez-faire economic ideas and their relation to conservative political thought. This might also, according to the author, elucidate the disputes over political economy in present times.
HISTORY
Deflem, Mathieu. Policing World Society. Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation. [Clarendon Studies in Criminology.] Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2002. xiii, 301 pp. £50.00.
Using a theoretical model of bureaucratization based on Weber and recent theories of globalization, Professor Deflem aims to offer in this study a sociological analysis of the history of international police cooperation in the period from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of World War II. Exploring international cooperation strategies involving police institutions from the United States and Germany as well as other European countries, he examines the role of police in the nineteenth-century movement towards international independence, international policing aspects of the outbreak of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution; and the international implications of the Nazification of the German police. See also Klaus Weinhauer's review in this volume, pp. 519-521.
De-industrialization: Social, Cultural, and Political Aspects. Ed. by Bert Altena and Marcel van der Linden. [International Review of Social History, Supplement 10.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2002. 175 pp. £15.95.
The seven essays in this collection deal with the social, cultural and political effects of de-industrialization processes in Western and non-Western contexts throughout the twentieth century, exploring the consequences of de-industrialization for working-class families and their communities; how de-industrialization affects working-class culture, trade unions, traditional labour parties and the regional, social, educational and cultural infrastructure; and the extent to which gender relations are changed by de-industrialization. Included are essays on South Africa (Franco Barchiesi and Bridget Kenny), post-war Britain (Darren G. Lilleker), the Ruhr region (Stefan Goch), the United States (Robert Forrant, Gregory Wilson) and India (Chitra Joshi). Christopher H. Johnson offers a general introduction on the relation of de-industrialization and globalization.
Hoerder, Dirk. Cultures in Contact. World Migrations in the Second Millennium. [Comparative and International Working-Class History.] Duke University Press, Durham, N.C. [etc.] 2002. xxii, 779 pp. Maps. $100.00.
In this extensive study, the well-known migration scholar Professor Hoerder describes and analyses the origins, causes and extent of human migration around the globe from the eleventh century onward to the present day. With special consideration for the impact of migrations on the receiving countries and the cultural interactions they have brought about, the author argues that understanding societal change requires taking into account the impact of migrations. He concludes that present-day migration patterns have been transformed by new communication systems and other forces of globalization and transnationalism.
Lafargue, Paul. Essays zur Geschichte, Kultur und Politik. Hrsg. von Fritz Keller. [Schriften, Band 8.] Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin, Berlin 2002. 392 pp. € 24.95.
This collection comprises fourteen essays by Paul Lafargue (1842-1911) on cultural and religious issues. Lafargue, best known as the son-in-law of Karl Marx and author of La Droit à la Paresse (The Right To Be Lazy) (see IRSH, 37 (1992), pp. 137f., 45 (2000), p. 353, and 48 (2003), pp. 508f.), is to be regarded, according to the editor of this volume, as the first exponent of "cultural politics" in Marxism. A common theme in all these essays is Lafargue's fight against bourgeois concepts ("deities") such as progress, justice, reason, liberty, civilization, humanity and nation, which in fact were merely an apology for bourgeois action, or the lack thereof, to protect personal interests.
Scrivere con la sinistra. Dalla carta intestata a Internet. A cura di Stefano Caretti, Maurizio Degl'Innocenti e Gianni Silei. Lacaita, Manduria [etc.] 2002. Ill. 170 pp. € 20.00.
Examining over 350 images, the authors of this work analyse the iconography of letterheads on the stationery of social-democratic and other leftist political parties and related organizations from the early twentieth century. The topics addressed following the introductory chapter are symbols of international socialism; Italian socialism; communist symbols; and the period after World War II. The sixth chapter deals with the iconography of websites of organizations from the same political spectrum but with a far broader geographic scope.
Transnationale Öffentlichkeiten und Identitäten im 20. Jahrhundert. Hrsg. von Hartmut Kaelble, Martin Kirsch [und] Alexander Schmidt-Gernig. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/M. [etc.] 2002. 448 pp. € 58.00.
This collection of sixteen contributions aims to explore how Western, and in particular European societies, have coped during the twentieth century with the demands on and challenges to the nation state as a result of the ongoing globalization, the impact of this process on the self-perceptions and identities of these societies and the resulting emergence of transnational public spheres and identities. The contributors focus on three main themes: the field of tension between the nation, Europe and the rest of the world; the relation of transnational migration patterns, social movements and transfers of ideas and identities; and transnational non-governmental organizations and networks of experts.
Uncovering Labour in Information Revolutions, 1750-2000. Ed. by Aad Blok and Greg Downey. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2003. 261 pp. £15.95; $24.95.
This volume explores the role, position and divisions of information and communication labour in the broadest sense through periods of revolutionary technological change. The nine contributions range from eighteenth-century German clerical work, through Indian telegraph workers' actions in 1908, computing labour in early twentieth-century US electrical engineering, the impact of containerization and ICT on South-African stevedores and international seafarers, to the emergence of computer programmers, labour organization in Silicon Valley and the role of volunteer work in the early development of the World Wide Web. In his concluding contribution, Greg Downey argues that hitherto labour has been largely overlooked in the historiography of revolutions in information technologies. See also Ursula Huws's review in this volume, pp. 528-530.
COMPARATIVE HISTORY
Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora. Ed. by Linda M. Heywood. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2002. xv, 384 pp. Ill. Maps. £45.00; $64.95. (Paper: £15.95; $22.95.)
The thirteen essays in this volume, originating from a conference organized in Washington, DC, in 1999, examine the culture of Central Africans in the Kongo-Angola zone from the sixteenth century onward, the changes that coincided with the rise of the slave trade, and how this Central-African culture was transformed in the subsequent diaspora in the Americas. Contributors review the adaptations in the cultural institutions, beliefs and practices of Central Africans in Brazil, Latin America and the Caribbean.
High, Steven. Industrial Sunset. The Making of North America's Rust Belt, 1969-1984. University of Toronto Press, Toronto [etc.] 2003. 306 pp. Ill. Map. $27.95; $55.00 (Paper £18.00; £35.00.)
This study explores and compares the processes of industrial transformation in Canada and the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s, when plant closings were widespread in the Great Lakes region. Drawing from 137 oral history interviews with displaced workers in Canada and the United States, Professor High aims to offer a regional analysis of the resulting economic, social and cultural devastation and of the different ways that Canadian and American mill and factory workers interpreted their own displacement. The author concludes that the disruption caused by the plant closings was filtered through national contexts. See also Robert Forrant's review in this volume, pp. 534-536.
Irish and Polish Migration in Comparative Perspective. Ed. by John Belchem and Klaus Tenfelde. [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts zur Erforschung der europäischen Arbeiterbewegung. Schriftenreihe A, Darstellungen, 22.] Klartext, Essen 2003. 240 pp. € 28.90.
The fourteen essays in this volume, based on a conference organized at the Institute of Social Movements of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in October 1999, offer a comparative analysis of the history of two different migrant groups in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe, with similar backgrounds, age structures and religious cultures. Both Irish and Polish migrants were mainly rural, predominantly young and single and for the most part adherents of distinctive forms of Catholicism. After two general comparative essays, six contributors deal specifically with Irish migration in Britain, four with Polish migration to Germany and Western Europe and two with Irish and Polish immigrants in the United States. See also Leo Lucassen's review in this volume, pp. 521-524.
Kaiser, Claudia. Gewerkschaften, Arbeitslosigkeit und politische Stabilität. Deutschland und Großbritannien in der Weltwirtschaftskrise seit 1929. [Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe III, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften, Band 923.] Peter Lang, Frankfurt/M. [etc.] 2002. ix, 462 pp. € 61.10.
This dissertation (Freiburg i. Breisgau, 1999) compares the reactions of the German and the British central trade union federations - the ADGB and the TUC - to the mass unemployment during the Great Depression in the 1930s and the related political unrest. Dr Kaiser compares social origins and voting behaviour of the unemployed, economic and political changes during the period in both countries, the organizational leeway available to the unions, industrial relations, programmatic reactions to the economic crisis and their attitude to political extremism. She concludes that the differing political cultures in both countries were of decisive importance.
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
Goulbourne, Harry. Caribbean Transnational Experience. Pluto Press, London [etc.] 2002; Arawak publications, Kingston 2002. ix, 246 pp. £50.00. (Paper: £15.99.)
Examining the Caribbean community both in Britain and in the Caribbean itself in recent years, Professor Goulbourne poses three central arguments in this study: the concepts of "diaspora" and "Caribbean diaspora" are problematic; the African and Caribbean diasporas are integral parts of the wider Atlantic, rendering a distinction between the West and the rest pointless with respect to the Caribbean; and the need for empirical validation and theoretical information to make discussions about Caribbean transnationality meaningful. He explores, among others, the common Atlantic heritage, social and economic contexts of Caribbean transnationality and transnationality of families.
Huws, Ursula. The Making of a Cybertariat. Virtual Work in a Real World. Monthly Review Press, New York; The Merlin Press, London 2003. xiv, 208 pp. $18.95; £13.95.
Professor Huws brings together in this collection eleven essays that are revised versions of texts published between the late 1970s and the present and deal with the consequences of the recent revolutionary advances in information and communications technology (ICT) for the workplace and for workers worldwide. Focusing in particular on the position of women in the workplace and at home, both as workers and as consumers, she examines how the ICT revolution changes categories of employment, modes of organization, and divisions of labour, leading to the emergence of what she labels as a "cybertariat": large groups of workers with insecure, flexible and often part-time employment relations. See also Nicole Mayer-Ahuja's review in this volume, pp. 531-533.
Kronauer, Martin. Exklusion. Die Gefährdung des Sozialen im hoch entwickelten Kapitalismus. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt [etc.] 2002. 252 pp. € 19.90; S.fr. 35.90.
Social exclusion, as a result of unemployment and poverty, and the emergence of an underclass have become frequent subjects of debate in social sciences and politics in Western societies in recent decades. This study aims to give an overview of these phenomena and the related debates. Dr Kronauer examines the French origins of the social exclusion concept and the American background of the underclass concept, the elaboration of these concepts in social sciences, their relation to urban issues and the challenges they present for democracy.
CONTINENTS AND COUNTRIES
AFRICA
Cooper, Frederick. Africa since 1940. The Past of the Present. [New Approaches to African History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2002. xiii, 216 pp. Ill. Maps. £14.95; £40.00.
This textbook about African history differs from most, in that it is not intended to be comprehensive. Professor Cooper begins his history around 1940 and argues that regarding independence as a less rigid cut-off point than usual will make for a better understanding of the period as a whole. His analysis revolves around the "Gate-keeper state" concept. Control over the "gate" between the new state and the rest of the world determines the course of political development. Professor Cooper published previously on post-emancipation societies in Beyond Slavery. Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (2000) (see IRSH, 47 (2002), p. 320). The book features brief bibliographies in each chapter. The full bibliography appears on: http://publishing.cambridge.org/resources/0521776007/80731.doc.
Algeria
Grangaud, Isabelle. La ville imprenable. Une histoire sociale de Constantine au 18e siècle. [Recherches d'histoire et de sciences sociales, 95.] Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris 2002. 368 pp. Maps. € 35.00.
The city of Constantine, Algeria, under Ottoman rule at the end of the eighteenth century, was governed between 1771 and 1792 by the singular and enigmatic figure of Sâlah Bey, whose reputation as a self-willed and autonomously operating governor and brutal end have made him legendary. Dr Grangaud offers in this study a social history of the city in this period, focusing on the social networks and the organization of the jurisdiction, to provide a context and background to the dramatic events leading to Bey's death.
Nigeria
Anthony, Douglas A. Poison and Medicine. Ethnicity, Power and Violence in a Nigerian City, 1966 to 1986. [Social history of Africa.] Heinemann, Portsmouth (NH) [etc.] 2002. x, 272 pp. Ills. £45.00 (Paper: £16.95.)
In colonial Nigeria many ethnic Igbo (Ibo) migrated to Kano, which was dominated by the Islamic Hausa tribe. The Christian Igbo worked for the expanding sector of the colonial state. In 1966 riots erupted in the North, and many Igbos fled to the South. After their defeat in the war of secession over Biafra (1967-1970), the Igbos returned to Kano. The author argues that ethnicity can be both a destructive and a healing factor. The healing role is demonstrated by the success of the Igbo in Kano in the period 1970-1986. At present, religious tensions, which incite ethnic hostility between Hausa and Igbo, appear to predominate.
Rwanda
Jefremovas, Villia. Brickyards to Graveyards. From Production to Genocide in Rwanda. [SUNY series in the Anthropology of Work.] State University of New York Press, Albany 2002. xi, 162 pp. Ill. Maps. $19.95.
This book examines relationships in the stone and roof tile industry in Rwanda, disclosing the socioeconomic relationships that led to genocide. Central topics include the transformation of gender, class and power relations during the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods. The author bases this investigation on two case studies about two different regions. The concluding chapter is of a more general social-historical nature and attributes the genocide of 1994 to the combination of rapid impoverishment, the pressure of population expansion on the available land and the merciless ethnic exploitation of greed and prejudice of the masses by a small, parasitic elite.
AMERICA
Indigenous Movements, Self-representation and the State in Latin America. Ed. by Kay B. Warren and Jean E. Jackson. University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas 2002. vi, 294 pp. $22.95.
The contributions in this collection focus on indigenous social movements in the Guatemalan highlands and Amazonian lowlands of Colombia and Brazil to examine the success of these movements in recent decades in asserting the right of indigenous people to greater cultural autonomy and self-determination. The contributors, anthropologists and indigenous leaders from the United States and Latin America, deal with questions such as who speaks for indigenous communities, the position of engaged anthropology in this respect, how indigenous movements relate to global transformations and to the popular left, and how conflicts between the national indigenous leadership and local communities play out in specific cultural and political contexts.
Brazil
Branford, Sue [and] Bernardo Kucinski, with contrib. by Hilary Wainwright. Politics Transformed. Lula and the Workers' Party in Brazil. Latin America Bureau, London 2003. viii, 136 pp. £6.99.
This practical volume was written in the autumn of 2002, when the success of the fourth attempt by Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva to become president of Brazil was imminent. The work is based in part on Brazil: Carnival of the Oppressed published by the same authors in 1995 and features a history of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), Lula's personal experiences and the course of events in Brazil under Cardoso that preceded 2002. This last chapter revolves around Brazil's debt problem. Hilary Wainwright wrote a concluding chapter about local politics in the PT stronghold Porto Alegre.
Radicals in Power. The Workers' Party (PT) and Experiments in Urban Democracy in Brazil. Ed. by Gianpaolo Baiocchi. Zed Books, London [etc.] 2003. xvi, 254 pp. £49.95; $65.00. (Paper: £14.95 $22.50.)
The eleven contributions in this collection primarily examine the local politics of the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT). Prior to Lula's victory in the 2002 presidential elections, the PT expanded into a formidable local force. The best-known case is Porto Alegre, where participatory citizen councils determine municipal expenditures. The authors, who are from Brazil, the United States and England, also review the situations in Belém and São Paulo. In early 2001 Marta Suplicy was elected mayor for the PT in that metropolis, an event discussed in a contribution about gender issues as well.
Guatemala
Forster, Cindy. The Time of Freedom. Campesino Workers in Guatemala's October Revolution. [Pitt Latin American Series.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh 2001. xiii, 287 pp. Ill. $34.95.
After the fall of dictator Ubico in the October Revolution of 1944, Guatemala experienced a decade of political freedom and social emancipation commonly known as "the time of freedom". Focusing on two plantation zones in this study of rural workers in this revolution, Professor Forster aims to redress the conventional historiography of the period, which overlooks the critical role of the plantation workers in achieving agrarian reform and consequently in the entire revolution.
Haiti
Geggus, David Patrick. Haitian Revolutionary Studies. [Blacks in the Diaspora.] Indiana University Press, Bloomington [etc.] 2002. xii, 335 pp. Maps. $49.95.
This book brings together thirteen essays on the history of the Haitian Revolution of 1789-1803 by a leading expert in the field. Eleven of the thirteen chapters are revisions of essays previously published between 1978 and 1997. After a general overview of the revolutionary events, which included the largest slave uprising in the Americas, Professor Geggus examines the historiography, its causation, the relation between slaves and free coloureds and the broader impact of the Revolution.
Mexico
Behrens, Benedikt. Ein Laboratorium der Revolution. Städtische soziale Bewegungen und radikale Reformpolitik im mexikanischen Bundesstaat Veracruz, 1918-1932. [Hispano-Americana. Geschichte, Sprache, Literatur.] Lang, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2002. 580 pp. € 70.70.
This dissertation (University of Hannover, 2001) examines the origins and development of urban social movements in Mexico in the immediate post-revolutionary period (1918-1932) and their impact on the political and societal development of the country. Focusing on the trade-unionist movement and the tenant strike movement in the cities of Veracruz and Orizaba, Dr Behrens sets out to demonstrate that especially as a result of the active role of women, these movements played an active and autonomous role in the transformation of Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century.
Gutmann, Matthew C. The Romance of Democracy. Compliant Defiance in Contemporary Mexico. University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif. [etc.] 2002. xxx, 289 pp. $49.95, £32.50. (Paper: $19.95, £12.95.)
This ethnographic study of popular politics in contemporary Mexico examines the views of working-class men and women about democracy, on both a national and a neighbourhood scale, and analyses their reason for participating or declining to participate in social movements, party politics and the electoral process. Focusing on the residents of a working-class neighbourhood in Mexico City, Professor Gutmann examines specifically how these people believe that democratic politics can change their lives. See also Jonathan T. Hiskey's review in this volume, pp. 536-539.
United States of America
Benner, Chris. Work in the New Economy. Flexible Labor Markets in Silicon Valley. [The Information Age Series.] Blackwell Publishing, Malden [etc.] 2002. xviii, 293 pp. £55.00. (Paper: £16.99.)
This study offers a detailed examination of labour markets and employment relations in Silicon Valley and analyses how workers and employers in this heartland of the "new economy" deal with the growing volatility in work demands and the consequent increase in flexibility of employment relations and uncertainty for workers. Professor Benner focuses on the increasingly important role of labour market intermediaries that have emerged in recent decades, some of which are modelled after pre-industrial forms of labour organization, such as guilds. See also Ursula Huws's review in this volume, pp. 528-530.
Chávez, Ernesto. ¡Mi Raza Primero! (My People First!). Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966-1978. University of California Press, Berkeley [etc.] 2002. xvii, 166 pp. Ill. $18.95.
Los Angeles is the home of the largest concentration of people of Mexican descent outside Mexico City. This study explores the development of the Chicano movement in this city in the 1960 and 1970s, focusing on four organizations that are central in this movement: the Brown Berets, the Chicano Moratorium Committee, La Raza Unida Party and the Centro de Acción Social Autónomo (CASA). Professor Chávez chronicles the ideas and strategies of the movements' leaders and adherents and critically analyses the concept of Chicano nationalism against the broader background of the Chicano movement in the United States.
Cordillot, Michel. La Sociale en Amérique. Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement social francophone aux États-Unis (1848-1922). [Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier international.] Les Éditions de l'Atelier/Les Editions Ouvrières, Paris 2002. 431 pp. Ill. € 44.00.
This volume, a sequel to the Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français, the biographical dictionary of the French labour movement series (see IRSH, 46 (2001), pp. 145f.), comprises one thousand biographical entries on French-speaking republicans, revolutionaries and socialists who found temporary or permanent refuge in the United States between 1848 and 1914 and in many cases pursued social improvement and reform in the United States. The 41 theme-based entries highlight the broader social and political context of social reformism and militancy of French speaking activists in the United States.
Fasce, Ferdinando. An American Family. The Great War and Corporate Culture in America. Transl. By Ian Harvey. Ohio State University Press, Columbus, Ohio 2002. xvi, 190 pp. $60.00. (Paper: $24.95.)
This study, the English translation of an Italian study, Famiglia a stelle e strisce, published in 1993, focuses on the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut, the largest brass manufacturer in the United States during World War I, to examine the relationship between war propaganda and government regulations, on the one hand, and business culture and immigration, on the other. Professor Fasce argues that government pressure, the need to stabilize the large immigrant workforce and the success of World War I stimulated the organizational and cultural transition of the American industrial world toward systemic management.
The Free Speech Movement. Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s. Ed. by Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik. University of California Press, Berkeley [etc.] 2002. xx, 618 pp. Ill. $19.95.
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) originated at the University of California at Berkeley in the autumn of 1964, when student activists struggled to get the restrictions on campus political activity rescinded. This collection encompasses both scholarly articles and personal memoirs of persons involved in the FSM, including the leader Mario Savio. The contributions deal with subjects such as the origins of the FSM in the civil rights movement, political tensions within the FSM, the day-to-day dynamics of the protest movement, the role of the Berkeley faculty and its various factions, the 1965 trial of the arrested students and the far less known "little Free Speech Movement of 1966".
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. Unequal Freedom. How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2002. x, 306 pp. £26.50.
Focusing on the arenas of citizenship and labour, Professor Glenn analyses in this book the roots of the persisting inequalities of race, gender and class in a comparative study of three regions in the United States. Following an overview of the concepts of the free worker and the independent citizen as devised at the national level, she explores how issues of race and gender shaped regional and local struggles over labour and citizenship rights between blacks and whites in the South, Mexicans and Anglo-Saxons in the Southwest and Asians and white planters (haoles) in Hawaii.
Hinshaw, John. Steel and Steelworkers. Race and Class Struggle in Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh. [suny series in American Labor History.] State University of New York Press, Albany 2002. xvii, 348 pp. $75.50. (Paper: $25.95.)
Examining the steel industry and the role of the industrial unions in the city of Pittsburgh from the mid-nineteenth through the twentieth century, Professor Hinshaw explores in this study the particular political economy of industry and its labour relations to establish how Pittsburgh became prototypical, first of an industrial city and a centre of successful industrial unionism and then of a centre of deindustrialization and decline, eventually becoming one of the most successful post-industrial cities in present-day United States. He devotes special attention to the role of racial discrimination in industry and labour unions.
Meyer, Malte. Neuanfang in der Defensive. US-Gewerkschaften unter Handlungsdruck. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2002. 170 pp. € 14.80.
This study of the rise of American trade unions in the past two decades is intended as an interim assessment of the innovation drive that has emerged in the trade union movement in response to the neo-liberal offensive of the 1980s and the decline in support for the traditional trade unions. The author argues that the success of this much-needed reform strategy, aimed at a more contentious stand towards employers and greater consideration for the grassroots and rank and file, depends largely on the measure of support that remains among workers for any kind of unionization.
Mott, Lucretia Coffin. Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott. Ed. by Beverly Wilson Palmer. Assoc. Editor: Holly Byers Ochoa; Ed. Fellow: Carol Faulkner. [Women in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2002. liv, 581 pp. $55.00.
This volume encompasses a broad selection of the correspondence of the Quaker activist reformer Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880). Mott was active over an extended period in a broad range of reform movements, including temperance, peace, equal rights, women's suffrage, non-resistance and the abolition of slavery. She was founder and leader of antislavery organizations, such as the racially integrated American Antislavery Society, and helped organize the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention in 1848. The selection encompasses both letters to other reformers and fellow Quakers and more personal correspondence to and about her family.
Roediger, David R. Colored White. Transcending the Racial Past. [American Crossroads, vol. 10.] University of California Press, Berkeley [etc.] 2002. ix, 323 pp. Ill. $29.95. (Paper: $19.95.)
Professor Roediger has brought together in this volume thirteen essays on race and the critical study of whiteness and racism in the United States, all but two of which were previously published between 1995 and 2000. The issues covered range from topical issues on race, race relations and racism in present-day United States to more historical-critical studies, including essays on W.E.B. Du Bois and black radicalism and the relation between white working-class immigrants and racism. In the concluding section the author discusses the future of race relations in the United States.
Spindler, Michael. Veblen and Modern America. Revolutionary Iconoclast. Pluto Press, London [etc.] 2002. ix, 175 pp. £45.00.
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) is generally considered to be one of the major American sociologists and economists and an important critic of American culture and society, especially in the seminal work on consumerism The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). This study offers an introduction to his work and a reassessment of Veblen as social critic. Dr Spindler sets out to place Veblen's thought in its historical and intellectual context and to evaluate his influence both in his own time and in later decades.
ASIA
China
Cheek, Timothy. Mao Zedong and China's Revolution. A Brief History with Documents. [The Bedford Series in History and Culture.] Bedford / St. Martin's, Boston, Mass., [etc.] 2002. xi, 259 pp. Ill. £10.99.
This textbook offers a documentary history of Mao's role in the development of modern China, combining a comprehensive introduction to the events in twentieth-century China with selected Mao texts from three different periods: the rural revolution in the 1920s and 1930s, the political revolution in the 1940s and the Utopian social revolution of the late 1950s and 1960s. These are followed by several writings about Mao, including Edgar Snow's famous interview with Mao from 1936, memoirs of his doctor and secondary texts on the significance of Mao for China.
Sri Lanka
Jayawardena, Kumari. Nobodies to Somebodies. The Rise of the Colonial Bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka. Zed Books, London [etc.] 2002. xxx, 412 pp. Ill. £50.00; $75.00. (Paper: £16.95; $29.95.)
This study examines the origins and growth of an indigenous bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka under British rule. Tracing Sri Lanka's evolution from a "feudal" society and mercantilist economy into a plantation society and economy, Professor Jayawardena explores how local merchants of different castes, ethnicities and religions accumulated capital through various economic activities and, gradually subverting the old caste-based division of labour, advanced to bourgeois class status. She examines how this new bourgeoisie embraced Western culture and lifestyles, basically collaborated with colonial rulers and was obsessed with land acquisition and social status, especially on issues of political reform.
EUROPE
The Age of Cultural Revolutions. Britain and France, 1750-1820. Ed. by Colin Jones and Dror Wahrman. University of California Press, Berkeley [etc.] 2002. xiii, 293 pp. $48.00; £35.00. (Paper: $18.95; £13.95.)
The twelve contributions to this volume, based in part on papers presented at a conference on historical writing towards the third millennium, organized at the University of Warwick in 1997, review the major cultural transformations in France and Britain in the years between 1750 and 1820, an era generally labelled as the age of revolutions. Included are contributions by David Bell on war propaganda and national identity in eighteenth-century France; Gareth Stedman Jones on the new social history in France; Carolyn Steedman on servants in England during this period; Carla Hesse on feminism in the French Revolution; and Barbara Taylor on Mary Wollstonecraft.
Du passé faisons table rase! Histoire et mémoire du communisme en Europe. Sous la dir. de Stéphane Courtois. Contr. de Joachim Gauck, Alexandre Iakovlev, Martin Malia [e.a.] Robert Laffont, Paris 2002. 576 pp. € 22.95.
As a follow-up to the much debated Le Livre noir du communisme (1997), this collection edited by Professor Courtois comprises sixteen contributions on crimes and human rights violations by communist regimes and parties in Europe during the twentieth century. The contributors in the second part focus on Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania and the GDR and those in the third part on Greece and Italy. In the first and most extensive part, the editor takes issue with the manifold and multifarious criticism on the Livre noir from both (former) communists and others, and the changing academic climate in the West towards communism in the post-Soviet era.
Harrison, Hope M. Driving the Soviets up the Wall. Soviet-East German Relations, 1953-1961. [Princeton studies in international history and politics.] Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2003. xx, 345 pp. Maps. $42.50, £28.95.
This monograph studies the Soviet-East German alliance from Stalin's death in 1953 through the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and describes how the East German regime resisted Soviet pressures for liberalization as a solution to the German refugee problem and instead convinced the Soviet Union to allow them to build the Berlin Wall. In reviewing the particular course of events, the author sheds new light on this critical episode in the Cold War. The evidential foundation of the book consists of archival documents from both the Soviet Union and the GDR, as well as interviews, memoirs and contemporary printed documents.
Sharman, Jason Campbell. Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe. [BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian and East European Studies, 4.] RoutledgeCurzon, London [etc.] 2003. vi, 173 pp. £60.00.
This book examines how in Communist Europe the overall historical, political, economic and social contexts affect people's repertoire of contention, and how the political elite dominates society through a powerful state apparatus and prevents resources for popular grievances from being translated into collective opposition. The empirical focus of the book is directed at three historical events: the imposition and consolidation of collectivization in the Soviet countryside between 1928-1934, the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 and the rise and fall of the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1980-1984.
Eire - Ireland
Fanning, Bryan. Racism and social change in the Republic of Ireland. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2002; distr. excl. in the USA by Palgrave, New York. vi, 208 pp. £45.00. (Paper: £14.99.)
In this analysis of racism in Ireland in recent decades, the author argues that despite a history of colonial anti-Irish racism, Ireland itself was never immune to racist ideologies, and that the recent rise in immigration and the emergence of new immigrant communities of black and ethnic minorities has intensified this racism. Dr Fanning deals with the relationship between ideological forms of racism and its consequences for black and ethnic minorities, the issue of nation-building, Ireland's response to the Holocaust, the reception of refugees and asylum seekers and the politics of Traveller exclusion and multiculturalism in Ireland and analyses the mechanics of exclusion resulting from institutional racism within political and administrative processes.
Morley, Vincent. Irish Opinion and the American Revolution, 1760-1783. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2002. x, 366 pp. £45.00; $65.00.
This study uses a broad range of sources, from newspapers to pamphlets, vernacular songs, and published sermons, to chart the impact of the American Revolution on Irish opinion and the evolution of views there on the subject. Dr Morley presents a chronological review of the attitudes of the Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian communities from the beginning of the colonial unrest in the early 1760s until the end of the hostilities in 1783 and reassesses the influence of the American Revolution on Irish developments such as Catholic relief and British recognition of Irish legislative independence.
France
Aussel, Michel. Nantes sous la monarchie de Juillet 1830-1948. Du mouvement mutualiste aux doctrines utopiques. Ouest Éditions, Nantes 2002. 252 pp. Ills. € 23.00.
In this social history of the city of Nantes from the start of the July Monarchy to 1848, the author examines consecutively the local demise of the old guild system and the rise of workers' mutualism and early syndicalism; the emergence of Utopian socialism and early communism there; the rise of public health provisions and policies there; the turmoil within the Catholic church; and the local impact of the events of 1848 on the city. In a panoramic final chapter he describes the city's infrastructural, educational, cultural and commercial transformations in this period.
Bredin, Jean-Denis. Un tribunal au garde-à-vous. Le procès de Pierre Mendès France, 9 mai 1941. Fayard, n.p. [Paris] 2002. 307 pp. Ill. € 20.00.
This study recounts the background and circumstances around the trial of Pierre Mendès France (1907-1982), a prominent member of the Radical Party and member of the Popular Front government of Léon Blum, who was tried for desertion by a military tribunal of the Vichy regime on 9 May 1941. Professor Bredin, a prominent magistrate and member of the Académie française, focuses in this essayistic history on the legal issues surrounding this highly politicized trial and its aftermath.
Caron, Jean-Claude. L'été rouge. Chronique de la révolte populaire en France (1841). [Collection historique.] Aubier, Paris 2002. 348 pp. Maps. € 22.00.
In the summer of 1841, a new levy on housing instigated a widespread popular revolt, particularly in southern France, and bloody insurrections in the cities of Toulouse and Clermont-Ferrand. Professor Caron explores in this study these events based on legal source texts to analyse to what extent the revolt can be considered an archaic form of anti-tax protest, stemming from pre-Revolutionary times, or should be seen as a transitional event from a traditional form of social violent protest into a modern politicized revolt.
Chevandier. Christian. Cheminots en grève ou la construction d'une identité (1848-2001). [Actualité de l'Histoire.] Maisonneuve & Larose, Paris 2002. 399 pp. Ill. € 20.00.
Railroad workers in France have a longstanding reputation for being combative and radical, as highlighted by their famous strikes in 1910 and 1920 and their active role in the resistance during World War II, in the aftermath of May 1968, through recent strikes in 2001. This study explores the demographic, political, organizational, technological and cultural characteristics of the railroad workers to place this reputation of militancy of railroad workers as a group in its historical perspective.
Des communistes en France (années 1920-années 1960). Sous la dir. de Jacques Girault. [Histoire de la France aux XIXe et XXe siècles, 58.] Publications de la Sorbonne, Paris 2002. 529 pp. Ill. € 25.00.
The 28 contributions in this volume are the proceedings of a series of seminars, organized between 1997 and 2000 at the Université de Paris 13, on communism and social movements in the Paris region in the period 1920-1960. The contributors explore the ways that communism took root in the region, dealing with themes such as the image and representation of communist politics; the Paris region as target of communist recruitment; the communist movement's relation with the labour and other social movements; its relation with teachers and position on the shopfloor; its role in the municipalities; and ideological struggles with the communist movement.
Congrès du monde ouvrier, France 1870-1940. Guide des sources. Codhos, Paris 2002. 169 pp. Ill. € 12.00.
This is a guide of printed materials available at various French resource centres on the history of the Congrès du monde ouvrier, the Workers' Congresses and the manifold labour movement and socialist organizations that derived from them, from their beginnings in 1873 until 1940. Preceding the bibliographic guide is an introduction to the eighteen French organizations that are collaborating in the Collectif du Centres de Documentation en Histoire ouvrière et sociale (Codhos).
Crozier, Michel. Ma belle époque. Mémoires 1947-1969. Fayard, [Paris] 2002. 391 pp. € 22.00.
This is the first of two volumes of the memoirs of the leading French sociologist Michel Crozier, well-known in part for his work on bureaucratization and on the social position and class consciousness of white-collar workers (see IRSH, 10 (1965), pp. 503f., and 17 (1972), p. 758). Covering the years 1947-1969, he describes his youth, his apprenticeship as a young sociologist, his period in the United States, his political adventures on the radical left and his experiences during May 1968.
Darriulat, Phillippe. Les patriotes. La gauche républicaine et la nation 1830-1870. [L'univers historique.] Seuil, Paris 2001. 325 pp. € 23.00.
This study explores, based on secondary sources, the emergence of French republicanism as a leftist political current and its relation to the French nation in the period between the July Monarchy and the end of the Second Empire in 1870. Dr Darriulat indicates five principles that identify leftist republicanism in this period: universal suffrage, reference to the Enlightenment heritage, the secular state, attention to social questions and patriotism. The topics he addresses include the revolutionary heritage, the republican Anglophobia and the role of republican Messianism in 1848/1849 and afterwards.
Delpont, Hubert. La victoire des Croquants. Les révoltes paysannes du Grand Sud-Ouest pendant la Révolution (1789-1799). Préf.: Anne-Marie Cocula. Amis du Vieux Nérac, Nérac 2002. viii, 539 pp. Maps. €30.00.
This study aims to offer a comprehensive historical account of the rural uprisings in the southwest of France in the ten years of the French Revolution, which have become particularly famous through the novel by Eugène Le Roy, Jacquou le Croquant (1899). Based on a detailed exploration and chronological overview of the rebellious activities directed against the landlords, covering an area of almost 2,000 villages in the region, Dr Delpont aims to demonstrate the importance of the rural masses in the southwest during the Revolution.
Didry, Claude. Naissance de la convention collective. Débats juridiques et luttes sociales en France au début du 20e siècle. Préf. d'Évelyne Serverin. [Recherches d'histoire et de sciences sociales / Studies in History and the Social Sciences, 94.] Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris 2002. 267 pp. Ill. € 23.00.
The law of 25 March 1919 established the legal foundation for collective agreements in France. This study explores the legal debates that preceded this law in the context of the social and labour struggles at the beginning of the twentieth century. Using these debates and case law concerning collective agreements as sources, Dr Didry aims to show how the labour legislation resulted not from a linear social progression but from the interaction between the political and economic demands of the labour movement and the various legislative bodies involved.
Downs, Laura Lee. Childhood in the Promised Land. Working Class Movements and the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1880-1960. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2002. xv, 411 pp. Ill. $74.95. (Paper: $24.95.)
Originating in the late nineteenth century, the colonies de vacances were a vast network of summer camps created for French working-class children, providing rural retreats intended to restore the fragile health of poor urban children. Professor Downs focuses in this study on the municipal colonies organized by the banlieues, the working-class cities of the Paris red belt, to examine the rise of this charitable institution and to analyse how diverse groups, both local socialist and communist leaders and Catholic seminarians, aimed to use these summers to shape the minds and bodies of working-class youth, based on ideals of collective life of children.
Fitzsimmons, Michael P. The Night the Old Regime Ended. August 4, 1789, and the French Revolution. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park (Penn.) 2002. x, 245 pp. £41.95.
The meeting of the French National Assembly on the night of 4 August 1789 is generally seen as the moment the ancien regime formally ended. This study examines the renunciations of privileges made by all three estates in the kingdom during this meeting and analyses how this affected the estates and the National Assembly itself and served as an important foundation for subsequent developments in the French Revolution. Arguing against those historians who disparage the importance of the meeting, Professor Fitzsimmons concludes that the meeting of 4 August also exemplified the opportunity to accomplish revolutionary change through peaceful means.
Frémontier, Jacques. L'étoile rouge de David. Les Juifs communistes en France. Fayard, Paris 2002. 549 pp. € 25.00.
Thousands of French Jews joined the French communist party, the PCF after World War II, despite the frequent overt anti-Semitic policies of the Soviet Union. Based on interviews with a hundred men and women who were - and in some cases are - active communist militants, Dr Frémontier aims in this book to analyse the appeal of communism for these people: to what extent did it serve as a new identity, and what were the similarities between Jewish religion and culture and sympathy for communist ideals?
Grandcoing, Philippe. La Baïonnette et le Lancis. Crise urbaine et révolution à Limoges sous la Seconde République. Pulim, Limoges n.d. [2002]. 246 pp. Ill. Maps. € 22.00.
In April 1848, in the aftermath of the first elections with universal suffrage, workers in the city of Limoges disarmed the bourgeois national guard and controlled the city for several days. In this study Dr Grandcoing uses micro-history methods to examine the social processes at play in the construction of individual and collective political representation during these events and analyses to what extent this working-class revolt heralded the entry into political modernity and the advent of modern urbanization under the influence of industrialization.
Guilhaumou, Jacques. Sieyès et l'ordre de la langue. L'invention de la politique moderne. Éditions Kimé, Paris 2002. 235 pp. € 24.00.
This study aims to offer both an intellectual biography of Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836), one of main political and constitutional theorists of the French Revolution, and an analysis of his political philosophy. Dr Guilhaumou argues that language dominated Sieyès' concept of the working of the political mind. His theoretical work on political metaphysics before 1789 became concrete in his work on the new constitution, with which he introduced a new political language. In the last part of his study, the author deals with Sieyès' political-philosophical debates with the German philosophers Humboldt and Fichte.
L'histoire à travers champs. Mélanges offerts à Jean Sagnes. Travaux réunis par Michel Cadé. [Collection Études.] Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, Perpignan 2002. 399 pp. Ill. Maps. € 22.00.
In this Festschrift for the French social and agricultural historian Jean Sagnes, in recognition of his retirement, 22 contributors explore a broad range of subjects relating to his fields of research. Based in Perpignan, Professor Sagnes has written extensively on theoretical and historiographic issues, regional labour and socialist history of the Midi and the Languedoc, the history of the viticulture in these regions and the corresponding history of rural labour.
Lagarrigue, Max. Renaud Jean. Carnets d'un paysan député communiste. Atlantica, Anglet 2001. 531 pp. Ill. € 22.71.
This volume encompasses both a biographical sketch of the French rural communist leader Renaud Jean (pseudonym of Jean Jean, 1887-1961) and his "notebooks", which include the diary he kept during his detention from 1939 to 1941 and the memoirs he wrote at the end of his life, and in which he accounts for his political activities within the French communist party (the PCF) and the Comintern but primarily expounds his ideas on the role and position of farmers and farm workers and the importance of rural France. The annexes comprise documents relating to his Comintern activities, such as letters from Zinoviev and Trotski to Jean.
Liauzu, Claude et Josette Liauzu. Quand on chantait les colonies. Colonisation et culture populaire de 1830 à nos jours. [Histoire: enjeux et débats.] Éditions Syllepse, Paris 2002. 251 pp. € 18.50.
This study analyses popular songs in nineteenth and twentieth-century France that relate to French colonialism and anti-colonial struggle. In chronological sequence, the authors review songs during the conquering of Algeria and the colonization period between 1880 and 1930; the anti-colonialist tradition in songs; exoticism and eroticism in songs about the colonies, the rise of nationalist songs in the 1930s, songs about colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria in the 1950s; and songs related to decolonization and globalization and the rise of "world music" in recent decades.
Marec, Yannick. Bienfaisance communale et protection sociale à Rouen (1796-1927). Expériences locales et liaisons nationales. Préf. de Maurice Agulhon. La Documentation française et Association pour l'étude de l'histoire de la Sécurité sociale, Paris 2002. 1362 pp. (in 2 vols). Ill. Maps. € 68.00.
In the history of French social security, the city of Rouen exemplifies a specific form of community-based public assistance, known as the "système rouennais" and developed at the end of the nineteenth century. This two-volume study gives a comprehensive history of the relation between community-based, private forms of charity and modern forms of nationally organized social security, focusing on Rouen from the end of the Directory to 1927.
Michel, Louise. Le Livre du bagne. Précédé de Lueurs dans l'ombre, plus d'idiots, plus de fous et du Livre d'Hermann. Textes ét. et prés. par Véronique Fau-Vincenti. [Collection Louise Michel-&140;uvres.] Presses Universitaires de Lyon, Lyon 2001. 199 pp. Ill. € 17.53.
This volume comprises three texts by Louise Michel, two of which were hitherto unpublished. Lueurs dans l'ombre, plus d'idiots, plus de fous, originally published in 1861, is presented in the first part of this volume together with another early text, "Le Livre d'Hermann", published here for the first time. "Livre du bagne", the longest essay in this volume, was written at extended intervals, during the various periods of imprisonment that Louise Michel endured between 1872 and 1884. In all three texts, she deals with the impact of confinement and detention on the human spirit, comparison of insanity and crime and confinement of the insane and of criminals.
Perrot, Michelle. Les ouvriers en grève. France 1871-1890. Les ré-impressions des Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris 2001. vii, 899 pp. Ill. Maps. (In 3 vols.) F.fr. 650.00.
This is a new edition of a pioneering study of strikes and strike movements in France during the early Third Republic, including the end of the Commune and the first general strike in France, originally published in two volumes in 1974 (see IRSH, 19 (1974, p. 467). An abridged version appeared in 1984 and was entitled Jeunesse de la grève (see IRSH, 30 (1985), p. 158) and translated into English as Workers on strike (1987). In the preface to the present edition, Professor Perrot reflects on the responses to the book and the course of her own career as a social historian in the broader context of the development of labour history in France over the past thirty years.
Picon, Antoine. Les saint-simoniens. Raison, imaginaire et utopie. [Histoire et Société/Modernités.] Belin, Paris 2002. 381 pp. Ill. € 24.00.
This study deals with the followers of the French Utopian thinker Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), who in a few decades from the 1830s onward formed an active social reform movement, focusing on issues such as women's liberation and industrial development. In addition to analysing the place of Saint-Simonism in the history of Utopian thought, Dr Picon explores the rise and social composition of the movement, its relation to the world of science and technology and the ideas emerging from the movement on town planning, architecture and urban management.
Postic, Marcel-Vincent. Carrier et la terreur à Nantes. L'Harmattan, Paris [etc.] 2001. 302 pp. € 24.40.
With the start of the Terror in September 1793 and at the onset of the uprising in the Vendée, Jean-Baptiste Carrier (1756-1794) was dispatched by the Convention to Nantes to restore order for the Republic. This study recounts Carrier's activities in the city of Nantes at the end of 1793 and early 1794, when under his zealous direction some 10,000 people were put to death as alleged counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the Republic, until in February 1794 he was called back to Paris and ultimately condemned to the guillotine himself in December 1794.
Reynaud, Georges. Les Marseillais de la Marseillaise. Dictionnaire biographique du bataillon du 10 août.. Éditions Christian, Paris 2001. 384 pp. Ill. Maps. € 27.44.
On 2 July 1792, a battalion of 450 volunteers left Marseille to march on Paris - expanding en route into a group of 500 - to help defend the young Republic in the insurrection and taking of the Tuileries on 10 August. They were eternalised through the battle hymn Rouget de Lisle composed for them: La Marseillaise. This biographical dictionary of the battalion of 10 August features biographical entries on these 500 Marseillais, including their geographical and social backgrounds and their subsequent fate and careers. An extensive introduction places the history of the battalion and La Marseillaise in a broader context.
Ribeyreix, Christine. Louise Michel, quand l'aurore se lèvera. La Lauze, Perigueux 2002. 261 pp. Ill. € 20.00.
In this biographical sketch of Louise Michel (1830-1904) for a general readership, Mrs Ribeyreix gives a chronological overview of Michel's transformation from a teacher involved in social causes and with a strong literary gift into an active participant in the Paris Commune and relates her experiences in exile in New Caledonia and her rise to a celebrated anarchist at the end of her life. The annexes include a number of her poems.
Santamaria, Yves. L'enfant du malheur. Le Parti communiste français dans la Lutte pour la paix (1914-1947). [Histoires, cultures et sociétés.] Seli Arslan, Paris 2002. 315 pp. € 34.00.
This study deals with the development of the French communist party (PCF) view of pacifism and its positions on war and peace, summarized in the paradoxical motto "lutte pour la paix", the struggle for peace. Covering the period of World War I and the proto-history of the PCF to the beginnings of the Cold War, Dr Santamaria explores the origins and background of communist hostility towards pacifist currents on the left and analyses their efforts to mobilize popular antiwar sentiments in the interwar years for their own political aims, navigating between revolutionary ambition, pacifism and nationalism.
Germany
1848 und das Versprechen der Moderne. Hrsg. von Jürgen Fohrmann und Helmut J. Schneider. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003. 191 pp. € 25.00.
The ten contributions to this collection deal with the changes in political, intellectual and literary discourse and semantics in Germany in the period of the Vormärz and during the decades after 1848, when the concept of modernity in a broad variation of metaphors dominated political and cultural discourse. The subjects covered by the contributions include the use of the metaphors of youth and old age (Rainer Kolk); an analysis of Marx's Achtzehnte Brumaire (Volker Kaiser); the invention of a modern kind of intellectual (Jürgen Fohrmann); Jewish emancipation in this period (Bernd Fischer); and the changing position of women in the 1848 discourse (Barbara Hahn).
Arbeitslose im Blick der Sozialforschung. Ausgewählte Studien aus der Geschichte der empirischen Arbeitslosenforschung im deutschsprachigen Raum. Hrsg. von Gerd Vonderach. [Sozialforschung, Arbeit und Sozialpolitik 9.] Lit, Münster [etc.] 2002. 124 pp. € 17.90.
The ten contributions to this collection offer reviews and summaries of a selection of German social scientific empirical research on the experience of unemployment and the unemployed, from the period of the Great Depression until the present. Among the contributions are a review of a classical sociographic study of the unemployed in Marienthal from 1933 and of an extended study of unemployed youth in the immediate post-war period (the editor), a summary of a study of the everyday experiences of the unemployed in the early 1980s (Erich Kirchler) and overviews of studies of unemployment in the former GDR (Toni Hahn and Berthold Vogel).
Armut und Armutsbekämpfung. Schriftliche und bildliche Quellen bis um 1800 aus Chemitz, Dresden, Freiberg, Leipzig und Zwickau. Ein sachthematisches Inventar. Bearb. von Helmut Bräuer und Elke Schlenkrich. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2002. 2 vols (1455 pp.) € 175.00.
This two-volume publication offers a theme-based inventory of textual and visual source material on poverty and poverty control in the early modern period until c. 1800 in the Saxon cities of Chemnitz, Dresden, Freiberg, Leipzig and Zwickau. The work presents information on relevant sources from 28 archives, museums, libraries and collections, encompassing a broad range of materials from certificates, acts, chronicles, maps, newspapers and periodicals, paintings etc.
Auswandererbriefe aus Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska und Pennsylvania. Emigrant letters from Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and Pennsylvania. Ed. by Robert Rameil. Geschichtsverein Meerbusch, Meerbusch 2002. Ill. Map. 160 pp. € 8.80.
In this volume, 32 letters from German emigrants, originating from the region between the cities of Krefeld and Düsseldorf, are published, together with biographical sketches of all emigrants involved. All texts are in German as well as in English. The emigrants left for the United States between 1835 and 1884.
Feral, Thierry. Adam Scharrer. Écrivain antifasciste & militant paysan. [Allemagne d'hier et d'aujourdhui.] L'Harmattan, Paris; L'Harmattan Hongrie, Budapest; L'Harmattan Italia, Torino 2002. 143 pp. €13.00.
This book offers a concise introduction to the life and literary work of the German novelist and antifascist activist Adam Scharrer (1889-1948), the author of influential novels such as Vaterlandslose Gesellen. Das erste Kriegsbuch eines Arbeiters (1930) and Maulwürfe. Ein deutscher Bauernroman (1933), which he wrote while in exile in Prague. The final chapter of Maulwürfe is published here in French, with annotations that place Scharrer's political criticism of Nazism in a historical context.
Groß-Berliner Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte in der Revolution 1918/19. Dokumente der Vollversammlungen und des Vollzugsrates. Vom Generalstreikbeschluß am 3. März 1919 bis zur Spaltung der Räteorgane im Juli 1919. Hrsg. und bearb. von Gerhard Engel, Gaby Huch und Ingo Materna. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2002. xlviii, 885 pp. € 188.00.
This third and final volume of the source publication on the Groß-Berliner Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte (see IRSH, 40 (1995), pp. 168f. and 44 (1999), pp. 526f. for the first two volumes) connects chronologically to the previous volume and covers the final months of the German Council Republic from March 1919 until its actual end in July of that year. The volume features 101 documents, including protocols, announcements and other related documents of the plenary assemblies and of the executive committee of the various councils. The introduction offers a political and organizational overview of the Council Republic in this period. The documents are once again arranged chronologically, and indexes of persons and subjects have been appended.
Grosse Vorholt, Elke. "...wir waren nicht freiwillig hier!" Zwangsarbeit und Arbeitserziehung in der Westfälischen Jutespinnerei und Weberei AG Ahaus. [Nachwirkungen. Bildungsimpulse aus der Provinz, Band 4.] Lit, Münster [etc.] 2002. 306 pp. Ill. € 15.90.
This study examines the various forms of forced labour and forced labour education during World War II in the jute factory in Ahaus, Westphalia, near the Dutch border. Mrs Große Vorholt examines the different groups put to work there, including Polish and other Eastern European workers, Dutch and Belgian female migrant workers and German women forced to work as part of a labour education programme, and supervised by the Gestapo. She deals with working conditions at the factory, living conditions and treatment in the camps, the leeway available to the factory management and denazification in the post-war period.
Hammermann, Gabriele. Zwangsarbeit für den "Verbündeten". Die Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen der italienischen Militärinternierten in Deutschland 1943-1945. [Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom, Band 99.] Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2002. x, 719 pp. € 104.00; SFR 172.00.
After Italy's capitulation in September 1943, around half a million Italian military internees were sent to work as forced labourers in the German armaments industry. This revised dissertation (University of Trier, 1995) provides a detailed description of the living and working conditions, the Nazi supervision agencies involved, changes in the circumstances of the internees at the final stage of the war and their liberation, repatriation and failed reintegration in the immediate post-war period.
Hines, Gerald. Armut, Pauperismus, Gewerkschaften. Die Praxis der deutschen Gewerkschaften, sich nicht mit der Armut zu beschäftigen. AVA, Leipzig 2002. 327 pp. € 44.00.
Starting with a critical analysis of official, "bourgeois" definitions and methods for quantifying poverty, as practised by government agencies in Germany in the recent past, this study examines in what measure German trade unions use these same definitions and methods, and how this influences the trade unions' attitude towards poverty in Germany. Mr Hines finds that the definition of poverty as used by the trade unions does not accommodate the expanding poverty and pauperism that has resulted from the recent processes of individualization, economic modernization and globalization and proposes conceptual and practical changes in trade-union policy towards poverty.
Hoen, Henk 't. Zwei Jahre Volkswagenwerk. Als niederländischer Student im "Arbeitseinsatz" im Volkswagenwerk von Mai 1943 bis Mai 1945. [Historische Notate, Heft 6.] Unternehmensarchiv der Volkswagen AG, Wolfsburg 2002. Ill. 129 pp.
These are the memoirs of a Dutch student who was put to work as forced labour at the Volkswagen plants in Germany from May 1943 to May 1945. Mr 't Hoen sketches everyday experiences, the labour regime, the way he was treated by the Nazi guards and the frequent tensions with and social exclusion by the local population. In the introduction, Dr Grieger describes the general context of forced labour in Nazi Germany.
Hoffmann, Dierk. Aufbau und Krise der Planwirtschaft. Die Arbeitskräftelenkung in der SBZ/DDR 1945 bis1963. Veröffentlichungen zur SBZ-/DDR-Forschung im Institut für Zeitgeschichte. [Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte, Band 60.] R. Oldenbourg Verlag, München 2002. vii, 586 pp. € 74.80.
Planning and control of the labour force was central in the GDR planned economy. This study explores the emergence of control over the labour force control from the end of World War II, when forced employment prevailed in the phase of economic reconstruction, through the period of the extension of central economic planning, until the beginnings of the New Economic System of Planning and Direction in 1963. Focusing on raw materials and heavy industries, Dr Hoffmann aims to show that the development of central labour planning and control was not a continuous linear process.
Koch, Elke. Frauen - Männer - Stadtgesellschaft. Heilbronn und die "Frauenfrage" von 1900 bis 1918. [Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Heilbronn, Band 12.] Stadtarchiv Heilbronn, Heilbronn 2002. 892 pp. Ill. € 45.00.
This dissertation (Eberhard-Karls University, Tübingen, 2002) examines the origins and rise of a local women's movement in the city of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg between 1900 and the end of World War I. Dr Koch reviews the origins of the women's movement in charity activities and associational life, the proliferation of the women's movement in the local public sphere and in local politics and explores the acceleration of women's emancipation and growth of female employment as a result of the war.
Linne, Karsten. "Weiße Arbeitsführer" im "Kolonialen Ergänzungsraum". Afrika als Ziel sozial- und wirtschaftspolitischer Planungen in der NS-Zeit. Monsenstein & Vannerdat, Münster 2002. 490 pp. €22.80.
This dissertation (University of Bremen, 2001/2002) explores the National Socialist ideas and plans from 1933 onward for a (re)colonization of Africa. Dr Linne analyses how Nazi planners devised an economic and social colonial policy to use Africa as colonial expansion territory that might raise the German standard of living. He shows how the Nazis were preoccupied with the "labour question": the supposed manpower shortage and migrant labour, which they intended to solve through a complex system of labour recruitment and labour control, supervised by "white labour guardians". See also IRSH, this volume, pp. 197-224.
Mankowitz, Zeev W. Life between Memory and Hope. The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany. [Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare, vol. 12.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2002. xii, 335 pp. Ill. £25.00; $35.00.
This study examines the c. 250,000 Holocaust survivors, who converged on the American Occupation Zone in the years 1945-1948 and were commonly known as the She'erith Hapleitah, the Surviving Remnant. Focusing on the initial responses of this group to the tragedy that overtook them, Dr Mankowitz aims to tell the story of these survivors from their own perspective and to show how they envisaged themselves as the bridge of life between destruction and rebirth and were thus able to deliver remarkable social and political achievements, despite the enormous sufferings they underwent.
Reibel, Carl-Wilhelm. Das Fundament der Diktatur: Die NSDAP-Ortsgruppen 1932-1945. [Sammlung Schöningh zur Geschichte und Gegenwart.] Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn [etc.] 2002. 415 pp. € 39.90.
The Ortsgruppen, the basic local organizational form of the NSDAP, were crucial to the inner stability of the Third Reich. In this dissertation (Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, 2000), Dr Reibel explores the transformation of the Ortsgruppen from local platforms of Nazi propaganda into local dictatorial power bases in the period 1932 to 1945 and their internal organizational structure, human resources management and financing. In the second part of the book, the author examines how in the local practice the Ortsgruppen became radicalized instruments for political control, persecution of dissidents and Jews and mobilization for the total war.
Rüther, Daniela. Der Widerstand des 20. Juli auf dem Weg in die Soziale Marktwirtschaft. Die wirtschaftspolitischen Vorstellungen der bürgerlichen Opposition gegen Hitler. Mit einem Geleitwort von Hans Mommsen. [Sammlung Schöningh zur Geschichte und Gegenwart.] Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn [etc.] 2002. xi, 491 pp. € 68.00.
This dissertation (Bochum, 2000) examines the views and conceptions of the desired economic policy and socio-economic order among the different groups involved in the conspiracy against Hitler of 20 July 1944. Exploring the various intellectual and academic roots of the conspirators, Dr Rüther aims to show how several of these conceptions aimed to reconcile orthodox laissez faire economics with centralized plan economics, and how these views deeply influenced the form and substance of post-war economic policy and socio-economic order in West Germany, which came to be known as the soziale Marktwirtschaft.
Schubert, Michael. Der schwarze Fremde. Das Bild des Schwarzafrikaners in der parlamentarischen und publizistischen Kolonialdiskussion in Deutschland von den 1870er bis in die 1930er Jahre. [Beiträge zur Kolonial- und Überseegeschichte, Band 86.] Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2003. 446 pp. € 79.00.
This dissertation (University of Osnabrück, 2001) examines the construction and circumstances of racist images of black aliens in Germany in parliamentary and media debates on colonialism between the 1870s and the 1930s. By reviewing the argumentation of both the propagandists of colonialism and missionaries and the critics of colonial policy from leftist-liberal, socialist and communist origins, Dr Schubert finds that both sides had a colonial world view, based on a consensus about the perception of black Africans.
Great Britain
Brundage, Anthony. The English Poor Laws, 1700-1930. [Social History in Perspective.] Palgrave, Basingstoke [etc.] 2002. vii, 185 pp. £45.00.
This textbook offers a general overview of the nature and operation of the English poor law system from the early eighteenth century to its termination in 1930. Professor Brundage reviews the transition from a localized system designed primarily for rural communities into a centralized system to cope with the growing problems of urban poverty and deals with topics such as the workhouse, assisted emigration, vagrancy, the perspectives and reactions of the poor to the system and the relation of the poor laws to private charity, as well as to economic development.
Drescher, Seymour. The Mighty Experiment. Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2002. ix, 307 pp. £38.00.
Outlining the relationship of economic growth to moral issues with regard to slavery, Professor Drescher explores in this study the considerations that led the British empire to abolish slavery in 1833. Examining how politicians, colonial bureaucrats, pamphleteers and scholars validated their arguments on rational scientific grounds, and how the infiltration of the social sciences in the debate minimized agitation on both sides, Professor Drescher argues that the plan to end British slavery, rather than being a timely escape from a failing economic system, was the crucial element in one of the greatest social experiments ever.
Fowler, Alan. Lancashire Cotton Operatives and Work, 1900-1950. A Social History of Lancashire Cotton Operatives in the Twentieth Century. [Modern economic and social history.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2002. xii, 236 pp. £47.50.
Considering the Lancashire cotton industry from the perspective of a group of workers central to the industry's development, Dr Fowler focuses on the cotton operatives in the period 1900-1950 to examine how they established collective organizations to improve their working and living conditions. Examining the role and activities of the trade-union organizations in raising wages, improving working conditions, reducing working hours, establishing the right to holidays and forcing the introduction of factory legislation, he explores these conquests and their impact on industry and society in general.
Fury, Cheryl A. Tides in the Affairs of Men. The Social History of Elizabethan Seamen, 1580-1603. [Contributions in Military Studies, vol. 214.] Greenwood Press, Westport (Conn.) [etc.] 2002. xiii, 295 pp. £53.95.
This book examines the daily-life experiences of the ordinary seafarers of the British maritime community at the end of the sixteenth century, whether in civilian employment or on warships. The open warfare with Spain from 1585 onward made this a particularly volatile period of maritime history, in which both groups of seafarers experienced increased pressure. Dr Fury explores training, the maritime social order, labour relations and the role of custom, health care and mortality and concludes that seafarers were increasingly obliged through forms of forced labour contracts to accept dangerous working conditions at substandard wages.
Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects. Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867. Polity, Cambridge 2002. xviii, 556 pp. Ill. £60.00. (Paper: £19.99.)
Focusing first on English Baptist missionaries in Jamaica and then on a group of Baptist and other nonconformist abolitionists in the city of Birmingham, Professor Hall aims in this study to reveal how in the mid-nineteenth century British Empire, metropole and colony were closely interconnected, and how the identity of coloniser formed a constitutive part of Englishness. Through her examination of the background, ideas, social networks and gender relations of these two groups, she analyses how these people constituted themselves as colonisers both in Jamaica and at home, and how their initial idealism about the opportunity to "civilize" the colonized "others" into people like themselves gradually turned into harsh forms of racism in the course of the century.
Hannam, June and Karen Hunt. Socialist Women. Britain, 1880s to 1920s. Routledge, London [etc.] 2002. viii, 232 pp. £17.99.
Examining the experiences of women involved in the British socialist movement in its formative period (i.e. from the 1880s to the 1920s), the authors of this study aim to offer a new perspective on both socialist and feminist politics of that era. Focusing on three case studies (women's suffrage, women and internationalism, and the politics of consumption) Drs Hannam and Hunt examine the various ways in which socialist women struggled to translate the tension between socialism and feminism into a creative practical political practice in this period.
Howe, Glenford Deroy. Race, War and Nationalism. A Social History of West Indians in the First World War. Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston; James Currey Publishers, Oxford 2002. xv, 270 pp. £19.95.
Focusing on the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR), this study explores the hitherto largely neglected role of the predominantly black soldiers from the British West Indies in World War I. Looking at the daily problems of army life for West Indian recruits, the capacities in which they served and their experiences after the war, Dr Howe examines the social, political and psychological implications of the war effort for the West Indians involved from the perspective of the dialectical relationship between local processes in the West Indies and British-colonial policy decisions.
Kirby, Peter. Child Labour in Britain, 1750-1870. [Social history in perspective.] Palgrave Macmillan, London 2003. ix, 172 pp. £49.50. (Paper: £16.99.)
This study offers a general introduction to the issue of child labour in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. Dr Kirby asserts that the concentration by contemporary observers as well as historians on the small numbers of children employed in industry, has diverted attention from the major role of working children in the context of the family, the labour market and the state. He argues that child labour was pivotal both in economic growth and for the incomes of working-class households. See also Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk's review in this volume, pp. 517-518.
Greece
Voglis, Polymeris. Becoming a Subject. Political Prisoners during the Greek Civil War. Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2002. xi, 250 pp. Ill. £17.00.
Drawing comparisons with political prisoners in Germany and Spain, this study focuses on the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) to examine the lives of the political prisoners in the polarization of this conflict. Dr Voglis explores the impact of the exceptional circumstances on the practices of punishment, the effect the prison administration and the prisoners' collective on their personalities, and the elaboration of the category of political prisoners.
Italy
Berti, Giampietro. Errico Malatesta e il movimento anarchico italiano e internazionale 1872-1932. [Saggi di storia] FrancoAngeli, Milano 2003. 813 pp. Ill. € 40.00.
This is the first complete biography of the eminent Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta (1853-1932). From the outset, the author establishes that for 60 years Malatesta's ideas and actions coincided with the history of the Italian and international anarchist movement and with the labour movement in general. In 1871 he joined the First International. From 1884 until 1919 he was in exile, including periods in Argentina and London, which the author describes extensively. Whether he was nearby or far away, however, he remained involved in the assorted incidents of social turmoil in Italy in that period. The author also analyses Malatesta's theoretical reflections about anarchism.
Demarco, Domenico. Il risorgimento e la "questione sociale" e altri saggi. Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli 2002. x, 305 pp. € 21.00.
In the first part of this anthology, the author has collected five articles on the following subjects: the Risorgimento and the social issue; the economy of the Italian states prior to the unification; the Italian revolutions of 1848; the history of social classes during the Risorgimento, focusing on the revolutionaries of 1848-49 in the Papal States; selected aspects of the activities of the Economic Societies in the South. The second part comprises three essays on subjects concerning the financial and economic history of Italy from the mid eighteenth until the early nineteenth century.
Dunnage, Jonathan. Twentieth-Century Italy: A Social History. [A Social History of Europe.] Longman, Harlow [etc.] 2002. xi, 271 pp. £16.99.
This textbook gives a general, chronological overview of the social history of Italy in the long twentieth century. Assessing living standards, health and education, working conditions and leisure pursuits, Dr Dunnage traces the impact of the great social, economic, cultural and political transformations, including two world wars and the rise of Fascism, on the everyday lives of Italians. He pays attention to varying forms and survival mechanisms of the Italian family, the role of women, the development of community relations and political movements and the relation between grass-roots Italian society and the nation state.
Whitaker, Stephen B. The Anarchist-Individualist Origins of Italian Fascism. [Studies in Modern European History, vol. 46.] Peter Lang, New York [etc.] 2002. viii, 194 pp. € 57.80.
This study combines biographical studies of four Italian anarchists with extreme individualist sympathies, who embraced fascism in the early 1920s and became close ideological allies of Mussolini: Leonardo Arpinati, Massimo Rocca, Maria Rygier and Torquato Nanni. All grew disillusioned with Mussolini by 1930 and were forced into exile in Italy or abroad. Dr Whitaker uses a biographical approach to elucidate the individualist anarchist components in the rise of Italian fascist ideology and its connections with Nietzschean and secular religious thought at the end of the nineteenth century.
The Netherlands
El, Carla van. Figuraties en verklaringen. Stijlgebonden schoolvorming in de Nederlandse sociologie na 1968. Aksant, Amsterdam 2002. xiii, 225 pp. Ill. € 20.00.
In this history of the development of the academic discipline of sociology in the Netherlands after 1945, Dr van El focuses on two theoretical schools that arose from the late 1960s onward, one at the University of Amsterdam and the other at the universities of Utrecht, Groningen and Nijmegen. In Amsterdam, sociologists around Joop Goudsblom were inspired by the work of the German sociologist Norbert Elias and his historical comparative Figuration Sociology. The other main current, around sociologists R. Wippler and S. Lindenberg, propagated a methodological-individualistic programme of explanatory sociology. The author examines origins of this dichotomy and its consequences for Dutch sociology.
Poland
Blatman, Daniel. Notre liberté et la vôtre. Le mouvement ouvrier juif BUND en Pologne, 1939-1949. [Histoires-Judaïsmes.] Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris 2002. 314 pp. Ill. € 38.00.
This study describes and analyses the activities of the militants of the Bund - the socialist, antinationalist political party of Jewish workers, founded in 1897 in Vilna - in Poland in the period from the Nazi occupation of Poland in 1939 until its dissolution by the Polish communist regime in 1949. Professor Blatman aims to reveal the prominent role of the Bund in the resistance, both in the various ghettos and in exile in London and the United States, analyses its relation with the Polish government in exile and with other Polish resistance groups and describes the fruitless efforts of the surviving Bund activists to reconstruct the movement in post-war Poland.
Russia - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Brandenberger, David. National Bolshevism. Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956. [Russian Research Center Studies, vol. 93.] Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2002. xv, 378 pp. Ill. £33.50.
This study traces the origins and rise of the populist "national Bolshevism" propaganda campaign, which Stalin and his inner circle designed in the 1930s to mobilize Soviet society for the expected war. Professor Brandenberger argues that the national identity propagated in this period shows that Stalinist ideology was in fact more Russian nationalist than it was proletarian internationalist, and that this in turn helps to explain why this nationalist populism not only survived Stalin but still resonates in present-day Russia.
Fayet, Jean-François. Karl Radek (1885-1939) Biographie politique. [L'Europe et les Europes, 19e et 20e siècles, vol. 4.] Peter Lang, Bern [etc.] 2004. xv, 813 pp. € 77.40.
Karl Radek (pseudonym of Karl Sobelsohn) was one of the leaders of the Comintern, until he was banned because of his support for Trotsky in 1927. After being pardoned he headed the secret operation BMI, which gathered information abroad for Stalin. In 1937 at the second Moscow show trial, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. This biography is the first extensive study about Karl Radek based on archival material, as these data became available in the 1990s. In the introduction the author describes which archives were accessible to him, and which were not (the latter included the AP - the presidential archive - and the archive of the FSB, the secret service), as well as which sections have probably been lost forever.
Haynes, Michael and Rumy Husan. A Century of State Murder? Death and Policy in Twentieth-Century Russia. Pluto Press, London [etc.] 2003. xv, 265 pp. £15.99; $24.95.
This study examines mortality in Russia in the twentieth century. It uses exhaustive demographic inquiry and other available statistics to analyse social and class differences in death rates and to link them with policies of the state. The "fourth great mortality crisis" of the transition period (after those of World War I and the civil war; of collectivization and famine in the 1930s; and of World War II), during which male life expectancy was less than 59 years (compared to 75 in Western Europe), is covered extensively.
Holquist, Peter. Making War, Forging Revolution. Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2002. xvi, 359 pp. £29.95.
In this revisionist interpretation of the Bolshevik Revolution, Professor Holquist argues that Tsarist and Revolutionary governments implemented policies for total mobilization that were common to other belligerent powers during World War I, and that the period 1914-1921 should be seen as a continuum in which distinctive characteristics of Russian political life, Marxist ideology, wartime circumstances and broader trends of wartime policies converged to bring about the Bolshevik Revolution. Focusing on the Don territory of the Cossacks, he examines the implementation of three particular policies - state management of food, the employment of official violence for political ends and state surveillance - and their impact on the lives of ordinary citizens.
Hutcheson, Derek S. Political Parties in the Russian Regions. [BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian and East European studies, 2.] RoutledgeCurzon, London [etc.] 2003. ix, 196 pp. £60.00.
This study examines the role of party organizations and activists in the politics of post-Soviet Russia, especially at regional and local levels. Using the results of extensive fieldwork in three regions of middle Russia (the provinces of Ul'janovsk and Samara and the Republic of Tatarstan), the author analyses the work of the six main parties that emerged from the 1999 parliamentary elections. The main emphasis of the study is comparative, both with respect to the internal structures and activities of the parties and as far as the relation between centre and periphery and the place of Russia in the broader post-communist wave of political transitions are concerned.
Parler de soi sous Staline. La construction identitaire dans le communisme des années trente. Ed. par Brigitte Studer, Berthold Unfried et Irène Herrmann. [Colloquium, 2.] Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris 2002. 210 pp. € 16.00.
This collection aims to explore how the Stalinist regime obtained approval and loyalty not only from party members but also from a large share of the population. To this end, autobiographical documents are examined: diaries, "party autobiographies" and private autobiographies, texts of criticism and self-criticism. The work contains eight contributions, some written in English and some in French, and is based on a colloquium organized by the Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris in 1999.
Redefining Stalinism. Ed. by Harold Shukman. [Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions.] Frank Cass, London [etc.] 2003. 178 pp. £65.00.
This collection of seven essays explores totalitarian and revisionist arguments about Stalin and Stalinism. The topics include a survey of recent Western views of Stalin's Russia, an account of Stalin's approach to intelligence, the politics of obligation, the cult of the dead in Soviet political memory and the demythologizing of Stalin in the years immediately following his death. The book appears in the series Totalitarian movements and political religions. Jeffrey Brooks, John Keep and Robert Service are among the authors.
Rogalla von Bieberstein, Johannes. "Jüdischer Bolschewismus". Mythos und Realität. Mit einem Vorw. von Ernst Nolte. Edition Antaios, Dresden 2002. 311 pp. Ill. € 29.00.
In this study the author aims to explain the large share of Jews among the Russian revolutionaries and to distinguish facts from prejudices concerning this controversial subject. He emphasizes the oppression of the Jews in Russia, Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe and the anti-Semitism that prevailed there. Next, he analyses the "vicious cycle premise": the rampant anti-Semitism led many Jews to embrace communism, which in turn made anti-Semitism far more virulent. The preface is by Ernst Nolte.
Utopie und Terror. Josef Stalin und seine Zeit. Hrsg. von Eva Maeder und Christina Lohm. Volkshochschule des Kantons Zürich; Chronos, Zürich 2003. 204 pp. Ill. € 24.80.
This collection consists of ten articles, based on a lecture series at the Volkshochschule des Kantons Zürich in 2002/2003. In addition to articles about Stalin himself, the subjects addressed include the balance of power between Stalin and the state and party apparatus and the survival strategies of the population, both in the cities and in the countryside. Other areas considered are the foreign party executive in the 1930s and Stalin's position on Eastern Europe. The book is richly illustrated with images from the periodical UdSSR im Bau.
Spain
Peirats Valls, José. The CNT in the Spanish Revolution. Vol. 1. Ed. by Chris Ealham. The Meltzer Press, Hastings n.d. [2001], with supp. from The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies. xiv, 299 pp. Ill. £60.00. (Paper: £15.95.)
This is the first English edition of a classic in the historiography of the Spanish Civil War. Originally published in the early 1950s in France and reprinted in 1971, it sketches the role of anarchism in the Civil War and offers the "official" view of the CNT on the role of the anarchist militias, the revolutionary collectives and the stark reality of the war effort. In this English edition, Dr Ealham has contributed a new introduction and elaborate notes on the text, and has attached detailed indexes.
Ruiz, Jesús. Posibilismo libertario. Félix Morga. Alcalde de Nájera (1891-1936). Ilustre Ayuntamiento de Nájera, Nájera; Universidad de La Rioja 2003. 318 pp. Ills. € 10.00.
This study analyses the political ideas and actions of the anarcho-syndicalist Felix Morga, who served as mayor of Nájera in the region of Rioja during the Second Republic. The author aims to depict the posibilismo libertario, i.e. the stand of those anarchists who, without abandoning their revolutionary causes, supported the Republic by participating in the democratic process. The author relates Morga as an individual and his conduct as a mayor to the socioeconomic and political context of Nájera. He bases his study on local and provincial archival research, writings by Morga, interviews and the local press.
Sagués San José, Joan. Una ciutuat en guerra. Lleida en la guerra civil espanyola (1936-1939). Pròleg de Conxita Mir Curcó. Publicaciones de Abadía de Montserrat, Barcelona 2003. 754 pp. € 30.00.
The author based this study, a revised edition of a dissertation (University of Lérida, 2001), on research in local and national archives, the local press and memoirs. The study addresses the preparations for the military coup in Lérida; the victory of the workers' militias, the organization of the local administration and the social revolution; issues concerning violence, public order and defence of the hinterlands; food supply, healthcare and cultural life; and the situation as a city on the front after being taken by the insurgents in April 1938.
Seidman, Michael. A ras de suelo. Historia social de la República durante la Guerra Civil. Alianza Editorial, Madrid 2003, 388 pp. Maps € 18.70.
Seidman, Michael. Republic of Egos. A Social History of the Spanish Civil War. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison (WI) [etc.] 2002. xi, 304 pp. Maps $55.00. (Paper: $24.95.)
These are Spanish translation and the English original of a study of the social history of the everyday lives of average, common Spaniards on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. Professor Seidman focuses on the experiences of the anonymous individuals, families and small groups and on their day-to-day struggle for their interests and survival. Examining factors such as wartime price restrictions, labour unrest, inflation, hoarding, pilfering and black marketeering, he argues that most people cared less about an abstract ideological cause than about their own, predominantly material interests. See also Manuel Pérez Ledesma's review in this volume, pp. 525-527.
Switzerland
Strebel, Erika Flückiger. Zwischen Wohlfahrt und Staatsökonomie. Armenfürsorge auf der bernischen Landschaft im 18. Jahrhundert. Chronos, Zürich 2002. 427 pp. CD-Rom. € 46.90.
This dissertation (University of Bern, 2000) examines poor relief in the region of Bern in the eighteenth century, as it came to be predominantly administered and financed by the local government. Dr Strebel shows how in the course of the eighteenth century a growing number of people, who comprised an increasing share of members of the "labouring poor", became dependent on the city's poor relief, and how this pressured the city's financial budget, creating a dilemma for the city government between social welfare and public finance.