Volume 53 part 2 (August 2008)
Bibliography
General Issues
Continents and Countries
- Africa
Angola | Egypt - America
Brazil | Canada | Mexico | Puerto Rico | United States of America - Asia
India | Turkey - Europe
Eire - Ireland | France | Germany | Great Britain | Italy | Poland | Portugal | Russia - USSR | Spain
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 SCIENCEAxinn, William G. and Lisa D. Pearce. Mixed Method Data Collection Strategies. [New Perspectives on Anthropological and Social Demography.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. xiv, 230 pp. £40.00; $70.00. (Paper: £15.99; $26.99.)
As a result of progressive specialization within social sciences, researchers are trained to use a narrow range of possible data collection methods. Drawing on a broad range of available data collection methods, this study puts forward a new set of data collection approaches suited for collecting new data about people, organizations and social processes and combining elements from existing methods, such as the micro-demographic community study approach, systemic anomalous case analysis, neighbourhood and life history calendars and longitudinal data collection. Detailed instructions and concrete examples are included.
Bouhuijs, Robert Jan Willem. De gefragmenteerde staat. Een onderzoek naar de relatieve autonomie van de staat onder het moderne kapitalisme. Het Spinhuis, Amsterdam 2006. 308 pp. € 35.00.
Using case studies on Chile during the Allende government (1970-1973) and the Netherlands under the Labour-led Den Uyl government (1973-1977) as an empirical foundation, this dissertation (University of Amsterdam, 2006) analyses the relationship between the modern democratic state and capitalist ruling class in social formations dominated by the capitalist production mode. Contrary to both classical and modern Marxist theory, which see this relation as merely instrumental, Dr Bouhuijs argues that the fact that political forces of the left can penetrate the heart of the state through elections demonstrates that the state has relative autonomy, despite economic globalization.
The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith. Ed. by Knud Haakonssen. [Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. xiv, 409 pp. $70.00; £40.00. (Paper: $28.99; £17.99.)
The thirteen essays in this companion volume aim to offer a comprehensive overview of all aspects of Adam Smith's thought. Although best known as an early proponent of the modern market economy and laissez-faire capitalism, his political economy was only part of a much larger intellectual system. As a contextualist history of this body of thought, the essays deal, for example, with his theory of language; his thoughts on science; on virtues, utility and rule; on justice, rights and law; Smith's politics; his relation to history writing; and, of course, his economics. In the concluding chapter, the editor together with Donald Winch discuss Smith's legacy.
The Cambridge Companion to Keynes. Ed. by Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. xiv, 327 pp. $40.00; £70.00. (Paper: $28.99; £15.99.)
This companion volume on the works and thought of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) brings together fifteen specially commissioned essays that aim to give a comprehensive overview of the links between Keynes' economics, his philosophy and the rest of his intellectual work. Contributors deal with his philosophical engagement with G.E. Moore and Franz Brentano and his relation to the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists and describe the historical context of his economic theory, principles of economic policy and political philosophy. Separate chapters are devoted to the role of his General Theory in the creation of modern macroeconomics and the many meanings of Keynesianism.
Chancer, Lynn S. AND Beverly XavieraWatkins. Gender, Race and Class. An Overview. [21st-Century Sociology.] Blackwell, Malden, MA [etc.] 2006. 160 pp. € 17.99.
This sociology textbook aims to offer an introduction on how the dimensions of gender, race and class as a combined topic have evolved in recent decades and have become prominent in contemporary studies of social inequalities. The authors review the development of these concepts separately and discuss intellectual and political arguments for analysing them together.
Ferretter, Luke. Louis Althusser. [Routledge Critical Thinkers.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2006. xi, 162 pp. £50.00.
This textbook offers an introduction to the ideas and work of the French critical Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990) and their impact on politics and culture. Dr Ferretter places key themes in Althusser's work in the context of earlier Marxist thought, deals with his important contributions to the interpretation and critique of Marx's work and discusses the continuing influence of Althusser's theory in contemporary feminist, post-colonialist and queer theory.
Images of Gramsci. Connections and contentions in political theory and international relations. Ed. by Andreas Bieler Adam David Morton. [RIPE Studies in Global Political Economy.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2006. xxv, 186 pp. £60.00.
Based on an interdisciplinary workshop organized at the University of Nottingham in October 2003, the twelve essays in this volume address the relevance of Antonio Gramsci's ideas for political theory and international political economy at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the first section, contributors assess Gramsci's methodological principles, his conception of civil society, his writings on war and cultural struggle and the spatial dimension of his thought. In the second section, authors focus on the relevance of Gramsci's thought for questioning the contemporary world order, including issues of global capitalism, transformations of the state, revolutionary praxis, Orientalism and empire and European regionalism.
Sociologists in a Global Age. Biographical Perspectives. Ed. by Mathieu Deflem. Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2007. ix, 273 pp. £55.00.
This volume brings together sixteen autobiographical essays by leading international sociologists who write on their motives and experiences with becoming practitioners in the field, paying attention to the intellectual and socio-political context in which their works matured and concluding with their views on the future direction of the field. The contributors were selected for their comparative and transnational interests and experiences and include: Martin Albrow, Karin Knorr Cetina, Diane E. Davis, Pierpaolo Donati, Leon Grunberg, Horst J. Helle, Eiko Ikegami, Tianhui Jing, Hyuan-Chin Lim, Ewa Morawska, Richard Münch, Saskia Sassen, Joachim J. Savelsberg, Piotr Sztompka, Edward A. Tiryakian and Ruut Veenhoven.
HISTORY
1956. European and global perspectives. Ed. by Carole Fink, Frank Hadler, Tomasz Schramm. [Global History and International Studies.] Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2006. 354 pp. € 22.00.
The thirteen essays in this volume examine the year 1956 as a global transformative moment in twentieth-century history. Khrushchev's start with destalinization, revolutionary moments in Poland and Hungary and crises in the Sinai and around the Suez Canal, as well as the development of a global consciousness, specifically mark this year, according to the editors. The contributions are organized around four sections, covering "traditional" Cold War issues; upheavals in European communism; the birth of the European Common Market, combined with the Middle East crises and the onset of decolonization in Africa; and other global issues.
1848. The Year of Revolutions. Ed. by Peter H. Wilson. [The International Library of Essays on Political History.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2006. xxiv, 556 pp. £125.00.
This volume in a series that brings together previously published essays analyzing political history focuses on 1848, the year of European revolutions. Included are articles that were published in leading historical journals between 1972 and 2004, including Past and Present, History, Social History and International Review of Social History. The essays selected are organized around five main themes: international dimensions; national experiences; political mobilization; counterrevolution and the state; and legacy.
Adderley, Rosanne Marion, "New Negroes from Africa". Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean. [Blacks in the Diaspora.] Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana [etc.] 2006. xiv, 337 pp. $24.95.
From 1807, when the British government outlawed the slave trade and began to rescue Africans from slave ships operating illegally, thousands of these "liberated Africans" were taken to British Caribbean colonies as free settlers to work either as paid labourers or as indentured servants. This study focuses on the Bahamas and Trinidad to explore the formation of new African immigrant communities on these islands, which had long been dependent on enslaved African labour. Professor Adderley looks at the family relations, at the religion and culture of these liberated Africans and at the labour they performed. She concludes with a discussion of the issue of repatriation.
Adelman, Jeremy. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2006. x, 409 pp. £26.95.
This study of the development of the concept of sovereignty in the Iberian-Atlantic world aims to enlighten readers about the origins of this new notion of sovereignty, which emerged in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and drove the struggle for independence in the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Professor Adelman argues that the pressures of rival states and merchant capitalism transformed the relation between colonies and mother countries, as empires ceased to be viable models for sovereignty. He concludes that the emergence of Latin American nations should be seen as the effect, and not as the cause, of the collapse of European empires.
Alcohol. A Social and Cultural History. Ed. by Mack P. Holt. Berg, Oxford [etc.] 2006. ix, 246 pp. £50.00; $89.95. (Paper: £17.99; $29.95.)
The thirteen chapters in this volume on the history of alcoholic beverages in the West from the Renaissance to the present aim to give an outline of the broadest and most basic changes over time in the drinking patterns of Western Europeans, Americans and Australians. The contributors cover the changes in the nature and kinds of alcoholic beverages consumed; changes in the venues, environments and circumstances in which alcoholic drinks were consumed; and changes in the ways in which alcohol functioned to delineate and define various social and cultural phenomena, such as religion, class, politics or health and disease.
Brock, Peter. Against the Draft. Essays on Conscientious Objection from the Radical Reformation to the Second World War. University of Toronto Press, Toronto [etc.] 2006. xii, 462 pp. $80.00; £50.00.
Professor Brock has brought together in this volume 25 essays on conscientious objection to the draft from 1525 to the end of World War II. The essays were written and previously published in part over more than thirty years. Themes covered include the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition of military exemption, starting in the Radical Reformation in 1525; the Quakers' tradition of anti-militarism; anti-draft movements in Civil-War America, Tolstoy's pacifism; the fate of conscientious objectors in the psychiatric clinics in Germany and Poland; and the harsh treatment of Jehovah's Witnesses and other pacifist religious minorities in Nazi-Germany.
Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. Islam and the Abolition of Slavery. Hurst & Company, London 2006. xxvi, 293 pp. Maps. £35.00.
Professor Clarence-Smith aims to offer a comprehensive overview of how the debate about slavery and its abolition developed in Islam, from the spread of this religion to the twentieth century. Contesting prevailing views on the relation of Islam to slavery and drawing on examples from the whole of the Islamic world, he argues that views on servitude and its religious justification varied, even long before abolition of slavery become a prominent current in West. The author then focuses on the modern debate in Islam from the late eighteenth century onward, comparing it with similar debates within other world religions.
Dahlén, Marianne. The Negotiable Child. The ILO Child Labour Campaign 1919-1973. Uppsala Universitet, Uppsala 2007. 352 pp. (http://publications.uu.se/theses)
This dissertation (Uppsala University, 2007) examines the campaign that the International Labour Organization (ILO) developed in the period 1919-1973 to regulate the minimum age for admission to employment. Examining five main themes - among which the relationship between industrialized and colonized and developing countries; the relationship between the child, the family and the state; and the importance of school - she concludes, for example, that the minimum age campaign had remarkable continuity, despite the revolutionary economic and social changes during the twentieth century, and that the campaign was predominantly modelled on the "norm of the Western industrialized childhood". See also Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk's review in this volume, pp. 320-322.
The Expert Consumer. Associations and Professionals in Western Consumer Society. Ed. by Alain Chatriot, Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel [and] Matthew Hilton. Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2006. ix, 209 pp. £47.50.
The eleven contributions in this volume, based on a colloquium organized at the École Nationale d'Administration in Paris in June 2004, review selected forms and moments of consumer mobilization across the twentieth century in Europe and the United States. Chronologically organized, the first section focuses on early twentieth-century, predominantly ethically inspired consumer activism; the second section covers the period during and in between the World Wars; whereas in the last section on the second half of the twentieth century Matthew Hilton and others discuss the internationally organized consumer movement (see also IRSH, 51 (2006), p. 348, and 52 (2007), pp. 373-406).
Frankel, Oz. States of Inquiry. Social Investigations and Print Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the United States. [New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History.] Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland 2006. x, 370 pp. $48.00.
The mid-nineteenth century saw the start of a host of investigative projects and official reports initiated, commissioned and published by both the British and the American governments, such as the British inquiries into child labour and poverty and American studies on Indian tribes and scholarly explorations of the West. Professor Frankel explores in this study the origins and development of these policy investigations and official reports, which constituted an economy of exchange that he terms "print statism". He argues that it also brought about the unintended consequences of limited control over the process of inquiry and the role and impact of the official reports after publication.
Iggers, Wilma Abeles and Georg Iggers. Two Lives in Uncertain Times. Facing the Challenges of the 20th Century as Scholars and Citizens. [Studies in German History, Vol. 4.] Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2006. viii, 211 pp. $85.00; £50.00. (Paper: $24.95; £14.95.)
In this dual autobiography, American-German historians Georg Iggers, known for his work on modern historiography (see IRSH, 44 (1999), p. 119), and Wilma Abeles Iggers, specialist on the social and cultural history of Central European Jewry, relate their life stories, starting from their very different experiences of childhood and adulthood and their joint lives as a married couple and historians over almost six decades. Coming from different Jewish family backgrounds, they both fled with their parents in 1938 to the United States, where they met. Active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, they also promoted German-Jewish reconciliation and forged ties between historians in East Germany and West Germany during the Cold War.
Levinson, Marc. The Box. How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2006. xi, 376 pp. £15.95; $24.95
This is a comprehensive history of the shipping container and its revolutionizing consequences for shipping, ports, labour and world economy. Mr Levinson explores the pivotal role of entrepreneur Malcolm McLean and his success in supplying US forces in the Vietnam war in the breakthrough of container shipping. He examines how the container transformed both economic geography - with the demise of traditional ports and the rise of previously obscure ones - and the role and character of labour in the ports. He concludes that container shipping paved the way for modern economic globalization by making shipping as cheap as it has become.
Mining Women. Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670 to 2005. Ed. by Jaclyn J. Gier and Laurie Mercier. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2006. x, 355 pp. £42.00.
The fifteen essays in this collection explore gender relations and women's work and activism in mining communities and mining industries in different parts of the world from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Organized in chronologically ordered parts, contributors cover mining industries in colonial and imperial settings, look at the increasing masculinization of the industry from the nineteenth century onward and explore the role of women in labour protests and organizations in the first half of the twentieth century and in the recent eras of de-industrialization and globalization. In the epilogue, the first editor (who passed away unexpectedly last year) highlights the response by women to the most recent developments in globalization and the concomitant dissolution of traditional labour institutions, environmental destruction and emergence of a global feminism. See also Caroline Merithew's review in this volume, pp. 315-317.
Van Kemseke, Peter. Towards an Era of Development. The Globalization of Socialism and Christian Democracy 1945-1965. [KADOC Studies on Religion, Culture and Society, vol. 5.] Leuven University Press, Leuven 2006. 324 pp. € 32.00. This revised edition of a dissertation (University of Leuven, 2001) explores the impact of globalization and decolonization processes on the ideologies of two major western European political currents (social democracy and Christian democracy) in the period 1945-1965. Dr Van Kemseke analyses how in the context of Cold War international politics, the Socialist International and its Christian democratic counterpart the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales "discovered" the underdeveloped world, and economic development of the Third World became the major issue in their orientation toward international politics. See also Carl Strikwerda's review in this volume, pp. 332-335.
COMPARATIVE HISTORY
Power and the People. A Social History of Central European Politics, 1945-56. Ed. by Eleonore Breuning, Jill Lewis and Gareth Pritchard. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2005. xxvii, 292 pp. £16.99.
The sixteen contributions to this volume cover various aspects of the social history of politics in six Central-European countries (East and West Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary) in the period 1945-1956. Organized in four sections, the chapters compare the position of four different social groups - workers, ethnic and linguistic minorities, youth and women - in each of these countries. General themes dealt with include the absence of revolutions in the aftermath of World War II; the re-imposition of social control by postwar elites; the attempt to restore prewar gender relations; and the failure of communist parties to win popular support.
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
Raby, D.L. Democracy and Revolution. Latin America and Socialism Today. Pluto Press [etc.], London [etc.] 2006. xi, 280 pp. $95.00. (Paper: $29.95.)
Professor Raby focuses in this book on the recent history and political developments of two Latin American countries, Cuba and Venezuela, and their leftist leadership, arguing that their experiences with gaining and retaining political power is a source of hope and inspiration for anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements across the world that a real alternative world is possible by winning political power on a popular democratic basis. According to the author, the state remains the most important framework for gaining political power, despite its weakening by the process of globalization.
CONTINENTS AND COUNTRIES
AFRICA
Ordering Africa. Anthropology, European Imperialism, and the Politics of Knowledge. [Studies in Imperialism.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2007. xiv, 390 pp. £60.00.
Anthropological and ethnographic research in Africa figured prominently in the development and transformation of the discipline of anthropology in the twentieth century, whereas at the same time ethnographic studies had a significant impact on the way imperial powers controlled African subjects. The twelve contributions to this volume aim to offer a comparative review of these mutually constitutive processes by exploring the role of metropolitan research institutes; Africans as ethnographers; the transnational features of knowledge production; and the relationship between anthropology and colonial administration.
Angola
Birmingham, David. Empire in Africa. Angola and Its Neighbours. [Ohio University Research in International Studies. Africa Series, No. 84.] Ohio University Press, Athens 2006. 190 pp. $22.00.
In the eleven essays in this volume, Professor Birmingham demonstrates his extensive understanding of the history of Southern Africa, especially that of Angola. All essays were published previously in anthologies or journals. This collection features a broad range of topics. The author shares new insights through original comparisons, such as the policy concerning alcohol for the indigenous of the Portuguese in Angola and of the Boers in South Africa. He also compares the wealthy colonialists from Belgium and Portugal, observing that both included a member of the Saxe-Coburg royal family. The constant factor in Angola's history is, according to the author, violent exploitation.
Egypt
Maghraoui, Abdeslam M. Liberalism Without Democracy. Nationhood and Citizenship in Egypt, 1922-1936. [Politics, History, and Culture.] Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2006. xx, 192 pp. € 50.00.
This study aims to show how, following Egypt's independence from Great Britain in 1922, indigenous reformers sought to align Egypt with the modern Western world and incorporate liberal notions of nationhood and citizenship by embracing European civilization and culture and degrading their own local cultures and traditions. Focusing on cultural expressions such as literary works and on newspaper articles about social issues, Dr Magrhaoui argues that the reformist professionals and leading cultural figures by adopting the language of Western liberalism as their own also took over the social prejudices built into that language.
AMERICA
Brazil
GRADEN, DALE TORSTON. From Slavery to Freedom in Brazil. Bahia, 1835-1900. [Diálogos Series.] University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 2006. xxviii, 297 pp. $24.95.
This study deals with the broad anti-slavery movement in Bahia, Brazil's most "African" federal state. Of the three driving forces behind abolitionism (Christian and humanist moralism, capitalist-rationalist ideology and slave resistance), Graden focuses on the third. Throughout the period, uprisings were imminent. Coalitions of slaves, freeborn blacks and Africans rescued from slave ships by the English anti-slavery squadron and released to land in Bahia fed the unrest. Domestic problems arising from the war against Paraguay brought some legislative improvement: after 1871 children of female slaves were born free. Still, slave owners continued to resist the emancipation until 1888.
Canada
Iacovetta, Franca. Gatekeepers. Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada. Between the Lines, Toronto 2006. Ill. xiii, 370 pp. C$34.95.
This is a study of the interactions between the many European immigrants, who came to Canada at the end of World War II and in the early Cold War years and the "gatekeepers", mostly middle-class individuals and organizations active in a variety of reception and citizenship programmes to accommodate these newcomers and help reshape their lives. Professor Iacovetta analyses the connections between the political, social, gender, sexual and immigrant history of Canada in this era and the politics of citizenship in a capitalist democracy that became both a more multi-ethnic nation and a national security state.
Mexico
Frazer, Chris. Bandit Nation. A History of Outlaws and Cultural Struggle in Mexico, 1810-1920. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln [etc.] 2006. x, 243 pp. £26.00.
Focusing on the century between Mexico's independence in 1821 and the Mexican Revolution of 1917/1920, this study investigates the cultural impact that banditry had on postcolonial Mexico and the process of state formation, the emergence of a natonal identity and the struggle for hegemony. Examining the nature and role of foreign travel accounts, novels and popular ballads, Professor Frazer analyses how the narratives of banditry are linked to a social and political debate about "mexican-ness" and the nature of justice. He concludes that the cultural image of the Mexican bandit remains relevant in present-day phenomena, such as the Zapatista guerrillas.
Santiago, Myrna I. The Ecology of Oil. Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938. [Studies in Environment and History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. Ill. Maps. xii, 411 pp. £50.00; $85.00.
Focusing on northern Veracruz, Mexico in the first four decades of the twentieth century, this study explores the social and environmental consequences of oil extraction in tropical areas. Professor Santiago aims to show how oil production generated major transformations in land tenure systems and uses, as well as in social organization, leading to marginalization of the indigenes, environmental destruction, tense labour relations and, in the context of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), increased class conflict. It was the Mexican oil workers, according to the author, who were pivotal in the drive towards the 1938 nationalization of the foreign oil industry. See also Michiel Baud's review in this volume, pp. 328-330.
The Women's Revolution in Mexico, 1910-1953. Ed. by Stephanie Mitchell and Patience A. Schell. [Latin American Silhouettes.] Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md. [etc.] 2007. viii, 233 pp. € 17.99.
In addition to the introduction and conclusion by Mitchell and Schell, respectively, this book contains 8 contributions about specific topics. Two are by the editors. Each contribution features a brief introduction to the topic, followed by a translated source. The topics range from the struggle by seven women for acknowledgement as "Veteran of the Revolution", to the fight for women's suffrage, which despite their major contribution to the revolution was granted only in 1953. The conclusion features a brief historiographic review of women's history in Mexico. The publication derives from the International Colloquium on the History of Women and Gender in Mexico, Yale University 2001.
Puerto Rico
Figueroa, Luis A. Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2005. 290 pp. £38.50.
In this study Professor Figueroa addresses the rise of a working class originating from the slave population in Guyama, Southeast Puerto Rico, where the sugar industry was relatively underdeveloped prior to 1900. Planters had great difficulty maintaining production levels following the emancipation in 1873. Even though the former slaves remained under contract for three more years, many left the plantations to which they had been bound. Especially women released from slavery abandoned fieldwork in droves. The authorities imposed repressive measures to curtail vagrancy. In Guayama former slaves were not in a position to start small farms. After 1873 they joined the jornaleros (day labourers), a group that had existed on the island for some time.
United States of America
Anthony, David Henry III. Max Yergan. Race Man, Internationalist, Cold Warrior. New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2006. xiii, 376 pp. Ill. £34.50.
This biography of the American black activist and intellectual Max Yergan (1892-1975) offers a chronological overview of the multi-faceted life and international career spanning more than half a century proceeding from his start as a young black YMCA missionary working in Africa, through an active role in the CPUSA and as a prolific activist against racial discrimination and colonialism alongside famous colleagues as W.E.B. DuBois and Gandhi to a conservative who became an apologist for South African apartheid in his later years. The biographer argues that the frequently critical assessment of Yergan's character and career is not always deserved.
Archibald, Katherine. Wartime Shipyard. A Study in Social Disunity. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2006. lxxxii, 244 pp. Ill. $25.00.
This is a new edition of a study, originally published in 1947, in which the author, who spent two years working as a female graduate student at Berkeley, California, in a wartime shipyard in Oakland, gives a classic account of life and work at the home front. She describes how women were seen as intruders, white and black migrant workers were regarded as inferior, and trade unions were concerned more with their own position than with defending workers' rights. In their extensive introduction to this new edition, Professors Arnesen and Lichtenstein place Katherine Archibald's work in the context of recent scholarship on women and African Americans in the wartime workplace.
Brick, Howard. Transcending Capitalism. Visions of a New Society in Modern American Thought. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, [etc.] 2006. x, 324 pp. € 39.95.
This analysis of mid twentieth-century American postcapitalist thought aims to show how an influential current of social theorists in the United States, originating from the interwar period, came to believe from the early 1950s onward that modern Western society was better described as "postcapitalist", "postindustrial", or "technological" than as capitalist. Focusing on thinkers such as Thorsten Veblen, Talcott Parson, Daniel Bell and others, Professor Brick positions this postcapitalist vision within a longer history of social theory and ideology that supported a shift toward a more social economy and argues that it was a contributing factor in the revival of dissent in the 1960s.
Fones-Wolf, Ken. Glass Towns. Industry, Labor, and Political Economy in Appalachia, 1890-1930s. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urban [etc.] 2007. xxviii, 236 pp. Ill. $65.00. (Paper: $25.00.)
In this study of the glass-making industry in West Virginia, Professor Fones-Wolf examines the industry's restructuring in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the push for economic development in the region, and how these interrelated processes became intertwined to transform the labour and social relations of the region. Through case studies of glass production hubs for window, tableware and bottled glass, the author looks at issues such as global patterns of industrial restructuring, employers' responses to global competition, workers' roles in changing workplace culture and political action and the role of labour migration. See also Dwight B. Billings's review in this volume, pp. 322-325.
MacLean, Nancy. Freedom Is Not Enough. The Opening of the American Workplace. Russell Sage Foundation [etc.], New York [etc.] 2006. xii, 454 pp. $35.00; £22.95; € 29.80.
This study traces the struggle for equal job opportunities and economic inclusion for African Americans, Latinos and women in the United States from the late 1950s and early 1960s onward. Professor MacLean shows how this struggle went hand in hand with the civil rights movements and achieved a milestone with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Focusing on the role of grassroots activists from the black freedom movement, the women's movement and organizations of Latinos, she aims to show how over time this struggle fundamentally refashioned American society and democracy.
Piven, Frances Fox. Challenging Authority. How Ordinary People Change America. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham [etc.] 2006. vii, 195 pp. £13.99; $21.95.
The central question that the prominent American political scientist and sociologist Professor Piven aims to answer in this latest study is how egalitarian reform ever occurs, given the inequalities of American society and the extent to which electoral-representative arrangements are so twisted by those inequalities that genuine reform remains impossible. Zooming in on the American revolution, the abolitionist movement, the early twentieth-century rise of the labour movement and the Vietnam antiwar movement, she argues that these historical intervals of protest movements wield a form of disruptive power that leads to fundamentally egalitarian democratic reform.
Sanger, Margaret. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger. Vol. 2. Birth Control Comes of Age, 1928-1939. Ed. by Esther Katz. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Ill., [etc.] 2006. xl, 528 pp. $65.00.
This is the second of a projected four-volume edition of selected papers that traces the life and career of Margaret Sanger (born Higgins) (1879-1966), a renowned American birth control activist, feminist and social reformer (see IRSH, 50 (2005), p. 528, for volume one). Consisting predominantly of correspondence, this volume focuses on Sanger's efforts during the 1930s to legalize contraception, confronting powerful opposition from the Catholic Church in particular.
Skocpol, Theda, Ariane Liazos, [and] Marshall Ganz. What a Mighty Power We Can Be. African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality. [Princeton Studies in American Politics. Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives.] Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2006. xiii, 291 pp. Ill. £17.95. (Paper: £15.95.)
Fraternal associations - self-selecting brotherhoods and sisterhoods that provided aid to members, enacted in group rituals and engaged in community services - were an important form of self-organization in the United States from the nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, especially among African Americans. This study explores the most visible African American fraternal associations that spanned communities in one or more states and analyses their pivotal role in the struggle for civil rights and racial integration. The authors also explore the legal struggles that ensued when white legislature aimed to outlaw the use of important fraternal names and symbols by blacks.
Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism. The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. xiv, 283 pp. Ill. $75.00; £45.00.
The public works programmes developed and carried out between 1933 and 1939 were an important part of President Roosevelt's New Deal. Adopting a political economy perspective, this study explores the role of these programmes, executed through agencies like the Public Works Adminstration and Works Progress Administration, in transforming the American economy, landscape and political system. Professor Smith argues that these programmes meant a revolution in state-sponsored economic development and were not only elementary to the New Deal's welfare state but also established crucial foundations for postwar economic growth.
Souls for sale. Two German Redemptioners Come to Revolutionary America. The life stories of John Frederick Whitehead and Johann Carl Büttner. Ed. with Intr. and Notes by Susan E. Klepp, Farley Grubb and Anne Pfaelzer de Ortiz with the ass. of Matthew Muehlbauer and Uta Kresse Raina. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania 2006. xvi, 272 pp. Ill. $75.00. (Paper: $ 25.00.)
This volume presents two parallel autobiographical accounts of two adolescent Germans, each recruited by labour contractors and placed on board the same ship to sail to colonial America in 1773 and work as a bound servant. As the memoirs of John Frederick Whitehead - published here for the first time - and Johann Carl Büttner offer divergent interpretations of basically similar experiences, they provide, according to the editors in their introduction, important firsthand insights into the transatlantic migration process, working and living conditions and opportunities for redemptioners in colonial America.
Triece, Mary E. On the Picket Line. Strategies of Working-class Women During the Depression. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc]. 2007. viii, 179 pp. $60.00. (Paper: $25.00.)
This study explores protest tactics and rhetoric used by working-class women activists in the United States in the 1930s in the struggle for their rights, both in the paid labour force and as caregivers in the home. Focusing in part on influential figures within the Communist Party, Professor Triece argues that the confrontational protest tactics of this period remain relevant to the present-day struggle of women for better working and living conditions. See also Ileen A. Devault's review in this volume, pp. 330-332.
ASIA
India
Datta Gupta, Sobhanlal. Comintern and the Destiny of Communism in India 1919-1943. Dialectics of Real and Possible History. Seribaan, Kolkata 2006. xxi, 329 pp. $17.00; Rs. 695.00.
This study of the impact of the Communist International (Comintern) on the shaping and development of Indian communism is based on materials from the Moscow Comintern archives and the archives of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), opened in the 1990s. Professor Datta Gupta aims to reinterpret the history of Indian communism by adopting a critical perpsective on the long-lasting influence of stalinism. A separate chapter is devoted to the fate of Indian communist revolutionaries in Moscow.
Turkey
Özyürek, Esra. Nostalgia for the Modern. State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2006. xi, 227 pp. Ill. £56.00. (Paper: £13.99.)
The combination of the dominance of economic neoliberalism and the rise of political Islam challenged the unity and authority of the secularist Turkish state at the end of the twentieth century. In this study, Professor Özyürek analyses how ordinary Turkish citizens have started over the past decade to demonstrate their affinity and nostalgia for Kemalism - the official ideology of the secularist Turkish Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923. By examining how Turkish citizens organize and decorate their domestic space, interpret political developments and celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Republic, she aims to show how notions of citizenship have been reconfigured.
EUROPE
A Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms. Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries. Ed. and with an Intr. by Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova and Anna Loutfi. Central European University Press, Budapest [etc.] 2006. xxi, 678 pp. Ill. Maps. £39.95.
This biographical dictionary describes the lives, work and aspirations of some 150 women and men who were active in women's and feminist movements in 22 countries in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe (CESEE) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Challenging the widely held belief - also among historians - that no historical feminism existed in this part of Europe, the biographical portraits brought together here aim to show that feminists were widespread and diverse, including people from various social strata, political backgrounds, cultural heritages and religious beliefs.
Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries. Work, Power, and Representation. Ed. by Maarten Prak, Catharina Lis, Jan Lucassen. [a.o.]. Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2006. xii, 269 pp. £50.00.
Based on a long-term Dutch-Flemish research project, the eight contributions to this volume explore the development and the economic, political, social and cultural role and position of craft guilds in the Northern and Southern Netherlands in the late medieval and early modern period from a comparative perspective. Issues dealt with include the institutional development of guilds (Maarten Prak); their relation to export industries and early capitalist development (Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly); gender and the tailoring trades (Harald Deceulaer and Bibi Panhuysen); religious rituals (Alfons K.L. Thijs); mutual aid (Sandra Bos); and social representation (Johan Dambruyne).
Lattek, Christine. Revolutionary Refugees. German socialism in Britain, 1840-1860. [Routledge studies in modern British history, Vol. 2.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2006. xiv, 358 pp. £85.00.
Mid-nineteenth century London hosted a substantial German colony, including not only Karl Marx but many other émigrés with revolutionary ideals as well. This study explores the debates among these German socialists, who ranged from utopian socialists to groups such as the "Communist League", dominated by Marx and Engels. Dr Lattek also examines the links of these émigrés with British kindred spirits, such as the Chartists, and with other international radical groups and analyses the broader social and cultural environment of this immigrant community. See also Toni Offermann's review in this volume, pp. 317-320.
Maltone, Carmela. Exil et identité. Les antifascistes italiens dans le Sud-Ouest 1924-1940. [Voyages, migrations et transferts culturels.] Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, Pessac 2006. 253 pp. € 22.00.
With Mussolini's rise to power, thousands of antifascist intellectuals, politicians, trade unionists and militants went into exile in France in the early 1920s. Many settled in the southwest, in the Gascogne region, where they rebuilt their organizations and started exile journals, engaging in intensive editorial activities. This study explores how this exile community of antifascists adapted to the new situation by reconstructing their organizational network in the form of co-operatives, reaffirming their common identity through continued antifascist struggle.
Networks of Nazi Persecution. Bureaucracy, Business and the Organization of the Holocaust. Ed. by Gerald D. Feldman and Wolfgang Seibel. [Studies on War and Genocide, Volume 6.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2005. xii, 376 pp. $75.00; £50.00. (Paper: $27.95; £16.95.)
The eighteen essays in this volume present recent research on the organization, bureaucracy and division of labour that underpinned the persecution and mass murder of the Jews during World War II. The contributors aim to show how the Holocaust was to a large extent based on a network of inter-organizational relations and a variety of non-hierarchical cooperation, as well as rivalry and competition between various organizational units within the Nazi state apparatus, and which the financial, bureaucratic and other interests were involved.
Osteuropa in den Revolutionen von 1848. Hrsg. v. Lars Lambrecht. [Forschungen zum Junghegelianismus, Band 15.] Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2006. 242 pp. € 39.70.
Based on a long-term research project on the Young Hegelians and their ideology, the eleven contributions to this volume explore the impact and effects of the 1848 Revolution on Eastern Europe. Themes covered include modernization and westernization in Eastern Europe as a result of 1848, the interaction between the political and literary relations of Eastern and Western Europe in this era, the reception of Hegelian philosophy among Eastern European intellectuals, the role of women in political relations, the emancipation of Jews and anti-Semitic trends among Young Hegelians.
Eire - Ireland
Ó Gráda, Cormac. Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce. A Socioeconomic History. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey [etc.] 2006. Ill. xii, 300 pp. € 22.95.
Before the first Lithuanian Jewish immigrants arrived in Dublin in the 1870s, Ireland hardly had a Jewish population, and on the eve of World War I the Jewish community in Dublin still numbered barerly three thousand. Professor Ó Gráda examines the economic, social, cultural and demographic history of the Jewish community up to the late 1940s, when it experienced a dramatic decline. Looking at the occupational profile, demographics and cultural and religious behaviour, he argues that the community's small size shaped its occupational profile and influenced its acculturation but also compromised its viability in the long run.
France
Albert Gazier. Autour d'une vie de militant. [Des poings et des roses]. L'Harmattan, Paris 2006. 320 pp. € 20.00.
Based on selections from his dairy and memoirs, this volume gives a chronological overview of the life and work of Albert Gazier (1908-1997), a leading socialist and trade union activist and politician. Starting out as leader of a Parisian white-collar union during the Popular Front years, Gazier assumed a leading role in the resistance organization of the CGT, became a socialist member of parliament and minister in various governments in the 1950s and held a central role as negotiator for the French government in the decolonization of Algeria. In the 1960s he was pivotal and instrumental in the renewal of the French socialist party under François Mitterand.
Le bon grain et l'ivraie. La sélection des migrants en Occident, 1880-1939. Sous la dir. de Philippe Rygiel. Éditions aux lieux d'être, La Courneuve 2006. 268 pp. € 28.50.
Stricter regulation of immigration and more selective policy from the end of the nineteenth century onward to the eve of World War II have always been marked by the idea of "separating the wheat from the chaff". The nine chapters in this volume, based on a research project from the late 1990s, focus on the French situation, examining both the origins and the application of the legislation. Combining case studies of American, Algerian and other immigrants, the editor argues that the French case has been particular, in that application of the official legislation depended heavily on the actions and attitudes of state officials, employers and even the immigrants. Considerant, Victor. Principles of Socialism. Manifesto of Nineteenth Century Democracy. Transl. by Joan Roelofs. [Washington Studies in World Intellectual History, Vol. 2.] Maisonneuve, Washington, D.C. 2006. 119 pp. $14.95.
This is the first comprehensive English translation of Victor Considerant's Principes du Socialisme : Manifeste de la démocratie au XIX siècle, first published in 1843 as an introduction to the new journal La Démocratie pacifique and reprinted as a pamphlet in 1847. Victor Considerant (1808-1893) was one of the most important followers of the utopian thinker Charles Fourier and the leading organizer and theorist of the Fourierist movement (see IRSH, 47 (2002), pp. 295-299, 337). His Manifeste is generally seen as an important source of inspiration for Marx and Engels and their Communist Manifesto. In her introduction the translator places Considerant in the context of mid-nineteenth-century pre-Marxian radicalism.
Daumalin, Xavier [and] Jean Domenichino. Le Front populaire en entreprise. Marseille et sa région (1934-1938). Préface de Jean-Marie Guillon. Éditions Jeanne Laffitte, Marseille 2006. 188 pp. Ill. € 22.00.
This study examines the rise and decline of the broader French Popular Front movement in the years 1936-1940 in and around Marseilles. The authors argue that Marseilles figured prominently in the emergence of the union of various political and trade-union forces on the left that formed the Popular Front. Anticipating national Popular Front policies, local syndicalists organized factory occupations and strikes to ensure rapid implementation of social legislation, such as the forty-hour working week. With the demise of the national Popular Front government, employers in Marseilles were equally quick to reverse the achievements of the left, according to the authors.
Daniel Guérin. Révolutionnaire en mouvements. David Berry, Robert Schwarzwald, Hervé Baudry [e.a.]. [Dissidences, Vol. 2.] Harmattan, Paris 2007. 216 pp. € 19.50
The eleven essays in this volume, published in the recently launched series Dissidences, explore the work and ideas of the French historian and anarchist Daniel Guérin (1904-1988). Contributors deal with Guérin's leftist political activities and his progression from radical socialism, through Trotskyism to anarchism, his involvement in the struggle for emancipation of homosexuals and against colonialism and racism, as well as his historiographic work, including his history of the French Revolution in La lutte de classes sous la première République : Bourgeois et 'bras nus' (1793-1797) (1946).
Demonsais, Bruno. Gavroche. Un hebdomadaire culturel socialiste de la Résistance à la Guerre froide. Des poings et des roses. L'Harmattan, Paris 2006. 279 pp. € 24.50.
Gavroche was a Parisian socialist cultural weekly, founded clandestinely in 1943 during the Nazi occupation of Paris, and discontinued in 1948, at the beginning of the Cold War. This study explores the origins and development of the paper, its relation to the French socialist party and the role of its founder, the journalist Jean Texcier (1888-1957). Dr Demonsais analyses the central role the weekly played in the development of a postwar cultural and political renaissance, perpetuating the Republican values of the French resistance and hosting seminal debates between adherents of existentialism, humanism and "personnalisme".
Dinan, Susan E. Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France. The Early History of the Daughters of Charity. [Women and Gender in the Early Modern World.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2006. x, 190 pp. £45.00.
The Daughters of Charity was a seventeenth-century French women's religious community that remained uncloistered. This study chronicles the community's history and development, showing how these women, living in private houses in French cities and towns, offered medical care, religious instruction and alms to the sick and the poor, evolving into France's premier organization of nurses. Professor Dinan shows how this community shaped the system of early modern poor relief in France and was shaped by it in turn. She also deals with the complicated relationship of the Daughters of Charity with the Catholic Church in this era of Catholic Reformation.
Le Front populaire. [Sous la dir. de] Jean-Pierre Rioux. Éditions Tallandier, Paris 2006. 159 pp. € 15.00.
The twelve contributions to this concise volume, all previously published in the periodical L'Histoire, offer an introductory history of the French Popular Front for a general readership. Traditionally considered a heyday for the French left, the contributors deal with the origins of that image; the Popular Front origins; the position and role of intellectuals; the development of labour relations and labour struggles in this period; the achievements of the forty-hour working week and paid holidays; cultural developments; balancing a judgment on the Popular Front's international relations policy and its relation to the Vichy regime.
Gluckstein, Donny. The Paris Commune. A Revolution in Democracy. Bookmarks Publications, London 2006. 255 pp. Ill. £14.99.
This history of the Paris Commune is written from the perspective that this revolutionary experiment provides inspiration to those, including the author, who desire a better, more equal society in the contemporary world. Dr Gluckstein deals with the Commune's most important achievements; the political and social developments in France leading up to the revolution; the ensuing civil war, ending in the defeat of the Communards during the Bloody Week in May 1871; and the various historical interpretations of the Commune and its significance.
L'orientalisme des saint-simoniens. Sous la dir. de Michel Levallois et Sarga Moussa. Maisonneuve & Larose, Paris 2006. 294 pp. € 32.00.
The fifteen essays in this volume, all based on a colloquium organized in November 2004 at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, examine the role in and position of the Saint-Simonists on the nineteenth-century phenomenon of Orientalism. Historians, literary scholars and art historians examine the broader context of Orientalism in early nineteenth-century French ideology and literature; explore the specific Saint-Simonist elements in their preoccupation with the Maghreb and the Middle East and their role in colonial projects in Egypt and Algeria; and deal with the diffusion and heritage of Saint-Simonist Orientalism in late nineteenth-century French colonialism. The Origins of the French Revolution. Ed. by Peter R. Campbell. [Problems in Focus]. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2006. 256 pp. Ill. £18.99.
The ten contributions to this textbook aim to offer an overview of recent research and historiography on the French Revolution. Themes covered include the financial crisis as one of the main origins of the Revolution; the role of the decision-making process and the Paris Parliament in the preceding decade; intellectual and religious origins; art and theatre in the 1780s; pamphlet literature; the role and involvement of the peasantry; and the events of 1789 in the Estates General. In his introduction, the editor offers a new interpretation of the crisis of the French monarchy.
Prochasson, Christophe. Saint-Simon ou l'anti-Marx. Figures du saint-simonisme français XIXe-XXe siècles. Perrin, Paris 2005. 344 pp. € 23.00.
In this intellectual biography of the French utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Professor Prochasson focuses on Saint-Simon's long-lasting influence on a variety of nineteenth and twentieth-century ideological currents in France. In this general overview of the development of his ideas, the author argues that traits of his utopian ideas figure in nineteenth-century liberalism, late nineteenth-century reformist and scientific socialism, French neo-socialism of the 1930s and reformist technocracy of the 1960s, up until the rediscovery of his work among the French new left in the 1980s.
La question coloniale dans l'Humanité (1904-2004). Choix des articles, conception, pres. et ann. d'Alain Ruscio. La Dispute, Paris 2005. 599 pp. € 30.00.
In this volume over 250 articles on colonialism, decolonization and post-colonial relations are brought together from the French communist periodical l'Humanité spanning the century from its establishment in 1904 until 2004. l'Humanité featured, according to the editor of the volume, a continuous anti-colonialist perspective, as is evident from the contributions selected here from a wide variety of journalists, politicians and intellectuals. The selection is ordered chronologically, from the pre-communist era (1904-1920), through the interwar period including the Popular Front years (1935-1939), World War II and the problematic period of decolonization to the present. A separate section is devoted to immigration and integration.
Santamaria, Yves. Le pacifisme, une passion française. [Collection L'Histoire au présent.] Colin, Paris 2005. 350 pp. € 20.50.
In this history of French pacifism, Dr Santamaria argues that the history and development of this ideology can be considered in a competitive and tumultuous relation with two other important French passions: nationalism and social revolution. In a chronological overview from the French Revolution through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he aims to show how the ideological struggle against war in French pacifism has - in different ways across the various periods he distinguishes - remained connected with the struggle for democracy and human rights.
Shepard, Todd. The Invention of Decolonization. The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, [etc.] 2006. xv, 288 pp. Ill. $45.00.
In this study of the Algerian War (1958-1962), the related abrupt decolonization process and its longer-term consequences, the author argues that the separation of Algeria from France was a revolutionary event in more than one sense. Professor Shepard argues that it not only violated an essential element of French republican theory, universalism and its own 1958 Constitution but also deprived Algerian Muslim residents of French citizenship and left the French of Algeria, the pieds noir, out in the cold. The repercussions are responsible for many of the racial and religious tensions in contemporary France, according to the author.
Les socialismes français à l'épreuve du pouvoir (1830-1947). Pour une critique mélancolique de la gauche. Ouvrages sous la dir. de Philippe Corcuff and Alain Maillard. [La Discorde.] Les Éditions Textuel, Paris 2006. 207 pp. € 20.00.
In the seven essays in this volume, historians, sociologists and philosophers discuss the history of socialism in France from the complex perspective of its relation with political power. After three more general overviews of the history of socialism's relationship to power by Alain Millard (for the period 1789-1905), Michelle Perrot (for the period 1871-1914) and Thierry Hohl (for the period 1921-1947), the other contributions focus on militants emblematic of this issue: Auguste Blanqui (Daniel Bensaïd and Michael Löwy); the Parisian militants in the First International (Bruno Scacciatelli); Jean Jaurès (Philippe Chanial); and Léon Blum (Philippe Corcuff).
Germany
Abendroth, Wolfgang. Gesammelte Schriften. Band 1. 1926-1948. Hrsg. und eingel. von Michael Buckmiller, Joachim Perels und Uli Schöler. Offizin, Hannover 2006. 585 pp. € 36.80. (Paper: € 24.80.)
This is the first volume in a series projected to include eight volumes comprising the complete collection of the writings of the German political scientist Wolfgang Abendroth (1906-1985) (see IRSH, 45 (2000), p. 150 and 48 (2003), p. 144f.). The present volume features Abendroth's writings from the period from 1926 onward, when he was active in the Bund der freien sozialistischen Jugend, his dissertation and Habilitation and writings on educational reform and the reconstruction of a democratic judicial system in the Soviet Occupation Zone. The editors give a biographical sketch of Abendroth's life and work in their introduction.
After the Fall of the Wall. Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany. Ed. by Martin Diewald, Anne Goedicke, and Karl Ulrich Mayer. [Studies in Social Inequality]. Stanford University Press, Stanford, (Cal.) 2006. xx, 380 pp. € 60.00.
The thirteen chapters in this volume examine how the transformation of East Germany from a communist state to part of the Federal Republic of Germany has transformed the life course dynamics of individuals as well. Looking at issues such as institutional transitions; individual characteristics and the changing labour market; gender and age disparities; class mobility and meritocracy; and social networks, the contributors aim to address questions such as the extent to which there are still two different Germanies, and how are the new social order and the East German legacy influencing the lives and opportunities of today's German citizens?
Braun, Bernd. "Ich wollte nach oben!" Die Erinnerungen von Hermann Molkenbuhr 1851 bis 1880. [Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, Beiheft 24.] Dietz, Bonn 2006. 336 pp. Ill. € 32.00.
After recently writing a biography and editing the diaries from the period 1905-1927 of the leading German socialist Hermann Molkenbuhr (1851-1927) (see IRSH, 46 (2001), p. 506f.), Dr Braun has now edited in this volume Molkenbuhr's memoirs from the period 1851-1880. These memoirs, written in the early 1910s, can be regarded, according to the editor, as one of the most important autobiographical writings from the German labour movement of imperial Germany. Molkenbuhr sketches his youth, marked by the social downfall of his family, and his difficulties as a leading socialist activist under the Sozialistengesetz.
Bruer, Albert A. Aufstieg und Untergang. Eine Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (1750-1918). Böhlau, Köln [etc.] 2006. 394 pp. € 39.90.
In this dissertation Dr Bruer aims to offer a general chronological overview of the history of Jews in Germany from the late eighteenth century to the end of World War I, based on secondary sources. According to the author, this history was characterized by an upward trend of successful integration of Jews in German society as a result of the gradual deconfessionalization in the realms of state and society during most of the nineteenth century and a subsequent downward trend of increasing anti-Semitism and exclusion as a result of economic crises from the end of the nineteenth century onward.
Der Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund 1964-1969. Ed. by Wolther von Kieseritzky. [Quellen zur Geschichte der deutschen Gewerkschaftsbewegung im 20.Jahrhundert, Band 13.] Dietz, Bonn 2006. 914 pp. € 78.00.
This is the thirteenth volume in an ongoing series of source publications about the history of the German trade-union movement from 1914 (see IRSH, 38 (1993), p. 122, and 52 (2007), p. 342). This volume documents the history of the Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), the West German trade union central, in a period characterized by a transformation of West German political culture, with more tense interactions between government, employers and the labour movement as a result of the DGB's ambition for greater social and economic democracy. The over 100 documents brought together here, consisting of the minutes of executive board meetings and related correspondence, also give insight into the internal difficulties in the process.
Gippert, Wolfgang. Kindheit und Jugend in Danzig 1920 bis 1945. Identitätsbildung im sozialistischen und im konservativen Milieu. Klartext, Essen 2005. 552 pp. € 32.00.
This dissertation (University of Cologne, 2003) examines growing up and coming of age in the Free City of Danzig in the period 1920-1945, given the political, social and cultural landscape specific to this city. Analysing the everyday experiences of children and juveniles from both socialist and conservative backgrounds, the author aims to show the impact of this period's sweeping political and social events, such as the dominant role of the Nazis in the city from the early 1930s onward and on the youth and their upbringing.
Grundfragen der Sozialpolitik in der öffentlichen Diskussion: Kirchen, Parteien, Vereine und Verbände. Bearb. von Ralf Stremmel, Florian Tennstedt, Gisela Fleckenstein unter Mitarb. von Margit Peterle und Gisela Rust-Schmöle. [Quellensammlung zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sozialpolitik 1867 bis 1914; I. Abt.: Von der Reichsgründungszeit bis zur kaiserlichen Sozialbotschaft (1867-1881), Band 8.]. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2006. xl, 670 pp. € 99.00.
This is the eighth volume in a series of source editions on the history of German social policy from 1867 to 1914, the first section of which covers the period 1867-1881 (see IRSH, 47 (2002), pp. 340. for the previous volume in this section). This volume focuses on the debate on the social question among various interest groups, such as the churches, political parties, the emerging labour movement and employers' organizations and various other organizations in the public sphere. The correspondence included from founding members of the Verein für Sozialpolitik (including Adolphe Wagner, Lujo Brentano and Gustav Schmoller) offers a documentary history of its origins.
Niewerth, Andrea und Christoph Roolf. Zwangsarbeit in Neuss während des Zweiten Weltkrieges (1939-1945). [Dokumentationen des Stadtarchivs, Band 7.] Stadtarchiv Neuss, Neuss 2005. 231 pp. Ill. € 16.80.
Exemplifying interest in the history of forced labour in Nazi Germany at the local level, this study documents forced labour in the war economy in the city of Neuss in North Rhine-Westphalia. The authors sketch variations in the living and working conditions of forced labourers, paying special attention to the large share of forced labourers from Eastern Europe and to the organization and prevalence of forced labour in different economic sectors.
Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus. Wolfgang Kraushaar (Hg.). Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2006. 1415 pp. (in 2 vols.) € 78.00.
This volume aims to offer in two large tomes a comprehensive history of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) and related follow-up extremist leftist terrorist organizations active in West Germany and internationally in the 1970s and 1980s. Aiming to place the RAF as a specific form of late twentieth-century terrorism, the 61 essays - the large majority being original contributions - are organized around a number of thematic fields, including: general definitions of (modern) terrorism; the ideological and theoretical roots of the concept of Stadsguerilla ("urban guerilla"); the leading figures of the RAF's first generation; the international dimension and networks of the RAF; the relation with the West German state and judicial system and the role of left-wing attorneys; the relation of the terrorist groups with the media; mythologizing the RAF; and generalizing hypotheses. In the concluding section, interviews with the former head of the German law enforcement agency, responsible for the German state's struggle against the RAF terrorists, and with the writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger are included.
Totaler Arbeitseinsatz für die Kriegswirtschaft - Zwangsarbeit in der deutschen Binnenschifffahrt 1940-1945. Erinnerungen, Dokumente, Studien. Hrsg. von Eckhard Schinkel. [Westfälisches Industriemuseum - Quellen und Studien, Band 11.] Klartext, Essen 2005. 237 pp. Ill. € 12.90.
This collection brings together memoirs, contemporary documents and historical research on foreign forced labour active in inland waterways shipping in wartime Nazi Germany, focusing especially on French forced labourers, who from 1943 onward were assigned here through the Service du Travail Obligatoire. The memoirs of one of these French forced labourers, Alfred Dusautier, are a major part of the book.
Wildt, Michael. Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung. Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz 1919 bis 1939. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2007, 432 pp. € 28.00.
The term national community was used in National Socialist ideology to assess who was excluded from the community. This study explores at regional and local levels how the civil society of the Weimar Republic was transformed into an ethnically exclusive, racist "Volksgemeinschaft", national community. Professor Wildt aims to show how it was local branches of the NSDAP, the SA and the Hitlerjugend - and not only the central Nazi organizations - that achieved this by a consistent and fervent policy of isolation, stigmatization and threatening of Jewish members of the community and other Germans who remained loyal to their fellow citizens. See also Jie-Hyun Lim's review in this volume, pp. 325-327.
Great Britain
Barker, Hannah. The Business of Women. Female Enterprise and Urban Development in Northern England 1760-1830. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2006. vii, 189 pp. € 45.00.
Focusing on three northern English towns (Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield), this study portrays the experiences of lower middle-class businesswomen in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and explores their social and economic roles in this period. Challenging views that see these women as only marginally relevant to urban society, Dr Barker argues that businesswomen were central to the operation and development of commerce in late Georgian England. See also Danielle van den Heuvel's review in this volume, pp. 313-315
Burton, Alan George. The British Consumer Co-operative Movement and Film 1890s-1960s. [Studies in Popular Culture.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2005. 260 pp. £55.00.
The British Consumer Co-operative Movement was one of the first movements in the realm of the broader labour movement to adopt film for propaganda purposes. This study explores the culture and practice of the Co-operative Movement in terms of its use of film, in particular the role of the Co-op Movement in the interwar Workers' Film Movement and in the propaganda films during World War II, as well as the broader development of the workers' film and its eventual decline due to the impact of commercial television in the 1950s.
Caine, Barbara. Bombay to Bloomsbury. A Biography of the Strachey Family. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2006. xvii, 488 pp. Ill. £12.99.
Professor Caine, who recently published an overview of the history of English feminism (see IRSH, 46 (2001), pp. 307f.), portrays in this family biography the remarkable lives and careers of the members of the renowned Strachey family. Richard and Jane Strachey were a successful imperial couple, whose progressive, reformist ideas were inherited by their ten children, born over an exceptionally long period of 27 years. Based on their extensive family archive, including a vast correspondence collection, the author sketches how the daughters and sons, among them the famous writers Lytton Strachey, each in their own way assumed leading roles in radical reform, the suffrage movement, feminism and science.
Cressy, David. England on Edge. Crisis and Revolution 1640-1642. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2006. xiv, 446 pp. Ill. £25.00.
In this study of the onset of the English Civil War, or English Revolution, Professor Cressy focuses on the years 1640-1642 to submit that, contrary to recent revisionist tendencies that deny any real revolution, these two years constituted a revolutionary change in terms of profound disruption of the social, political and religious stability of the government of Charles I. Much of this instability was mirrored in the public discourse and radically unfettered press. These linked processes, the author argues, led to revolutionary change that in turn led to civil war, instead of civil war leading to revolution.
Fideler, Paul A. Social Welfare in Pre-Industrial England. The Old Poor Law Tradition. [Social History in Perspective.] PalgraveMacmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2006. viii, 264 pp. £ 17.99.
This textbook surveys the parish-centred social welfare in England from the late medieval period, through its institutionalization in Elizabethan Poor Law to its demise in the period of early industrialization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Professor Fideler subsequently offers the ideological context of Christian moral theology, humanist and Protestant thought and neo-Stoic benevolence and political arithmetic, explores two competing approaches to social welfare - voluntary (societas) and mandatory (civitas) - and concludes with an analysis of the first early histories of social welfare in England from the late eighteenth century.
Fumerton, Patricia. Unsettled. The Culture of Mobility and the Working Poor in Early Modern England. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago [etc.] 2006. xxv, 237 pp. £50.00; $31.50. (Paper: $20.00; £13.00.)
Based on an exploration of contemporary pamphlets and literature, Professor Fumerton aims to reconstruct in this study the everyday lives of the growing numbers of homeless and itinerants among the English working class in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. In the second half of the book, she focuses on seamen as prototypical for the class of mobile wage labourers and turns to a case study of one seaman, Edward Barlow (b. 1642), who authored a unique journal that provides a rare opportunity, according to the author, for learning how the increasingly mobile underclass in eighteenth-century England saw itself.
Hilton, Boyd. A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783-1846. [New Oxford History of England.] Clarendon, Oxford 2006. xxv, 757 pp. Ill. £30.00.
A volume in the New Oxford History of England, this study aims to offer a new, reinterpretative account of the transformative period in English history from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. A period in which the country survived an era of war against Napoleonic France, combined with unprecedented population growth and heightened social unrest, to emerge as the world's dominant power and strongest economy. Combining political, social, economic and cultural history and examining the cultural phenomena of Romanticism and religious revival, Professor Hilton argues that this remarkable transformation over the course of six decades laid the foundation for Victorian England.
Phillips, Nicola. Women in Business, 1700-1850. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge [etc.] 2006. xi, 299 pp. Ill. £50.00; $85.00.
This study examines how changing perceptions of gender influenced the role of women in business in Britain during the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries. Examining women's business practices, partnerships and credit networks and the impact of domestic ideologies, Dr Phillips aims to show that women participated more extensively in entrepreneurial activity, and that the hindrances to effective participation by women in business activity were much less problematic in practice than has hitherto been assumed. See also Danielle van den Heuvel's review in this volume, pp. 313-315.
Samuel, Raphael. The Lost World of British Communism. Verso, London [etc.] 2006. xii, 244 pp. £19.99.
The British Marxist historian Raphael Samuel (1934-1996), co-founder of Past and Present and founder of the History Workshop, published three essays in 1985-1987 in New Left Review, in which he combined a personal account of his own experiences growing up in a British Communist Party (CPGB) family with a portrait of the CPGB party culture and the everyday life of its members and described how the close-knit CPGB was destroyed from the late 1950s, beginning with the events of 1956, the year of the Hungarian Uprising. These essays are brought together in this volume, with a preface by Alison Light, Samuel's widow.
Shepherd, John and Keith Laybourn. Britain's First Labour Government. Palgrave, Basingstoke [etc.] 2006. xii, 255 pp. Ill. £50.00.
The Ramsay MacDonald minority government, lasting from January to November 1924, was the first Labour government in the United Kingdom. This study aims to give a comprehensive account of the government's complex beginnings, its domestic, foreign and imperial policy and the mysterious circumstances of its downfall. The authors argue that MacDonald's premiership was a far more important episode, in terms of attention to social issues and legitimizing Labour as a party of power, than is commonly acknowledged by historians.
A Social History of England, 1200-1500. Ed. by Rosemary Horrox and W. Mark Ormrod. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2006. xi, 514 pp. £50.00; $90.00. (Paper: £22.99; $39.99.)
The nineteen essays in this textbook aim to give a comprehensive introductory overview of the social history of late medieval England, encompassing the period 1200-1500. After an introductory essay surveying the historiographic and demographic debates (by S.H. Rigby), contributors explore themes such as social hierarchy, town and countryside, religious beliefs, experiences with war, work, law and order, youth and old age, ritual, travel and transport and the development of reading and writing.
Italy
Antonelli, Laura. Voci dalla storia. Le donne della resistenza in Toscana tra storie di vita e percorsi di emancipazione. Pentalinea, Prato 2006. 734 pp. € 30.00.
This is an oral history of the resistance by women in Tuscany from 8 September 1943, the date that the Germans occupied Italy. The book contains texts from 26 interviews with women born in Tuscany between 1906 and 1932, most in the years 1921-1923. The majority has a proletarian or artisan background. Most worked as couriers, only one was a partisan. The interviews follow a pattern, although not one that has been rigidly observed. They are arranged by province. The interviews are preceded by a study about the life course of women in the resistance.
Assistenza, previdenza e mutualità. Nel Mezzogiorno moderno e contemporaneo. Atti del Convegno di studi in onore di Domenico Demarco, Benevento, 1-2 ottobre 2004. A cura di Ennio De Simone [e] Vittoria Ferrandino. FrancoAngeli, Milano 2006. 515 pp. (in 2 vols). € 50.00.
These papers were presented at the scholarly gathering held in Benevento in 2004 in honour of the Economic History Professor Domenico Demarco. The two volumes comprise 24 contributions altogether. The first includes analyses of institutions providing social services in the South of Italy, both those of the Church and those of artisans from the pre-industrial period to the present. Two contributions are about industrial partnerships. The second volume focuses on social assistance and mutual aid societies in the South of united Italy. The transition from charity via mutualism to state intervention recurs throughout the contributions.
Balsamini, Luigi. Una biblioteca tra storia e memoria. La "Franco Serantini" (1979-2005). [Strumenti per la ricerca storica, 4.] BFS Edizioni, Pisa 2006. 208 pp. Ill. € 15.00.
This is a study of the history and activities of the Biblioteca "Franco Serantini", which derived from the library of the Pisa anarchists, encompassing 1,500 titles on politics, philosophy, economics, history and culture from the period 1840-1970. The library is named after a young anarchist killed as a result of police violence in 1972. The study reviews the organizational structure, thriving collection development and relations with researchers and the authorities. The appendices comprise lists of library collections, archive collections of persons and organizations and other information about the activities of the BFS (see also http://www.bfs.it/).
D'Amuri, Maria. Le case per il popolo a Torino. Dibattiti e realizzazioni, 1849-1915. [Pubblicazioni del Comitato di Torino dell'Instituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italiano. Nuova serie, 28.] Carocci editore, Torino 2006. 287 pp. € 30.00.
This study is about social housing in Turin. The author analyses the debates and initiatives about this subject, focusing on how the problem was perceived, the solutions implemented and their impact on urban development. The subjects addressed include hygiene issues, the political debate about public housing, with particular consideration for the position of the socialist party, the corresponding legislation, organization of public housing development cooperatives, and the results of the 1901 census with respect to public housing.
Dizionario biografico del movimento sindacale nelle Marche (1900-1970). A cura di Roberto Giulianelli [e] Massimo Papini. Presentazione di Gianni Venturi. Ediesse [etc.], Roma 2006. 485 pp. € 30.00
This biographical dictionary contains 220 entries on syndicalists, including eight women, who were active in the Marche region in the period from the establishment of the first Camera del Lavoro in the Ancona area around 1900 until the end of the Hot Autumn of 1970. While all currents from the labour movement are represented, the members of the communist CGIL account for the majority. Next come the Catholics. The other groups are republicans, socialists, anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists. Occupational groups include farmers, artisans and industrial workers. Each entry lists the sources and a bibliography. In some cases only oral sources are available for the post-war period.
Galzerano, Giuseppe. Michele Schirru. Vita, viaggi, arresto, carcere, processo e morte dell'anarchico italo-americano fucilato per l'"intenzione" di uccidere Mussolini. [Atti e Memorie del Popolo.] Galzerano Editore, Casalvelino Scalo 2006. Ill. 1086 pp. € 35.00.
This is a lengthy study about the circumstances under which Michele Schirru (1899-1931) was arrested, the course of his trial and the reactions to his execution. Schirru was an Italian-American anarchist who was arrested in Italy for plotting an attack on Mussolini. The author has used a lot of unknown archive material, including confiscated letters that Schirru wrote from prison. He also reproduces articles from the Italian fascist press, as well as ones that appeared abroad (Europe, America, Australia, Tunisia), primarily in the anarchist press in Italian, about Schirru.
Martellini, Amoreno. Fiori nei cannoni nonviolenza e antimilitarismo nell'Italia del Novecento. [Saggi, Storia e scienze sociali.] Donzelli Editore, Roma 2006. xi, 226 pp. € 24.50.
This study offers a history of Italian pacifism in the twentieth century. Two chapters follow the introduction about pre-war pacifism, which was influenced in part by Tolstoy's ideas. The first chapter is about the classical anti-war movement in the period 1946-1960, the second is about the period 1961-1972, when pacifism and manifestations thereof, such as conscientious objectors and alternative service, evolved along with societal developments, as expressed through the rise of the youth movement. The author has used the vast archive of Edmondo Marcucci, who had an extensive network of national and international contacts.
Sandro Pertini. Dal confino alla Resistenza. Lettere: 1935-1945. A cura di Stefano Caretti. [Strumenti e Fonti, 51.] Lacaita, Manduria [etc.] 2007. 227 pp. € 20.00.
This is the third volume of the correspondence annotated by Professor Stefano Caretti of Sandro Pertini (1896-1990), lawyer, socialist and President of the Italian Republic from 1978 until 1985. The correspondence starts in 1935 with his exile on Ponza and subsequently other places where he was confined until August 1943 and continues until 1945. At the beginning of this volume are many letters to his mother, describing interesting details about his interactions with friends. There are also letters to his lawyers and correspondence with socialists, such as Basso, Saragat and Nenni. Each of the 95 letters is referenced.
Santomassimo, Gianpasquale. La terza via fascista. Il mito del corporativismo. Carocci, Roma 2006. 317 pp. € 28.00.
Fascism was regarded by contemporaries as the third course between liberalism and socialism because of the corporatist idea, which was one of the most important elements. As the corporatist ideology became more widespread abroad, its application in practice diminished in Italy during the 1930s. This study follows the debate on the subject in Italy in cultural terms but pays less attention to the actual development of corporatism in the economy and society. The study is detailed up to 1934 and offers a more general review for the period thereafter.
Vittoria, Albertina. Storia del PCI 1921-1991. Carocci editore, Roma 2007. 190 pp. € 13.50.
This is a non-partisan synthesis of the history of the Italian Communist Party (Pci), written by a history professor at the University of Sassari. Professor Vittoria traces the history of the PCI through the different stages: from its establishment in 1921, via Gramsci and clandestinity, resistance and liberation, to the post-war period including the 1956 crisis, the attitude toward the Soviet Union, the Czech crisis, the "historic Compromise" with the Christian Democrats, up to the establishment of the Partito democratico della Sinistra. The book includes a bibliographie raisonnée for each chapter, as well as various bibliographical charts of document collections.
Poland
Kochanowicz, Jacek. Backwardness and Modernization. Poland and Eastern Europe in the 16th-20th Centuries. [Variorum Collected Studies Series. Studies in East-Central Europe.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2006. xi, 322 pp. £62.50.
This volume, consisting of fourteen essays, published earlier (between 1983 and 2002) in various places, deals with the structural specificity of economic backwardness and its continuity and persistence in Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe. The first, historical part reviews debates on peasantry and on the rise of capitalism and the uneven spread of modernization. The second, more contemporary part deals with social change issues after the fall of state socialism.
Portugal
Barradas, Ana. Dicionário de mulheres rebeldes. Ela por Ela, Lisboa 2006. 259 pp. Ill. € 26.50.
The 704 articles (with 150 portraits) that constitute this dictionary are arranged by given name, unpredictable in length and follow the author's preferences rather than any verifiable criterion. No entry appears for Germaine de Staël, although there is one for Germaine Greer. The result is a work that is more suitable for reading than as a reference but is nevertheless interesting, if only because of the relatively high number of - often little known - women from the Iberian peninsula in a selection that is otherwise drawn from many countries and centuries.
Fonseca, Inês. Aivados Posse da Terra, Resistência e Memória no Alentejo. Edições Dinossauro, Lisboa 2006. 221 pp. € 15.00.
Based on an anthropological dissertation (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1997), this book relates how the inhabitants of Aivados, a small village in the district of Beja, decided that the Carnation Revolution of 1974 gave them the opportunity to retake the commons that had been taken from them in the previous decades. The author, who interviewed many of the participants and had access to the documentation collected by the Associação do Povo de Aivados, traces their struggle and its aftermath and comments on aspects of equality, resistance and memory from the perspective of modern theories of rural protest.
Sá, Pinto de. Conquistadores de Almas. Memórias de uma militância de prisões políticas (1970-1976). Guerra & Paz, Lisboa 2006. 325 pp. Ill. € 17.00.
These remarkable memoirs consist of two sections. In the first, the author, who was born in Angola in 1952 and moved to Portugal only in 1967, tells of his involvement in the student movement and the Maoist groups that proliferated in Lisbon in the early 1970s. In the second part, he is arrested by the regime's secret police, the PIDE - the "conquerors of souls" of the title - and tortured until he reports on his comrades. Released two months before 25 April 1974, he is rearrested by the new authorities and held without charge until March 1976.
Vilaça, Alberto. A comuna de Paris E A 1.a Internacional. Revisitades em Portugal. Campo das Letras, Porto 2005. 193 pp. Ill. € 14.70.
This is a collection of articles, some published previously, from the early 1990s on, on the Paris Commune and its repercussions and reverberations in Portugal. Though writing for a broad public, the author, a long-time Communist militant, often goes into specifics, such as the echoes of the Commune in his native Coimbra or lesser-known aspects of the biography of José (Giuseppe) Fontana. He adds a bibliography on Commune-related titles in Portuguese.
Russia - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Feest, David. Zwangskollektivierung im Baltikum. Die Sowjetisierung des estnischen Dorfes 1944-1953. [Beiträge zur Geschichte Osteuropas, Band 40.] Böhlau, Köln 2007. 535 pp. € 59.90; S.fr. 102.
This study addresses the Sovietization and collectivization of Estonian agriculture after World War II and the consequences of land reform for the economy and ownership relations. Forced collectivization in Estonia followed the pattern of the old Soviet republics (mass terror, deportations, political purges), although it deviated in specific ways highlighted in this study. The focus is not on the victims but on the authors and participants, primarily on local chapters of the Estonian Communist Party.
Lenin Reloaded. Toward a Politics of Truth. Ed. by Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Slavoj Žižek. [sic, Vol. 7.] Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2007. viii, 337 pp. £53.00. (Paper £13.99.)
The aim of this volume's editors is to revive consideration for the significance of Lenin as one who made Marx's thought explicitly political and applied it in practice. They contend that a focus on Lenin is urgently needed to cope with present-day problems, including global capitalism, the predominance of the liberal-democratic political system and the need for changes in production modes. Twelve of the seventeen essays in this book were based on papers presented at the conference Toward a politics of truth: The retrieval of Lenin, organized in Essen, Germany, in February 2001.
Modernisation in Russia since 1900. Ed. by Markku Kangaspuro and Jeremy Smith. [Studia Fennica. Historica, Vol. 12.] Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki 2006. 331 pp. € 26.60.
This volume consists of 16 essays, devoted to economic, technical, social, cultural and political modernization in Russia, perceived as either catching up with existing, often western, models or original innovation. It explores this broad theme both through general reviews of particular topics and specific case studies of modernization projects. The book results from the research project The conditions for constructing New Russia. Interactions of tradition and Europeanness in the development of 20th century Russia and its two concluding conferences in Helsinki (2002) and Birmingham (2003).
Randolph, John. The House in the Garden. The Bakunin Family and the Romance of Russian Idealism. Cornell University Press, Ithaca [etc.] 2007. xiii, 287 pp. $45.00.
This book is a case study of the role played by home life in the making of Imperial Russian social thought. It tells the story of Priamukhino, the provincial manor house where the Bakunin family settled in the late eighteenth century. Drawing on the family's vast archive, it examines how the Bakunin home supported the ambitions and reputations of the young Vissarion Belinskij, Nikolaj Stankevich and Mikhail Bakunin and participated in the creation of a new and radical tradition in Russian social thought: the romance of Russian Idealism.
Russland 1905. Perspektiven auf die erste Russische Revolution. Hrsg. Martin Aust [und] Ludwig Steindorff. [Kieler Werkstücke. Reihe F: Beiträge zur osteuropäischen Geschichte, Band 9.] Peter Lang, Frankfurt [etc.] 2007. 180 pp. € 33.60.
The ten contributions in this volume describe the 1905 revolution in Russia and its consequences from different perspectives. Two essays are dedicated to the relation of the periphery of the empire (i.e. Poland and Turkestan) to the center (St. Petersburg and Moscow), and two others discuss responses to 1905 in Russian and Polish literature. Aspects dealt with include the Russian railways, the military and the role of Russian liberalism: zemstvo members, intelligentsia and the Cadet Party. The book appears as Part 9 in the series Kieler Werkstücke. Reihe F: Beiträge zur osteuropäischen Geschichte.
Spain
Aisa, Ferran. Contrarevolució. Els Fets de Maig de 1937. Edicions de 1984, Barcelona 2007. 334 pp. € 18.00. In May 1937 longstanding tensions between centralizing and libertarian groups in the Republican camp came to a head in the streets of Barcelona, resulting in several victories for the centralizers. The author uses the contemporary press as well as secondary sources to restate the case of the defeated, while placing the events in the context of the history of the Second Republic and the Civil War. He stresses the counter-revolutionary role of the Russian and Spanish Communists and the police services they controlled.
Avilés, Juan. Francisco Ferrer y Guardia. Pedagogo, anarquista y mártir. Marcial Pons Historia, Madrid 2006. 299 pp. € 22.00.
This is the first scholarly biography of Francisco Ferrer, who was executed in Barcelona in 1909 at age 50 after having been accused of instigating the Semana Trágica. Basing himself on documentation from archives and libraries in various countries, the author sheds new light not just on Ferrer's well-known activities as an anarchist educator but also on his role among Republican conspirators and Freemasons. He seeks to distinguish myth from reality while describing both, most notably in his reconstruction of Ferrer's possible involvement in the attempts to assassinate Alfonso XIII in Paris and Madrid.
Balaguer, Manuel Vicent. Conflicto y revolución en las comarcas de Castelló, 1931-1938. [Colleccío "Humanitats", Núm. 21.] Universitat Jaume I, Castellón de la Plana 2006. 327 pp. € 18.00; $24.12.
The author studies labour conflicts, both industrial and rural, in Castelló from the beginning of the Second Republic until the fall of most of the province to Franco's troops in 1938. Relying extensively on primary sources, he analyses the strikes during this period, as well as the different types of collectives that arose after the outbreak of the Civil War. He delves in detail into the history of collectivization in Almassora and Borriana. An interesting separate chapter is dedicated to the theory and practice of the type of salaries that were (or were proposed to be) used in the collectives. The book is based on a dissertation (Universitat de València).
Beevor, Antony. THE Battle for Spain. The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London 2006. xxxii, 526 pp. Ill. £25.00.
Based on his book published in 1982 as The Spanish Civil War, Mr Beevor has expanded this history of the Spanish civil war, using a wealth of new material that has come available in the meantime in Spain and from Soviet and German archives. The book offers a chronological narrative of the course of the war, emphasizing the military and international relations aspects of the war and the internal divisions and struggles among both adversaries.
Ceamanos Llorens, Roberto. Los años silenciados. La II República en la Comarca de Tarazona y el Moncayo (1931-1936). Comarca de Tarazona y el Moncayo, Tarazona 2006. 303 pp. Ill.
The author, who published not only on the history of Aragón but also on French historiography, has used local and regional archival records, the contemporary press and interviews with surviving inhabitants to write the history of this region on the northwestern border of the province of Zaragoza during the Second Republic. In a handsomely produced book, he carefully reconstructs its economic situation, political developments and conditions of social life, especially with a view to education and religion, while depicting local events in a national context.
Celada, Antonio R, Manuel González de la Aleja, AND Daniel Pastor García. Los brigadistas de habla inglesa y la Guerra Civil Española. [Colección Almar-Anglística, no. 9.] Editorial Ambos Mundos, Salamanca 2006. 501 pp. Ill. € 18.00; $28.15.
This is what would seem to be the definitive reference work on the English-speaking members of the International Brigades. In addition to a list of participants that exceeds 160 pages, the book contains a chronology, information on the battalions concerned and on their literary impact and extensive lists of relevant monuments, films, books and archival records.
Cendra i Bertran, Ignasi. El Consell d'Economia de Catalunya (1936-1939). Revolució i contrarevolució en una economia collectivitzada. Pròleg de Pelai Pagès. Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, Barcelona 2006. 287 pp. € 14.00; $18.48.
The Council on the Economy, which like the Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias was formed by the organizations that defeated the military coup in Catalonia in July 1936, was responsible for crucial legislation on socialization or nationalization - the decision made for continuous political struggle between libertarians and statists - of the Catalan economy during the Civil War. This dissertation (Universitat de Barcelona) is a full-fledged study of the functioning of the Council based on its minutes (although there are serious gaps in the record) and the personal papers of Albert Pérez Baró, who was involved in the Council and wrote a well-known book on the collectivizations.
Cruz, Rafael. En el nombre del pueblo. República, rebelión y guerra en la España de 1936. Siglo XXI de España Editores S.A., Madrid 2006. xi, 403 pp. Ill. € 19.00.
Discarding the ideological histories of the Civil War as political myths devised to create identities and legitimize actions, the author applies the analytical instruments of modern social movement theory to the brief existence of the Second Republic. Scrutinizing socio-political developments, he considers possible alternative courses. The Republic of 1931 proclaimed popular sovereignty, but never advanced beyond the status of a project. A half-defeated military coup degenerated into three years of civil war, in which both sides claimed to represent the real Spanish people and sought to exclude those considered alien.
Fernández Asperilla, Ana. Mineros, sirvientas y militantes. Medio siglo de emigración española en Bélgica. Fundación 1o de Mayo [etc.], Madrid 2006. 158 pp. Ill. € 20.00.
In November 1956, Belgium became the first European country to sign an agreement with Spain regarding labour migration, primarily with a view toward helping the Belgian coal mining industry. At its height around 1970, the Spanish population in Belgium equalled close to 70,000. Basing herself on archives and other sources, the author outlines the history of this migration, its social, cultural and political activities and the role of women. Some 80 contemporary photographs illustrate the story.
Las figuras del desorden. Heterodoxos, proscritos y marginados. Actas del V Congreso de Historia Social de Espana. Ciudad Real, 10 y 11 de noviembre de 2005. Coord. Santiago Castillo y Pedro Oliver. Siglo XXI de España, Madrid 2006. xii, (Incl. CD-Rom.) 372 pp. € 20.00.
This rich volume contains the major papers presented at the V Congreso de Historia Social de España (Ciudad Real, 2005) and introduced by José Casanova; the other 35 contributions are reproduced on an appended CD-ROM. Rosa Sid, Bernard Vincent, Javier Herrero and Flocel Sabaté reflect on the tensions between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Blanca Garí, Aurelia Martín Casares, Pere Gabriel and Tomás Montecón deal with exile and proscription. Iñaki Bazán, Fernando Álvarez-Uría, Richard Cleminson and Pedro Oliver discuss marginalization and exclusion. Topics range from the mystery cults of Antiquity to Opus Dei and from medieval Beguins to male prostitutes in Restoration Spain.
Freán Hernández, Oscar. El movimiento libertario en Galicia 1910-1936. Edicios Do Castro, Sada 2006. 244 pp. € 12.00.
Based on a doctoral dissertation (Universidade de Vigo, 2003), this book consists essentially of three parts. In the first, the author tells the progressively less localized history of the various anarchist and anarchosyndicalist organizations in Galicia from the foundation of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo until the outbreak of the Civil War. In the second, he traces their radicalization over time. In the third, he shows how they adapted to local circumstances, which enabled them to grow outside the cities and in specific economic sectors, such as the fishing trade.
Fuentes, Yvonne. Martires y anticristos. Análisis bibliográfico sobre la Revolución francesa en España. [La cuestión palpintante. Los siglos XVIII en España, Vol. 5.] Iberoamericana [etc.], Madrid [etc.] 2006. 204 pp. € 36.00.
In the first of the three parts of this book, the author analyses the results of bibliographical research into Spanish publications on the French Revolution in the revolutionary era (1789-1799), during the Peninsular War (1808-1814) and in the years of Fernandine absolutism (1823-1833). The second and third parts contain a detailed list of works and a list of royal proclamations, respectively, for the first period. The author concludes that anti-French and related anti-Enlightenment sentiment did not really take off before the second period and was consolidated in the third.
Guerra Civil en Aragón. 70 años después. Eds: Ángela Cenarro Lagunas [y] Víctor Pardo Lancina. Gobierno de Aragon [etc.], Zaragoza 2006. 322 pp. Ill. € 25.00.
The richly illustrated catalogue of an exhibition held in 2006, this book also features a series of articles by prominent historians such as Julián Casanova (on the Second Republic), Paul Preston (on Franco's aims), Enrique Moradiellos (on the international context), Mary Nash (on the Republic's women) and José-Carlos Mainer (on culture). In addition, there are nine interesting local studies on violence and repression in both camps, military campaigns and the role of women and that of writers and journalists from abroad.
Gutiérrez-Álvarez, Pepe. Retratos poumistas. [España en armas.] Espuela de Plata, Sevilla 2006. 412 pp. € 20.00.
In chapters of varying lengths the author portrays some 40 revolutionaries who were in one way or another connected to the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, founded in 1935 to organize anti-Stalinist communists. They range from leaders like Andreu Nin and Joaquín Maurín to less-known militants and some foreigners, including Willy Brandt. All sketches have a personal touch, as the author knew many of those presented. A bibliography is appended.
Joan Scott y las políticas de la historia. Cristina Borderías (ed.). [Historia y Feminismo.] Icaria editorial, Barcelona 2006. 294 pp. € 19.00.
These are the contributions to the first seminar on Historia y Feminismo, organized by the Asociación Española de Investigación de Historia de las Mujeres in Madrid in 2005. Joan Scott opens the book with "Le Mouvement pour la parité: a challenge to French universalism" (translated here) and takes part in the debates following the presentations. Four articles (by Rosa Cid, Ángela Muñoz, María Victoria López-Cordón and Mónica Burguera) discuss the American historian's influence on women's history in Spain, three others (by Nerea Aresti, Miguel Ángel Cabrera and Elena Hernández Sandoica) deal with her role in the innovation of historical studies more generally.
Lucea Ayala, Victor. Rebeldes y amotinados. Protesta popular y resistencia campesina en Zaragoza (1890-1905). Institución "Fernando el Católico" [etc.], Zaragoza 2005. 414 pp. Ill. € 18.00.
This study of rural protest in the province of Zaragoza in the years before and after the Desastre of 1898 seeks to reverse the image of Aragonese peasants as lethargic half-wits nostalgic for pre-modern times. Instead, the author has used archival records and the press to trace collective action against calamities, such as consumer taxes or the military service system known as the quintas, as well as individual acts of resistance where local balances of power were excessively to the disadvantage of the villagers. The result is an impressive account of the peasants' ingenuity in fighting unfavourable terms that state and church tried to impose.
MacKay, Ruth. "Lazy, Improvident People". Myth and Reality in the Writing of Spanish History. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, [etc.] 2006. xii, 298 pp. $65.00; £36.95. (Paper: $24.95; £14.50.)
A common explanation in historiography and other writings since the early modern era for why Spain, allegedly, did not develop like the rest of Europe has been the idea of a peculiar Spanish disdain for manual labour. Seeking the origins of this deeply ingrained historical prejudice and cultural stereotype, Dr MacKay finds them in the ilustrados, Enlightenment intellectuals and reformers aiming to advance their own project of rationalization and modernization through disparagement of artisinal labour. She argues that archival records show that this image in no way reflected the actual lives and work of early modern Spanish artisans.
Masjuan, Eduard. Medis obrers i innovació cultural a Sabadell (1900-1939). L'altra aventura de la ciutat industrial. [Ciència i tècnica, 33.] Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra 2006. 266 pp. € 22.00; £29.04.
The author traces the rise and fall of popular cultural alternatives to traditional Catholicism in the fast-growing textile centre of Sabadell, focusing on the role of anarchism, social Christianity and theosophy. He discusses a broad range of activities aimed at strengthening secular culture, from "sociological theatre" and "scientific excursionism" through spiritism and naturalism to esperantism and the escola laica. Catholicism reacted strongly, and the ensuing struggle had vicissitudes for all parties, until Franco's victory in the Civil War silenced virtually all secular voices in what the author describes as a "cultural genocide".
Morente, Francisco. Dionisio Ridruejo. Del fascismo al antifranquismo. [Nuestro ayer.] Editorial Sintesis, Madrid 2006. 559 pp. € 25.50.
The author of this biography has written extensively on the relationship between fascism and youth (and edited, with Ferran Gallego, Fascismo en España annotated in IRSH, 52 (2007), p 198). The poet Dionisio Ridruejo (1912-1975) was Franco's propaganda chief during the Civil War and fought the Soviets in the División Azul but broke with the regime in 1942, disillusioned by its abandonment of fascist ideals. Later he was imprisoned and exiled various times, as he gradually became a democratic opponent. His biographer, who used Ridruejo's personal papers now in Salamanca, concentrates on the politician without neglecting the poet.
Olaya Morales, Francisco. Historia del Movimiento Obrero español (1900-1936). Confederación Sindical Solidaridad Obrera, Madrid 2006. 1023 pp. € 20.00.
This is the second volume of the author's monumental history of the Spanish labour movement, following upon his Historia del movimiento obrero español (siglo XIX) published in 1994. It takes the reader from the beginning of the twentieth century to the military coup of July 1936. The author sides with the libertarians in the many conflicts of those decades and relishes polemics with politicians and historians alike, both contemporary and modern-day. He tells his story chronologically and in detail, citing amply from memoirs and the press.
Ortiz Villalba, Juan. Del golpe militar a la Guerra Civil Sevilla 1936. RD Editores, Madrid 2006. 485 pp. € 17.97
In this essentially unchanged third edition of a work originally published in 1997, the author retraces in detail the preparation and execution of the military coup of July 1936 in Sevilla, which was among the largest cities to fall to the rebels in the early days of the Civil War. He tells the story of the desperate resistance efforts, accompanied by an outburst of anticlericalism, and the bloody repression that followed General Queipo de Llano's victory. The book contains many interesting photographs.
Reverte, Jorge M. La caída de Cataluña. Crítica, Barcelona 2006. 555 pp. € 29.00.
This history of the fall of Catalonia at the end of the Civil War appears as a day-to-day chronicle from 22 September 1938, the eve of the start of Franco's offensive, through 13 February 1939, when the last remnants of the Republican army crossed into France. Each day's narrative is constructed from interviews, memoirs and the like, relating events at headquarters and government offices, as well as among individual soldiers and citizens. Each account concludes with extracts from the official war bulletins of the two enemies.
La rosa illustrada. Trobada sobre cultura anarquista i lliure pensament. Coords. Associació Cultural Alzina [i] Clemente Peñalva. Universidad d'Alacant, Alicante 2006. 219 pp. Ill. € 17.00.
This book arises from a series of talks held at the University of Alicante in the spring of 2004. Following two historical studies on Spanish anarchosyndicalism from 1910 until the present, two articles on "libertarian practice" discuss anarchist medical practitioners during the Second Republic and the Civil War and libertarian naturalism, respectively. Two articles address the relation of anarchism to literature and art. The final three are about present-day manifestations of anarchism and deal with alternative means of communication, squatting in Barcelona and antimilitarism. Interesting illustrations are appended.
Riesco Roche, Sergio. La reforma agraria y los orígenes de la Guerra Civil. Cuestión yuntera y radicalización patronal en la provincia de Cáceres (1931-1940). Prólogo de Julio Arostegui. [Collección Historia Biblioteca Nueva.] Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid 2006. 419 pp. € 35.00. $46.20.
Based on a dissertation (Universidad Complutense, 2005), this study of attempts at land reform in the province of Cáceres under the Second Republic reveals how the resistance organized by the largely absentee landowners was a major factor in the outcome of the 1936 military coup in Estremadura. The coming of the Republic gave hope to huge numbers of yunteros (landless labourers), who radicalized when the reforms were slow in coming; yet when they came, the owners radicalized in turn. This process is elaborated in detail thanks to the author's use of the records from the former Instituto de Reforma Agraria.
Ruzafa Ortega, Rafael. Artesanos (1854) y mineros (1890). Dos fases de la protesta obrera en el País Vasco. Asociacion de Historia Social, Madrid [etc.] 2006. 142 pp. € 6.00.
This book reproduces some little-known documents related to two events in Basque labour history: a demonstration against the rise of bread prices in November 1854 and the miners' strike of May 1890. These texts serve to qualify the conventional historiography. The author argues that the motín of 1854 attests to an underrated democratic activism among the artisans of Bilbao, whereas a pamphlet on the 1890 strike reflects a republican position between the nationalist employers and the miners, who were by then ardent socialists.
Semblanza de Indalecio Prieto. Coord. Andrés Saborit. Estudio introd. Enrique Moral Sandoval. Fundacion Indalecio Prieto, Madrid 2007. 302 pp. € 10.40.
After Indalecio Prieto died in Mexico in 1962, Andrés Saborit Colomer (1889-1980), a militant and deputy of the Partido Socialista Obrera Español whose life is outlined in an introduction by Enrique Moral Sandoval, wrote a series of historical articles on the socialist leader. These are collected here, together with an earlier (1953) and a later (1965) piece. The result is not an academic study but a portrait sketched from recollections supported by documents, in which Prieto is at the heart of a story that covers many aspects of the history of Spanish socialism.
Teresa Claramunt. La "virgen roja" barcelonesa. Biografía y escritos. Maria Amalia Pradas Baena. Prólogo de Teresa Albelló. Virus editorial, Barcelona 2006. 333 pp. Ill. € 18.00.
Teresa Claramunt Creus (1862-1931), a textile worker from Sabadell and prominent anarchist militant, experienced life in prison and exile. The editor (whose L'anarquisme i les lluites socials a Barcelona 1918-1923 was annotated in IRSH, 50 (2005), pp. 156f.) has preceded her selection of texts with a 100-page introduction and interesting illustrations. The anthology contains anarchist and feminist articles, as well as comments on social and political developments. They are often from El Productor and El Rebelde, where Claramunt served on the editorial boards, although most major contemporary anarchist serials are represented as well.
Trabajadora. Tres décadas de acción sindical por la igualdad de género (1977-2007). Las políticas de género en Comisiones Obreras a través de la revista Trabajadora. Coord. Carmen Bravo Sueskun, Jorge Aragón Medina, Susana Brunel Aranda [e.a.]. Fundación 1 o de Mayo [etc.], Madrid 2007. 397 pp. € 10.00.
Appearing regularly since 1984, Trabajadora is a review published by Comisiones Obreras on questions related to women and work. The authors use its history as a foundation for analysing the role of gender issues in trade union policy and for examining how this policy has evolved over time. A separate chapter by Carmen Briz deals with the iconography of the review and reproduces many of its covers.
Vicente Villanueva, Laura. Teresa Claramunt (1862-1931). Pionera del feminismo obrerista anarquista. [Colección Biografías y Memorias, 4.] Fundación de Estudios Libertarios Anselmo Lorenzo, Madrid 2006. 306 pp. € 15.00.
In this biography of the anarchist militant the author depicts her subject in the context of Spanish history in general and Spanish anarchism in particular. In addition to compensating in part for the lack of direct data on Teresa Claramunt, who always was very reserved about her private life, this approach sheds light on the uneasy relations between anarchists, syndicalists and republicans in Catalonia. After the abortive general strike of 1902, Claramunt was gradually marginalized for various reasons. The author covers in detail her activities as an anti-clerical freethinker and a feminist avant-la-lettre.