New Approaches to Global Labor History

Abstract

Employing innovative methods and new approaches to global labor history, the six essays in this collection explore important aspects of labor's role in global capitalism since the early modern period. Essays by Jan Lucassen and Jeffrey D. Glasco study the commercial agents, soldiers, and sailors that constituted the institutional framework for the global expansion of Western capitalism. Essays by Julie Greene and by Donna Gabaccia, Franca Iacovetta, and Fraser Ottanelli concentrate on workers who entered the international labor markets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They show how employers attempted to use migrants to promote stratification within the working classes and how workers responded to these efforts by trying to fashion their own identities. Finally, essays by Josie Fowler and Victor Silverman investigate the international organizations created by labor movements, responding to global capitalism, and illustrate how these organizations have shaped the development of the labor movement.