Brings together broadly synthetic essays of interpretation that illuminate both the rethinking of history and paradigm that has taken place within the fields of African and Latin American history and the resonances between these fields. Three of the essay have previously been published in scholarly journals; three essays and a postscript were written expressly for this volume. Paper edition (unseen), $15.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This is the first world history of peasants. Peasants in World History analyzes the multiple transformations of peasant life through history by focusing on three primary areas: the organization of peasant societies, their integration within wider societal structures, and the changing connections between local, regional and global processes. Peasants have been a vital component in human history over the last 10,000 years, with nearly one-third of the world’s population still living a peasant lifestyle today. Their role as rural producers of ever-new surpluses instigated complex and often-opposing processes of social and spatial change throughout the world. Eric Vanhaute frames this social change in a story of evolving peasant frontiers. These frontiers provide a global comparative-historical lens to look at the social, economic and ecological changes within village-systems, agrarian empires and global capitalism. Bringing the story of the peasantry up through the modern period and looking to the future, the author offers a succinct overview with students in mind. This book is recommended reading to anyone interested in the history and future of peasantries and is a valuable addition to undergraduate and graduate courses in World History, Global Economic History, Global Studies and Rural Sociology.

Coffee from East Africa, wine from California, chocolate from the Ivory Coast - all those every day products are based on labour, often produced under appalling conditions, but always involving the combination of various work processes we are often not aware of. What is the day-to-day reality for workers in various parts of the world, and how was it in the past? How do they work today, and how did they work in the past? These and many other questions comprise the field of the global history of work – a young discipline that is introduced with this handbook. In 8 thematic chapters, this book discusses these aspects of work in a global and long term perspective, paying attention to several kinds of work. Convict labour, slave and wage labour, labour migration, and workers of the textile industry, but also workers' organisation, strikes, and motivations for work are part of this first handbook of global labour history, written by the most renowned scholars of the profession.

An indispensable reference work for anyone interested in Latin America's economic development.

The first comprehensive and authoritative history of work and labour in Africa; a key text for all working on African Studies and Labour History worldwide.

Essays that suggest new ways of understanding the role that US actors and agencies have played in Latin America." - publisher.

Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History is a collection that embraces a new social and cultural history of Latin America that is not divorced from politics and other arenas of power. True to the intellectual vision of Brazilian historian Emilia Viotti da Costa, one of Latin America’s most distinguished scholars, the contributors actively revisit the political—as both a theme of historical analysis and a stance for historical practice—to investigate the ways in which power, agency, and Latin American identity have been transformed over the past few decades. Taking careful stock of the state of historical writing on Latin America, the volume delineates current historiographical frontiers and suggests a series of new approaches that focus on several pivotal themes: the construction of historical narratives and memory; the articulation of class, race, gender, sexuality, and generation; and the historian’s involvement in the making of history. Although the book represents a view of the Latin American political that comes primarily from the North, the influence of Viotti da Costa powerfully marks the contributors’ engagement with Latin America’s past. Featuring a keynote essay by Viotti da Costa herself, the volume’s lively North-South encounter embodies incipient trends of hemispheric intellectual convergence. Contributors. Jeffrey L. Gould, Greg Grandin, Daniel James, Gilbert M. Joseph, Thomas Miller Klubock, Mary Ann Mahony, Florencia E. Mallon, Diana Paton, Steve J. Stern, Heidi Tinsman, Emilia Viotti da Costa, Barbara Weinstein

Part I: Historiography Writing Global Labour History c. 1800-1940: A Historiography of Concepts, Periods, and Geographical Scope 39 Jan Lucassen African Labor History 91 Frederick Cooper Reflections on Labor and Working-Class History in the Middle East and North Africa 117 Zachary Lockman Paradigms in the Historical Approach to Labour Studies on South Asia 147 Sabyasachi Bhattacharya The History of Labor in Japan in the Twentieth Century: Cycles of Activism and Acceptance 161 Akira Suzuki Fin-de-Si6cle Labour History in Canada and the United States: A Case for Tradition 195 Bryan D. Palmer Labour in Western Europe from c. 1800 227 Dick Geary The Laboring and Middle-Class Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean: Historical Trajectories and New Research Directions 289 John D. French What's in a Name? Labouring Antipodean History in Oceania 335 Lucy Taksa Workers, Class, and the Socialist Revolution in Modern China 373 Arif Dirlik The Drama of the Russian Working Class and New Perspectives for Labour History in Russia 397 Andrei Sokolov Part 2: Case Studies in Comparative Labour History Worldwide Agricultural Labor and Property: A Global and Comparative Perspective 455 Prasannan Parthasarathi Studying Asian Domestic Labour Within Global Processes: Comparisons and Connections 479 Ratna Saptari Brickmakers in Western Europe (17oo00-19oo) and Northern India (1800-2000): Some Comparisons 513 Jan Lucassen Global Labour History in the Twenty-First Century: Coal Mining and Its Recent Pasts 573 Ian Phimister "Nothing to Lose but a Harsh and Miserable Life Here on Earth": Dock Work as a Global Occupation, 1790-1970 591 Lex Heerma van Voss Railroad Labor and the Global Economy: Historical Patterns 623 Shelton Stromquist.

This anthology reflects the complex processes in the production of historical knowledge and memory about Sierra Leone and its diaspora since the 1960s. The processes, while emblematic of experiences in other parts of Africa, contain their own distinctive features. The fragments of these memories are etched in the psyche, bodies, and practices of Africans in Africa and other global landscapes; and, on the other hand, are embedded in the various discourses and historical narratives about the continent and its peoples. Even though Africans have reframed these discourses and narratives to reclaim and re-center their own worldviews, agency, and experiences since independence they remained, until recently, heavily sedimented with Western colonialist and racialist ideas and frameworks. This anthology engages and interrogates the differing frameworks that have informed the different practices—professional as well as popular–of retelling the Sierra Leonean past. In a sense, therefore, it is concerned with the familiar outline of the story of the making and unmaking of an African “nation” and its constituent race, ethnic, class, and cultural fragments from colonialism to the present. Yet, Sierra Leone, the oldest and quintessential British colony and most Pan-African country in the continent, provides interesting twists to this familiar outline. The contributors to this volume, who consist of different generations of very accomplished and prominent scholars of Sierra Leone in Africa, the United States, and Europe, provide their own distinctive reflections on these twists based on their research interests which cover ethnicity, class, gender, identity formation, nation building, resistance, and social conflict. Their contributions engage various paradoxes and transformative moments in Sierra Leone and West African history. They also reflect the changing modes of historical practice and perspectives over the last fifty years of independence.

Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria is concerned with the problematic nature of religion and politics in Nigerian history. The book provides a lively and straightforward treatment of the relationship among religion, politics, and history in Nigeria, and how it affects public life today. By adopting various cultural, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the text's contributors provide an excellent introduction to the volatile mix of religion and politics in Nigerian history, as well as a range of strategic choices open to religious adherents. The complexity of the relationship among religion, history, and politics is organized around four themes: indigenous values and the influence of Islam and Christianity, colonialism and religious transformation, the religious landscape of the post-colonial period, and the rise of evangelism and fundamentalism. The volume provides an insightful guide to contemporary history, contemporary religion, and contemporary politics, enabling the reader to reach informed and balanced judgments about the role in religion in Nigerian history and politics. This opens the door for serious examination and debate, and will be excellent for use by the general reader and in political science, history, and religion courses.