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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.

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Contents 1. Introduction Karin Hofmeester and Marcel van der Linden 2. Regional perspectives 2.1. China Christine Moll Murata 2.2. South Asia Rana P. Behal 2.3. Sub-saharan Africa Bill Freund 2.4. Latin America and the Caribbean Rossana Barragan and David Mayer 2.5. Canada and the United States Bryan D. Palmer 2.6. Eastern Europe and Russia Susan Zimmerman 2.7. Western Europe Andrea Komlosy 2.8. Iran (Persia) Touraj Atabaki 2.9. The Ottoman Middle East and Modern Turkey Gavin Brockett and Özgür Balkili‡ 3. Kinds of work 3.1. Agriculture Erik Vanhaute 3.2. Mining Ad Knotter 3.3. Textile Industry Prasannan Parthasarathi 3.4. Trade, transport and services Peter Cole and Jennifer Hart 3.5. Administration Therese Garstenauer 4. Types of labour relations 4.1. Introductory remarks Karin Hofmeester 4.2. Subsistence and household labour Eileen Boris 4.3. Convict labour Christian de Vito 4.4. Indentured labour Rosemarijn Hoefte 4.5. Slavery Patrick Manning 4.6. Wage labour Jan Lucassen 5. Attitudes towards work Karin Hofmeester 6. Labour migration Marlou Schrover 7. Work incentives and forms of supervision Marcel van der Linden 8. Organization and resistance 8.1. Mutualism Marcel van der Linden 8.2. Desertion Matthias van Rossum 8.3. Strikes, lockouts and informal resistance Sjaak van der Velden 8.4. Trade unions Marcel van der Linden Acknowledgments Notes on contributors Index

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Marcel van der Linden is Professor and Director of Research at the IISH, Amsterdam Karin Hofmeester is Professor at the IISH, Amsterdam

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