Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

Alfagali, Crislayne, Blacksmiths of Ilamba: A Social History of Labor at the Nova Oeiras Iron Foundry (Angola, 18th Century). (Work in Global and Historical Perspective 15) 430 S. 2023 (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, GW) <687-768>
ISBN 978-3-11-078651-4 hard ¥14,111.- (税込) EUR 59.95 *

This study analyzes the establishment of an iron foundry in the interior 18th-century of Angola. It was a fruit of the Portuguese Enlightenment, which encouraged investment in manufacturing, particularly of iron, a metal indispensable for military and technological purposes. However, the plans faced the resistance of African blacksmiths and founders who refused to learn foreign techniques and work processes. By emphasizing Central African agency, the book highlights the successful strategies of historical actors who scholars have largely ignored. Based upon a wide variety of sources from Brazilian, Portuguese, and Angolan archives, the book reconstructs how Africans were taken to work at the foundry and the important role they played in developing the form of production employed there. By emphasizing continuities with African technology and the quality of the iron produced, it counters interpretations of the project as an example of the failure of the Portuguese Enlightenment. The analysis demonstrates the circulation of knowledge about iron production, thus revitalizing debates that have posited knowledge transmission as unidirectional. It also highlights the relationship between local political leaders and the colonial government, in addition to elucidating the processes by which workers were organized.

Duijzings, Ger / Duskova, Lucie (ed.), Working All Night: Modernity, Night Shifts and the Temporal Organization of Labour Across Political and Economic Regimes. (Work in Global and Historical Perspective) 305 S. 2022:10 (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, GW) <687-180>
ISBN 978-3-11-075288-5 hard ¥22,350.- (税込) EUR 94.95 *

The night has always and almost universally represented a special ‘out of the ordinary’ temporal zone with its own meanings, possibilities, and dangers. It is only since the modern era that the night has become increasingly ‘normalised’. Although 24/7 industrial production is often seen as a consequence of capitalist expansion, other political and economic regimes adopted the ‘night shift’, normalising it as part of an alternative modernity.

Dinu, Radu Harald / Bengtsson, Staffan (eds.), Disability and Labour in the Twentieth Century: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. (Interdisciplinary Disability Studies) 280 pp. 2023:1 (Routledge, UK) <687-188>
ISBN 978-1-03-232753-2 hard ¥35,612.- (税込) GB￡ 125.00 *

This volume puts disability and labour at the centre of historical enquiry. It offers fresh perspectives on the history of disability and labour in the twentieth century and highlights the need to address the topic beyond regional boundaries. Bringing together historians and disability scholars from a variety of disciplines and regions, the chapters investigate various historical settings, ranging from work cooperatives to disability associations and informal workplaces, and analyse multiple meanings of labour in different political and economic systems through the lens of disability. The book's contributors demonstrate that the nexus between labour and disability in modern, industrialised societies resists easy generalisations, as marginalisation and integration were often two sides of the same coin: While the experience of many disabled people has been marked by exclusion from mainstream production, labour also became a vehicle for integration and emancipation. Addressing one of the research gaps of the disability history field, which has long been dominated by British and North American perspectives, the book sheds light on less-studied examples from Scandinavian countries and Eastern Europe including Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Romania. Cutting across national, cultural and class divides the volume provides a springboard for reflections on common experiences of disability and labour during the twentieth century. It will be of interest to all scholars and students working in the field of disability studies, sociology and labour history.

Lieb, Felix, Arbeit und Umwelt?: Die Umwelt- und Energiepolitik der SPD zwischen Oekologie und Oekonomie 1969-1998. (Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte 132) 456 S. 2022:8 (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, GW) <687-235>
ISBN 978-3-11-077423-8 hard ¥15,288.- (税込) EUR 64.95 *

Ueber die Krise der SPD ist allerorten zu lesen, und das nicht erst seit gestern. Bereits seit den 1970er-Jahren forderten neue Themen und Akteur:innen das sozialdemokratische Politikmodell fundamental heraus. Im Bereich der Umweltpolitik war dies besonders deutlich zu erkennen: Das neue oekologische Bewusstsein stellte das klassisch-sozialdemokratische Fortschrittsmodell und das Selbstverstaendnis der SPD als Partei der Arbeit infrage. Hinzu kam, dass das von der Umweltbewegung und den Gruenen propagierte Ideal der Basisdemokratie gegen das traditionelle Organisationsprinzip der SPD gerichtet war. Doch wie reagierte die Sozialdemokratie auf dieses doppelte Spannungsfeld zwischen ?Arbeit" und ?Umwelt" sowie ?Partei" und ?Bewegung"? Felix Lieb untersucht in dieser parteihistorischen Studie erstmals die Versuche der SPD, die eigene Identitaet zu wahren und sich gleichzeitig unter oekologischen Vorzeichen zu erneuern. Ausgezeichnet mit dem Willy-Brandt-Preis fuer Zeitgeschichte 2021 der Bundeskanzler-Willy-Brandt-Stiftung.

Delius, Anna, Working on Rights: Labor Protest and Democratic Opposition in Spain and Poland, 1960-1990. (Work in Global and Historical Perspective 17) 400 S. 2024 (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, GW) <687-1052>
ISBN 978-3-11-076885-5 hard ¥11,757.- (税込) EUR 49.95 *

This book is the first to connect global labor history and the history of human rights: By focusing on democratic labor oppositions in Spain and Poland between 1960 and 1990, it shows how workers in authoritarian regimes addressed repression and whether they developed a language of rights in the light of a globally dynamic human rights discourse. The study argues that the democratic labor oppositions in Spain and Poland were both variants of emancipatory and democracy-oriented social movements with global interconnections that emerged in the 1960s. It reveals that the demands for free and independent trade unions, which in both countries became a flashpoint in the fight for broader democratic demands, was not always discussed in rights terms, but rather presented as an inevitable necessity. At the same time, these labor movements and their intellectual allies morally delegitimized state repression against workers and thereby employed the concepts of democracy, participation, solidarity, progress and eventually, rights. Integrating the history of two European semi-peripheric societies into a broader narrative, this book is relevant for readers interested in global labor history, human rights history and the history of democratization in Europe in the late twentieth century.