West Africa

Gomez, Michael A. African Dominion. A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2018. viii, 505 pp. Maps. $45.00; £37.95.

Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, including Arabic manuscripts, oral histories, and recent archaeological findings, Professor Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history more generally. Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel regions, the author traces exchanges of ideas and influences with North Africa and the Central Islamic Lands by way of merchants, scholars, and pilgrims. The proliferation of Islam in West Africa, in tandem with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire.

Krug, Jessica A. Fugitive Modernities. Kisama and the Politics of Freedom. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2018. xiii, 260 pp. Maps. $99.95. (Paper: $25.95).

During the early seventeenth century, Kisama emerged in West Central Africa (present-day Angola) as communities for those fleeing the violence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The fugitives mounted effective resistance to European colonialism despite the absence of centralized authority or a common language. In this book, Professor Krug explores the intellectual, political, and social histories of the Kisama. Drawing on archives in Angola, Brazil, Portugal, and Spain, as well as on oral histories, linguistics, and ethnographic fieldwork in various maroon communities in Brazil and villages throughout geographical Kisama Angola, the author follows the idea of Kisama to the Americas, where fugitives in e.g. Brazil used it to articulate politics in fugitive slave communities.

Bolivia

Grisaffi, Thomas. Coca Yes, Cocaine No. How Bolivia's Coca Growers Reshaped Democracy. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2019. viii, 261 pp. Ill. Maps. $99.95. (Paper: $25.95).

When Evo Morales, leader of the Movement toward Socialism (MAS), became Bolivia's president in 2006, coca growers celebrated his election and the possibility of scaling up their form of grass-roots democracy to the national level. The coca leaf plays a central role, symbolizing collective identification, on the one hand, and crime, on the other hand. Drawing on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with coca union leaders, peasant farmers, drug traffickers, and politicians, Dr Grisaffi tells the story from Morales's inauguration to the moment he failed to meet all the demands of his constituents. The realization of alternative democratic models collapsed due to international pressure in the war on drugs.

Brazil

Green, James N. Exile within Exiles. Herbert Daniel, Gay Brazilian Revolutionary. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2018. xv, 322 pp. Ill. $104.95. (Paper: $27.95).

Herbert Daniel was a significant figure in Brazilian leftist revolutionary politics and social activism from the mid-1960s until his death in 1992. As a student, he joined a revolutionary guerrilla organization but was forced to conceal his sexual identity, a situation Daniel described as internal exile. In the 1980s, he became engaged in social activism to champion gay rights, feminism, environmental justice, and fighting discrimination against those with hiv/aids. In this book, Professor Green paints a portrait of Herbert Daniel, using his personal and political experiences to investigate opposition to Brazil's military dictatorship, the left's construction of a revolutionary masculinity, and the challenge that the transition to democracy posed to radical movements.

Mattos, Marcelo, Badaró. Laborers and Enslaved Workers. Experiences in Common in the Making of Rio de Janeiro's Working Class, 1850–1920. Transl. [from Portuguese] by Meirelles, Renata and de Barros, Frederico Machado. [International Studies in Social History, Vol. 29.] Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2017. viii, 175 pp. $110.00; £78.00.

In the nineteenth century, Rio de Janeiro was the capital of the Brazilian Empire, the country's main port, its most populous city, and the site of the first factories, and had a large urban population of enslaved workers. It was also the site of an incipient working-class consciousness that expressed itself across distinct social categories. In this volume, Professor Mattos analyses working-class formation, and focuses on the co-existence of enslaved and free workers in the years before the abolition of slavery, and especially on the impact that such shared experiences had on the process of working-class formation in Rio in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century. See also Claudio Batalha's review in this volume, pp. 339–341.

Miki, Yuko. Frontiers of Citizenship. A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil. [Afro-Latin America.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2018. xix, 292 pp. Ill. Maps. £75.00. (Paper: £29.99; E-book: $80.00).

This book presents the history of race, nation, and citizenship in nineteenth-century Brazil. Through archival research that tells the stories of slaves, Indians, and settlers, Professor Miki challenges the idea that Brazilian Indians “disappeared” during the colonial era, paving the way for Latin America's largest black nation. The author argues that exclusion and inequality of indigenous people and those of African descent became embedded in the very construction of Brazil's inclusive nationhood, demonstrating that to understand the full scope of central themes in Latin American history – race and national identity, unequal citizenship, popular politics, and slavery and abolition – requires connecting the histories of both the African diaspora and the indigenous Americas.

Vidal Luna, Francisco and Klein, Herbert S.. An Economic and Demographic History of São Paulo, 1850–1950. [Social Science History.] Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2018. xxv, 448 pp. Maps. $75.00.

The aim of this book is to explain how São Paulo changed from a frontier province of little importance into one of the most important agricultural and industrial regions in the world. The authors provide a synthetic overview of the growth of São Paulo from 1850 to 1950, analysing statistical data on demographics, agriculture, finance, trade, and infrastructure. Quantitative analysis of primary sources, including almanacs, censuses, newspapers, state and ministerial-level government documents, and annual government reports, offers granular insight into state building, federalism, the coffee economy, early industrialization, urbanization, and demographic shifts. In chronologically and structurally organized chapters, the authors compare São Paulo's transformation to that of other regions from the same period.

Mexico

Draper, Susana. 1968 Mexico. Constellations of Freedom and Democracy. [Radical Americas.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2018. xvi, 251 pp. $99.95. (Paper: $25.95).

In recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the protests, strikes, and struggles of 1968 across Europe, the United States, and Latin America, Professor Draper qualifies the 1968 movement in Mexico, challenges the dominant narrative of the movement that has emphasized the importance of the Tlatelolco Massacre and responses of male student leaders. The author reveals new archives of revolutionary participation that provide insight into how 1968 and its afterlives are understood, from marginal cinema collectives to women's cooperative experiments, and gives voice to Mexican Marxist philosophers, political prisoners, and women who participated in the movement, illustrating the wide diversity that inspired alternative forms of political participation.

Suriname

Fokken, Margriet. Beyond Being Koelies and Kantraki. Constructing Hindostani Identities in Suriname in the Era of Indenture. Verloren, Hilversum 2018. 378 pp. Ill. € 39.00.

Originally from India and shipped to the Dutch colony of Suriname after the abolition of slavery, more than 34,000 Hindostani served as contract labourers to keep the plantation system afloat from 1873. Central to this dissertation is the perspective and identification of the Hindostani. Dr Fokken follows the journey of the Hindostani from recruitment, to shipment, travel experiences, arrival in Suriname, relocation to plantations, and their dispersal following the end of their contracts, either as city workers or as farmers. The annexes show overviews of e.g. the ships transporting emigrants to Suriname from Calcutta and the plantations with the highest number of Hindostani indentured labourers.

Ramsoedh, Hans. Surinaams onbehagen. Een sociale en politieke geschiedenis van Suriname 1865–2015. Verloren, Hilversum 2018. 368 pp. Ill. € 29.00.

With a population of over half a million and a diversity of population groups, languages, and religions, Suriname is one of the most segmented societies in the Caribbean. Dr Ramsoedh describes the social and political history of Suriname in the colonial period (1865–1945), the post-colonial period (1945–1975), and the period after independence (1975–2015), in which discomfort and simmering discontent (albeit not resulting in actions or resistance) is a constant undercurrent among part of the population. The lack of socio-economic perspective, failure of politics as an instrument for improvement, and the initial absence of a sense of community due to the segmentation of Surinamese society are highlighted. See also Dirk Kruijt's review in this volume, pp. 342–344.

United States of America

Akers Chacón, Justin. Radicals in the Barrio. Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican American Working Class. Haymarket Books, Chicago (IL) 2018. 719 pp. Ill. $27.95. (E-book: $14.99).

The long and deeply rooted history of the Mexican working class in the United States is interwoven in the experience of the labour movement as a whole. Epochs of rising class struggle have co-evolved with a tradition of Mexican labour radicalism referring to the formation of left-wing political ideologies that have informed collective action. Anti-capitalist political doctrine entered Mexico with European immigrants and developed in conjunction with indigenous and organic expressions of Mexican radicalism. Professor Akers Chacón documents how migratory workers carried with them radical political ideologies, new organizational models, and shared class experience, as they crossed into southwestern barrios during the first three decades of the twentieth century.

Clark, Daniel J. Disruption in Detroit. Autoworkers and the Elusive Postwar Boom. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) [etc.] 2018. xi, 266 pp. $99.00. (Paper: $28.00; E-book: $19.95).

Professor Clark challenges the American belief that the 1950s were a golden age of prosperity for autoworkers by dealing with the delicate interplay between larger national economic forces, auto industry and auto union policies, and the lives of those who laboured and lived in Detroit in the first two decades after World War II. Detroit autoworkers and their families experienced the same job instability and economic insecurity that had long shaped working-class life and labour. Attentive to gender and race, the author has based his findings on extensive and deep research in newspapers and on closely listening to and reading oral histories.

Duncan, Stephen R. The Rebel Café. Sex, Race, and Politics in Cold War America's Nightclub Underground. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (MD) 2018. xiv, 317 pp. Ill. Maps. $54.95.

The art and antics of rebellious figures in 1950s American nightlife, from the Beat Generation to eccentric jazz musicians and comedians, have long fascinated fans and scholars alike. In this book, Professor Duncan focuses on the New York and San Francisco bars, nightclubs, and coffeehouses from which these cultural icons emerged. Throughout this period, the author argues, nightspots were crucial institutions of the American democratic public sphere. Amid the Red Scare's repressive politics, the urban underground of New York and San Francisco acted as both a fallout shelter for left-wingers and a laboratory for social experimentation, not merely offering entertainment, but also serving as a conduit to new socio-political awareness.

LaFleur, Greta. The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (MD) 2018. xii, 286 pp. $64.95.

The point of departure of this book is the centrality of natural history and specifically naturalist investigations into human variety in the history of sexuality in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Natural history accounts are examined alongside popular narratives, including e.g. barbary, captivity, execution, cross-dressing, and anti-vice narratives. Professor LaFleur traces the broadening knowledge of sexuality defined in terms of the dynamic relationship between humans and their natural, social, physical, and climatic milieu, demonstrating how environmental logic was generally used to explain sexual behaviour like sodomy, prostitution, and cross-dressing.

Schermerhorn, Calvin. Unrequited Toil. A History of United States Slavery. [Cambridge Essential Histories.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2018. ix, 258 pp. £71.99. (Paper: £17.99; E-book: $20.00).

This book synthesizes what we know about the institution of slavery. The essence of US slavery was forced labour, in farming, mining, construction, transport, and factory settings. By the 1830s, most enslaved people worked in the cotton fields. Professor Schermerhorn details how the institution of slavery became the most valuable economic interest in the nation, exploring the personal narratives of enslaved people against the broader processes of nation-building in the United States, growth and intensification of markets, the institutionalization of chattel slavery, and the growing relevance of race in the politics and society of the republic, based on themes such as politics, economics, labour, literature, rebellion, and social conditions.

Shackel, Paul A. Remembering Lattimer. Labor, Migration, and Race in Pennsylvania Anthracite Country. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) 2018. ix, 155 pp. Ill. Maps. $99.00. (Paper: $28.00; E-book: $19.95).

On 10 September 1897, a group of 400 striking coal miners of Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian descent marched on Lattimer, Pennsylvania, where law enforcement officers fired into the protesters, killing nineteen miners. Dramatically retelling the incident, Professor Shackel traces how the violence and the acquittal of the deputies boosted membership of United Mine Workers. By blending archival and archaeological research with interviews, the author shows how the social, economic, and political circumstances surrounding historic Lattimer closely align the riven communities of today, as the descendants of the slain miners, now in positions of power, have become anti-union and anti-immigrant, as Dominicans and other Latinos change the community.

Tigar, Michael E. Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power. Monthly Review Press, New York 2018. 168 pp. $95.00. (Paper: $22.00; E-book: $17.00).

This book is a collection of essays on five groups of mythologies that help rationalize the present system of social relations. Some focus on how mythologies mask state repression of democratic rights in the fields of racism, criminal justice, free expression, worker's rights, and international human rights. Others deal with the ways in which ordinary private law categories of property, contract, and tort perform the same social function. Professor Tigar explores important issues through the lens of his personal and professional experience and through his analysis of some of the most important cases decided by the nation's courts.

Zecker, Robert M. “A Road to Peace and Freedom”. The International Workers Order and the Struggle for Economic Justice and Civil Rights, 1930–1954. Temple University Press, Philadelphia (PA) 2018. xiv, 384 pp. Ill. $99.50. (Paper: $34.95).

The International Workers Order (IWO) was an American consortium of ethnic mutual self-insurance societies that advocated unemployment insurance, social security, and vibrant industrial unions. This interracial leftist organization guaranteed the healthcare of its 180,000 white, black, Hispanic, and Arab working-class members. In this book, based on extensive primary sources, Professor Zecker describes the economic goals, commitment to racial justice and activism, of the group, from lobbying to end segregation and lynching in America to defeating fascism abroad, also illustrating the panoply of entertainment, sports, and educational activities designed to enrich the minds and bodies of members. Led by communists, however, the IWO was subject to government surveillance and was ultimately disbanded.

China

Jinhua, Dai. After the Post-Cold War. The Future of Chinese History. Ed. and with an introd. by Rofel, Lisa. [Sinotheory.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2018. xi, 199 pp. Ill. $94.95. (Paper: $24.95).

This collection of seven essays focuses on questions of history, memory, and the historical revisionism of the new millennium. Drawing on Marxism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminist theory, the film theorist Professor Dai examines one specific film in each essay to broaden discussion of present-day China within global capitalism, outlining the tension between China's embrace of the free market and a regime dependent on a socialist imprimatur. In all but two of the films she addresses, socialist subjectivity has been forgotten in favour of global depoliticized images. One of her central arguments is that the erasure of the past simultaneously forecloses imagining the future.

Shigang, Fan, Striking to Survive. Workers’ Resistance to Factory Relocations in China. Transl. [from Chinese] by Moss, Henry. Haymarket Books, Chicago (IL) 2018 (2014). 190 pp. $16.95.

This book documents a recent wave of factory closures in China's Pearl River Delta and struggles by workers to retain their jobs, pensions, and livelihoods. Through detailed case studies and in-depth interviews with workers, Mr Fan Shigang shows how Chinese migrant workers defend their labour rights and struggle to survive through large-scale political and economic restructuring. The author presents nine testimonies of workers and describes how workers took collective action against their employers, as the workers narrate their experiences during the two strikes, their initial enthusiasm, distrust of peers and representatives, and internal divisions and uncertainty about what to do next.

Ho, Denise Y. Curating Revolution. Politics on Display in Mao's China. [Cambridge Studies in the History of the People's Republic of China.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2018. xvi, 308 pp. Ill. £79.99. (Paper: £22.99).

Making an exhibition was both mass education and mass mobilization. In this history of the Mao period (1949–1976), Professor Ho examines the relationship between exhibitions and political movements. Museum workers collected revolutionary relics, neighbourhoods, schools, work units mounted and narrated local displays, and exhibits provided ritual space for ideological lessons and political campaigns. Examples range from the First Party Congress Site and the Shanghai Museum to the class education and Red Guard exhibits that accompanied the Socialist Education Movement and the Cultural Revolution. Using archival sources, ephemera, interviews, and other materials, the author traces the process by which exhibitions were developed, presented, and received.

Moll-Murata, Christine. State and Crafts in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). [Social Histories of Work in Asia.] Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2018. 402 pp. Ill. Maps. € 129.00.

In this study, Professor Moll-Murata examines crafts from early modern handicraft manufacturing in China to the beginnings of industrialization, from the seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries, including the transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasty, describing the initial expansion of the bureaucracies in charge of artisan production followed by downsizing and increasing reliance on the market by most branches of handicraft production. In different chapters, she considers the government-artisan relationship in specific sectors, such as shipbuilding, porcelain, and textiles, exploring the role of artisans in society and the activities of the relatively autonomous Chinese guilds as opposed to the state institutions.

Wang, Di. The Teahouse under Socialism. The Decline and Renewal of Public Life in Chengdu, 1950–2000. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2018. xi, 311 pp. Ill. $95.00. (Paper: $29.95).

Obtaining a full understanding of a city requires observing its most basic units of social life, according to Professor Wang. In this book on the teahouses of Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan Province), the author examines the social and economic activities of everyday Chinese. Relying on both archival material and fieldwork, he looks at the transformation of teahouses from private businesses to collective ownership and explores how state policy and the responses of proprietors changed the overall economic and social structure of the city, using this transformation to illuminate broader trends in China's urban public life from 1950 through the end of the Cultural Revolution and into the post-Mao reform era.

White III, Lynn T. Rural Roots of Reform, before China's Conservative Change. Routledge, Abingdon 2018. xxix, 380 pp. $169.95. (Paper: $63.95; E-book: $26.98).

China's economic and military rise dominates discussions about the world's most populous country. The government is credited with success, but data presented here on production at rural factories prove that growth accelerated during the early 1970s, initiated mostly by officials on rural production teams and brigades, transforming many peasants into workers in the 1970s and 80s. Country factories competed with state industries for materials and markets. By the 1980s, shortages led to inflation, government deficits, unofficial credit, unenforceable planning, and illegal migration and then to international exports – and to severe political tensions, causing reactive changes after 1990 and lasting into the era of Xi Jinping. See also Ju Li's review in this volume, pp. 325–327.

Pakistan

Khan, Ayesha. The Women's Movement in Pakistan. Activism, Islam and Democracy. I.B. Tauris, London [etc.] 2018. xvii, 398 pp. Ill. £85.00.

During the rule of Zia ul-Haq, Islamization policies and control over women became the key markers of religious adherence by the state. A new resistance emerged, led by urban, educated women who rejected discriminatory laws and policies and demanded a return to democratic dispensation with equal rights for all. In this history of the modern women's movement in Pakistan, based on archives from the Women's Action Forum, court records, interviews, and analysis of newspapers and magazines, Dr Khan argues that the demand for a secular state and resistance to Islamization should not be seen as a crucial contribution to the evolution of the Pakistani state or as Pakistani women sympathizing with a Western agenda.

Turkey

Disliking Others. Loathing, Hostility, and Distrust in Premodern Ottoman Lands. Ed. by Karateke, Hakan T., Çipa, H. Erdem, Anetshofer, Helga. [Ottoman and Turkish Studies.] Academic Studies Press, Boston 2018. xv, 339 pp. Ill. $109.00.

The economic and social stability of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made the Ottoman lands a relatively safe and secure environment for trade, arts and crafts, peaceful coexistence, and settlement. This volume presents a critical evaluation of this so-called Pax Ottomanica, exploring xenophobia (disliking foreigners) and alterophobia (disliking members of alternative groups within the same society) in the Ottoman lands. The thirteen articles strive to contextualize the many issues that sound like ethnic slurs, racial stereotyping, religious discrimination, misogyny, and elitism. The goal of the volume is to investigate the axes of tension, blemishes, and fractures in the everyday practice of coexistence in a dynamic, multi-religious, multi-confessional, and multi-ethnic empire.

Belgium

De Bock, Jozefien. Parallel Lives Revisited. Mediterranean Guest Workers and Their Families at Work and in the Neighbourhood, 1960–1980. Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2018. xiii, 206 pp. Ill. Maps. $120.00; £85.00.

Combining quantitative analysis, archival research, and over one hundred oral history interviews, Dr De Bock explores the lives of immigrants arriving from six Mediterranean countries in the Belgian city of Ghent from 1960 to 1980, including their experiences on the labour market, the different economic sectors where they worked, the types of jobs they held and social relations between immigrant workers and their colleagues and employers. The author also analyses the position of immigrants on the local housing market and their spatial dispersion across the city, while tracing the course of social relations in the neighbourhoods.

De Munck, Bert. Guilds, Labour and the Urban Body Politic. Fabricating Community in the Southern Netherlands, 1300–1800. [Routledge Research in Early Modern History.] Routledge, New York [etc.] 2018. xiv, 312 pp. Ill. £120.00. (E-book: £39.99).

In the Southern Netherlands, powerful occupational guilds were governed by manufacturing masters. Guild-based artisans gained acceptance as genuine political actors, their political identity, and agency deriving from their skills and trustworthiness, although corporative spirit and power diminished over time. Professor De Munck shows that the disintegrated guild structure enabled European modernity and the modern economy to develop. In this book, the author sheds new light on the emergence of civil society, citizenship, and communal resource management and attempts to understand the meaning and role of the guilds through their entanglements with both the private and the political sphere.

Eire – Ireland

Watt, Timothy D. Popular Protest and Policing in Ascendancy Ireland, 1691–1761. [Irish Historical Monograph Series.] Boydell, Woodbridge 2018. xiv, 260 pp. £65.

This book explores the connexion between collective action, popular politics, and policing in Ireland in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Dr Watt investigates the impact that authorities and law enforcers had on society, when they carried out policing duties, and the actions undertaken by the lower social orders to protect their freedoms, livelihoods, and customs. The author shows how increasing taxes, used mainly to cover the cost of the British armed powers, resulted in proliferation of violent protests in most parts of Ireland and examines the conduct of rioters and members of the forces of order, revealing the moral compasses used during violent confrontations on both sides.

France

Bowd, Gavin. The Last Communard. Adrien Lejeune, the Unexpected Life of a Revolutionary. Verso, London [etc.] 2016. 182 pp. Ill. £14.99; € 24.65.

In 1871, Adrien Lejeune fought on the barricades of the Paris Commune. Imprisoned for treason when the Commune fell, he narrowly avoided execution for his role in the struggle for a new future. In later life, he immigrated to Soviet Russia, finding fame as a revolutionary icon. Having led a long and extraordinary life, he died in Siberia in 1942. Vaunted as a hero in France, his ashes came to rest in the Communards’ plot of the Père Lachaise cemetery. Dr Bowd's biography is based on newspapers and archival material of the Comintern and the French Communist Party.

Meriggi, Maria Grazia. Entre fraternité et xénophobie. Les mondes ouvriers parisiens dans l'entre-deux-guerres et les problèmes de la guerre et de la paix. [Le corps social.] Préface de Michel Dreyfus. Editions Arbre bleu, Nancy 2018. 169 pp. € 22.00.

The interwar period was marked by intense worker solidarity, culminating in the coalition Le Front Populaire, while coinciding with a nationalist and xenophobic surge against immigrant workers, in the context of economic crisis. In this book, Professor Meriggi examines how this dual reality was reflected in the workplace, based on her analysis of sources such as union archives and police records on strikes in the Paris region and the North during the 1920s and 30s. The main theme addressed is equal treatment of French and foreign workers by some trade unions, the actions of the “ethnic” sections of the Immigrant Workforce, and the xenophobic and anti-Semitic propaganda of the nationalist leagues.

Reid, Donald. Opening the Gates. The Lip Affair, 1968–1981. Verso, London [etc.] 2018. xvi, 492 pp. Ill. £32.00.

The long 1968, from May 1968 until the election of Mitterrand in 1981, saw the last widespread expression of confidence in the creativity and moral universe of workers engaged in labour conflicts, according to Professor Reid. In 1973, workers at the Lip watch firm in Besançon occupied their factory to prevent massive layoffs. They continued working and paid their own salaries. Educated by ‘68, the workers formed committees to manage every aspect of what became a national struggle. Female employees developed a working-class feminism, combating workplace harassment and male control of the union. Drawing extensively on unpublished materials, the author reconstructs the vision and practice of those involved. See also Xavier Vigna's review in volume 64:1, pp. 159–161.

Germany

“Deutsche Arbeit”. Kritische Perspektiven auf ein ideologisches Selbstbild. Hrsg. von Felix Axster und Nikolas Lelle. [Studien zu Ressentiments in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Bd 2.] Wallstein, Göttingen 2018. 287 pp. Ill. € 30.80.

The topos Deutsche Arbeit emerged in the mid-nineteenth century and bonded notions of work ethic and national character. During the Nazi regime, the concept became particularly effective within the concept of the Volksgemeinschaft. In the twelve contributions, the authors examine the origins of this ideological self-image, investigating how “work” was inserted in a nationalist ideology and how the concept of the nation was, in turn, circumscribed by the concept of work, linking this with the politics of exclusion and culminating in anti-Semitism and the extermination policy of the Third Reich and discussing how the radicalization of the term by National Socialism has persisted since the end of the war until today.

A History Shared and Divided. East and West Germany since the 1970s. Ed. by Bösch, Frank. Transl. [from German] by Walcoff Neuheiser, Jennifer. Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2018 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015). xii, 608 pp. Ill. £135.00, $190.00. (E-book: $44.95).

The historical trajectories of East and West Germany were interrelated in complex ways. This collection of eleven essays is a comparative study of changing social structures in East and West Germany, such as work, the economy, welfare, education, lifestyle, and politics, as well as the environment, sports, and media. In addition to considering the separate histories or differences between the states, the authors seeks similarities and interactions between East and West, revolving around an analysis of how East and West Germany have changed since the 1970s, also examining whether there was a prevalence of commonalities, or whether system-based differences dominated the trajectories of each state.

Jarausch, Konrad H. Broken Lives. How Ordinary Germans Experienced the 20th Century. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2018. xiii, 446 pp. Ill. $35.00; £27.00. (Paper: $22.95; £17.99).

Drawing on six dozen memoirs by the age cohort of Germans born in the 1920s, Professor Jarausch chronicles the stories of people who lived through the Third Reich, World War II, and the Cold War partition and participated in Germany's post-war recovery, reunification, and rehabilitation. Bringing together the voices of men and women, perpetrators and victims, the author reveals the intimate human details of historical events and offers new insights, for example about why so many Germans supported Hitler. He argues that by focusing on its own suffering, this generation ultimately achieved a more critical understanding of national identity, which helped transform Germany from a military aggressor into a pillar of European democracy.

Karl Marx 1818–1883. Leben. Werk. Zeit. Trier 05.05.–21.10.2018. Groβe Landesausstellung Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier Stadtmuseum Simeonstift Trier. Hrsg. von Beatrix Bouvier, Rainer Auts. Theiss, Darmstadt 2018. 384 pp. Ill. € 39.95.

In recognition of the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx's birth, a large exhibition divided between two locations in Trier traces his life, work, and writings. The nineteenth century, with its economic and social upheavals, shaped the philosopher and economist. Aspirations for freedom and democracy, industrialization, and urbanization are hallmarks of this turbulent era. This catalogue offers insights into this period, Marx's intellectual career and his most important writings and considers their relevance to the present day, while also showing the person Karl Marx with his family, his companions, and the different places he stayed in his eventful life.

Kiel und die Revolution von 1918. Das Tagebuch eines Werftingenieurs, verfasst in den Jahren 1917–1919. Edition und Textanalyse. Kuhl, Klaus [Kieler Werkstücke. Reihe A: Beiträge zur Schleswig-Holsteinischen und Skandinavischen Geschichte, Bd. 51.] Peter Lang, Bern 2018. Ill. € 71.90; £54.00.

This diary of the Kiel shipyard engineer Andersen offers an impression of the behaviour of shipyard employees during the years 1917–1919. Born in a relatively wealthy rural family, Nikolaus Andersen had a broad range of interests, including politics. In his analysis of the diary, Dr Kuhl finds indications that large parts of the white-collar employees supported the revolutionary upheavals in Kiel, from examining which events were recorded there, how they affected him, and how discussion in his environment was presented, as well as the question as to what extent the statements by the diarist may be deemed representative of his environment.

Pelz, William A. A People's History of the German Revolution. [People's History.] Pluto Press, London 2018. xxii, 180 pp. £75. (Paper, E-book: £16.99).

In October 1918, as a consequence of the military defeat of Germany, triggered by a naval mutiny, the anger of the masses spread revolution throughout the country. Workers joined forces with sailors and soldiers in an enormous mass movement against the monarchical system. The proclamation of the Weimar Republic ended the revolution in 1919. Professor Pelz explores the revolution from the bottom up, focusing on the active role of women, rank-and-file activists and ordinary workers in its course, making the compelling case that, for a brief period, the actions of the common people shaped a truly revolutionary society.

Great Britain

Akkerman, Nadine. Invisible Agents. Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018. xviii, 264 pp. Ill. £20.00.

The struggle of She-Intelligencers to construct credibility in their own time is mirrored in their invisibility in the archives. Taking mid-seventeenth-century Britain as a case study, Dr Akkerman traces the women who carried out (counter) espionage around the English Civil War. The first two chapters introduce the main themes of how women ensured their own invisibility. Chapters three to five explore the history of two Royalist secret organizations (the Sealed Knot and the Great Trust), showing women's involvement. The last two chapters detail the lives of Anne Lady Hackett and Aphra Behn and their psychological struggle with the trade of espionage, which they managed to shape to their advantage.

Bell, Henry. Maclean, John. Hero of Red Clydeside. [Revolutionary Lives.] Pluto Press, London 2018. xi, 242 pp. £75.00. (Paper, E-book: £14.99).

In this biography of John Maclean (1879–1923), Scotland's most famous revolutionary, is situated in the political, social, and economic context of his time, whilst examining the legacy of his struggle a hundred years on. Maclean was notable for his opposition to World War I, which led him to be arrested and to lose his teaching post. Although he had been appointed Bolshevik representative in Scotland, he was not in harmony with the Communist Party of Great Britain. This book examines his work as an organizer and educator and his imprisonment and hunger strike and traces how he became the early hero of radical Scottish Independence.

Catterall, Peter. Labour and the Free Churches, 1918–1939. Radicalism, Righteousness, and Religion. Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2016. xiii, 322 pp. £90.00. (Paper: £28.99).

This study explores how the Free Churches, traditionally allied to the Liberal Party, reacted to the growing importance of the Labour Party. In the first of four prisms, the author examines the response by the leadership of the Free Churches to the rise of the new party, in the second how social changes at the local level affected chapel society and the propensity of adherents to engage politically, in the third the level of personnel, and in the final prism ideals and ideas. He also addresses how both the Free Churches and the Labour movement handled the concept of class and considers the shift in nonconformist attitudes towards the State. See also Peter Acker's review essay in volume 64:1, pp. 129–142.

Cookson, Gillian. The Age of Machinery. Engineering the Industrial Revolution, 1770–1850. [People, Markets, Goods. Economies and Societies in History, Vol. 12.] The Boydell Press, Woodbridge [etc.] 2018. x, 324 pp. Ill. Maps. £19.99.

In this book, Dr Cookson explores the engineers who built the first generations of modern textile machines, between 1770 and 1850, in northern England, and the industry they brought about, probing their origins and skills, the sources of their inspiration and impetus, and how a high-tech, factory-centred, world-leading market in textile machinery was developed virtually from scratch. The circumstances suggest that the potential to accelerate economic growth could be found within social assets and craft skills. The details of this research, including family relationships, are set out in appendices, offering lists of textile engineers, Leeds engineering businesses before 1830 and estimates of textile machinery at work in the United Kingdom (1835–1856).

Deringer, William. Calculated Values. Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 2018. xxii, 413 pp. Ill. $34.46. (E-book: $30.92).

In the early twenty-first century, confidence in numbers grew, as manifested by the rising prestige of quantitative research methods. Complex calculations were often regarded with suspicion until the last decades of the seventeenth century and first decades of the eighteenth century. Professor Deringer argues that though this coincided with advances in natural science and financial capitalism, the new quantitative enthusiasm was a product of partisan politics, where parliamentary debates about taxes, trade, and national debt were increasingly conducted through calculations. According to the author, the authority of numbers resulted not from efforts to find objective truths but from the turmoil of politics.

John Lilburne and the Levellers. Reappraising the Roots of English Radicalism 400 Years On. Ed. by Rees, John. [Routledge Studies in Radical History and Politics.] Routledge, London 2018. x, 157 pp. Ill. £94.99. (Paper, E-book: £36.99).

John Lilburne (1615–1657) was one of the leading figures in the Levellers, the highly influential radical sect that called for law reform, religious tolerance, extended suffrage, and a new form of government. The eight essays in this book assess the legacy of Lilburne and the Levellers 400 years after his birth. In roughly chronological order, according to the events in Lilburne's life, the authors examine his role as an inspirational leader, his writings that exposed the hypocrisy, and corruption of those in power, his contribution to political ideas, his personal and political relations with his wife Elizabeth, his exile in the Netherlands, his late decision to become a Quaker, and his reputation after his death. See also Henk Looijesteijn's review in this volume, pp. 327–329.

Johnson, Neil. The Labour Church. The Movement and Its Messages. [Routledge Studies in Radical History and Politics.] Routledge, New York, 2018. x, 233 pp. £120.00. (E-book: £39.99).

Theological Socialism prophesized a new utopian era explained in Christian religious terms. For members of the Labour Church, it was an inclusive message about God working through the Labour movement. Dr Johnson examines the principles underlying the Labour Church, showing the importance of religious belief to the Left in thought and practice in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British Socialism. The principles are placed within a wider context, highlighting the social and ideological setting of the Labour Church, the events and concepts that shaped the founder's thinking and the motivations and aspirations of the people who aligned with the movement. See also Peter Acker's review essay in volume 64:1, pp. 129–142.

Sloane, Nan. The Women in the Room. Labour's Forgotten History. Forew. by Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP. I.B. Tauris, London [etc.] 2018. xix, 252 pp. Ill. £17.99. (E-book: £17.09).

Throughout Labour's history, even in its earliest years, women were present, but they were not always recorded or remembered. They came from many different backgrounds and supported the causes they believed in, as organizers, campaigners, negotiators, polemicists, public speakers, and leaders. Sloane unearths the stories of women who, long before the campaign for women's suffrage, fought for workers’ rights and played a key role in the birth of the Labour Party. The book opens with the establishment of the Trade Unions Congress in 1868 and takes the story up to the 1918 general election, in which the first women voted.

Iceland

Dufeu, Val. Fish Trade in Medieval North Atlantic Societies. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Human Ecodynamics. [The Early Medieval North Atlantic.] Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2018. 254 pp. Ill. Maps. € 99.00, (E-book: € 98.99).

In this book, Dr Dufeu reconstructs settlement patterns of fishing communities in Viking Age Iceland and the Faeroes. The author integrates written sources, geoarchaeological data, and zooarchaeological data to examine how fishing propelled political change in the North Atlantic. The aims of the study are to establish the key features of Iceland's economic patterns and produce models for socio-economic developments based mainly on the development of a specialized fish trade within a defined historical framework. By researching the interaction between places of production, distribution, and consumption of fish the author identifies networks of exchange and locates cultural and economic spaces.

Italy

Balsamini, Luigi. Gli arditi del popolo. Dalla guerra alla difesa proletaria contro il fascismo (1917–1922). Seconda edizione. [Atti e memori del popolo.] Galzerano, Casavelino Scalo 2018. 446 pp. Ill. € 15.00.

The present volume, revised, rewritten, and redesigned since the first edition of 2002, is a detailed reconstruction of the Arditi del popolo movement, which consisted of former soldiers from World War I. The movement was established in 1921, providing leftist organizations with armed defence against fascist attacks. Nowadays, with the return of the extreme right to the political arena, the discourse on fascism needs to be renewed and ways to fight it updated. Reconstruction of the history of the Arditi del popolo helps preserve the memory of the generation that has combatted fascism with every necessary means.

Pernicone, Nunzio and Ottanelli, Fraser M.. Assassins against the Old Order. Italian Anarchist Violence in Fin de Siècle Europe. University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) [etc.] 2018. ix, 219 pp. $99.00. (Paper: $30.00; E-book: $19.95).

Although political violence is the focus of this study, assassinations were not the only defining feature of the Italian anarchist movement. The authors study the historical, economic, social, cultural and political conditions, the social conflicts and left-wing politics, along with the experiences in Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States that led to Italian anarchist violence at the end of the nineteenth century, examining how these assassinations connect with other forms, ideologies, and insurrections of anarchist violence in Italy and other countries. Treating each assassination within its historical context, the authors provide bibliographical portraits and analyses of the main Italian perpetrators.

Poland

Piatkowski, Marcin. Europe's Growth Champion. Insights from the Economic Rise of Poland. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018. xxv, 364 pp. Ill. Maps. £65.00. (Paper: £25.00).

Over the last twenty-five years, Poland has transitioned from a poor, peripheral country to the ranks of the world's high-income countries. This book is about the lessons learned from Poland's experience and defines a model that Poland and other Eastern European countries need to adopt in order to continue to grow. Dr Piatkowski emphasizes the importance of fundamental sources of growth in economic development: institutions; culture; ideas; and leaders. He argues that shifting from an extractive society to an inclusive society was the key to Poland's success, while acknowledging the future challenges that Poland faces, and that moving to the core of the European economy will require further reforms and changes.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Cameron, Sarah. The Hungry Steppe. Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2018. xi, 277 pp. Ill. Maps. $49.95.

During the Kazakh famine of 1930–1933, more than 1.5 million people perished, a quarter of Kazakhstan's population. Drawing upon state and Communist party documents, as well as newspapers and oral history, Professor Cameron reveals this story and its devastating consequences for Kazakh society. Moscow sought to create a stable territory with clearly defined boundaries as an integral part of the Soviet economic system that served as a meatpacking centre. But the radical programme of state-led transformation instigated the total collapse of the republic's livestock economy. The famine experience scarred the republic for the remainder of the Soviet era and shaped its transformation into an independent nation in 1991.

Engelstein, Laura. Russia in Flames. War, Revolution, Civil War 1914–1921. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2018. xxvii, 823 pp. Ill. Maps. £25.00.

After the implosion of the Romanov dynasty, Russia was in crisis, as one interim government replaced another. In this book, Professor Engelstein examines the seven years of chaos surrounding 1917: the war, the revolutionary upheaval, and the civil strife it provoked. The struggle for power engaged not only civil society and party leaders but also the population of the empire. Revolution and civil war revealed democratic hopes about social justice and equality, but the October Revolution destroyed any democratic experiment. The Bolsheviks managed to harness the social breakdown caused by the war and to institutionalize violence for creating a new society and a new form of power.

Kalinovsky, Artemy M. Laboratory of Socialist Development. Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2018. xiii, 316 pp. Ill. Maps. $42.95.

The story of Tajikistan presented here illuminates the history of Soviet development in the twentieth century. Dr Kalinovsky connects high politics and intellectual debates with the life histories and experiences of peasants, workers, scholars, and engineers and illustrates the post-war Soviet Union, the relationship between Moscow and its periphery and the interaction between Cold War politics and domestic development. He focuses on the everyday experiences of Soviet development, the construction and local workers of the Nurek Dam, struggles over the welfare state and urbanization, and campaigns to mechanize agriculture, electrify the Tajik countryside and deliver the benefits of the welfare state while developing the cotton economy.

Smolkin, Victoria. A Sacred Space is Never Empty. A History of Soviet Atheism. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2018. xvi, 339 pp. Ill. $45.00; £35.00. (Paper: $32.95).

Soviet power used a variety of tools to turn its vision of a communist world without religion into reality. Yet, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in creating an atheist society. This book presents the history of Soviet atheism from 1917 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on archival material and in-depth interviews, Professor Smolkin argues that religion represented an obstacle to the monopoly of Soviet communism on political, ideological, and spiritual authority. In bringing about a world without religion, simply exorcising religion was not enough; atheism had been reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments.

Spain

14D, historia y memoria de la huelga general. El día que se paralizó España. Babiano, José y Tébar, Javier (coords.), prólogo de Unai Sordo. Catarata, Madrid 2018. 126 pp. € 14.00. (E-book: € 9.99).

In 1988, in the general strike of 14 December, instigated by a youth employment plan offering companies high subsidies but mandating low-wage, temporary contracts for young people without cause and without collective rights drew participation by ninety-five per cent of employees in Spain. This unprecedented success was a blow to the neoliberal course of the González government policy. Considering the strike of 14D from different perspectives, four contributions elaborate on the historical events and their context, while in the second part three essays dedicated to the memory of the strike convey a vision of events lived and remembered with emotion.

Cambio institucional y fiscalidad. Mundo Hispánico, 1760–1850. Ed. por Bertrand, Michael y Moutoukias, Zacarías. [Collection de la Casa de Velázquez, Vol. 164.] Casa de Velázquez, Madrid 2018. xi, 432 pp. € 35.00. (E-book: € 19.99).

This volume addresses the processes of institutional change in Spain and Latin America from the Seven Years War to the nineteenth century. The processes are analysed through the prism of the history of finance by examining fiscal issues in broader economic, social and cultural transformations. The eighteen contributions are presented in three parts. Part one describes the reform of taxation promoted by the monarchy in the context of competition between empires and new liberal thinking. In Part two, local actors and their influence on the political order and financial institutions are considered, and in Part three the contributors analyse the role of land, property and institutions, and the political dynamics linked to financing war through tax revenues.

Leval, Gaston. Collectives in the Spanish Revolution. Transl. from the French by Richards, Vernon. PM Press, Oakland (CA) 2018 [1952]. xxvii, 380 pp. Ill. $27.95.

Revolutionary Spain came about with an explosion of social change. Combining research and analysis with lucid reporting, the author of this book was not only a participant in the Revolution and a dedicated anarcho-syndicalist, but also an eyewitness to the many industrial and agrarian collectives. Surveying agrarian collectives in Aragón, Levante and Castile. Leval, he shows the variety of urban examples of self-organization, from factories and workshops to medicine, social services, Barcelona's tramway system and beyond. In the introduction and preface, he offers a précis of Leval's life and methods, placing this study in the context of more recent writing on Spanish collectives.

Switzerland

Suter, Mischa. Rechtstrieb. Schulden und Vollstreckung im liberalen Kapitalismus 1800–1900. Konstanz University Press, Konstanz 2016. 328 pp. Maps. € 32.90; Sfr. 39.90.

This study proposes new perspectives on the history of capitalism, as well as on the historical epistemology of economic activity, by examining debt collection practices in the economy of nineteenth-century liberalism. Dr Suter describes the legal procedures, paperwork routines, and social relations that shaped debt as profoundly relational in nineteenth-century Switzerland, epitomizing economic and political liberalism. The social relation of debt is in turn depicted as a central force field in nineteenth-century society. Based in part on the theoretical and historical work of Marx, the book places special emphasis on precarious economies.