Transnationalizing American labor history

Journal of American History

Volumn 86, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 1078-1092

  Van Der Linden, Marcel ^a,b  

^a INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL HISTORY   (Netherlands)

^b UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33646193638     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2568606     Document Type: Review

References (104)

1. For the United States labor historians, see Ronald W. Schatz, "Review Essay: Labor Historians, Labor Economics, and the Question of Synthesis," Journal of American History, 71 (June 1984), 93-100.
2. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1964), vii.
3. Michelle Perrot, "The Three Ages of Industrial Discipline in Nineteenth-Century France," in Consciousness and Class Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. John M. Merriman (New York, 1979), 149-68, esp. 150.
4. Winfried Schulze, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945 (German historical knowledge since 1945) (Munich, 1989), esp. chap. 16.
5. See, for instance, a survey of specialized history courses and completed history dissertations at eight American universities, 1948/1958-1978: Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (New York, 1990), 200, 202.
6. Margaret Ramsay Somers, "Workers of the World, Compare!," Contemporary Sociology, 18 (May 1989), 325-29, esp. 325.
7. Richard Price, "The Future of British Labour History," International Review of Social History (Assen), 36 (no. 2, 1991), 249-60, esp. 253.
8. Gareth Stedman Jones, for instance, defended his "linguistic turn" as a result of "the gulf between the predictions of the Marxist explanatory model and the actual assumptions which appear to have guided the activities of . . . workers": Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832-1982 (Cambridge, U.K., 1983), 8.
9. Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society (9 vols., Delhi, 1982-1996).
10. Werner Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?, trans. Patricia M. Hocking and C. T. Husbands (1906; London, 1976).
11. The most significant early studies on national comparisons are, to my knowledge, Carl Kindermann, Zur organischen Güterverteilung, II: Die Glasarbeiter Deutschlands und der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika in ihrer allgemeinen materiellen Lage (On the organic distribution of goods, II: The general material condition of the glassworkers of Germany and the United States of America) (Leipzig, 1896);
12. and Hans Bötcher, Zur revolutionären Gewerkschaftsbewegung in Amerika, Deutschland, und England: Eine vergleichende Betrachtung (On the revolutionary trade union movement in America, Germany, and England: A comparative view) (Jena, 1922).
13. Marc Bloch, "A Contribution towards a Comparative History of European Societies" (1928), in Land and Work in Mediaeval Europe: Selected Papers by Marc Bloch, trans. J. E. Anderson (Berkeley, 1967), 44-81;
14. th century: Marc Bloch) (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 184.
15. See, for example, Frits van Holthoon and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Internationalism in the Labour Movement, 1830-1940 (2 vols., Leiden, 1988);
16. Serge Wolikow and Michel Cordillot, eds., Prolétaires de tous les pays: Unissez-vous? Les difficiles chemins de l'internationalisme, 1848-1956 (Proletarians of all countries: Unite? The difficult paths of internationalism, 1848-1956) (Paris, 1993).
17. See my bibliographical attempts: Marcel van der Linden, "Internationalism in the Labour Movement, 1830-1940: Fragments of a Bibliography," in Internationalism in the Labour Movement, ed. van Holthoon and van der Linden, II, 624-54;
18. and Marcel van der Linden, "A Bibliography of Comparative Labour History," in Australian Labour and Regional Change: Essays in Honour of R. A. Gollan, ed. Jim Hagan and Andrew Wells (Rushcutters Bay, New South Wales, 1998), 117-45.
19. Benedict Anderson, Long-Distance Nationalism: World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics (Amsterdam, 1992).
20. Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca, 1997).
21. Philip M. Katz, From Appomattox to Montmartre: Americans and the Paris Commune (Cambridge, Mass., 1998).
22. Philip S. Foner, "Protests in the United States against Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Law," International Review of Social History (Assen), 21 (no. 1, 1976), 30-50.
23. Jane E. Good, "America and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, 1888-1905," Russian Review (Stanford), 41 (July 1982), 273-87;
24. Arthur W. Thompson, "The Reception of Russian Revolutionary Leaders in America, 1904-1906," American Quarterly, 18 (Fall 1966), 452-76.
25. On Alexander Herzen, Nicholas Ogarev, Michael Bakunin, Nicholas Chernyshevski, Peter Lavrov, and Nicholas Chaikovski, see, for instance, David Hecht, Russian Radicals Look to America, 1825-1894 (Cambridge, Mass., 1947);
26. th century), Jahrbuch für Geschichte (Berlin), 13 (1973), 71-108.
27. Joseph H. Park, "The English Workingmen and the American Civil War," Political Science Quarterly, 39 (1924), 432-57;
28. R. Greenleaf, "British Labour against American Slavery," Science & Society, 17 (Winter 1953), 42-58;
29. Royden Harrison, "British Labour and the Confederacy," International Review of Social History (Assen), 2 (no. 1, 1957), 78-105;
30. Royden Harrison, "British Labor and American Slavery," Science & Society, 25 (Dec. 1961), 291-319;
31. Samuel Bernstein, "The Opposition of French Labor to American Slavery," Science & Society, ibid., 17 (Spring 1953), 136-54.
32. James A. Stevenson, "Daniel de Leon and European Socialism, 1890-1914," Science & Society, ibid., 44 (Summer 1980), 199-223.
33. Temma Kaplan, "On the Socialist Origins of International Women's Day," Feminist Studies, 11 (Spring 1985), 163-71.
34. Michael Basset, "The American Socialist Party and the War, 1917-1918," Australian Journal of Politics and History (Brisbane), 11 (Dec. 1965), 277-91;
35. Sally M. Miller, "American Socialist Women and the Second International," ITH-Tagungsberichte 13-II (Vienna, 1980), 670-89.
36. See the controversial volume by Harvey Klehr, John E. Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven, 1998).
37. J. P. Morray, Project Kuzbas: American Workers in Siberia, 1921-1926 (New York, 1983);
38. Steve Fraser, "The 'New Unionis'm and the 'New Economic Policy,'" in Work, Community, and Power: The Experience of Labor in Europe and America, 1900-1925, ed. James E. Cronin and Carmen Sirianni (Philadelphia, 1983), 173-96.
39. Norman J. Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860-1895: A Study in Democracy (New York, 1929), 191-200;
40. Henry Pelling, "The Knights of Labor in Britain, 1880-1901," Economic History Review (Oxford), 9 (no. 2, 1956-1957), 313-31;
41. Charlotte Erickson, American Industry and the European Immigrant, 1860-1885 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 145-46;
42. Léon Watillon, The Knights of Labor in Belgium, trans. Frederic Meyers (Los Angeles, 1959).
43. David J. McDonald quoted in Jeffrey Harrod, Trade Union Foreign Policy: A Study of British and American Union Activities in Jamaica (Garden City, N.Y., 1972), 329-30.
44. Robert W. Cox, "Labor and Hegemony: A Reply," International Organization, 34 (Winter 1980), 159-76, esp. 163.
45. L. G. Churchward, "The American Influence on the Australian Labour Movement," Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand (Melbourne), 5 (1951-1953), 258-77;
46. Eugene Forsey, Trade Unions in Canada, 1812-1902 (Toronto, 1981), 138-66;
47. Maurice Dommanget, La Chevalerie du Travail française, 1893-1911 (The French Knights of Labor, 1893-1911) (Lausanne, 1967);
48. Gregory S. Kealey and Bryan D. Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880-1900 (Cambridge, U.K., 1982);
49. John H. M. Laslett, "The American Knights of Labor in an International Context," Bulletin - Society for the Study of Labour History (Sheffield, Eng.), (Spring 1985), 49-51;
50. Herbert Roth, "American Influences on the New Zealand Labour Movement," Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand (Melbourne), 9 (1959-1961), 413-20;
51. Watillon, Knights of Labor in Belgium, trans. Meyers.
52. Salvatore Salerno, Red November, Black November: Culture and Community in the Industrial Workers of the World (Albany, 1989), 93-115. No systematic study is available on the transnational influence of the IWW.
53. For some general observations, see Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies: The Story of Syndicalism in the United States (London, 1967), 275-93.
54. For case studies, see Verity Burgmann, Revolutionary Industrial Unionism: The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia (Melbourne, 1996);
55. Frank Cain, The Wobblies at War: A History of the IWW and the Great War in Australia (Melbourne, 1993);
56. Churchward, "American Influence on the Australian Labour Movement";
57. Peter DeShazo, Urban Workers and Labor Unions in Chile, 1902-1927 (Madison, 1983);
58. Erik Olssen, The Red Feds: Revolutionary Industrial Unionism and the New Zealand Federation of Labour 1908-1914 (Auckland, 1988);
59. John Philips, "The South African Wobblies: The Origin of Industrial Unions in South Africa," Ufahuma, 8 (no. 3, 1978), 122-38;
60. and P. J. Rushton, "Revolutionary Ideology of the I.W.W. in Australia," Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand (Melbourne), 15 (1971-1973), 424-46.
61. Norman Caulfield, "Wobblies and Mexican Workers in Mining and Petroleum, 1905-1924," International Review of Social History (Assen), 40 (no. 1, 1995), 51-75;
62. Walter Galenson, Labor in Norway (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), 21-22, 59, 61;
63. Jorunn Bjørgum, "Fagopposisjonen av 1911" (The trade union opposition of 1911), Tidsskrift for arbeiderbevegelsens historie (Oslo), 1 (1976), 63-131.
64. See also Ross McCormack, "Wobblies and Blanketsriffs: The Constituency of the IWW in Western Canada," in Lectures in Canadian Labour and Working-Class History, ed. W. J. C. Cherwinski and Gregory S. Kealey (St. John's, 1985), 101-14.
65. Cox, "Labor and Hegemony: A Reply."
66. In this article Cox notes that he does not view the influence of the AFL in other countries as "transnational," because the term implies "a free and equal relationship among trade unions from different countries, all independent of their governments, when the reality is a hegemonic corporatist structure of power with a national base and international extensions" (Cox, "Labor and Hegemony: A Reply." ibid., 170-71).
67. do not subscribe to this rationale. This logic would preclude transnational corporations as well. William G. Whittaker, "The Santiago Iglesias Case, 1901-1902: Origin of American Trade Union Involvement in Puerto Rico," Americas, 24 (1968), 378-93;
68. Melinda Tria Kerkvliet, Manila Workers' Unions, 1900-1950 (Quezon City, 1992), 16-17;
69. Joseph Redford, "Samuel Gompers and the Caribbean: The AFL, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1898-1906," Labor's Heritage, 6 (no. 4, 1995), 4-25.
70. The literature on this topic is immense. See, for example, Ronald Radosh, American Labor and United States Foreign Policy (New York, 1969).
71. Of special importance was the AFL's influence in Latin America, specifically Mexico: see Sinclair Snow, The Pan-American Federation of Labor (Durham, N. C., 1964);
72. Harvey A. Levenstein, Labor Organizations in the United States and Mexico: A History of Their Relations (Westport, 1971);
73. and Gregg Andrews, Shoulder to Shoulder? The American Federation of Labor, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1924 (Berkeley, 1991).
74. Major differences of historical interpretation are evident in the literature, particularly in the French case. See Roy Godson, American Labor and European Politics: The AFL as a Transnational Force (New York, 1976), 115-22, 126-31;
75. Jack Kantrowitz, "L'Influence américaine sur Force Ouvrière: Mythe ou réalité?" (The American influence on Force Ouvrière: Myth or reality?), Revue française de science politique (Paris), 28 (Aug. 1978), 717-38;
76. and Annie Lacroix-Riz, "Autour d'Irving Brown: l'AFL, le Free Trade Union Committee, le Département d'Etat, et la scission syndicale française (1944-47)" (In connection with Irving Brown: The AFL, the Free Trade Union Committee, the State Department, and the French trade union split, 1944-47), Le mouvement social (Paris), no. 151 (April-June 1990), 143-91.
77. Other case studies include Carolyn Eisenberg, "Working-Class Politics and the Cold War: American Intervention in the German Labor Movement, 1945-1949," Diplomatic History, 7 (1983), 283-306;
78. Howard Schoenberg, "American Labor's Cold War in Japan," Diplomatic History, ibid., 3 (1979), 249-72.
79. Hobart A. Spalding Jr., "U.S. Labour Intervention in Latin America: The Case of the American Institute for Free Labor Development," in Trade Unions and the New Industrialisation of the Third World, ed. Roger Southall (London, 1988), 259-86. The AIFLD was but one of several regional organizations of the AFL-CIO.
80. Robert W. Cox and Stuart M. Jamieson, "Canadian Labor in the Continental Perspective," International Organization, 28 (Autumn 1974), 803-26.
81. Bryan D. Palmer, "Social Formation and Class Formation in North America, 1800-1900," in Proletarianization and Family History, ed. David Levine (Orlando, 1984), 229-309, esp. 231.
82. Bryan D. Palmer, Working-Class Experience: The Rise and Reconstitution of Canadian Labour (Toronto, 1983), 149;
83. Forsey, Trade Unions in Canada, chaps. 8-11 and appendix, 506-13;
84. Robert H. Babcock, Gompers in Canada: A Study in American Continentalism before the First World War (Toronto, 1974).
85. Cox and Jamieson, "Canadian Labor in the Continental Perspective."
86. David Kettler, James Struthers, and Christopher Huxley, "Unionization and Labour Regimes in Canada and the United States: Considerations for Comparative Research," Labour/Le Travail (St. John's), 25 (Spring 1990), 161-87, esp. 178.
87. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963).
88. Richard Breen and David B. Rottman, "Is the National State the Appropriate Geographical Unit for Class Analysis?," Sociology (Oxford), 32 (Feb. 1998), 1-21, esp. 15.
89. Marcel van der Linden, "The National Integration of European Working Classes, 1871-1914," International Review of Social History (Assen), 33 (no. 3, 1988), 285-311.
90. Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, "From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational Migration," Anthropological Quarterly, 68 (no. 1, 1995), 48-63, esp. 48.
91. See also Donna Gabaccia, "Is Everywhere Nowhere? Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant Paradigm of United States History," Journal of American History, 86 (Dec. 1999), 1115-34.
92. Here one could apply the method of analysis in Arnd Schneider, "The Transcontinental Construction of European Identities: A View from Argentina," Anthropological Journal on European Cultures (Llangollen), 5 (no. 1, 1996), 95-105.
93. See, for example, John Mason Hart, ed., Border Crossings: Mexican and Mexican-American Workers (Wilmington, 1998).
94. For a case study of the interaction between Irish and English textile workers in Fall River, Massachusetts, and Lancashire, England, see John T. Cumbler, "Transatlantic Working-Class Institutions," Journal of Historical Geography (London), 6 (no. 3, 1980), 275-90.
95. See, for instance, Philip S. Foner, "The French Trade Union Delegation to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, 1876," Science & Society, 40 (Fall 1976), 257-87.
96. The United States has never ratified more than a small fraction of the ILO Covenants. Walter Galenson has given two reasons for this: "employer opposition and the historical reluctance of the Senate to ratify any international conventions, including those adopted by the ILO": Walter Galenson, The International Labor Organization: An American View (Madison, 1981), 199.
97. See, for example, Fabrice Montebello, "Hollywood Films in a French Working Class Milieu: Longwy, 1945-1960," European Contributions to American Studies (Amsterdam), 28 (1994), 213-46.
98. Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago, 1976), 207.
99. John Logue, Toward a Theory of Trade Union Internationalism (Gothenburg, 1980), 11.
100. For a description of the Independent Order of Red Men and its Tecumseh Lodge No. 109, see August Sartorius von Waltershausen, The Workers' Movement in the United States, 1879-1885, ed. David Montgomery and Marcel van der Linden (Cambridge, U.K., 1998), 189-95.
101. See, for instance, Roy Wagner, Symbols That Stand for Themselves (Chicago, 1986).
102. An exception confirming the rule is Victor Silverman, "Popular Bases of the International Labor Movement in the United States and Britain, 1939-1949," International Review of Social History (Assen), 38 (no. 3, 1993), 301-20.
103. David Roediger, "Race and the Working-Class Past in the United States: Multiple Identities and the Future of Labor History," in The End of Labour History?, ed. Marcel van der Linden (Cambridge, U.K., 1993), 127-43, esp. 131.
104. David Thelen, "Making History and Making the United States," Journal of American Studies (London), 32 (Dec. 1998), 373-97, esp. 380.