Using the history of the Irish linen industry as a substantive case study Spinning the Threads of Uneven Development shows how gendered variations in the division of labor within and between households affected the economic development of the local and regional textile industry beginning with industrialization through to the transition to industrial capitalism. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from census records to folk poetry, Jane Gray develops a dynamic model of gender that links the allocation of labor within households to macro-socioeconomic change. Expanding on recent literature of the salience of gender in the Irish political economy, Spinning the Threads of Uneven Development is important reading for social and economic historians as well as those interested in the role of gender in economic development and Irish history.

In the nineteenth century, the Netherlands and its colonial holdings in Java were the sites of dramatically increased industrialization. Led by a group of “merchant kings” who exemplified gentlemanly capitalism, this ambitious trading project transformed the small, economically moribund Netherlands into a global power. Merchant Kings offers a fascinating interdisciplinary exploration of this episode and reveals not only the distinctive nature of the Dutch state, but the surprising extent to which its nascent corporate innovations were rooted in early welfare initiatives. By placing colony and metropole into a single analytical frame, this book offers a bracing new approach to understanding the development of modern corporations.

This impressive collection offers the first systematic global and comparative history of textile workers over the course of 350 years. This period covers the major changes in wool and cotton production, and the global picture from pre-industrial times through to the twentieth century. After an introduction, the first part of the book is divided into twenty national studies on textile production over the period 1650-2000. To make them useful tools for international comparisons, each national overview is based on a consistent framework that defines the topics and issues to be treated in each chapter. The countries described have been selected to included the major historic producers of woollen and cotton fabrics, and the diversity of global experience, and include not only European nations, but also Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, Uruguay and the USA. The second part of the book consists of ten comparative papers on topics including globalization and trade, organization of production, space, identity, workplace, institutions, production relations, gender, ethnicity and the textile firm. These are based on the national overviews and additional literature, and will help apply current interdisciplinary and cultural concerns to a subject traditionally viewed largely through a social and economic history lens. Whilst offering a unique reference source for anyone interested in the history of a particular country's textile industry, the true strength of this project lies in its capacity of international comparison. By providing global comparative studies of key textile industries and workers, both geographically and thematically, this book provides a comprehensive and contemporary analysis of a major element of the world's economy. This allows historians to challenge many of the received ideas about globalization, for instance, highlighting how global competition for lower production costs is by no means a uniquely modern issue, and has b

This book, a compendium of 28 papers selected from two recent conferences on the topic, focuses on aspects of rural landscape, broadly related to issues of language, representation and power. These are issues that have not been addressed on a pan-European landscape level before.The aim is to offer a deeper interdisciplinary understanding of historical and contemporary processes in European landscapes.

This volume results from a conference on the 1965 Hajnal hypothesis at Stanford University in 1999. Scholars from all over the world reviewed the contribution Hajnal's hypothesis made to our knowledge of historical demography. First, the hypothesis is placed in its historiographic context. Geography comes next. Hajnal distinguished Western Europe from the rest of the world because marriage there was late and non-universal. By contrast, in Eastern Europe, but even more so in Asia, young and universal marriage dominated. The second part of this book explores these geographic divisions, covering Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe, Japan, India and China. The third part of the volume introduces new issues and thus revises and even extends Hajnal's hypothesis into patriarchy, the role of children, women's labor, servants, and illegitimacy. This volume is the first in the series Life at the Extremes. The demography of Europe and China edited by Chuang Ying-Chang (Academia Sinica, Taiwan), Theo Engelen (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands) and Arthur P. Wolf (Stanford University, U.S.A.). Book jacket.

K.J. James examines linen handloom weavers as they encountered significant changes in the industry, and explores fluctuating definitions of men's and women's work in the trade. Using a case study of mid-Antrim's rural weavers, this book explores sexual divisions of labour, the gendering of skill, and work strategies in weaving households as it analyzes the persistence of hand production in Ireland's main textile sector. This work advances the study of hand producers in Irish industry, whose diverse experiences have been neglected in favour of urban factory labour in the study of the post-Famine Irish linen industry.

CSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800+ serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers.

Between the end of the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution, the long-established structures and practices of European agriculture and industry were slowly, disparately, but profoundly transformed. Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe, first published in 1997, narrates and analyzes the diverse patterns of economic change that permanently modified rural and urban production, altered Europe's economy and geography, and gave birth to new social classes. Broad in chronological and geographical scope and explicitly comparative, the book introduces readers to a wealth of information drawn from thoughout Mediterranean, east-central, and western Europe, as well as to the classic interpretations and current debates and revisions. The study incorporates scholarship on topics such as the world economy and women's work, and it discusses at length the impact of the emergent capitalist order on Europe's working people.