The studies collected here deal with social and cultural changes in Polish lands during the early phases of industrialisation, i.e. the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Attention is first given to the stabilisation of urban agglomerations and workers' communities, and the accompanying transformations in social status, family structure, and collective life and culture of the workers. An especial focus is the cultural transformations which occurred at the time of the 1905-1907 revolution in the Kingdom of Poland, incorporating it into tsarist Russia. In parallel with this, Professor Zarnowska has been concerned to examine the gender-determined inequalities of the life opportunities of women and men, and how these altered as social modernisation in Poland progressed. She looks at the changing legal and social status of women and their life chances, as well as the emergence of new social models of women's roles. Several studies are also devoted to the impact exerted by urban civilisation, as well as the growing professional activity of women upon the changes to cultural norms regulating the relations between women and men, as well as the development of women's aspirations in the family, society and culture.

The studies collected here deal with social and cultural changes in Polish lands during the early phases of industrialisation, i.e. the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Attention is first given to the stabilisation of urban agglomerations and workers' communities, and the accompanying transformations in social status, family structure, and collective life and culture of the workers. An especial focus is the cultural transformations which occurred at the time of the 1905-1907 revolution in the Kingdom of Poland, incorporating it into tsarist Russia. In parallel with this, Professor Zarnowska has been concerned to examine the gender-determined inequalities of the life opportunities of women and men, and how these altered as social modernisation in Poland progressed. She looks at the changing legal and social status of women and their life chances, as well as the emergence of new social models of women's roles. Several studies are also devoted to the impact exerted by urban civilisation, as well as the growing professional activity of women upon the changes to cultural norms regulating the relations between women and men, as well as the development of women's aspirations in the family, society and culture.

Drawing upon an impressive range of international sources, this book explores the late-nineteenth century partnership between Bradford worsted manufacturers the Briggs brothers and the German merchant Ernst Posselt, and their subsequent foreign direct investment in a modern factory and workers’ community at Marki, near Warsaw in Poland. Protectionism and increasing foreign competition are discussed, among many complex economic pressures on British industry, as likely catalysts for this enterprise and the general historiography of the Polish lands is explored to reveal a climate of extraordinary opportunity for well-capitalised foreign industrialists in this period. British, Polish and German press and archival documents, as well as Russian police and factory inspectors’ reports reveal the everyday experience of Polish factory workers and British consular correspondence provides fascinating insight into the machinations of the entrepreneurs and Warsaw’s cosmopolitan business community. Through the development and domination of market and raw materials sources, this venture is shown to have monopolised worsted manufacture in the Russian Empire, using state of the art technology to create, and modern marketing techniques to promote, its product range and evolving image. Marki was described in 1886 as ’a second edition of Saltaire’ and latterly as ’the Polish Bournville or Port Sunlight’, thus aspects of British and Polish social history are compared to assess the efficacy of introducing the model-community concept, in combination with a radical employment policy, to less industrially-developed Poland. The experiences of an expatriate community of skilled Yorkshire foremen and their instrumentality in diffusing British industrial technology throughout the Russian Empire are described. Against a backdrop of political instability and social upheaval, which dramatically impacted on business behaviour after 1905 and particularly during the interwar period of

Aspasia is an international peer-reviewed yearbook that brings out the best scholarship in the field of interdisciplinary women's and gender historyfocused on - and produced in - Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. In this region the field of women's and gender history has developed uevenly and has remained only marginally represented in the "international" canon.

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.

Domestic and caregiving work has been at the core of human existence throughout history. Poorly paid or even unpaid, this work has been assigned to women in most societes and occasionally to men often as enslaved, indentures, "adopted" workers. While some use domestic service as training for their own future independent households, others are confined to it for life and try to avoid damage to their identities (Part One). Employment conditions are even worse in colonizer-colonized dichotomies, in which the subalternized have to run the households of administrators who believe they are running an empire (Part Two). Societies and states set the discriminatory rules, those employed develop strategies of resistance or self-protection (Part Three). A team of international scholars addresses these issues globally with a deep historical background. Contributors are: Ally Shireen, Eileen Boris, Dana Cooper, Jennifer Fish, David R. Goodman, Mary Gene De Guzman, Jaira Harrington, Victoria Haskins, Dirk Hoerder, Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, Majda Hrženjak, Elizabeth Hutchison, Dimitris Kalantzopoulos, Bela Kashyap, Marta Kindler, Anna Kordasiewicz, Ms Lokesh, Sabrina Marchetti, Robyn Pariser, Jessica Richter, Magaly Rodríguez García, Raffaella Sarti, Adéla Souralová, Yukari Takai, and Andrew Urban.

From the start of its existence organized labor has been the voice of workers to improve their economic, social, and political positions. Beginning with small and very often illegal groups of involved workers it grew to the million member organizations that now exist around the globe. It is studied from many different perspectives – historical, economic, sociological, and legal – but it fundamentally involves the struggle for workers’ rights, human rights and social justice. In an often hostile environment, organized labor has tried to make the world a fairer place. Even though it has only ever covered a minority of employees in most countries, its effects on their political, economic, and social systems have been generally positive. Despite growing repression of organized labor in recent years, membership numbers are still growing for the benefit of all employees, including the non-members. Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor: Fourth Edition makes the history of this important feature of life easily accessible. The reader is guided through a chronology, an introductory essay, 600 entries on the subject, appendixes with statistical material, and an extensive bibliography including Internet sites. This book gives a thorough introduction into past and present for historians, economists, sociologists, journalists, activists, labor union leaders, and anyone interested in the development of this important issue.

Though often unnoticed by scholars of literature and history, Polish American women have for decades been fighting back against the patriarchy they encountered in America and the patriarchy that followed them from Poland. Through close readings of several Polish American and Polish Canadian novels and short stories published over the last seven decades, Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction traces the evolution of this struggle and women’s efforts to construct gendered and classed ethnicity. Focusing predominantly on work by North American born and immigrant authors that represents the Polish American Catholic tradition, Grażyna J. Kozaczka puts texts in conversation with other American ethnic literatures. She positions ethnic gender construction and performance at an intersection of social class, race, and sex. She explores the marginalization of ethnic female characters in terms of migration studies, theories of whiteness, and the history of feminist discourse. Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction tells the complex story of how Polish American women writers have shown a strong awareness of their oppression and sought empowerment through resistive and transgressive behaviors.

Around 1900 cities in Southern and Eastern Europe were persistently labeled "backward" and "delayed." Allegedly, they had no alternative but to follow the role model of the metropolises, of London, Paris or Vienna. This edited volume fundamentally questions this assumption. It shows that cities as diverse as Barcelona, Berdyansk, Budapest, Lviv, Milan, Moscow, Prague, Warsaw and Zagreb pursued their own agendas of modernization. In order to solve their pressing problems with respect to urban planning and public health, they searched for best practices abroad. The solutions they gleaned from other cities were eclectic to fit the specific needs of a given urban space and were thus often innovative. This applied urban knowledge was generated through interurban networks and multi-directional exchanges. Yet in the period around 1900, this transnational municipalism often clashed with the forging of urban and national identities, highlighting the tensions between the universal and the local. This interurban perspective helps to overcome nationalist perspectives in historiography as well as outdated notions of "center and periphery." This volume will appeal to scholars from a large number of disciplines, including urban historians, historians of Eastern and Southern Europe, historians of science and medicine, and scholars interested in transnational connections.

Gendering Migration demonstrates the significance of studying migration through the lens of gender and ethnicity and the contribution this perspective makes to migration histories. Through a consideration of the impact of migration on men and masculine identities as well as women and feminine identities, it extends our understanding of questions of gender and migration, focusing on the history of migration to Britain after the Second World War. The volume draws on oral narratives as well as documentary and archival research to demonstrate the important role played by gender and ethnicity, both in ideas and images of migrants and in migrants' own experiences. The contributors consider a range of migrant and refugee groups who came to Britain in the twentieth century: Caribbean, East-African Asian, German, Greek, Irish, Kurdish, Pakistani, Polish and Spanish. The fresh interpretations offered here make this an important new book for scholars and students of migration, ethnicity, gender and modern British history.