European University Institute Library

Bondage, labor and rights in Eurasia from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, Alessandro Stanziani

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-251) and index

index present

non fiction

Bondage

bibliography

843862185

Alessandro Stanziani

International studies in social history, volume 24

labor and rights in Eurasia from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries

For the first time, this book provides the global history of labor in Central Eurasia, Russia, Europe, and the Indian Ocean between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. It contests common views on free and unfree labor, and compares the latter to many Western countries where wage conditions resembled those of domestic servants. This gave rise to extreme forms of dependency in the colonies, not only under slavery, but also afterwards in form of indentured labor in the Indian Ocean and obligatory labor in Africa. Stanziani shows that unfree labor and forms of economic coercion were perfectly compatible with market development and capitalism, proven by the consistent economic growth that took place all over Eurasia between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. This growth was labor intensive: commercial expansion, transformations in agriculture, and the first industrial revolution required more labor, not less. Finally, Stanziani demonstrates that this world did not collapse after the French Revolution or the British industrial revolution, as is commonly assumed, but instead between 1870 and 1914, with the second industrial revolution and the rise of the welfare state.--, Provided by Publisher

Table of contents Acknowledgments Introduction PART I: BONDAGE IMAGINED Chapter 1. Second Serfdom and Wage-Earners in European and Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to the Mid-Nineteenth Century Chapter 2. Poor Laws, Management, and Labor Control in Russia and Britain, or the History of the Bentham Brothers in Russia PART II: THE ARCHITECTURE OF BONDAGE. SLAVES AND SERFS IN CENTRAL ASIA AND RUSSIA Chapter 3. Slavery and Bondage in Central Asia and Russia from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth Century Chapter 4. The Institutions of Serfdom Chapter 5. Labor and Dependence on Russian Estates PART III: OLD BONDAGE, NEW PRACTICES. A COMPARATIVE VIEW. RUSSIA, EUROPE, AND THE INDIAN OCEAN WORLDS Chapter 6. The Persistent Servant: Labor, Rules, and Social Hierarchies in France and Britain from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century Chapter 7. Bondage across the Ocean. Indentured Labor in the Indian Ocean General Conclusion: The Collapse and Resurgence of Bondage Bibliography Index