bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Some Reflections on Corsican Secret Societies in the Early Nineteenth Century
Authors: Savigear P.
Published: December 2008

Stendhal, in La Chartreuse de Parme, described a minister of police who

“se garde bien de nier la conspiration, au contraire, seul avec le prince, et armé jusqu'aux dents, il visite tous les coins des appartements, regarde sous les lits et, en un mot, se livre à une foule d'actions ridicules dignes d'une vieille femme.”

Thus it is when conspiracy is in the air, and such fears were not without parallel in the administrations of the European states in years between 1815 and 1848. The European cabinets in this “age of Metternich” were beset by a fear of revolution, international conspiracy, carbonari and illuminati, and a widespread suspicion of subversion. The picture of clandestine organisation whether drawn in Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Rome or Milan, was not vastly different nor entirely fictitious. The period was punctuated with armed revolts, coups, arrests of agitators, and the appearance of secret societies, often republican, dedicated to the overthrow of the existing order. It is not surprising that contemporaries and indeed some historians of the period exaggerated the links between these phenomena, even to the extent of occasionally suggesting that one principal organisation was at work with a series of national variants creating an international network. Revolt in Piedmont, Naples and Spain was readily conceived to have a connection with attempted coups elsewhere in Europe. Buonarroti, Mazzini, La Cecilia, Victor Cousin, General Lafayette and many others were observed by the police of Europe as they moved about the continent engaged on legitimate business and perhaps on work of a more subversive nature. The suspicion was constantly present that such men were the agents of international revolution. This was the case not least in the ranks of the French administration, where carbonarist activity came into prominence in 1821 and 1822 and a fear of traffic in revolution remained until the middle of the century.
Soviets in Britain: The Leeds Convention of 1917
Authors: White Stephen
Published: December 2008

The Labour and Socialist Convention held at Leeds on 3 June 1917 was held expressly “to follow Russia”. It adopted four resolutions, the most celebrated of which called for the establishment of what have been termed “extra-Parliamentary Soviets with sovereign powers”. It was described shortly afterwards as “the most spectacular piece of utter folly for which [the Socialist left] during the whole war-period, was responsible – which is saying not a little”. A contemporary journal held that many of the ILP men had become “avowed Syndicalists or Bolsheviks”; and the King, in conversation with Will Thorne after the latter's visit to Russia on behalf of the government, expressed some concern about what had taken place. He “seemed greatly disturbed at the famous Leeds Conference”, Thorne recorded. Thome's reply, however, had “seemed to relieve his mind”. F. W. Jowett, a member of the group which issued invitations to the Convention, referred to it to the end of his life as the “highest point of revolutionary fervour he had seen in this country”.
Socialists and Bureaucrats: The Blum Government and the French Administration, 1936–37
Authors: Wall Irwin M.
Published: December 2008

The failure of the Popular Front government of 1936–1937 was at least two-fold: from the national standpoint it was able neither to formulate a foreign policy of anti-fascism nor to bring France out of the economic crisis; from the narrower political perspective it was unable to prevent a growing sense of disillusionment and recrimination among its constituents. Both aspects have received increasing attention from historians in recent years, although not always with sufficient regard for the extent to which the two problems might be separable. Greater intervention on behalf of the Spanish Republicans, for example, might not have saved the Spanish Republic, but even so would have gone far toward satisfying Blum's constituents and blunting communist criticism of his government. Abandonment of the forty-hour week, on the other hand, while adding to the deceptions of the left, might have permitted the achievement of the economic upturn upon which the hopes of the Popular Front ultimately rested. Spain and finances – war and economics, the twin chief concerns of western civilization in our century as A. J. P. Taylor has facetiously suggested – are the issues in terms of which most analysts of Blum's double failure have proceeded. But there is another which may have been equally important, and which appears to have been of greater significance in the eyes of contemporaries. This was the question of the relationship of the Blum government and the French administration. The increasingly blurred distinction between politics and administration characteristic of contemporary Gaullism, as well as the rigidity and resistance to innovation typical of the crisis-prone French bureaucratic style, suggest in any case a re-evaluation of the recent past in terms what Michel Crozier has aptly called “the bureaucratic phenomenon”.
Daily Herald V. Daily Citizen, 1912–15
Authors: Holton R. J.
Published: December 2008

The myth or reality of widespread social unrest in Britain in the period immediately before the First World War has attracted increasing attention among historians in recent years. Debate has centred upon two main themes, namely the character and impact of contemporary labour unrest, and the situation and prospects of the Liberal Party. Was British labour fundamentally disaffected from existing forms of industrial relations and from Parliamentary democracy? Was the pre-1914 Liberal Party already in decline and unable to withstand the advance of the Labour Party? Several recent writers have returned sceptical or largely negative conclusions to questions of this kind. In so doing they have sought to dispel a popularly held notion of incipient social breakdown and imminent social change, proposed amongst others by Dangerfield in The Strange Death of Liberal England.
„Er soll an der Organisation festhalten”: Zum Wortlaut von Lassalles Testament
Authors: Na'aman Shlomo
Published: December 2008

Lassalles Testament ist das entscheidende Zeugnis dafür, wie ganz persönlich Lassalle den ADAV als seine eigenste Schöpfung auffaßte, wie sehr er die Organisation mit seiner Person identifizierte. Obwohl der Lassalle unwandelbar wohlgesinnte Franz Mehring die von Lassalle ausgesetzten Legate und Renten als dem Parteiinteresse dienend interpretierte, konnte er doch nicht umhin, das Testament als verhängnisvoll für die Weiterentwicklung des ADAV zu bezeichnen. Im zweiten Kapitel des vierten Buches seiner Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie findet sich dazu die folgende Passage: „Verhängnisvoller erwiesen sich die Bestimmungen des Testaments, die sich unmittelbar auf den Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeiterverein bezogen. Lassalle empfahl dem Vereine, den Frankfurter Bevollmächtigten Bernhard Becker zu seinem Nachfolger zu wählen, und diesem band er auf die Seele, an der Organisation festzuhalten, die den Verein zum Siege führen werde, Verfügungen, die sich als Reflexe der Vahlteichschen Opposition erklären, aber, statt alte Verwirrung zu schlichten, nur neue Verwirrung angerichtet haben.”
The Plague of the Blue Locusts
Authors: Storch Robert D. , Engels F.
Published: December 2008

The implantation of a modern police in the industrial districts of Northern England resulted from a new consensus among the propertied classes that it was necessary to create a professional, bureaucratically organized lever of urban discipline and permanently introduce it into the heart of working-class communities. The coming of the new police represented a significant extension into hitherto geographically peripheral areas of both the moral and political authority of the state. This was to be accomplished by the creation of a powerful and quite modern device – a bureaucracy of official morality. By 1840 it came to be “an axiom in police that you guard St. James by watching St. Giles”. This was a novel attitude. Eighteenth-century governments and the upper classes in general were surely apprehensive of the movements of the lower orders, but did not consider it either useful or necessary to watch St Giles all the time. One could learn what one needed to know about what was on the collective mind of St Giles when it rioted; one might even use or manipulate its riots in useful ways as the reform movement of 1830–32 did with great success. Previous to the nineteenth century urban disorder was not necessarily perceived as subversive of the social order. “Provided that the ruler did his duty, the populace was prepared to defend him with enthusiasm. But if he did not, it rioted until he did. This mechanism was perfectly understood by both sides, and caused no political problems beyond a little occasional destruction of property […]. Since the riots were not directed against the social system, public order could remain surprisingly lax by modern standards.”
Demarcation Disputes in British Shipbuilding Before 1914
Authors: Robertson Paul L.
Published: December 2008

Matters of labour organisation and control are clearly related to the progress of mechanisation. Economic growth results from increases in productivity brought about by management's combination of trained men and “skillful” machines in productive work. In isolation neither management, labour, nor capital can in themselves achieve sustained growth in the output of goods and services; the efficient co-ordination of a trained and disciplined workforce with equipment designed to perform specific activities is always required. In a period of changing technology such as the nineteenth century, however, the proper co-ordination may be difficult to achieve because the introduction of workers with new talents or machines which can perform multiple functions is apt to disturb existing work routines, upset prevailing cost relationships, and force management to reorganise entire sections of the productive process. This is particularly true if the various functions performed by new types of machinery have hitherto been assigned to more than one man or group of men.
Revolutionary Syndicalism in the Italian Labor Movement: The Agrarian Strikes of 1907–08 in the Province of Parma
Authors: Sykes Thomas R.
Published: December 2008

In the decade before World War I, revolutionary syndicalists and reformist socialists clashed repeatedly in the Italian labor movement. The reformist socialists, who maintained a hegemony throughout this period, advocated cooperation and compromises with the bourgeoisie and the government, supported by the Socialist Party in Parliament, to secure socio-economic benefits for the workers. The revolutionary syndicalists, who began to present an alternative to this strategy in 1905, favored direct action by workers through the unions to seize advantages from the bourgeoisie and reinforce the class consciousness of the proletariat. They asserted that the strike was the most effective means to win socio-economic reforms and bring about changes in politics. At the same time, they believed that it attracted converts and strengthened the union movement. The revolutionary syndicalists also argued that striking workers acquired initiative and combativeness, sentiments of unity and solidarity, and developed a heroic ethos of duty, dedication and sacrifice. The challenge of a strike, on the other hand, restored energy to the bourgeoisie: it transformed the property owners into aggressive, worthy opponents of the proletariat. As illusions of collaboration disappeared in the heat of battle, the revolutionary syndicaUsts predicted that the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie would become more intense and intransigent.
A Contribution to the Scientific Study of the History of Trade Unions
Authors: Van Tijn Th.
Published: December 2008

The purpose of this article is to make a contribution to the scientific – that is to say, the analytical and explanatory – historiography of workers' trade unions in individual industries. The question to which an answer is sought is, “What factors determine the success of a trade union of the workers in a particular branch of industry ?” A trade union of workers is here defined as a sales cartel for labour power. By the success of such a trade union is meant its recognition by the employers concerned as an agent selling the labour power of the workers it represents; the recognition becomes a fact when wages and other conditions of employment are determined in the framework of a national Collectieve Arbeids-Overeenkomst (CAO) – a collective labour agreement, in which the trade union is a party in a formal contract.
The National Free Labour Association
Authors: Alderman Geoffrey
Published: December 2008

The origins of the British Labour Party are many and complex. They have formed the subject of innumerable works of historical scholarship and of journalism, for it is possible to tell the story equally forcefully in terms either of political theory or of personalities. But no matter how much weight may be given to the role of political ideas, and no matter how much importance one may attach to the appearance of the “right” men and women at the “rightrd; time, the crucial part played by the trade-union movement cannot be denied. It was the growing support derived from the trade unions which breathed life into the Labour Representation Committee after 1900, and this in spite of strongly-entrenched hostility from within the trade unions to socialism and all its works. The stages by which the unions became reconciled to, and then enthusiastic supporters of, the Labour Party are well known. Self-interest, not socialism, prompted the unions to support separate labour representation in Parliament. Until January 1901 only 29 per cent of those unions affiliated to the Trades Union Congress had decided to back the Labour Representation Committee. In the space of two years that proportion rose to over 56 per cent.
The Smacksmen of the North Sea
Authors: Rule John
Published: December 2008

The modern history of British deep-sea fishing begins with the railway expansion of the mid-nineteenth century. Rapid transport and the increasing use of ice as a preservative made it possible for fresh sea fish to enter the diets of the inhabitants of inland towns. Fresh sea fish was regarded as almost a luxury food before the railway age, yet by the third quarter of the nineteenth century, it had become a major protein source for the working classes of the industrial towns, and the fried-fish shop had become a working-class institution. The sea-fishing industry underwent a vast market-induced expansion. The census of 1841 enumerated only 24,000 males as being employed in fishing. By 1881 there were 58,000. If the inland consumer ever gave thought to the fishermen who supplied his table, he probably conjured up a picture of a weather-beaten village fisherman going daily to the fishing grounds to return in the evening to his waiting wife and children, bringing the silver harvest of the sea. While he had been at sea his family had busied themselves baiting lines, making and mending nets, and, in the case of the fish wives, performing their traditional function of selling the catch. Such a picture may have been broadly true of the fishing villages of Scotland, Cornwall, Northumberland or the South coast, but a feature of the second half of the nineteenth century was the creation of a new kind of fisherman who crewed the sailing trawlers of the North Sea. The expansion of the market has coincided with the discovery of the rich beds of the North Sea, and to such an extent did the North Sea trawling ports come to dominate the fishing industry that, by the beginning of the twentieth century, Hull and Grimsby were together receiving as much fish as all the remaining ports of England and Wales put together. Those who toiled on the grey North Sea were known as the “smacksmen”, and it is the extreme nature of their occupation which is the subject of this study.
The Social Composition of the Nazi Party in Eutin, 1925–32
Authors: Stokes Lawrence D.
Published: December 2008

The supporters of the Nazi party prior to 1933 can be divided into two groups. Much the larger of these were the millions of voters who, beginning in the summer of 1930, cast their ballots for Hitler and his party. The second group, whose adherence to the Nazi movement included but also went beyond voting for its candidates in elections, were the formal members of the NSDAP. Between February 1930 and May 1932, they increased in number from approximately 170–180,000 to some 850–900,000.
The Independent Labour Party and the Yorkshire Miners: The Barnsley By-Election of 1897
Authors: Rubinstein David
Published: December 2008

The Independent Labour Party was formed early in 1893, at a time when its founders hoped that reformist, undogmatic Socialism would soon attract the support of large numbers of working men. This was a hope shared by others committed to a more rigorous Socialist ideology. Even Friedrich Engels, convinced that the formation of a political party sustained by the working class was the task of greatest importance, hailed the ILP as the body desired by the old members of the International of the 1860's. But the early hopes were short-lived. Everyone of its twenty-eight candidates was defeated at the General Election of 1895, even Keir Hardie, the party's leader, who had been elected at West Ham without Liberal opposition in 1892. Many of the candidates polled well, but the overall result was a deep disappointment. In four subsequent by-elections between May 1896 and October 1897, ILP candidates of proven ability, while finding considerable support among the electorate, finished last on each occasion, and the trend of election results grew worse rather than better. The ILP polled thousands of votes rather than the few hundreds of the Marxist body, the Social Democratic Federation, but this was small consolation. In terms of membership and general party activity the years after 1895 also marked a regression. Gradually Hardie and his colleages became convinced that winning the workers to Socialism by means of the ILP alone was not a feasible strategy. There was no way, in the short term, to further the cause of independent labour without the adhesion of the non-Socialist trade unions. This inevitably meant the soft-pedalling of Socialism. Defeated as a separate force, the ILP was forced to accept the idea of an alliance with the trade unions, in the hope that any form of labour party would first become independent of the Liberals and eventually Socialist. The first assumption proved correct, the second on the whole incorrect, but it is difficult to see what other course could have been pursued at the time. Thus the years between 1895 and 1900, the vital pre-history of the Labour Party, were years which were to stamp it at its birth in 1900 as a party of practical trade unionists, fighting for limited aims, with a smattering of Socialists whose influence failed to dominate the party programme or strategy.
Fabianism and Guild Socialism: Two Views of Democracy
Authors: Wright Anthony W.
Published: December 2008

In this century British socialism has rarely engaged in serious internal debate about the fundamental concepts of its political vocabulary. In this respect, as in others, British socialism has been true to the wider traditions of British political life. There has, of course, been much vigorous controversy on policy and programme, but also a remarkable absence of genuine doctrinal debate, certainly as compared with continental socialisms. A major exception to this, however, is to be found in the decade which has the First World War at its centre. Indeed, this may be regarded as the most creative period in British socialist thought in the twentieth century (notwithstanding the superficially more turbulent 1930's); and it is a period which ends, interestingly, in the early 1920's, when Labour becomes securely established in the world of parliamentary politics.
The New Poor Law and the Struggle for Union Chargeability
Authors: Caplan Maurice
Published: December 2008

While much has been heard in recent times of the evils attaching to “the principles of 1834”, other important aspects of the New Poor Law have been seriously neglected. The laws of settlement and removal were unjust and inhumane, and the system of parochial rating was anomalous, uneven and, indeed, thoroughly iniquitous. One of the main features of the Poor Law Amendment Act had been the grouping of the parishes of England and Wales into unions of parishes. Those of a medium-sized town usually constituted one union, while in the countryside the typical union tended to comprise all the parishes within a radius of up to about ten miles of a country town, its centre. Under the Act, the administration of the Poor Law was based on the union and not, as heretofore, on the parish; yet the latter remained the financial unit, each parish being chargeable for its own Poor Law expenditure. This uneven arrangement prevented the effective operation of the Act, and, as will be shown, had unhappy consequences. Attempts at reform in these matters were strenuously opposed in Parliament between 1845 and 1865, and only in the latter year was the Union Chargeability Act passed.
The 1842 “Plug Plot” in Stockport
Authors: Reid T. D. W. , Reid Naomi
Published: December 2008

The origins and nature of the strike movement which affected the manufacturing districts of England during the summer of 1842 have been subject to a variety of interpretations. The very use of the term “Plug Plot” suggests some sinister motivation, and certainly belief in the existence of a conspiracy became widespread as the strike proceeded. According to the Manchester Guardian
The Chartist Prisoners, 1839–41
Authors: Godfrey Christopher
Published: December 2008

Historians of Chartism face a dilemma. On the one hand, they are obliged to interpret this national political movement on the national level, to attempt to explain why millions of British working men and women were engaged in organized political activity over several decades. But, on the other hand, many of the richest sources on Chartism are found on the local level. Older histories of the movement treated Chartism from a national perspective, but failed to take note of many of its complexities. More recently, a good deal of local research has rigorously tested our assumptions about Chartism, but the task of carefully analyzing the movement on the national level still remains.
Bakunin and the United States
Authors: Avrich Paul
Published: December 2008

“MIKHAIL ALEKSANDROVICH BAKUNIN is in San Francisco ”, announced the front page of Herzen's Kolokol November 1861. “HE IS FREE!Bakunin left Siberia via Japan and is on his way to England. We joyfully bring this news to all Bakunin's friends.” Arrested in Chemnitz in May 1849, Bakunin had been extradited to Russia in 1851 and, after six years in the Peter-Paul and Schlürg fortresses, condemned to perpetual banishment in Siberia. On June 17, 1861, however, he began his dramatic escape. Setting out from Irkutsk, he sailed down the Amur to Nikolaevsk, where he boarded a government vessel plying the Siberian coast. Once at sea, he transferred to an American sailing ship, the Vickery, which was trading in Japanese ports, and reached Japan on August 16th. A month later, on September 17th, he sailed from Yokohama on another American vessel, the Carrington, bound for San Francisco. He arrived four weeks later, completing, in Herzen's description, “the very longest escape in a geographical sense”.
The Little Buttymen in the Forest of Dean, 1870–86
Authors: Fisher Chris
Published: December 2008

On a superficial inspection, miners' unionism in the Forest of Dean between 1871 and 1886 does not appear to have been atypical of miners' unionism in general in Britain in that period: neither in the fluctuations in its strength nor in its policies. Like the unions in most other coal districts, that in Dean flourished in the economic boom of the early 1870's, fell into weakness after 1875 and then revived in the early 1880's. In each of those phases the policies of the Dean miners were much like those of other miners. They demanded increases in wages, resisted reductions in wages, insisted upon the installation of weighing machines at pit bank, and sought to have winding hours reduced. Demands for the introduction of a sliding scale, to govern the movement of hewing rates in relation to coal prices, and for the establishment of conciliation and arbitration machinery, were common to many miners' unions at both local and national level. With those demands went the common rhetoric of the identity of interests of capital and labour. All this is the familiar content of that moderate, cautious, market-conscious approach to dealings with the masters which dominated miners' organisations for most of the second half of the century.
Employers' Organizations in Mid-Victorian England
Authors: Yarmie Andrew H.
Published: December 2008

Despite the attention paid by economic and labour historians to mid-Victorian trade unionism, the development, organization and objectives of the employers' counter-organizations have been neglected. Research on this subject has tended to concentrate on the post-1880 period and has to a great extent overlooked the origins of the employers' offensive tactics. The two major lines of attack which were to be adopted by employers in the 'eighties were already taking shape in the mid century. Employers' industrial organizations had been formed to counter unionism, while employers' pressure groups attempted to resist what employers described as “grand-motherly” governmental interference. The aim of this article will be to conduct a preliminary investigation of the origins and strategy of employers' organizations, and to evaluate their impact in the industrial and legal fields.
L'Espagne, la Commune et l'Internationale
Authors: Serrano Carlos Seco
Published: December 2008

Les événements qui se produisirent en France lors du printemps de 1871 eurent une triple répercussion sur la situation en Espagne. Ils constituèrent en premier lieu la pierre de touche des tensions existant entre les groupes politiques dressés contre la Reine Isabelle II en 1868. Ils encouragèrent ensuite une réaction de plus en plus violente des groupes sociaux au pouvoir contre les organisations ouvrières de l'A.I.T. surtout, qu'on assimilait purement et simplement aux Communards, Ils constituèrent enfin, du fait même de cette réaction d'une part, par le truchement des émigrations provoquées par les persécutions déclenchées contre l'Internationale et son idéologic d'autre part, l'un des facteurs essentiels de la propagation de cette idéologie. C'est à l'étude détaillée de cette triple répercussion de la Commune sur la situation espagnole aux environs de 1870 que nous allons procéder.
Edouard Vaillant
Authors: Howorth Jolyon
Published: December 2008

A son retour d'exil en 1880, Vaillant ne voit, dans un avenir immédiat, qu'une tâche principale: l'organisation d'un grand parti socialiste national, se donnant pour but premier la conquête du pouvoir politique. Nominalement lié à l'organisation blanquiste issue de la proscription londonienne, le Comité révolutionnaire central, il s'établit loin de Paris pour se vouer à l'organisation du parti dans son département du Cher; c'est le premier témoignage de son désaccord avec les représentants d'idées, de tactiques devenues à ses yeux surannées: c'étaient celles du Second Empire. Pour cette tâche d'organisation il a craint d'abord de s'allier avec Jules Guesde, le passé de celui-ci étant trop équivoque. Mais Vaillant se rend compte bientôt qu'entre Guesde et lui existe une communauté certaine d'esprit touchant cette œuvre immédiate d'organisation; dans les années quatre-vingts, les rapports entre les deux hommes se resserrent jusqu'à atteindre, au moment de la crise boulangiste, le niveau d'une véritable unité d'action. Au cours des années quatre-vingt-dix, après le départ du C.R.C. des éléments entraînés dans l'aventure boulangiste par Henri Rochefort, Vaillant dirige son parti vers une organisation ouverte et active sur une triple base: action politique sous toutes ses formes, y compris l'usage de toutes les fonctions électives; action économique de toute espèce; action démocratique, création d'un mouvement de masse entraînant, dans le courant socialiste, les forces vives de la nation. Poursuivant constamment cette forme d'action il s'éloigne des «doctrinaires» du P.O.F. pour trouver, pendant quelques années, en Jaurès un compagnon de lutte avec lequel il s'est senti sûrement plus d'affinités.
Les Guesdistes, la deuxieme Egalite et la Commune (1880)
Authors: Girault Jacques
Published: December 2008

Comment le mouvement socialiste français renaissant a-t-il vu la Commune? Qu'en a-t-il retenu? La Commune est-elle un modèle, un mythe ou une étape de la lutte vers la Révolution? Nous avons choisi la deuxième série du journal guesdiste L'Egalité, publiée du 21 janvier 1880 au 25 août 1880: «Pour la première fois en France, un ‹journal ouvrier› au plein sens du mot», comme l'écrit Marx à Sorge en novembre 1880. Cet hebdomadaire doctrinal paraît après le congrès de Marseille d'octobre 1879, lors de la phase préparatoire à l'adoption d'un programme socialiste commun. Quelle place la Commune a-t-elle tenue lors de cette élaboration?
Petr Lavrov
Authors: Sapir Boris
Published: December 2008

Petr Lavrovich Lavrov, a recognized leader of Russian Populism (Narodnichestvo), not only witnessed on the spot the events preceding and following March 18, 1871, he also analyzed them in a monograph and often reverted to them in his writings and speeches. He arrived in Paris on March 13, 1870, after having escaped from one of the northern areas of his native country, where he was deported to by the Russian authorities. He was 47 years old and enjoyed the well earned name of an able homme de lettres and defender of causes dear to the radical intelligentsia. Moreover, in a study called Historical Letters (1868–1869), composed in the solitude of his deportation, he succeeded in formulating the aspirations of the Russian revolutionary youth.
Imagination and Revolution: Guidelines for a Historiography of the Literature of the Paris Commune of 1871
Authors: Schulkind Eugene
Published: December 2008

The purposes of this study are threefold: to consider the possible significance of literary art created by supporters of the Commune of 1871; to assess the contribution made by past studies of this literature; and to suggest an approach to its effective utilization as historical documentation.
Le Roman et la Commune
Authors: Roche Anne
Published: December 2008

Le roman sur la Commune, qu'il se propose d'exalter la Commune ou de la rabaisser, qu'il ait un but politique et pédagogique, ou également des ambitions esthétiques, n'en a pas moins une base commune à tous ses auteurs: la volonté de décrire «la réalité». La notion flaubertiennedu «livre sur rien», l'idée qu'un texte naît et se développe selon des lois qui lui sont propres et qui n'ont rien de commun avec la «réalité», semblent complètement étrangères à nos romanciers. Certes, il leur arrive parfois de dépasser le naturalisme et le réalisme (par exemple, Cladel à la fin d'I.N.R.I., Zola à la fin de La Débâcle), mais cela reste au niveau de la pratique du texte: leur théorie du roman reste globalement prisonnière de la description du réel, avec toutes les conséquences formelles, mais aussi politiques, qu'entraîne ce choix.
Local Manifestations of the Urquhartite Movement
Authors: Salt John
Published: December 2008

David Urquhart (1805–1877), the inspirer of the agitation that took his name, has been succinctly described as “an ex-diplomatic official who carried his Russuphobia to an almost pathological extreme”. As an official at the British Embassy in Constantinople, Urquhart, whose admiration for the Turks knew no bounds, had tried to engineer a war between Britain and Russia. In his eccentric way he ascribed his subsequent removal from a position of diplomatic responsibihty to the work of Russian agents in the British Foreign Office. The phobia grew. David Urquhart, a man of compelling charm and deep idealism, came to regard the Czar as the Antichrist and to see his minions everywhere. In particular, Urquhart turned his attack on Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary who had recalled him to England in July, 1837, and whom he now represented as an agent in an international conspiracy.
Dienstbotenlektüre im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert in Deutschland
Authors: Engelsing Rolf
Published: December 2008

Wir wollen es keinem Leser verargen, wenn er befürchtet, daß ihn in diesem Aufsatz ein Kehraus der Kulturgeschichte erwartet. Hat die Disziplin nicht längst ihren Offenbarungseid geleistet und, was irgend an Werten greifbar war, an ihre Hauptgläubiger, z. B. an die Diszi-plinen Volkskunde und Geistesgeschichte abgetreten? Man wird es aber auch uns nicht verargen, wenn wir uns dagegen verwahren, das Thema einer Marotte halber gewählt zu haben und bei einer Art der Geschichtsbetrachtung und Geschichtsschreibung stehen geblieben zu sein, von der es schon zur Zeit Wilhelm Giesebrechts sarkastisch hieß, sie sei „eine Olla podrida von tausend Wunderlichkeiten”, und von der wir selbst behaupten, sie sei nicht erst durch eine wissenschaftliche Entwicklung überholt worden, sondern ihrem Wesen nach von Anfang an überholungsbedürftig gewesen. Obwohl wir diese Art Kulturgeschichte nicht im Sinn haben, wollen wir das Problem der Kulturgeschichte nicht ganz auf sich beruhen lassen. Denn da sie nun einmal schon zur Zeit Giesebrechts „ein so vieldeutiger und viel mißdeuteter Name” war, kann man sich nicht einfach dadurch sicherstellen, daß man darauf verweist, daß in der Epoche des Imperialismus die Kulturgeschichte, die sich in der baürgerlichen Gesellschaft vieler Anhänger erfreute, die aber vom Staat allenfalls gleichgültig betrachtet wurde und kaum über Lehrstühle verfügte, von der Politischen Geschichte, die nach der Gründung des Deutschen Reiches von der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft aufgewertet wurde, dem jungen nationalen Machtstaat vonnoten war und über zahlreiche Lehrstühle verfügte, in einem sehr ungleichen Kampf aus dem Felde geschlagen wurde. Genügte es, hierauf zu verweisen, so ließe sich nach dem Spruch: nomen est omen auf das allgemeine Los der Besiegten kommen und behaupten, die Kritik an der Kulturgeschichte sei bloße Kritik am Namen Kulturgeschichte, Kritik an einer ohnmächtigen und verdrängten Disziplin, Kritik, die Auswüchse statt der Sache selbst zur Zielscheibe nahm und fälschlich „eine Olla podrida von tausend Wunderlichkeiten” dem Gespött von Zunft, Verwaltung und Öffentlichkeit preisgab, während beispielsweise einem Lamprecht doch nur etliche Schludrigkeiten und Irrtümer nachzusagen waren. Ist aber nicht Dietrich Schäfer, der Herold der triumphierenden Politischen Geschichtsschreibung, in-zwischen mit seinem ganzen System, aller Stichhaltigkeit des Détails ungeachtet, hinfällig und anrüchig geworden?
Plenkhanov in War and Revolution, 1914–17
Authors: Baron Samuel H.
Published: December 2008

Despite the fact that the views of Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856–1918) on the World War cannot be studied in his voluminous collected works – the editor abruptly terminated the edition with an article Plekhanov published on the eve of the war's outbreak – his position is broadly familiar to students of Russian and international socialism. Thanks to his substantial published writings from September 1914 to March 1917 scattered through the press of at least five countries, a two volume collection of his articles and speeches for the remainder of 1917, and several brief secondary accounts, it is possible to trace Plekhanov's wartime outlook. By contrast, little is known of his political initiatives, associations and conflicts during the war years. A considerable share of his correspondence and other personal papers – the kind of material likely to illuminate these aspects – has been printed by the Dom Plekhanova, the Leningrad repository that holds almost all of them.
Bolshevik Activity amongst the Working Women of Petrograd in 1917
Authors: Donald M.
Published: December 2008

This article attempts to examine the activity of the Bolshevik Party amongst the working women of Petrograd in 1917, and in particular the conflicting Bolshevik attitudes towards work amongst women. The study has been limited to Petrograd, because the situation there, while not typical, was of vital importance. The Petrograd Committee was a major policy-making body within the party, and a wide spectrum of attitudes towards work amongst women existed at this time within the Petrograd party, and a wide spectrum of attitudes towards work amongst women existed at this time within the Petrograd party. The major primary sources used for this article were the 1917 editions ofPravda, and 13 issues ofRabotnitsa, from May 1917 to January 1918.
Paternalism and Democracy in the Politics of Robert Owen
Authors: Claeys Gregory
Published: December 2008

Popular conceptions of the politics of Robert Owen have changed surprisingly little since the early nineteenth century. Within a short time of the advent of his national campaign for Poor Law reform, Owen came under attack from radical parliamentary reformers on the grounds of his ostensible political conservatism. Among the rumours then afloat among the reformers, Richard Carlile later wrote, one was “that Mr. Owen was an instrument of the Government, to bring forward this plan of providing for the lower and poorer classes, for the purpose of drawing their attention from Parliamentary Reform”.
A Social Analysis of KPD Supporters: The Hamburg Insurrectionaries of October 1923
Authors: Peterson Larry
Published: December 2008

Although much has been written about the history of the German Communist Party, little is known about who actually belonged to it or supported it. Yet knowledge of the social composition of German Communism is an important, in many ways crucial, factor in assessing the role of the KPD in the development of the German workers' movement during the Weimar Republic. Aside from a census of party members conducted by the national leadership in 1927, and voting returns in elections, there are no national sources on which to base an analysis of the social structure of the Communist movement in Germany. Local and regional sources, though sporadically preserved and until now little exploited, offer an alternative way to determine the social bases of German Communism. This article contributes to the history of the KPD by attempting to analyze one source about support for German Communism in a major industrial city. In October 1923 the KPD staged an insurrection in Hamburg, resulting in the arrest and conviction of over 800 persons. A social analysis of these known insurrectionaries can indicate some of the sources of support for the KPD and suggest some of the ways in which the KPD fit into the history of the German working class and workers' movement.
Violence and Political Protest in Ming and Qing China
Authors: Zurndorfer Harriet T.
Published: December 2008

Thomas T. Meadows, an experienced British diplomat in China during the nineteenth century and author ofThe Chinese and Their Rebellions, wrote: “Of all nations that have attained a certain degree of civilization, the Chinese are the least revolutionary and the most rebellious.” Meadows had ample opportunity to make such a remark since he was witness to some of China's fiercest rebellions, those committed by the Taipings, the Nien and Moslem groups during the time of his tour. These revolts, although mass-based and widespread, were put down with particular ferocity by the Qing monarchy. Meadows's remark directs attention to the delicate question of when does a rebellion become a revolution? In the case of these movements, they did not become revolutions because there was no transformation either in the structure of Chinese society or in the system of political power. These incidents may have been “revolutionary situations”, but they did not have “revolutionary outcomes”.
The Social Democratic Federation and Popular Agitation amongst the Unemployed in Edwardian Manchester
Authors: Kidd Alan J.
Published: December 2008

The Social Democratic Federation is usually regarded by historians as of only marginal importance to the working-class movement of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To support this view reference is often made to its naive and mechanistic interpretations of Marxist theory, its small membership and sectarian nature, and the futility of its concentration upon political activity amongst the unemployed at the expense of support for the industrial action of trade unionists and the Parliamentary representation of labour. The stereotype of a narrow, doctrinaire sect with incompetent leadership contains more than a grain of truth, but like most stereotypes conveys only a partial verity. Too often it is used as an excuse for neglecting the SDF on the precept that it was irrelevant and “misguided” in its conception of the right path for the working-class movement. The comparative failure of the SDF, however, owed at least as much to the deeply engrained reformist and trade-unionist tradition amongst the English working class as it did to the inadequacies of the SDF itself.
International Class Solidarity or Foreign Interventions?
Authors: Jansen Marc
Published: December 2008

More or less by definition, civil war refers to an armed conflict between citizens of the same country. However, the two outstanding European examples of this century, the civil wars in Spain and Russia, were in fact complicated by foreign intervention. Indeed, in the case of Spain, intervention by foreign powers proved decisive.
Recasting Bourgeois Britain?
Authors: Nottingham Christopher J.
Published: December 2008

InRecasting Bourgeois Europe, his study of the responses of the major States of Western Europe to the conditions created by the First World War, Charles Maier makes only, according to his standards, passing reference to Great Britain. Initially this must appear quite reasonable, for if one compares the post-war situation of Britain with that of most of Continental Europe it must seem that Britain escaped, or at least experienced with a greatly reduced intensity, the disorder which beset other nations. It might therefore be assumed that the efforts of the British political elite to adjust to the post-war world are less worthy of attention than those of their Continental counterparts.
Explanations for Law Reform: The case of Wartime Labour Legislation in Britain, 1915–1916
Authors: Rubin Gerry R.
Published: December 2008

Among the various theoretical insights which seek to explain the emergence (and, for our purposes, the amendment) of ‘social’ legislation, the interpretation advanced by Oliver MacDonagh to explain nineteenth century governmental developments is widely known. This approach, which ascribes legal changes to the ‘pressure of events’, is built upon a five-stage model, progressing from the ‘discovery’ of an ‘evil’, to its administrative solution by means of legislative enactment. MacDonagh's formulation attracted, in turn, the criticism of those students of nineteenth century government growth, who pointed to the influence of Benthamite ideas as the forcing-house of change. Latterly, John Goldthorpe has sought to place emphasis on the role of social movements in galvanising legal reforms, suggesting how different interest groups might vie with one another in a pluralistic struggle for success.
The Path Not Taken: The Anarchist Alternative in Chinese Socialism, 1921–1927
Authors: Dirlik Arif
Published: December 2008

Until the late 1920s, anarchism was still a significant presence in Chinese radical thinking and activity, and till the middle of the decade, gave serious competition to the Communists. The essay discusses the nature of the anarchist movement in China, anarchist criticism of Bolshevik Marxism, and anarchist revolutionary strategy and activity during 1921–1927. It argues that while anarchists were quite innovative with regard to revolutionary strategy, their repudiation of organized power deprived them of the ability to coordinate revolutionary activity on a national scale, and what success they achieved remained local and short-lived. Indeed, the Communists were able to make better use of anarchist tactics than were the anarchists themselves. Anarchist critique of power rested on a denial of a center to society (and history). While this undercut the anarchists' ability to organize the revolutionary movement, it is also revealing of a basic problem of socialist revolution: the problem of democracy. In ignoring the anarchist critique of power, the successful revolutionaries deprived themselves of a critical perspective on the problem of socialist revolution, and were left at the mercy of the new structures of power that they brought into existence. Hence the importance of recalling anarchism.
“Rank and Filism” and Labour History: A Rejoinder to Price and Cronin
Authors: Zeitlin Jonathan
Published: December 2008

Few theoretical paradigms in labour history are so deeply entrenched as “rank and filism”. It was only to be expected, therefore, that a frontal assault on its assumptions would provoke a vigorous reaction. The responses to my article by Richard Price and James Cronin thus offer a welcome opportunity to clarify the theoretical claims of “rank and filism” and reassess its empirical plausibility as an interpretation of British labour history. But as in any clash between rival theoretical perspectives, the points at issue in this debate extend beyond factual disagreements to the meaning of basic concepts and the standards of proof involved in their assessment, and neither party fully recognizes itself in the account of their ideas presented by the other. No accumulation of discordant facts can conclusively disprove a theory, as students of scientific revolutions have demonstrated, but readers will have to judge for themselves whether the counter-evidence I have presented amounts to minor discrepancies which can be satisfactorily accommodated within the assumptions of “rank and filism” or fundamental anomalies which necessitate the abandonment of the paradigm itself.
Tito: The Formation of a Disloyal Bolshevik
Authors: Swain G. R.
Published: December 2008

Tito rose to lead the Yugoslav Communist Party by stressing his loyalty to Lenin. As a “Left” critic of “Right Liquidationism” his views coincided with the Left turn in the Comintern which climaxed with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. During the “imperialist” war, Tito, like Lenin, wrote only of the armed uprising and the proletarian revolution; for him this began with the German invasion of April 1941. However, Tito's experiences in Moscow during the height of the purges enabled him to get the measure of Stalin. Twice he emerged unscathed from accusations of Trotskyism, and in his writings began to explore the differences between Leninism and Stalinism.