History Commons^™

Anarchist Motherhood: Toward The Making Of A Revolutionary Proletariat In Illinois’ Coal Towns, Caroline Waldron Merithew

Caroline Merithew

In the winter of 1900, several months before Leon Czolgosz assassinated U.S. President William McKinley for the cause of anarchy and for the love of Emma Goldman, a group of French-speaking and Italian women residing in northern Illinois’s coal-mining communities formed a club, Il Gruppo Femminile Luisa Michel, and began to put egalitarian theory into practice.

One of the women’s first acts of rebellion was a challenge to the all-male Prosperity Club – an anarchist saloon and a key venue of radical culture and activism in the region. With the help of some sympathetic members, Luisa Michel planned an assault …

Colonels And Industrial Workers In El Salvador, 1944-1972: Seeking Societal Support Through Gendered Labor Reforms, Kati Griffith, Leslie Gates

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] How do military regimes seek support or legitimacy from society? What strategies, besides violent repression, do military leaders use to remain in power? In other words, how do military leaders try to achieve hegemony? El Salvador’s long period of military rule (1931-1979) gives researchers ample opportunity to investigate the mechanisms whereby military regimes try to gain societal support. Erik Ching’s chapter shows that General Martinez’s regime sought support through locally based patron-client relationships. Some analysts of El Salvador’s subsequent military regimes find that these regimes pursued a political alliance with urban industrial workers in order to gain support. Nevertheless, …

Technology, Economic Growth, And The State: American Political Culture And Economy, 1870-2000, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

In the essay that follows, I will examine three periods in American economic life, with a focus on the interplay of technological innovations, economic transformation, and the responses to them. The first period, focused on the decades between 1870 and1920, experienced the emergence of the corporation as the major form of production and, not surprisingly, the development of oppositional political movements to it. The second period, from 1933 to the 1960s, marked an era of reform efforts to balance the relationship between management and labor, efforts that, ironically, accepted as their premise the structure and rationale of the corporation itself. …

Inviting Us To Come Closer: Philip Levine's Portraits Of Detroit (Forthcoming), Christina Triezenberg

Christina Triezenberg

No abstract provided.

Review Of David Horner,'The Spy Catchers: The Official History Of Asio, 1949-1963', Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Critical review of the officially commissioned history of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) published in 2014.

Review: John S. Ahlquist And Margaret Levi, 'In The Interest Of Others: Organizations And Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of the comparative study of trade union organizational behaviour by John S. Ahlquist and Margaret Levi, 'In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), which involves a target group of US and Australian trade unions.

Radical History And Labour History, Terry Irving, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

This piece by Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill was published on their 'Radical Sydney/Radical History' blog (19 February 2015). It welcomes the Radical History Conference (London, 24 March 2015) and reflects on how the political heritage of labour, the original impulse for 'labour history', is energising a new generation of radical historians.

Home Front Ww2: Myths And Realties, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

This is a revised version of the author's 2014 Brisbane Labour History Association Alex McDonald lecture. In this paper the author takes apart the right-wing accounts, particularly by Hal Colebatch ('Australia's Secret War, 2013), that demonise the Australian trade union leadership and the Communist Party of Australia for 'treasonous' industrial disputation during World War II.

The Swahili, Jesse Benjamin

Jesse Benjamin

No abstract provided.

Walter Rodney And The Pan-African Groundings, Jesse Benjamin

Jesse Benjamin

No abstract provided.

Sea Change: An Essay In Maritime Labour History, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

An essay length monograph on the life and times of E.V. Elliott (1902-1984), a prominent and militant Australian maritime trade union leader from the 1930s through to the 1970s.