The history of work and labour

Abstract

As an aspect of economic (and later social) history, the study of work and labour relations-conveniently and mostly in hindsight termed 'Labour History'-has a long tradition in the Netherlands, where it has gone through several phases during more than a century. In the years before the Second World War, it started from a very broad basis, encompassing the entire period from the Middle Ages onwards. Dutch anthropologists also contributed to the history of work, especially with regard to the colonies. Similar to the position in other countries, this promising phase was followed by a more restricted concept of labour history, as the saga of male industrial breadwinners after the Industrial Revolution. The revival of the topic in the turbulent 1970s and 1980s brought an even narrower focus on the historical development of (leftist) collective action. In the latest phase, in the Netherlands since the 1990s all these elements have been combined in the new concept of Global Labour History, meaning the development of work at large, labour (wage and unfree) and labour relations worldwide.