Bondage : Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

Stanziani, Alessandro

Bondage : Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries - Berghahn Books 20140101

Open Access

For the first time, this book provides the global history of labor in Central Eurasia, Russia, Europe, and the Indian Ocean between the 16th and 20th centuries. It contests common views on free and unfree labor, comparing 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 via 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 17th and the 19th centuries. This growth was labor intensive: commercial expansion, transformations in agriculture, and the first industrial revolution required more labor, not less.


Creative Commons


English

j.ctt9qcm9z 9781785336607

10.2307/j.ctt9qcm9z doi


General & world history

History global labor history indentured servitude slavery abolition workers' rights Eurasia Peasant Russia Serfdom