J.B. McLachlan: A Biography


Book Description

Agitator, educator, organizer, J.B. McLachlan led the coal miners of Nova Scotia in their struggles for union recognition, united them around ideas of industrial democracy and social reconstruction, and defended their cause in the labour wars of the 1920s. This authoritative biography tells the story of legendary labour leader James Bryson McLachlan, champion of the Cape Breton Coal Miners in the early decades of the twentieth century. Charged with sedition in 1923, McLachlan's case was one of the most notorious political trials ever held in Nova Scotia. By the 1920s and 1930s, McLachlan was known across the country as a spokesman for the radical left in Canada. He helped change the balance of power in industrial society and advanced the struggle for social and economic justice. J.B. McLachlan: A Biography is a rich portrait of a brilliant early twentieth-century Canadian rebel who helped change the balance of power in industrial society and advance the struggle for social and economic justice.




Coal Black Heart


Book Description

A major new work of history, told through the stories of a teeming cast of characters. The history of coal is the story of the last two centuries of the industrialized world. Coal has powered that world, and controlled the destinies of millions. And nowhere has that influence run more deeply than in Nova Scotia, where the industry’s rise and decline has transformed society twice. Coal Black Heart is a global history that centres unapologetically on one province, and the generations of people whose lives there have been shaped by this dominating industry. There are the miners. There are the moonshiners and brooding social reformers and charismatic preachers who gave the mining towns their particular feel and flair. And there are the profiteers whose greed led to disaster. This is history as great storytelling - enthralling, involving, deeply moving, and it is a very personal narrative. A brilliant reporter, journalist, and author who has spent most of his career examining Nova Scotia’s weave of land, people, and history - and who grew up listening to its stories - John DeMont was born to write this book.




Global Labour History


Book Description

Part I: Historiography Writing Global Labour History c. 1800-1940: A Historiography of Concepts, Periods, and Geographical Scope 39 Jan Lucassen African Labor History 91 Frederick Cooper Reflections on Labor and Working-Class History in the Middle East and North Africa 117 Zachary Lockman Paradigms in the Historical Approach to Labour Studies on South Asia 147 Sabyasachi Bhattacharya The History of Labor in Japan in the Twentieth Century: Cycles of Activism and Acceptance 161 Akira Suzuki Fin-de-Si6cle Labour History in Canada and the United States: A Case for Tradition 195 Bryan D. Palmer Labour in Western Europe from c. 1800 227 Dick Geary The Laboring and Middle-Class Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean: Historical Trajectories and New Research Directions 289 John D. French What's in a Name? Labouring Antipodean History in Oceania 335 Lucy Taksa Workers, Class, and the Socialist Revolution in Modern China 373 Arif Dirlik The Drama of the Russian Working Class and New Perspectives for Labour History in Russia 397 Andrei Sokolov Part 2: Case Studies in Comparative Labour History Worldwide Agricultural Labor and Property: A Global and Comparative Perspective 455 Prasannan Parthasarathi Studying Asian Domestic Labour Within Global Processes: Comparisons and Connections 479 Ratna Saptari Brickmakers in Western Europe (17oo00-19oo) and Northern India (1800-2000): Some Comparisons 513 Jan Lucassen Global Labour History in the Twenty-First Century: Coal Mining and Its Recent Pasts 573 Ian Phimister "Nothing to Lose but a Harsh and Miserable Life Here on Earth": Dock Work as a Global Occupation, 1790-1970 591 Lex Heerma van Voss Railroad Labor and the Global Economy: Historical Patterns 623 Shelton Stromquist.




The Centennial Cure


Book Description

"This book examines the intersection of state policy, cultural development, and commemoration during Canada's 1967 centennial celebrations. It explores four initiatives that were undertaken in Nova Scotia to mark this anniversary, and demonstrates one province's response to Lamontagne's appeal to stem Canada's cultural poverty. These initiaties also reflected those larger social, cultural, economic, and political transformations that took place in postwar Nova Scotia. Further they help us understand the province's experience within the broader context of the development of modern Canadian cultural and social history."--




Marxism and Historical Practice (Vol. II)


Book Description

The two volumes of Marxism and Historical Practice bring together a wide range of essays written by one of the major Marxist historians of the last fifty years. Collected in Volume II, Interventions and Appreciations, are articles and reviews capturing the breadth of Palmer’s interests as a radical historian. Cultural forms and representational productions are analysed; political readings of historiography and pioneering historical practice provided. Themes as diverse as the analytic and political contributions of Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson, the conflicted legacies of American Trotskyism, and the representation of class politics in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York are covered.




From the Net to the Net


Book Description

This text looks at globalization through the lens of Atlantic Canadians and their relationship with both the global economy and the country at large.




Labour at the Lakehead


Book Description

In the early twentieth century, the Canadian Lakehead was known as a breeding ground for revolution, a place where harsh conditions in dockyards, lumber mills, and railway yards drove immigrants into radical labour politics. This intensely engaging history reasserts Northwestern Ontario’s rightful reputation as a birthplace of leftism in Canada by exposing the conditions that gave rise to an array of left-wing organizations, including the Communist Party, the One Big Union, and the Industrial Workers of the World. Yet, as Michel Beaulieu shows, the circumstances and actions of Lakehead labour, especially those related to ideology, ethnicity, and personality were complex; they simultaneously empowered and fettered workers in their struggles against the shackles of capitalism. Cultural ties helped bring left-wing ideas to Canada but, as each group developed a distinctive vocabulary of socialism, Anglo-Celtic workers defended their privileges against Finns, Ukrainians, and Italians. At the Lakehead, ethnic difference often outweighed class solidarity – at the cost of a stronger labour movement for Canada.




Canadian State Trials, Volume IV


Book Description

The fourth volume in the Canadian State Trials series examines the legal issues surrounding perceived security threats and the repression of dissent from the outset of World War One through the Great Depression. War prompted the development of new government powers and raised questions about citizenship and Canadian identity, while the ensuing interwar years brought serious economic challenges and unprecedented tensions between labour and capital. The chapters in this edited collection, written by leading scholars in numerous fields, examine the treatment of enemy aliens, conscription and courts martial, sedition prosecutions during the war and after the Winnipeg General Strike, and the application of Criminal Code and Immigration Act laws to Communist Party leaders, On to Ottawa Trekkers, and minority groups. These historical events shed light on contemporary dilemmas: What are the limits of dissent in war, emergencies, and economic crisis? What limits should be placed on government responses to real and perceived challenges to its authority?




Dictionary of Cape Breton English


Book Description

Biff and whiff, baker’s fog and lu’sknikn, pie social and milling frolic – these are just a few examples of the distinctive language of Cape Breton Island, where a puck is a forceful blow and a Cape Breton pork pie is filled with dates, not pork. The first regional dictionary devoted to the island’s linguistic and cultural history, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English is a fascinating record of the island’s rich vocabulary. Dictionary entries include supporting quotations culled from the editors’ extensive interviews with Cape Bretoners and considerable study of regional variation, as well as definitions, selected pronunciations, parts of speech, variant forms, related words, sources, and notes, giving the reader in-depth information on every aspect of Cape Breton culture. A substantial and long-awaited work of linguistic research that captures Cape Breton’s social, economic, and cultural life through the island’s language, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English can be read with interest by Backlanders, Bay byes, and those from away alike.




For a Better World


Book Description

Canada’s largest and most famous example of class conflict, the Winnipeg General Strike, redefined local, national, and international conversations around class, politics, region, ethnicity, and gender. The Strike’s centenary occasioned a re-examination of this critical moment in working-class history, when 300 social justice activists, organizers, scholars, trade unionists, artists, and labour rights advocates gathered in Winnipeg in 2019. Probing the meaning of the General Strike in new and innovative ways, For a Better World includes a selection of contributions from the conference as well as others’ explorations of the character of class confrontation in the aftermath of the First World War. Editors Naylor, Hinther, and Mochoruk depict key events of 1919, detailing the dynamic and complex historiography of the Strike and the larger Workers’ Revolt that reverberated around the world and shaped the century following the war. The chapters delve into intersections of race, class, and gender. Settler colonialism’s impact on the conflict is also examined. Placing the struggle in Winnipeg within a broader national and international context, several contributors explore parallel strikes in Edmonton, Crowsnest Pass, Montreal, Kansas City, and Seattle. For a Better World interrogates types of commemoration and remembrance, current legacies of the Strike, and its ongoing influence. Together, the essays in this collection demonstrate that the Winnipeg General Strike continues to mobilize—revealing our radical past and helping us to think imaginatively about collective action in the future.