DIVIn Unfree Masters, Matt Stahl examines recording artists' labor in the music industry as a form of creative work. He argues that the widespread perception of singers and musicians as free individuals doing enjoyable and fulfilling work obscures the realities of their occupation./div

This collection of essays examines the different forms of unfree labour that contributed to the development of the Atlantic world and, by extension, the debates and protests that emerged concerning labour servitude and the abolition of slavery in the West.

"Contrary to earlier views of pre-industrial Europe as an essentially sedentary society, research over the past decades has amply demonstrated that migration was a pervasive characteristic of early modern Europe. In this volume, the theme of urban migration is explored through a series of historical contexts, journeying from sixteenth-century Antwerp, Ulm, Lille and Valenciennes, through seventeenth-century Berlin, Milan and Rome, to eighteenth-century Strasbourg, Trieste, Paris and London. Each chapter demonstrates how the presence of diverse and often temporary groups of migrants was a core feature of everyday urban life, which left important marks on the demographic, economic, social, political, and cultural characteristics of individual cities. The collection focuses on the interventions by urban authorities and institutions in a wide-ranging set of domains, as they sought to stimulate, channel and control the newcomers' movements and activities within the cities and across the cities' borders. While striving for a broad geographical and chronological coverage in a comparative perspective, the volume aims to enhance our insight into the different factors that shaped urban migration policies in different European settings west of the Elbe. By laying bare the complex interactions of actors, interests, conflicts, and negotiations involved in the regulation of migration, the case studies shed light on the interrelations between burghership, guilds, relief arrangements, and police in the incorporation of newcomers and in shaping the shifting boundaries between wanted and unwanted migrants. By relating to a common analytical framework, presented in the introductory chapter, they engage in a comparative discussion that allows for the formulation of general insights and the identification of long term transformations that transcend the time and place specificities of the case studies in question. The introduction and final chapters connect insights derived from the individual case-study chapters to present wide ranging conclusions that resonate with both historical and present-day debates on migration. " -- Dust jacket.

»To Be Unfree« is a collection of essays investigating how political unfreedom has been and can be articulated within the republican tradition of political thought. The book combines a theoretical discussion of how freedom and its opposites have been conceptualized in the republican tradition with a broader perspective on this tradition's impact on the representation of unfreedom in Western literature and cultural history. It thus complicates our understanding of what it means to be unfree and unveils a series of distinctions which also shape our modern notions of freedom.

Two massive systems of unfree labor arose, a world apart from each other, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The American enslavement of blacks and the Russian subjection of serfs flourished in different ways and varying degrees until they were legally abolished in the mid-nineteenth century. Historian Peter Kolchin compares and contrasts the two systems over time in this magisterial book, which clarifies the organization, structure, and dynamics of both social entities, highlighting their basic similarities while pointing out important differences discernible only in comparative perspective. These differences involved both the masters and the bondsmen. The independence and resident mentality of American slaveholders facilitated the emergence of a vigorous crusade to defend slavery from outside attack, whereas an absentee orientation and dependence on the central government rendered serfholders unable successfully to defend serfdom. Russian serfs, who generally lived on larger holdings than American slaves and faced less immediate interference in their everyday lives, found it easier to assert their communal autonomy but showed relatively little solidarity with peasants outside their own villages; American slaves, by contrast, were both more individualistic and more able to identify with all other blacks, both slave and free. Kolchin has discovered apparently universal features in master-bondsman relations, a central focus of his study, but he also shows their basic differences as he compares slave and serf life and chronicles patterns of resistance. If the masters had the upper hand, the slaves and serfs played major roles in shaping, and setting limits to, their own bondage. This truly unprecedented comparative work will fascinate historians, sociologists, and all social scientists, particularly those with an interest in comparative history and studies in slavery.

A social history of the merchant class of 14th- and 15th-century London

This book examines how convicts played a key role in the development of capitalism in Australia and how their active resistance shaped both workplace relations and institutions. It highlights the contribution of convicts to worker mobilization and political descent, forcing a rethink of Australia’s foundational story. It is a book that will appeal to an international audience, as well as the many hundreds of thousands of Australians who can trace descent from convicts. It will enable the latter to make sense of the experience of their ancestors, equipping them with the necessary tools to understand convict and court records. It will also provide a valuable undergraduate and postgraduate teaching tool and reference for those studying unfree labour and worker history, social history, colonization and global migration in a digital age.