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"A dynamic historian revisits the workers' internationals, whose scope and significance are commonly overlooked. In current debates about globalization, open and borderless elites are often set in opposition to the immobile and protectionist working classes. This view obscures a major historical fact: for around a century-from the 1860s to the 1970s-worker movements were at the cutting edge of internationalism. The creation in London of the International Workingmen's Association in 1864 was a turning point. What would later be called the "First International" aspired to bring together European and American workers across languages, nationalities, and trades. It was a major undertaking in a context marked by opening borders, moving capital, and exploding inequalities. In this urgent, engaging work, historian Nicolas Delalande explores how international worker solidarity developed, what it accomplished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and why it collapsed over the past fifty years, to the point of disappearing from our memories"--
About the author
Nicolas Delalande is an associate professor of history at the Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po and editor in chief of
La Vie des Idées, an online magazine. He is the author of
Les Batailles de l’impôt: Consentement et résistances de 1789 à nos jours (2011) and a coeditor, with Patrick Boucheron, et al, of
Histoire mondiale de la France (published in English in 2019 as
France in the World) and, with Nicolas Barreyre, of
A World of Public Debts: A Political History (2020).
Anthony Roberts is a freelance writer, journalist, poet, and prize-winning translator. He currently lives in France.
Summary
A dynamic historian revisits the workers’ internationals, whose scope and significance are commonly overlooked.
In current debates about globalization, open and borderless elites are often set in opposition to the immobile and protectionist working classes. This view obscures a major historical fact: for around a century—from the 1860s to the 1970s—worker movements were at the cutting edge of internationalism.
The creation in London of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864 was a turning point. What would later be called the “First International” aspired to bring together European and American workers across languages, nationalities, and trades. It was a major undertaking in a context marked by opening borders, moving capital, and exploding inequalities.
In this urgent, engaging work, historian Nicolas Delalande explores how international worker solidarity developed, what it accomplished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and why it collapsed over the past fifty years, to the point of disappearing from our memories.
Additional text
Praise for A World of Public Debts:
“A fascinating and illuminating book…[It] sets the standards for what future historical research should look like: a fine mixture of political, ideological, and socioeconomic history…A must-read.” —Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century and Capital and Ideology
“The essays in this volume reveal how public debt goes to the core of the entangled relationship between government and money… a stunning collection.” —Jeremy Adelman, author of Republic of Capital and Worlds Together, Worlds Apart
“A brilliant work of historical scholarship.” —Emma Rothschild, author of Economic Sentiments and The Inner Life of Empires
