HIS2363 – From Cotton Mill to Megastore: Working in the West since 1845

Schedule, syllabus and examination date

Course content

Published in 1845, Friedrich Engels’s book Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (The Condition of the Working Class in England) describes how industrialisation affected the lives of working people, based in part on his encounters with them at a Manchester cotton mill. Regarding industrial labour as both a consequence of an ongoing class struggle and the sparkplug for the revolution that would end it one day, Engels told a story of industrial work as a catalyst for political change that was going to happen the world over, one nation at a time. Fast forward a good hundred and fifty years, we see the perspective on work and labour shifted. Industrial wage labour has moved in large parts to the Global South and is less clearly distinguishable from unfree labour. Unemployment has arisen as a major issue in wealthy countries. New forms of work have attracted scholarly attention, from domestic, reproductive and service labour (partly unpaid and often done by women) to creative work, where self-realisation is considered as much a reward as financial compensation. Fairness of pay and conditions is still an important concern, but it has become more difficult to mobilise for it, as dwindling union membership and the decline of Labour parties indicate.

Learning outcome

When you have completed this course you will be able to

  • overlook major trends and issues in the history of work and labour in the West since the mid-nineteenth century
  • understand historiographical arguments and discuss them critically
  • develop, implement and finish a small historiographical research project

Admission to the course

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Overlapping courses