Historical Studies

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/13720

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State Labour Control and Women’s Resistance in Austro-Hungarian Transylvania Tobacco Manufacturing (1897–1918)
(Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024-12-25) Ghiț, Alexandra; Department of Gender Studies; Department of Historical Studies
This chapter explores women’s labour activism and labour organising practices in Austria-Hungary, with a focus on two major labour conflicts, in 1897 and 1911, in the state tobacco factory in the Transylvanian city of Kolozsvár/Cluj Napoca/Klausenburg. In Europe, Hungary was a key producer of tobacco leaf but it exported little beyond Austria; most of its finished products were destined for internal consumption. Since the end of the nineteenth century, numerous new tobacco manufactories had been established in Hungary by the state tobacco monopoly organisation. During this era, women tobacco workers became more willing to engage in labour conflicts and had stronger links than before with the regional and national labour movement. The chapter documents their labour activism—rooted in their gendered experiences as low-paid women workers—and shows how their demands were countered and neutralised through site-specific forms of paternalistic benefits alongside discipline and control. The chapter shows that the labour activism of the women workers in Transylvania was closely linked to processes of capital accumulation as well as the social and political movements developing in Austria-Hungary after the 1890s. It demonstrates how the state tobacco factory became increasingly less a site for negotiation and rather one of confrontation that met with hard-line employer retribution, and that this reconfiguration ultimately weakened Kolozsvár tobacco women’s organising.
Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU. Vol. 29, 2023
(Central European University, Department of Medieval Studies, 2023) Ivanišević, Dora
A “Special Category of Women” in Austria and Internationally: Migrant Women Workers, Trade Union Activists, and the Textile Industry, 1960s to 1980s
(Brill, 2024-05-04) Helfert, Veronika; Hoerder, Dirk; Neissl, Lukas; Department of Gender Studies
At the beginning of the 1960s, Austria joined Western and Northern European states in recruiting temporary migrant workers. While the European “guestworker” and migrant labour regimes have been subject to multiple studies in the last 40 years, migrant women have rarely been at the centre of these investigations, although their specific issues have comprised a facet of the international labour movement since the 1970s. Female migrant workers faced a double marginalization in the labour movement, both as migrants and as women. By analysing printed source material, archival documents, and interviews with women trade unionists, this chapter examines this specific double marginalization; how gender, class, and ethnicity shaped the labour activism of domestic and migrant working women; and how the international, national, and local levels interacted in the context of the deindustrialization of the Austrian textile industry.
Renegotiating Skills, Wages, and the Right to Work: On the Gender of Labor Activism around Rationalization in the Bulgarian Tobacco Industry in the Early 1930s
(Cambridge University Press, 2024-02-19) Masheva, Ivelina Lyubenova; Department of Gender Studies
Starting from the early 1930s, structural changes in the Bulgarian tobacco industry, prompted by the advent of the world economic crisis and German economic expansionism into Southeastern Europe, led to a deep restructuring of the labor processes, known in the terminology of the time as rationalization, in the Bulgarian tobacco industry. The introduction of the tonga rationalization technology had a deskilling and deeply gendered effect on the industry, making a significant number of skilled male workers redundant, disproportionately decreasing average male wages and leading, in turn, to a further feminization of an already majority-female workforce. The introduction of the new system provoked a strong response from the organized labor movement, which used a variety of tactics to fight against the new technology: from strikes to petitions to tripartite negotiations. Organized labor's reaction was deeply gendered, an aspect that only becomes truly visible if, in addition to gender and skill, we employ the analytical lens of scale. By following trade union policies on the local, national, and international levels, the article goes beyond the carefully crafted gender-neutral language in official documents to reveal tensions between the conservative attitudes of rank-and-file activists and the official trade union agenda. This is especially evident in communist labor politics, where Bulgarian trade union policies on the local and national levels provoked an intervention on the part of the Profintern between 1930 and 1931. The movement's internal contradictions resulted in a polyvalent, ambiguous, and non-linear trade union policy formed through the clash of and negotiations between local activists’ conservative notions of gendered work and family roles and the radical gender program of international communism.
Radical and Utopian or Partnership between Men und Women? Austrian Trade Union Women, Autonomous Feminists and Labour Related Concerns, 1970s-1980s
(2024-04-01) Helfert, Veronika; Department of Gender Studies
This contribution explores the interplay between labour and feminist activism in Austria during the 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on the often overlooked nexus of the women’s liberation movement and the trade union movement, the analysis looks into the forms of organisation and protest used by women activists from various political affiliations on the left, including social democrats, communists and emerging alternative and green groups. These protests included the struggle for reproductive rights, conflicting ideas on the inclusion of domestic labour into labour activism, the significance of partnership as an activist concept, and the challenges of joint actions. The material is analysed using a combined source-critical and theory-driven approach, employing hermeneutic methods to reveal specific debates and the complex dynamics of cooperation and distinction in both labour and feminist activism. The study thus shows that the activism of women organised in communist, alternative (radical) left and socialist trade union contexts was part of the activist cycle of feminist movements in the 1970s and 1980s.
Women workers’ education at the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions: excavating histories of transnational collaboration with the ICFTU
(Informa UK Limited, 2023-11-8) Çağatay, Selin; Department of Historical Studies
This article explores the relationship between the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (Türk-İş) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) from the 1960s until the 1990s with a focus on the transnational collaboration of activists who organised educational activities for women workers and trade unionists to empower them as rights-seeking political subjects and strengthen their position within the trade union movement. Demonstrating how women’s trade union education evolved within the framework of local politics as well as global processes such as the Cold War and the emergence of a UN-led gender equality regime, it argues that global inequalities, geopolitical differences, and Türk-İş leaders’ ambivalent attitude towards women’s status in the trade union movement led to a loose, sporadic relationship between local activists and those from the west. At the same time, it was often these activists’ sustained efforts towards collaboration and the circulation of their agendas that pressured Türk-İş to invest in women’s empowerment in trade unions. Utilising archival and trade union sources as well as oral history interviews, the article integrates the work of women labour activists in feminist labour historiography, offering a more comprehensive understanding of trade unions’ gender politics in Turkey and globally.
The Women of Viharsarok: Peasant Women's Labour Activism in 1890s Hungary
(Cambridge University Press, 2024-04-24) Varsa, Eszter; Department of Gender Studies; Department of Historical Studies
This article explores peasant women’s labour activism in 1890s Hungary, in the southeastern part of the Habsburg Empire, where repeated harvesters’ strikes and peasant uprisings took place during the second half of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries, making it the first centre of agrarian workers’ socialist organizing in Hungary. Informed by a more inclusive approach to women’s activist histories and subaltern studies, this article develops a new perspective on the periodization and geography of the international and Hungarian history of women’s social movements, to contribute to the historiographies of peasant women’s labour activism in the Eastern European countryside.
Gendered Work, Skill, and Women's Labor Activism in Romanian Tobacco Factories from the 1920s to the 1960s
(Cambridge University Press, 2023) Ghiț, Alexandra
In this article, I choose struggles over skill development as an entry point to uncovering features of women's labor activism in state-owned tobacco factories in Romania, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. I look at the processes that constructed women tobacco workers, especially those at the Tobacco Manufactory in the city of Cluj, as non-skilled workers, and examine the forms of labor activism in the tobacco industry that challenged those constructs. I describe how women's work at the Cluj Tobacco Manufactory, from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s, was shaped by successive waves of production intensification and rationalization, demonstrating that these reorganizations affected female workers more than they affected their male coworkers. I point out that although they were considered non-skilled laborers, female tobacco workers exercised an amount of control over their work and were important contributors to their families’ maintenance. I show that spanning two different political regimes, matters of skill were at the core of labor activism. For female workers, in the interwar period, labor activism in male-dominated organizations and structures entailed skill-mediated political strategies that emphasized experience and shopfloor status besides skill. By the 1950s, labor activism encompassed engaging in confrontational politics over seasoned women workers’ lack of access to skill training programs. I show that both in the late 1920s and in the early 1950s, illiteracy and women's more limited access to formal schooling in general shaped new experiences of participation in labor politics.
Women’s Labour Struggles in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond: Toward a Long-Term, Transregional, Integrative, and Critical Approach
(Brill, 2023) Çağatay, Selin; Erdélyi, Mátyás; Ghiț, Alexandra; Gnydiuk, Olga; Helfert, Veronika; Masheva, Ivelina; Popova, Zhanna; Tešija, Jelena; Varsa, Eszter; Zimmermann, Susan; Department of Gender Studies; Department of History and Medieval Studies
The introductory chapter provides a historiographic and thematic framing for the contributions and, we hope, for future research. The first section discusses the existing historiography of the region, highlighting the long history of writing on women’s labour activism in Central and Eastern Europe and its adjacent territories within and across the borders of different types of empires and nation-states, and across vastly diverse political regimes. The second section discusses key contributions of the chapters assembled in the volume to the study of women’s (and sometimes men’s) quests for the improvement of the lives and working conditions of women, pointing to their interconnections and highlighting their contributions to the development of long-term and transregional approaches to the history of women’s labour struggles. The third section expands on the rationale for studying women’s labour struggles from a long-term, transregional, integrative, and critical perspective, further discusses insights emerging from the volume and other scholarship, and highlights challenges as well as directions for ongoing and future research in the field of women’s labour activism.
Divide, Provide and Rule: An Integrative History of Poverty Policy, Social Reform, and Social Policy in Hungary under the Habsburg Monarchy
(CEU Press, 2011) Zimmermann, Susan; Department of Gender Studies; Department of History and Medieval Studies
A concise and comprehensive account of the transformation of social policy from traditional poor relief towards social insurance systems in a European state before World War One. Brings together the analysis of older, mostly local welfare policies with the history of social policy developed by the state and operated at a national level. Explores also the interaction of various layers of and actors in welfare policy, i.e. of poor relief, social reform policies and the unfolding welfare state over time, including often neglected elements of these policies such as e.g. protective policies at the work place, housing policy, child protection, and prostitution policies. Demonstrates how definitions of what constituted need have served historically to produce divergent visions and treatment of male and female poverty, and how these historical biases have continued to shape the conceptual apparatus of research into the history of welfare and social policies.
Die bessere Hälfte? Frauenbewegungen und Frauenbestrebungen im Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918
(Promedia, 1999) Zimmermann, Susan; Department of History and Medieval Studies; Department of Gender Studies
Frauenpolitik und Männergewerkschaft: Die IGB-Fraueninternationale und die internationale Geschlechterpolitik der Zwischenkriegszeit
(Löcker, 2021) Zimmermann, Susan; Department of Gender Studies; Department of History and Medieval Studies
Building on a large network of female socialist activists and functionaries, the Women’s International of the International Federation of Trade Unions, the IFTU, also known as the »Amsterdam International«, pursued its mandate in the interwar period and into WWII. Historically, in the men-dominated labor movement, women trade unionists had to grapple with the marginalization of the women’s question; in the world of the non-socialist women’s movements, they were faced with the marginalization of the class question. This book brings the IFTU women and their largely unexplored contribution to international women’s and gender politics into the spotlight. The IFTU Women’s International cooperated closely with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the League of Nations in Geneva. As it developed its positions and policies, it collaborated with and confronted the IFTU leadership, international women’s organizations, and the trade union and women’s movements of the European countries. The IFTU women’s network sought to strengthen the position of women workers and addressed wage policies, women’s unpaid family work, labor protection and social policy, the right to work, war and peace, and the unionization of women. The book examines the multifaceted struggles of these many actors and players around the politics of women’s work and other elements of the emerging international gender politics of the interwar period, highlighting the complex and idiosyncratic contribution of the IFTU women.
Az eszmetörténet-írás ígéretei? Ludassy Mária: A toleranciától a szabadságig. Anglia 300 éve egy eszme történetének tükrében
(Budapesti Könyvszemle Alapítvány, 1993) Kontler, László; Department of History
Félreértés ne essék. Ludassy Mária idestova két évtizeddel ezelőtt megjelent első tanulmánykötetének címét parafrazálva nem az a nagyképű szándék vezérel, hogy megállapítsam: az ígéretesen indult szerző azóta mennyiben töltötte be a kvalitásaihoz fűzött várakozásokat. Annyit ugyanis nyomban leszögezhetek, hogy az eddigi életmű értelmetlenné tenne egy ilyen megközelítést. Ludassy neve húsz esztendeje szinte törvényszerűen bukkan fel minden olyan vállalkozásban, amelynek célja a felvilágosodás kori politikai- és morálfilozófia klasszikusainak a magyar olvasó számára való hozzáférhetővé tétele, a szerzőnek oroszlánrésze van abban, hogy e témának ma van színvonalas magyar nyelvű szakirodalma, bizonyos értelemben „tanárává” vált azon bölcsészkari nemzedékeknek is, amelyekkel a katedráról még nem volt alkalma szembesülni.
The Promise of the History of Ideas
(Budapesti Könyvszemle Alapítvány, 1993) Kontler, László; Department of History
review of: Mária Ludassy: A toleranciától a szabadság. Anglia 300 éve egy eszme tükrében. (From Tolerance to Freedom. Three Hundred Years of History in the Light of an Ideal) Budapest, 1992 106 pp.
Locke értekezése a polgári kormányzatról: Egy megfontolt felforgató
(Korunk Baráti Társaság, 2019) Kontler, László; Department of History
Idő és fejlődés - az idő mint fejlődés: William Robertson felvilágosult prédikációja
(AETAS Könyv- és Lapkiadó Egyesület, 2005) Kontler, László; Department of History
This article examines the thesis, advanced by Reinhart Koselleck in Futures Past, of the “temporalization of history” as interpreted in terms of the changing perception of the “compression” (or “acceleration”) of time that supposedly precedes the onset of the “future”, against a 1755 sermon by the eighteenth-century Scottish ecclesiastical leader and historian William Robertson. The framework of analysis is offered by a version of the model of the “multiplicity of enlightenments” and that of the “conservative Enlightenment” employed most forcefully by John Pocock, but also by other scholars. Looking at previous and contemporary schemes of historical time, it is demonstrated that Robertson, drawing on intellectual sources ranging from Arminian theology through philosophical history to stadial or conjectural history, worked with a synergetic view of historical agency in which human actions may be seen as expressions of divine providence, while at the same time God’s providence may be conceived as offering so many opportunities for the exercise of human will. But it is also important to recognize that he was capable of doing so because he allowed the patterns of socio-cultural and economic progress, discovered in the eighteenth century, to play a dynamic role in advancing the cause of Christian salvation, especially by “compressing time” at critical junctures of history. In Koselleckian terms: true to his character as a protagonist in Pocock’s “conservative Enlightenment”, Robertson’s notion of the acceleration of history was not quite divorced from the apocalyptic hope attached to the ever shortening periods preceding the last judgment, while at the same time clearly displaying aspects of a notion of historical hope.
Hume, a történetíró. Felvilágosult elbeszélés, az ember tudománya és szkeptikus hazafiasság
(Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2012) Kontler, László; Department of History
A globális: Kapitalizmus elviselhetetlen könnyűsége
(Budapesti Könyvszemle Alapítvány, 2006) Kontler, László; Department of History
Critic on Istvan Hont: Jealousy of Trade International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective
Koraújkortörténet
(OTKA, 2008) Barta, János; Kontler, László; Korpás, Zoltán; Lázár, Balázs; Molnár, Antal; Papp, Imre; Poór, János; Rákóczi, István; Soós, István; Szántó, György Tibor; Szilágyi, Ágnes Judit; Vajnági, Márta; Department of History
The dedicated purpose of competition "Early-modern Ages" was to produce a volume focusing on the history of early-modern ages. The manuscript is finished. As set out in the contract the volume is composed of essays of 60-80.000 characters discussing key elements of 15th-18th century world history broken down to four areas of focus: 1. Wars, civil wars, revolutions; 2. Empires, states, provinces; 3. Religion, religious reform, wars of religion; 4. Colonizers and colonies. Find the copy-read manuscript submitted to editorial scrutiny attached.
William Robertson, skót történetek és német identitások. Fordítás és recepció a felvilágosodás korában
(KORALL Társadalomtörténeti Egyesület, 2006) Kontler, László; Department of History
This article contributes to the discussion on the „unity versus diversity of the Enlightenment” through the examination of the contemporary German reception of some of the works of the renowned Scottish historian William Robertson in translations, reviews, references, „native” texts of similar topic and inspiration, etc. Th e works in question concern national histories: those of Scotland and Germany, predominantly in the 16th century, which Robertson regarded as pivotal in the transition to modernity. In an attempt to re-focus national historical inquiry by superseding a sham patriotism based on partisanship and the search for vainglory, Robertson predicated his own approach of enlightened „impartiality” to these subjects on a comparative study of social and cultural structures, and relied on the conceptual and theoretical arsenal of conjectural or „stadial” history. One of the difficulties the contemporary German interpreters did not quite cope with, had to do with the rather specifi c vocabulary employed in these paradigms. More importantly, Robertson’s German translators and commentators seem to have been more interested in precisely the partisan aspects of his books (Mary Stuart versus Elizabeth I, Protestants versus Catholics, etc.), which were intended to be suppressed in the original. In view of the dominant approaches in contemporary German historical scholarship, this should not be surprising. Th ough there were voices that demanded a broader horizon for German history as well as the application of standards similar to those of Robertson’s, the relevant texts of historians explicitly or implicitly regarded as his counterparts are marked with openly avowed political-ideological bias and an inward-looking search for the roots of modern „liberty” – the rule of law under strong (monarchical) government – not in the elimination of feudalism and the subsequent inability of monarchs to wield the plenitude of sovereign power, but the blessings of the imperial constitution. As in many other cases of communication in the enlightened republic of letters, the questions were to a great extent similar, but the stakes, the strategies and the answers fundamentally diff erent: the problems which from Robertson’s Scottish perspective called for a cosmopolitan and non-partisan treatment, continued to be discussed in precisely the opposite terms in the German reception of his writings relevant to national history.

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