Organizing Workers in the Shadow of Slavery: Global Inequality, Racial Boundaries, and the Rise of Unions...

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Rudi Batzell

Organizing Workers in the Shadow of Slavery

Global Inequality, Racial Boundaries, and the Rise of Unions in American and British Capitalism,...

Rudi Batzell

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English

University of Chicago Press
29 April 2025

Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Industrialisation & industrial history; Slavery & abolition of slavery; Labour economics; Industrial relations & safety

An original analysis of the relationship between slavery and the labor movement in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

During the rise of the labor movement in the late nineteenth century, why were American workers unable to organize inclusive trade unions like those formed by their counterparts in the United Kingdom? Comparing American and British capitalism in the port cities of Baltimore and Liverpool and the steel cities of Pittsburgh and Sheffield, Rudi Batzell reveals that the answer lies in the legacies of slavery and entrenched structures of racial inequality. Strikebreaking succeeded more often in the United States because landless Black Americans were, out of economic desperation, more likely to become scabs and fracture the class solidarity of any union movement. Batzell shows, in short, how racism was and is deeply connected to class, migration, and capitalism in a global economy marked by slavery and empire. In emphasizing the geography of economic inequality, this book offers new clarity on the late-nineteenth-century successes and failures of working-class formation. More broadly, Organizing Workers in the Shadow of Slavery makes it clear that the pursuit of justice today will require sustained economic reparations for slavery and colonialism.

By: Rudi Batzell
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 653g
ISBN: 9780226838762
ISBN 10: 0226838765
Pages: 392
Publication Date: 29 April 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction Part I. Rural Peripheries, Labor Uprisings, and the Migrant Strikebreaker 1. Near-Peripheries: Land and the Reserve Army of Labor 2. Parallel Rebellions: The Knights of Labor and the New Unionism 3. Divergence: Strikebreaking at Labor’s Turning Point Part II. The Pivot of the 1890s: Organized Workers and the Construction of Racial Boundaries 4. Drawing the Boundaries of Craft: The Challenge of Inclusive Unionism 5. Black Workers and the Boundaries of White Supremacy in the United States 6. National Boundaries: Immigration Restriction in the Shadow of Slavery 7. Drawing the Boundaries of White Supremacy in the British Empire Part III. Homes, Sports, and the Rise of Unions: Solidarity and Segregation in Workers’ Social Worlds 8. Solidarity and Segregation in the Industrial Suburb 9. Fordist Masculinity: Workers Organized in the Sports Bureaucracy 10. Crowds, Labor Bureaucrats, and the Politics of Redistribution Conclusion: The Shadow of Slavery, Present and Future Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Rudi Batzell is associate professor of history at Lake Forest College. His research has appeared in journals including Past & Present, Gender & History, and the Journal of Social History.

Reviews for Organizing Workers in the Shadow of Slavery: Global Inequality, Racial Boundaries, and the Rise of Unions in American and British Capitalism, 1870–1929

""Rudi Batzell's brilliant contribution to labor history uses four great American and British industrial cities as the focus of an innovative rethinking of crucial questions about the relationship between race and class. Superbly researched, lucidly written, and analytically incisive, the book situates the histories of working class formation in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Liverpool and Sheffield in their wider regional and global contexts. Batzell not only provides a superb portrait of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century industrial world, but also gives new intellectual life to old debates and provides profound insights into our present social and political crisis."" -- Jonathan Hyslop, Colgate University