A Cultural History of Work in the Early Modern Age

by Bert De Munck (Editor), Thomas Max Safley (Editor)

Overview

Winner of the 2020 PROSE Award for Multivolume Reference/Humanities

In the early modern age technological innovations were unimportant relative to political and social transformations. The size of the workforce and the number of wage dependent people increased, due in large part to population growth, but also as a result of changes in the organization of work. The diversity of workplaces in many significant economic sectors was on the rise in the 16th-century: family farming, urban crafts and trades, and large enterprises in mining, printing and shipbuilding. Moreover, the increasing influence of global commerce, as accompanied by local and regional specialization, prompted an increased reliance on forms of under-compensated and non-compensated work which were integral to economic growth. Economic volatility swelled the ranks of the mobile poor, who moved along Europe's roads seeking sustenance, and the endemic warfare of the period prompted young men to sign on as soldiers and sailors. Colonists migrated to Europe's territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, while others were forced overseas as servants, convicts or slaves. The early modern age proved to be a “renaissance” in the political, social and cultural contexts of work which set the stage for the technological developments to come.

A Cultural History of Work in the Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period with essays on economies, representations of work, workplaces, work cultures, technology, mobility, society, politics and leisure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350078253
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	09/17/2020
Series:	The Cultural Histories Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Bert De Munck is Full Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is the author of Technologies of Learning: Apprenticeship in Antwerp from the 15th Century to the End of the Ancien Régime (2007). He is also the co-editor, along with Steven Laurence Kaplan and Hugo Soly, of Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship (2007) and, with Anne Winter, of Gated Communities? Regulating Migration in Early Modern Cities (2012).

Thomas Max Safley is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. His most recent work includes Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (2019), as author, and Labor Before the Industrial Revolution (2018), as editor.
Bert De Munck is Full Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He teaches 'Early Modern History', 'Theory of Historical Knowledge', and 'Heritage and Public history'. He is a member of the Centre for Urban History, Antwerp, and the Director of the interdisciplinary Urban Studies Institute. De Munck is the author of Technologies of Learning: Apprenticeship in Antwerp from the 15th Century to the End of the Ancien Régime (2007). He is also the co-editor, along with Steven Laurence Kaplan and Hugo Soly, of Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship (2007) and, with Anne Winter, of Gated Communities? Regulating Migration in Early Modern Cities (2012).
Thomas Max Safley is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. His most recent work includes Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (2019), as author, and Labor Before the Industrial Revolution (2018), as editor. A specialist in the economic and social history of early modern Europe, he has published extensively on the history of marriage and the family, the history of poverty and charity, and the history of labor and business.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
General Editors' Preface
Contributor Notes
Introduction – Bert De Munck (University of Antwerp, Belgium) and Thomas Max Safley (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
1. The Economy of Work – Thomas Max Safley (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
2. Picturing Work – Ilja Veldman (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
3. Work and Workplaces – Josef Ehmer (University of Salzburg, Austria)
4. Workplace Cultures – Anna Bellavitis (University of Rouennormandie, France)
5. Work, Skill, and Technology – Karel Davids (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands)
6. Work and Mobility – Jason P. Coy (College of Charleston, USA)
7. Work and Society – Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly (both Free University of Brussels, Belgium)
8. The Political Culture of Work – Bert De Munck (University of Antwerp, Belgium) and Jan Dumolyn (Ghent University, Belgium)
9. Work and Leisure – Alessandro Arcangeli (University of Verona, Italy)
Notes
Further Readings
Index