| Sumario: | Global Labour History has rapidly gained ground as a field ofstudy in the 21st century, attracting interest in the Global Southand North alike. Scholars derive inspiration from the broadperspective and the effort to perceive connections between globaltrends over time in work and labour relations, incorporatingslaves, indentured labourers and sharecroppers, housewives anddomestic servants. Casting this sweeping analytical gaze, The World Wide Web ofWork discusses the core concepts 'capitalism' and 'workers',and refines notions such as 'coerced labour', 'householdstrategies' and 'labour markets'. It explores in new ways theconnections between labourers in different parts of the world,arguing that both 'globalisation' and modern labour managementoriginated in agriculture in the Global South and were only laterintroduced in Northern industrial settings. It reveals that19th-century chattel slavery was frequently replaced by other formsof coerced labour, and it reconstructs the laborious 20th-centuryattempts of the International Labour Organisation to regulatelabour standards supra-nationally. The book also pays attention tothe relational inequality through which workers in wealthycountries benefit from the exploitation of those in poor countries.The final part addresses workers' resistance and acquiescence: whycollective actions often have unanticipated consequences; why andhow workers sometimes organise massive flights from exploitationand oppression; and why 'proletarian revolutions' took place inpre-industrial or industrializing countries and never in fully developed capitalist societies.
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