Conducts research and collects data on the global history of labour, workers, and labour relations

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Resilient Diversity: the Governance of Racial and Religious Plurality in the Dutch Empire, 1600-1800
How did Dutch colonial institutions govern diversity in North America, the Caribbean, Western Africa and Asia? How can we explain...
Sooner or Later
"Sooner or later the American people are going to wake up" - Emma Goldman, 26 November 1919
Migrating Nudism to the US
'On December 5, 1929, over spareribs with mustard and sauerkraut, three German immigrants met at New York City's Café Micholob to...
Deserters and GI's during the Vietnam War
The U.S. waged war in Indochina, especially in Vietnam in the sixties. In the years round 1970 the anti-war movement was at its...
Deserters and GI's during the Vietnam War
Recently, the IISH acquired and arranged a vast and colourful collection on resistance within the American Army during the...
Memories of Belonging
Memories of Belonging is a three-generation oral-history study of the offspring of southern Italians who migrated to Worcester,...
Selective Immigration
The Emergency Quota Law of 19 May 1921 was designed to limit the immigration of aliens into the United States. Based on data from...
Lynch Law
Thousands of lynching victims were recorded in the US South at the end of the 19th century, the vast majority of whom were...
Afro-Indian Abraham
Because slave-run plantations in Florida lay at the edge of Indian lands, there was frequent contact between fugitive slaves,...
International Ladies Garment Workers
The great garment workers strike in New York (November 1909 until February 1910) was a stage for immigrant workers' solidarity...
Greensboro Four
'Apart from its textile and furniture industry, Greensboro (North-Carolina) was above all known as the home of the predominantly...
Sewing Machine Generates Millionaire
Elias Howe, a mechanic born in 1819, patented the first American sewing machine in 1846. Initially Howe's machine did not sell...
Women's Suffrage
Women's suffrage in the US was finally achieved on 18 August 1920 when Tennessee ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the...
"The Slave Next Door"
Construction is a labour field that is ripe for trafficking. In 2006, the Trans Bay Steel Company in California was involved in a...
Indigenous Slavery
The Belgian missionary Louis Hennepin was picnicking on the banks on the Mississippi on 12 April 1680, when he 'suddenly...
West Coast Waterfront Strike
In May and June 1934, more than 10.000 longshoremen struck all the US Pacific Coast ports. Vowing to open the port of San...
Mississippi River Workers
'The average Mississippi River roustabout is a strong black fellow, who has probably been a slave, and leaves the plantation for...
Puerto Ricans in Two Worlds
For several years now the IISH has had a small collection on the Puerto Rican National Movement, which deals with Puerto Rico and...
Gentlemen's Agreement
Almost a thousand Japanese immigrant workers arrived monthly in California in the early 1900's.  Tension grew over the Japanese...
Anti-Impressment
Four Irish-American seafarers from Marblehead, Massachusetts, were homeward bound on board the Pitt Packet, a brig with a load of...
Slave Revolt?
Two African and one Indian slave killed a farm family of seven whites in Newton, Long Island, N.Y. on 28 February 1708. The...
Mollie Maguires
The Mollie Maguires were a secret organization of Irish-American coal miners in Pennsylvania, named for an Irish widow who had...
Successful Seamstress
Elizabeth Keckley began working at the White House on 5 March 1861 as the personal dresser and modiste of the First Lady, Mary...
Seattle General Strike
The Seattle General Strike of 1919 lasted from February 6 to February 11, 1919 and started with a work stoppage of the shipyard...
Via Rotterdam to Pennsylvania
Rotterdam in the 17th and 18th centuries was a principal port of departure for transmigrants to America. Typically they came from...
Slavery Abolished
President Lincoln declared slavery in the Confederate States unlawful on 1 January 1861. Slaves were freed at the stroke of a pen...
Of Tub and Toil
The second edition of the Chicago World Fair opened on 26 May 1934. The impressive building of the Kohler Sanitation Company was...
Strikes and Bloodshed
On "Bloody Friday", July 20,1934, 67 striking truckdrivers and their supporters were shot by Minneapolis police.  In 'Striking...
Abramovič in New York
In two letters of April 1930 there is mention of a public debate on the best solution to the problems of the Jewish people. The...
Leroux
"Les Malthusiens proposent un massacre annuel des innocents dans toutes les familles dont la génération dépasserait le nombre...
Battle of Seattle
The World Trade Organization (WTO) had its convention in Seattle from 30 November till 2 December 1999. Some ten thousand...
Presidential Candidate Nixon
The Republican Convention on 23 August 1972 chose President Richard Nixon as presidential candidate. Nixon thereupon campaigned...
Bombs on Tripoli
On April 15, 1986, the American president Reagan ordered major bombing raids against  "terrorist sites" in Libya. The bombs...
Operation "Urgent Fury"
President Reagan's "Urgent Fury" operation, when 5000 American marines landed on Grenada, a Caribbean island of 340 square...
Second-oldest Profession
The first sociological study of pimps was published on 3 February 1931. Its author was the colorful medical doctor Ben Reitman...
"I Have a Dream Today"
Reverend Martin Luther King's struggle for equal rights for black Americans accelerated in 1963. He became world famous with his...
Search Warrant for Emma Goldman
The American anarchist Emma Goldman was considered already a dangerous woman in the 1890s. She was associated with the attempt on...
Rosenbergs Found Guilty
A world-wide clemency appeal was launched after the American communists Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death on the...
Anarchists Executed
On 11 November 1887 the prison in Illinois was preparing for the execution of Parsons, Spies, Fischer, and Engel, the Haymarket...
Black Panthers
The first issue of The Black Panther, official news organ of the Black Panther Party, was published on 25 April 1967. Black...
Power in a Union
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), nicknamed the Wobblies, was founded on June 27, 1905. This revolutionary syndicalist...
A Supernatural Jimi Hendrix
On September 18, 1970 Jimi Hendrix dies after an overdosis of pills. The year before this picture was shot in New York by the...
(No) International Earth Day
In 1970, within a short period of time, two International Earth Days were launched. Both days were initiated by US civilians...
Free Love in America
John Humphrey Knowles, whom many people were pleased to hear died April 13, 1886, had preached and practised Free Love. In 1848...
No Smoking at Work
The eleventh commandment in the woolen mill in Winchendon, Massachusetts is a smoking prohibition, issued July 5, 1830. Smoking...
The Masses Not Allowed
The American revolutionary magazine The Masses, dubbed "frank, arrogant and impertinent" by its most famous contributor John Reed...
Payment of wages by check
Payday at one of the then thirteen Libbey-Owens-Ford glass and plaskon plants in the USA around 1950. All wage employees were...
Auguste Fabre - Les Sky Scratchers
In 1896 Auguste Fabre, a Frenchman involved in the cooperative movement, wrote a short book about American skyscrapers. The...
Emma Goldman
In September 1895 a "very dangerous anarchist woman from New York" was searched by the Amsterdam police.This woman was Emma...
Postcolonial Migrants and Identity Politics
These transfers of sovereignty resulted in extensive, unforeseen movements of citizens and subjects to their former countries....
A. Berkman, Der Kronshtater oyfshtand
A protest against the repression of the revolt of the Russian sailors by the Bolshevik authorities in Leningrad in 1921.  From...
Di Geheymnise fun Rusishen kayzerlikhen hof
Report of the Imperial Court of Russia. The story of the attempt on Tsar Aleander II life in 1882.
Dovid Edelshtat, revolutionary Yiddish poet
After his emigration to the United States Dovid Edelshtat (1866-1892) started writing Yiddish poems of protest and wrath and...
David Truong
The IISH received an important addition to the archive of David H.D. Truong, formerly known as Truong Dinh Truong. Truong was...
Mission Yuppie Eradication Project
The Institute received a collection of documents from Kevin Keating, a well known local activist in San Francisco. The material (...
Exit Art, New York
The exhibition 'Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now' in Exit Art Cultural Center, New York (20 September - 22...
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