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Alessandro Stanziani just published Bondage. Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries. New York, Oxford : Berghahn, (International Studies in Social History Volume 24), 2014, 258 p."For the first time, this book provides the global history of labor in Central Eurasia, Russia, Europe, and the Indian Ocean between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. It contests common views on free and unfree labor, and compares the latter to many Western countries where wage conditions resembled those of domestic servants. This gave rise to extreme forms of dependency in the colonies, not only under slavery, but also afterwards in form of indentured labor in the Indian Ocean and obligatory labor in Africa. The author shows that unfree labor and forms of economic coercion were perfectly compatible with market development and capitalism, proven by the consistent economic growth that took place all over Eurasia between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. This growth was labor intensive: commercial expansion, transformations in agriculture, and the first industrial revolution required more labor, not less. Finally, Stanziani demonstrates that this world did not collapse after the French Revolution or the British industrial revolution, as is commonly assumed, but instead between 1870 and 1914, with the second industrial revolution and the rise of the welfare state."Preview on Google Books / Full pdf coverTable of contentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe Scope and Main Argument of this BookThe Legal Status and Rights of Labor in Russia and EuropeSerfdom in a Comparative PerspectiveGlobal, Local, Imperial: Scales of AnalysisPart I. Bondage ImaginedChapter 1. Second Serfdom and Wage Earners in European and Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to the Mid-nineteenth CenturyThe Eighteenth Century: Forced Labor between Reform and RevolutionEnlightenment and Serfdom in RussiaThe Proletarians Are the Real Serfs: Utopian Socialism, Christian Socialism, and Radical ThoughtConclusionChapter 2. Poor Laws, Management, and Labor Control in Russia and Britain, or the History of the Bentham Brothers in RussiaA Global History of Labor Control: The Case of the Bentham Brothers in RussiaEstate Organization in Russia: Instruktsiia, or How to Supervise the SupervisorControlling Labor: Paupers and Servants in BritainThe Fate of Bentham’s Panopticon: Labor Organization in Nineteenth-century Britain and RussiaConclusionPart II. The Architecture of Bondage: Slaves and Serfs in Central Asia and RussiaChapter 3. Slavery and Bondage in Central Asia and Russia from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth CenturyIntroductionKholopy: Slaves, Serfs, or Indentured Servants?War Captives at a Crossroads of EmpiresSlavery in Central Eurasia: Its Estimation and Overall InterpretationChapter 4. The Institutions of SerfdomProperty Rules and the Legal Status of Russian PeasantryChanging Legal Status: Administrative Procedure or Court ProceedingsPeasants in TownConclusion: Legal Status and Economic Dynamism in Imperial RussiaChapter 5. Labor and Dependence on Russian EstatesIntroductionProto-Industry, Trade, and Growth in the Eighteenth CenturyFrom Peasant-masters to Peasant-workers? (1800–1861)Toward a Reassessment of Second Serfdom in Eastern EuropePart III. Old Bondage, New Practices: A Comparative View of the Russian, European, and Indian Ocean WorldsChapter 6. The Persistent Servant: Labor, Rules, and Social Hierarchies in France and Britain from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth CenturyLabor Constraints in EnglandA French Exception?ConclusionChapter 7. Bondage across the Ocean. Indentured Labor in the Indian OceanThe Main ArgumentForms of Bondage in the Indian OceanForced Migration Across the Oceans: ConvictsThe Invention of EngagismeEngagés from Asia and Africa in the Indian Ocean in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth CenturiesEngagisme after SlaveryFrom Servants to Indentured Immigrants: The Case of MauritiusToward a New World?Conclusion. The Collapse and Resurgence of BondageCollective Bargaining and the “New” Labor Contract in Western CountriesPopulation, Migration, and Labor, 1870–1914Russian Growth: From Serfdom to Bondage?ReferencesArchivesPrinted DocumentsSelected BibliographyIndex