Labour's love lost: Observations on the historiography of class and ethnicity in the nineteenth Century

Authors

Peter Way, University of WindsorFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1994

Publication Title

Journal of American Studies

Volume

28

Issue

1

First Page

1

Keywords

labor supply, unskilled labor, historiography, working class

Last Page

22

Abstract

During the last thirty years, American labor and ethnic historiography, generally relying on pioneers like E. P. Thompson and Herbert Gutman, interpreted the 19th-century industrial experiences of the working classes and ethnic groups by explaining how such groups fashioned their own, separate, subcultures. Such scholarship idealized workers, minimized the primacy of industrial capitalism and its power to shape society according to capitalist ideologies, and ignored worker unrest that flared sporadically into violence. This unrest was never driven sufficiently by social class solidarity and ethnic consciousness that an autonomous subculture could root in those circles.

Comments

This article was first published in the Journal of American Studies. Copyright Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021875800026530.

Recommended Citation

Way, Peter. (1994). Labour's love lost: Observations on the historiography of class and ethnicity in the nineteenth Century. Journal of American Studies, 28 (1), 1-22.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/historypub/11