This paper uses recently digitised samples of apprentices and masters in London and Bristol to quantify the practice of apprenticeship in the late 17th century. Apprenticeship appears much more fluid than is traditionally understood. Many apprentices did not complete their terms of indenture;...

This paper studies the way workers and firms behaved in a highly cyclical sector such as the cotton textile industry, which encompassed 1/5 of the Catalan industrial workforce in the early 20th century. Using firm level evidence from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the paper shows that,...

[...]In part, this collection of papers derives from the impact of Subaltern Studies on approaches to the history of labour. While the contributions may not be located within ‘subalternism’, to differing degrees they reflect responses in the literature to that paradigm. At the very least,...

One of the most significant changes in the labour market in the twentieth century was the rise of the internal labour market. Its origins can be found in the nineteenth century, particularly in the large service companies such as banks and the railway companies. By studying the internal labour...

This paper reviews the achievements of the Labour Government’seducation policy between 1997 and 2001. Tony Blair claimed that hisGovernment would make education a priority. The first part of thepaper reviews the scale of education spending in relation to theeconomy at large and within the...