070290 UE Reading Course Global History and Global Studies (2024S)

In his famous 1972 book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Guyanese historian Walter Rodney developed a dialectical view of Euro-Atlantic relations, according to which he argued that while Europe underdeveloped Africa, it was Africa's labor (force) that developed Europe and North America. More than forty years later, Frederick Cooper, in an essay (2006) on the state of research in global labor history, reminded us "how much Africa has been shaped by its connections to the rest of the world and how much the world as we know it has been shaped by the labor of Africans." After a heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, interest in both labor history and Africa ebbed in subsequent decades. However, from around the mid-2000s onwards, significantly influenced by the turn towards the 'global' in many branches of the humanities, labor history under the label of 'global labor history' experienced a revitalization and remarkable upswing. The goal of the seminar is to introduce students to the vitality and broad scope of global labor history and Africa’s place in it. To accomplish this, the introductory sessions will debate relevant texts on Africa in global labor history. Afterwards, selected topics will be presented in which the instructors have their research foci, such as: African trade unionism, African parastatal companies and business history, coerced labor, democratization of labor (workers' self-management), construction work, mining, agricultural work, etc.