Experiencing Wages: Social and Cultural Aspects of Wage Forms in Europe since 1500(4 International Studies in Social History)

When discussing wages, historians have traditionally concentrated on the level of wages, much less on how people were paid for their work. Important aspects were thus ignored such as how frequently were wages actually paid, how much of the wage was paid in non-monetary form - whether as traditional perquisites or community relief - especially when there was often insufficient coinage available to pay wages. Covering a wide geographical area, ranging from Spain to Finland, and time span, ranging from the sixteenth century to the 1930s, this volume offers fresh perspectives on key areas in social and economic history such as the relationship between customs, moral economy, wages and the market, changing pay and wage forms and the relationship between age, gender and wages.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures and Tables Introduction Chapter 1. The wage in Europe since the sixteenth century Peter Scholliers and Leonard Schwarz Custom, Wages and the Market Chapter 2. Institutional and cultural change in wage formation: port labour in Antwerp (sixteenth – eighteenth centuries) Harald Deceulaer Chapter 3. When labour hires capital: evidence from Lancashire, 1870–1914 Michael Huberman Chapter 4. Giving notice: the legitimate way of quitting and firing (Ghent, 1877–1896) Patricia Van den Eeckhout Changing Pay Systems and Wage Forms Chapter 5. Wage forms, wage systems and wage conflicts in German crafts during the eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries Reinhold Reith Chapter 6. Wage forms, pay systems and labour control in nineteenth-century agriculture. Evidence from the Dutch province of Groningen Henny Gooren and Hans Heger Chapter 7. Cash, wages and the economy of makeshifts in England, 1650–1800 Craig Muldrew and Steven King Age, Gender and Wages Chapter 8. Gendered wage systems and industrialisation in Finland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Sakari Heikkinen Chapter 9. Engendering the experience of wages: the evolution of the piecework system at the Spanish Tobacco Monopoly, 1800–1930s Lina Gálvez-Muñoz Chapter 10. Age, gender and the wage in Britain, 1830–1930 Paul Johnson Chapter 11. At what cost was pre-eminence purchased? Child labour and the first industrial revolution Jane Humphries Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
Peter Scholliers works at the Center for Contemporary Social History, Free University Brussels.

Review :
"This is a volume that is to be welcomed both for providing new and intersint findings, that suggest new answers to old questions, and for opening new and exciting avenues for future research."  ·  Economic History Review