The twenty-seven articles presented in this volume mark the first stage of an international research project set up after the comprehensive reorganization of the International Institute of Social History in 1987. The aim of this extensive book project is to study the development of working-class movements using comparative research in an international framework in the time-period 1870-1914. Included in this study are papers by experts on as many countries (both European and non-European) as possible with a modern labour movement: Britain, Belgium The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, The Czech Workers' Movement in the Habsburg Empire, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, The Jewish Workers' Movement in the Russian Empire, Poland, Finland, United States of America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, and Japan.