Sweatshops at Sea Merchant Seamen in the World's First Globalized Industry, From 1812 to the Present

Synopsis

As the main artery of international commerce, merchant shipping was the world's first globalized industry, often serving as a vanguard for issues touching on labor recruiting, the employment relationship, and regulatory enforcement that crossed national borders. InSweatshops at Sea, historian Leon Fink examines the evolution of laws and labor relations governing ordinary seamen over the past two centuries. The merchant marine offers an ideal setting for examining the changing regulatory regimes applied to workers by the United States, Great Britain, and, ultimately, an organized world community. Fink explores both how political and economic ends are reflected in maritime labor regulations and how agents of reform--including governments, trade unions, and global standard-setting authorities--grappled with the problems of applying land-based, national principles and regulations of labor discipline and management to the sea-going labor force. With the rise of powerful nation-states in a global marketplace in the nineteenth century, recruitment and regulation of a mercantile labor force emerged as a high priority and as a vexing problem for Western powers. The history of exploitation, reform, and the evolving international governance of sea labor offers a compelling precedent in an age of more universal globalization of production and services.

Copyright:

2003

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780807877807

Related ISBNs:

9781469613697, 9781469603322, 9780807834503

Publisher:

The University of North Carolina Press

Date of Addition:

01/05/16

Copyrighted By:

The University of North Carolina Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Business and Finance, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics, Politics and Government

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.