James A.

James A. Jaffe. Striking a Bargain: Work and Industrial Relations in England 1815-1865 Manchester: Manchester University Press; dist. at Paigrave, New York, NY 2000 Pp ix, 273 $7495 ISBN 0-71904952-0

This is an ambitious and important work Its aim, Jaffe explains, is to challenge what he describes, fashionably enough, as the "grand theories or master narratives" of British nineteenth-century industrial relations history. The master narrative he has particularly in his sights is Eric Hobsbawm's contention that it was not until the middle decades of the hundred ...

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