Contact
Email:
holger.weiss@abo.fi
Website:
http://www.globalhistorylab.com/weiss-holger/
Further Information
Guest of the Director during the winter term 2019/20
Project
A sociospatial framework of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers and its precursor: global ambitions, transnational networks and local articulations of radical proletarian solidarity during the interwar period
The International of Seamen and Harbour Workers (ISH) and its precursor, the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers (IPC-Transport), were typical 'globalization projects' of the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU). The ambition of the IPC-Transport and the ISH was to activate and mobilize radical maritime transport workers on a global scale. Established in 1930 as an umbrella organization for radical maritime labour unions, the main objective of the ISH was to direct and coordinate the activities of the Communist-led opposition groups. Only in a few countries where Communist party and trade union activities were legal did the revolutionary opposition exist as independent unions, among others in Weimar Germany, France and the USA. In other countries, such as the United Kingdom and in the Scandinavian countries, the revolutionary trade union opposition operated within the existing maritime trade unions.
While in Munich, I will translate, rewrite and integrate new empirical material collected from the Comintern archives in Moscow and the Nordic countries in my book För kampen internationellt! Transportarbetarnas globala kampinternational och dess verksamhet i Nordeuropa (Helsinki: Työväen historian ja perinteen tutkimuksen seura, 2019). The project expands my previous research on the ambitions of the RILU and the Communist International to establish an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist network in the Black Atlantic during the 1930s. In my new project, I am applying a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to analyse the global/local - if not glocal - agendas, articulations and activities of the IPAC-Transport and ISH and its central nodes, the International Seamen’s Clubs. The sociospatial framework will gain new insights on the international and anti-colonial/anti-imperial campaigns of the ISH as well as on the spatial extension of national seamen’s strikes during the 1930s.