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Friedrich Krauß (1791–1868) is the author of Nothschrei eines Magnetisch-Vergifteten [Cry of Distress by a Victim of Magnetic Poisoning] (1852), which has been considered one of the most comprehensive self-narratives of madness published in the German language. In this 1018-page work Krauß documents his acute fears of ‘mesmerist’ influence and persecution, his detainment in an Antwerp asylum and his encounter with various illustrious physicians across Europe. Though in many ways comparable to other prominent nineteenth-century first-person accounts (eg. John Thomas Perceval’s 1838 Narrative of the Treatment Experienced by a Gentleman or Daniel Paul Schreber’s 1903 Memoirs of my Nervous Illness), Krauß’s story has received comparatively little scholarly attention. This is especially the case in the English-speaking world. In this article I reconstruct Krauß’s biography by emphasising his relationship with physicians and his under-explored stay at the asylum. I then investigate the ways in which Krauß appropriated nascent theories about ‘animal magnetism’ to cope with his disturbing experiences. Finally, I address Krauß’s recently discovered calligraphic oeuvre, which bears traces of his typical fears all the while showcasing his artistic skills. By moving away from the predominantly clinical perspective that has characterised earlier studies, this article reveals how Friedrich Krauß sought to make sense of his experience by selectively appropriating both orthodox and non-orthodox forms of medical knowledge. In so doing, it highlights the mutual interaction of discourses ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ as well as the influence of broader cultural forces on conceptions of self and illness during that seminal period.
After Japan’s colonization of Korea in 1910, many Korean peasants lost their land owing to the changes imposed in agriculture, and several Japanese coalmining companies started to recruit them as a colonial surplus population. Despite the low wages they offered, not all of the companies relied on Korean miners – the distribution of this workforce was strikingly uneven. Focusing on the mines of Chikuhō and Miike in the Fukuoka prefecture during the 1910s and 1920s, this article argues that the distribution of Koreans was a consequence of uneven capital accumulation among different mining companies. This unevenness reflected the differing wages and recruitment policies of these companies. Correlating earlier groups of cheap labourers, such as convict workers, to this history, we suggest some explanations as to why some mining companies brought Korean workers into the coal-production process as an immediately available, cheap, and disposable workforce, while others did not.
Recently, historians have begun to illuminate further the role that ethnicity played in integrating immigrants into mining societies. Ethnicity, they show, shaped foreign−native relations in complex ways. Migrant culture and local norms both affected the assimilation process. This essay, focusing on France’s premiere coalfield of Pas-de-Calais during the 1920s, a period of mass influx of Polish laborers, explores employers’ often underappreciated influence over inter-ethnic relations, and it reveals the far-reaching effects of managerial policies. Management’s ethnic paternalism influenced, though often unintentionally, relations between Poles and French miners and officials. Employer strategies to manage Poles led natives to see themselves as distinct from and even superior to immigrants. Beyond the workplace, employers used ethnic notions to attract and control Poles, yet in doing so they highlighted the dissimilarities between Poles and Frenchmen. Ultimately, coal companies reinforced foreigners’ isolation from local society and roused the suspicions of officials, who strictly policed the Polish community.
Working conditions and labour unrest among service employees in the hotel and restaurant sector have, for a long time,have not been at the centre of attention of labour historians, especially in Italy. However, from the late nineteenth century a considerable number of cooks and waiters in Italian cities began to organize in order to improve their working conditions and to create alternative, cost-free forms of employment. From the early twentieth century, the trade unions of the employees of hotels and restaurants (grouped together in a National Federation in 1907) attempted to achieve these goals by means of strikes and demonstrations, some of them remarkably militant. Using a broad range of primary sources and quantitative data, this paper will first describe the characteristics of the working conditions of workers in hotels and restaurants in Italy; second, it will analyse the evolution of organizations, demands, and strike action by these staff from the beginning of the twentieth century to the advent of fascism. Distinguishing two waves of mobilization (1902−1907/1908 and 1919−1920), this paper aims, firstly, to highlight the similarities and differences between union actions by hotel and restaurant employees, on the one hand, and those of other workers on the other. Secondly, it focuses on the ways that the strikes induced serving staff to feel like “real” workers in terms of the outlook and behaviour of industrial workers.