In July 1915 and October 1916, workers at the Bayonne, New Jersey, Standard Oil refinery went on strike, demanding better treatment and higher wages. In both cases, the workers were defeated by violence and repression. This article tells the largely forgotten story of the Bayonne strikes in the context of Progressive Era industrial relations in the United States that contributed to a specific United States version of welfare capitalism. The strikes emphasized the growth of unskilled mass production workers and highlighted the weakness of the existing labor movement, including its most radical expressions, in providing leadership to these workers. Capitalizing on this failure, Rockefeller and Standard Oil deflected the Bayonne workers’ anger into company unionism and welfare capitalism, which channeled the Progressive emphasis on “industrial democracy” to strengthen capitalism and prevent worker militancy and union organization for decades. The article examines how the Rockefellers’ vision of welfare capitalism differed from contemporary European counterparts, particularly to prevent social conflict by avoiding unions instead of collaborating with the union leadership.

This study examines prosecutorial resistance to democratic backsliding in Poland (2016–23) using Šipulová’s three-dimensional analytical framework. Despite facing greater structural vulnerabilities than judges – hierarchical subordination, immediate retaliation risks and weaker formal protections – Polish prosecutors developed sophisticated resistance strategies combining on-bench actions (challenging illegitimate orders, refusing transfers) with off-bench mobilisation (professional associations, media engagement, coalition-building with judges and civil society). Based on interviews with eleven prosecutors, the research reveals a paradoxical effectiveness pattern: minimal immediate political impact coupled with significant long-term achievements. While unable to prevent institutional capture, prosecutors elevated their professional standing, fostered unprecedented interprofessional solidarity and raised societal awareness about prosecutorial independence. The study demonstrates that prosecutorial resistance functions as democratic preservation rather than immediate political opposition, maintaining institutional memory and professional standards crucial for future democratic reconstruction.

The well of Junia Rufina has long been one of the main features of the archaeology of Roman Butrint. This paper aims at offering a chronological and cultural context for its dedication by inserting it into contemporary urban and historical developments. The monumentalization of the well in the 2nd c. CE illustrates how increased access to and architectural display of water was a main aspect of urban policy in the newly founded province of Epirus, in line with the rest of the Greek world. The role of Rufina, on the other hand, can be understood in the light of the cultural policies of the time, and as a manifestation of the power and prestige attached to female patronage in highly networked families throughout the Empire at the time of Hadrian.

The consumption of food is simultaneously one of humanity’s most basic necessities and one of its greatest luxuries. It has, appropriately, both inspired and reflected cultural activities, from agricultural rituals and ascetic practices to epicurean banquets and poetry. At the present moment, we seem to be living in an era of peak food obsession, fueled by extremely popular food culture, the rapid rise of “foodie” life on social media, and heated debates over the authenticity and identity of cuisine in a multicultural context. Chinese societies have been equally obsessed, with food being a central theme of ancient bronzes, Confucian classics, religious practices, and literary works. For this reason, the study of Chinese food culture naturally brings one through a wide array of disciplines, including cultural studies, history, religion, medicine, and aesthetics. However, with a few notable exceptions, major research in humanistic food studies has tended to emphasize recent time periods, European and American cultures, or both (the “modern west”). The result has been a strong emphasis on “cultural studies” approaches, usually adopting structuralist, culturalist, or Gramscian critiques of power brokers in the past century.1 This special issue shows how attention to Chinese food history may bring to light many new questions and methods in the study of food culture.

Handheld firearms have been little studied in the military history of the Portuguese in Asia. Historians have centered on naval and siege warfare, in which cannons feature extensively. The way artillery was used in ships and sieges has been depicted as an important innovation of European origin, which gave the Portuguese a decisive advantage over their Asian opponents. Yet, this approach has confined harquebuses and muskets to a secondary role. We reconsider this historiographical imbalance using Jeremy Black’s idea that fitness-for-purpose is the best standard to measure military effectiveness. We argue that even if handheld firearms were not used by the Portuguese in a particularly “innovative” way, they were important and effective at the time.

This article examines whether formal and informal workers in Argentina and Chile hold different attitudes toward labor unions. Engaging debates on labor-market dualism and union revitalization, we assess the representation gap hypothesis—which expects weaker union support among outsiders—against the class solidarity hypothesis, which anticipates broadly similar orientations across labor-market positions. Using original 2025 survey data from both countries, we find limited evidence of a systematic insider–outsider divide. Although informal self-employed workers sometimes express more skeptical views, most attitudes among informal workers are statistically indistinguishable from—and in some cases more favorable than—those of formal workers. Cross-nationally, Argentine workers tend to assign greater importance to unions, while Chilean workers report higher willingness to unionize. Taken together, these findings suggest that the representation gap thesis may not fully capture workers’ orientations and point to the potential relevance of solidaristic dynamics shaped by national institutional and political contexts.