Collection Guides

The Collection Guide of the Academy Library, formerly part of the now disbanded Library KNAW, contains the library collections of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) collected in the nineteenth century.

The collection comprises about 200,000 volumes and is accessible via the catalogue. It is an important source for research into the history of science in the Netherlands and is a treasure trove of rare and sometimes unique works.

The IISH is the world's principal repository of anarchist documents. A large anarchism collection was among the Institute's first acquisitions in 1935: the books and archives of Max Nettlau, nicknamed the 'Herodotus of anarchy'.

In 2008, the IISH acquired an extensive collection relating to the anti-apartheid movement and Southern Africa solidarity committees in the Netherlands.

The guide The Asian Collections at the International Institute of Social History, edited by Emile Schwidder and Eef Vermeij, contains brief descriptions of all the collection that consist largely of material about and from Asia.

The France collection is among the larger country collections at the IISH. The collection was built on the basis of revolutionary ideas in the second half of the eighteenth century.

The IISH's German-language collections cover the timeline between the democratic-revolutionary movement and early workers' organisations from around 1840 to the protest movement in the FRG of the 1960s and 1970s and the civic initiatives in the GDR of the 1980s. The impact of the archives of German socialist theorists transcends national boundaries.

International organisations hold an important place within the collections of the IISH. The rise of early workers' organisations was directly related to labour migration, both within Europe and worldwide. The labour movement tried to nurture international solidarity through socialism and trade union organisation.

The collection guide on Latin America, a region with many revolutions and revolutionary movements, reflects an important collection area for the IISH.

In recent years, the history of migrants, (labour) migration and migrant organisations has become an important research area for the IISH, which researches labour relations. After all, most people migrate because they hope to find work elsewhere, or because their employer sends them to another part of the world, such as soldiers or expats.

The focus of the Russian and Eastern European collections at the IISH lies with Russia and the former USSR. In addition, collection development has extended to most Eastern European countries that became communist after 1945. Former Czechoslovakia and Poland are particularly well represented, and to a lesser extent the Balkans.

The Law on the Historical Memory of Spain (Ley de la Memoria Histórica de España) of October 2007 has given a tremendous boost to research on the Spanish Civil War. This is reflected in the IISH collections on this theme.

The focus of the Dutch collections has traditionally been on socialism and labour movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since the 1970s, the social movement has broadened to include actions on the environment, human rights, squatting and other issues. The legacy of these newer social movements can also be found at the IISH as well as in this guide.

To mark the 150th birthday of Pieter Jelles Troelstra (1860-1930), in 2010, the IISH opened a digital documentation centre on this poet and politician.

Since its establishment, in 1987, the Turkey Desk has developed into one of the world's leading centres for the study of modern Turkey.

British social history covers some seven centuries, from the peasant protests and enclosure movement in the Middle Ages to the miners' strikes of the 1980s and today's peace movement. Topics such as the Industrial Revolution, the Chartists and the labour movement in its political, economic and social context can be studied at the IISH through both primary sources and secondary literature.

In the spectrum of archives and collections at the IISH, the anti-war movement occupies an important place. The large number of archives related to the pacifist movement is easily explained by the numerous cross-links that traditionally existed between left-wing groups, action committees and the pacifist movement.

This collection guide provides information on the history of working women worldwide.

The IISH has a unique and diverse collection of Yiddish material consisting of books, brochures, magazines and pamphlets of the early Jewish socialist and anarchist movement in Eastern and Western Europe.