Collection Guides

This Women at Work Collection Guide provides information about the history of working women worldwide.

From way back, antimilitarism was the predicament of religious groups like the Baptists and Quakers. The Marxist workers movement from the 19th and early 20th century incorporated antimilitarism in its struggle against imperialism and capitalism.

British social history writing spans about seven centuries, from the medieval farmers' protests and enclosure movement to the 1984 miners' strike and the peace movement today. 

Since it was begun in 1987, the Turkish Desk has developed into one of the most important research centers worldwide on the history of modern Turkey.

On the occasion of the 150th birthday of the poet and politician Pieter Jelles Troelstra (1860-1930), the IISH has opened a digital documentation center. 

Traditionally, acquisitions related to the Netherlands have included socialism and the labor movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since the 1970s, the social movement has expanded to include environmental issues, human rights, squatters, and similar subjects. The legacy of these new social movements can be found at the IISH as well.

The Law of Historical Memory of Spain (Ley de la Memoria Histórica de España) (October 2007) has greatly enhanced research on the Spanish Civil War. 

In the Russian and Eastern Europe collections at the IISH, Russia and the former USSR are dominant. Additional collection development efforts cover most countries in Eastern Europe that became communist after 1945.

There is a lot of common ground with IISH's 'core business', Global Labour History. For instance, most people migrate because they hope to find work elsewhere, or because they are sent to another part of the world by their employer (from soldiers to expats).

With its historic revolutions and legendary revolutionary movements, Latin America was bound to become core business for the Institute. 

International organizations figure prominently in the collections at the IISH.

The IISH collections on Germany and German speaking countries in Central Europe cover the period beginning with the democratic revolutionary movements and early workers' organizations around 1840 to the protest movements in the FRG during the '60s and '70s, and the civic movement in the GDR during the '80s.