The Moral Economy of Transnational Solidarity: Emotions, Money, and Reciprocity between European Workers (1860s-1914)

The Moral Economy of Transnational Solidarity: Emotions, Money, and Reciprocity between European Workers (1860s-1914)

What is solidarity made of? This is a question that European working-class activists had

to tackle when they developed their international solidarity networks, from the

foundation of the First International in 1864 to the eve of the First World War. Shared

feelings and emotions were essential to build identification and imagined communities

beyond borders. But the founders of the International wanted more. Solidarity implied

both words and money, feelings and practices. Building on my recently published

Struggle and Mutual Aid. The Age of Workers’ Solidarity (Other Press, New York, 2023),

this presentation explores the complex entanglement between emotions and financial

transfers, especially in times of strikes and labour uprisings. Taking inspiration both from

Viviana Zelizer’s sociology of money and EP Thompson’s “moral economy”, this study

aims at overcoming a potential divide between the cultural history of solidarity, based on

text analysis, values and symbols, and its economic side, centered on financial transfers

and practices. This talk argues that money and emotions travel together, but can also

collide and produce tensions and conflicts. The “business of solidarity” is always a

twisted and tricky path.

Nicolas Delalande is an Associate Professor in European History at the Centre

for History at Sciences Po. He is the author of Struggle and Mutual Aid. The Age

of Workers’ Solidarity (Other Press, New York, 2023), and has coedited, together

with Nicolas Barreyre, A World of Public Debts. A Political History (Palgrave

MacMillan, 2020). His research interests connect the history of capitalism, the

history of solidarity, and the history of trust in government and social

resistance.

Meeting number: 2740 076 9625

Meeting password:6mPV2He5VYu