Strikwerda makes his case with an impressive command of comparative European political history.
D. G. Troyansky, Texas Tech University
CHOICE, April 1998
One of the finest books on Belgium to appear in many years. It will be of great interest to French and German historians as well as Belgian scholars.
Kenneth Barkin, University of California, Riverside Strikwerda's insightful analyses of Belgian society and politics transform our understandings of the social and political history of the industrial age.
Donald Reid, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Strikwerda's authoritative study of the political emergence of the working class in Belgium makes a major contribution to the history of the beginnings of mass politics in the period between about 1870 and 1914.
Hugh Mcleod, The University of Birmingham, United Kingdom A model of patient historical reconstruction.
Kenneth D. McRae, Carleton University An original and thoroughly researched study . . . it fills a sizable gap in the history of modern Europe.
John Merriman, Yale University A very important work, throughly researched. Strikwerda's book will be a must for labour scholars.
Jean Stengers, Brussels
English Historcal Review
Strikwerda does not retell the history of national movements or parties, but lokks locally to analyze institutions that embodied 'working class solidarity.' Strikwerda's meticulous research in primary sources, as well as the encyclopedic range of his secondary scholarship, allows him to build upon and often to counter effectively the story told by Belgian historians of their own labor movements. This book should interest European labor historians who too easily overlook Belgium.
Janet Polasky, University of New Hampshire
Central European History, Vol. 32, No.2, 1999
...substantial and important study... Strikwerda's admirably wide-ranging book therefore deserves to be read by a wide audience. Equipped with a wealth of primary research, the author is at ease with Flemish Dutch sources...
Martin Conway, Balliol College, Oxford
French History, Vol.13, No.3, 1999
Carl Strikwerda has skillfully and thoroughly investigated the workers' movement in Ghent, Brussels, and Liège. He offers an innovative study of the mutual relationship of trade unionism, socialism, anarchism, Catholicism, and ethnicity in the period of emerging mass politics. . . . with admirable clarity, he has written a fine book, of great interest not only to Belgian scholars, but to all historians interested in the emergence of a pluralistic mass political life.
Lode Wills
Journal of Modern History