First published in 1984, this collection of twelve case studies examines the emergence of a free wage-labour force in all regions of the third world. Although the struggle and conflict through which the proletariat has achieved a degree of class consciousness is not neglected, the more dominant theme is that of the process and techniques which have created a working class on the capitalist periphery.

1. Introduction 2. The Labour Question in the Gold Coast, 1870-1906 3. British Nitrate Companies and the Emergence of Chile's Proletariat, 1880-1914 4. Proletarianisation in Mozambique 5. The Creation of a Proletariat on Peru's Sugar Plantations: 1880-1920 6. The Political Economy of Semi-Proletarianisation Under Colonialism: Sudan 1925-50 7. Poverty, Proletarianisation and the Production of Uneven Development: A Kenyan Village 8. Peasants or Proletarians? The Transformation of Agrarian Production Relations in Egypt 9. Agro-Industry, State Policy and Rural Social Structures: Recent Analyses of Proletarianisation in Brazilian Agriculture 10. The Development of Capitalism and the Making of the Working Class in Colonial Indochina, 1870-1940 11. Proletarianisation in the World Order: The Peruvian Experience 12. The Formation and Development of the Working Class in Argentina, 1857-1919 13. Vanguard of the Proletariat? Communists and Unions in Shanghai and Bombay, 1927-1929