Rebels with a Cause: Five Centuries of Social History Collected by the International Institute of Social History

Revolutionaries, anarchists, socialists, peace activists, sexual reformers, fundamentalists...'rebels with a cause' have featured in every age, The collections of the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam are full of them. The IISH is the world's largest documentation centre in the field of social history and emancipation movements. The collections for which the Institute is renowned occupy some 50 kilometres of shelf space filled with books, archives, posters, banners and photographs. This book is published on the occasion of the Institute's 75th anniversary in 2010. It looks back on three quarters of a century of collection development in an international context. Yet it also tells a new history of creative ideas and people who fought for radical change. 'Rebels with a cause' constitute the thread through this story built from over two hundred original documents. From Karl Marx to Aung San Suu Kyi, from the French Revolution to the Chinese student revolt of 1989, from the early modern world explorers to today's anti-globalists.