Re-constructing the origins of modern labor management

Mainstream history generally assumes that modern labor-management techniques originated in factories in Europe and North America employing ‘free’ wage laborers. The present explorative article argues, however, that important innovations were born outside the North Atlantic region (especially in the colonies), in attempts to control unfree workers; that some of these innovations date from long before the Industrial Revolution; and that knowledge about such innovations travelled through all parts of the globe.