One of the most infamous villains in North America during the Progressive Era was the padrone, a mafia-like immigrant boss who allegedly enslaved his compatriots and kept them uncivilized, unmanly, and unfree. In this history of the padrone, first published in 2000, Gunther Peck analyzes the figure's deep cultural resonance by examining the lives of three padrones and the workers they imported to North America. He argues that the padrones were not primitive men but rather thoroughly modern entrepreneurs who used corporations, the labour contract, and the right to quit to create far-flung coercive networks. Drawing on Greek, Spanish, and Italian language sources, Peck analyzes how immigrant workers emancipated themselves using the tools of padrone power to their own advantage.

This 2000 study is of the history of the padrone, a mafia-like immigrant boss who allegedly enslaved his compatriots.
Reviews
'Skilfully blending biography and cultural analysis - and using sources in four languages - Gunther Peck has written a superb study of the immigrant padrones and their workers. Peck manages to place a crucial passage in American labor history in a truly global context, while remaining sensitive to the peculiarities of his fascinating cast of characters. It is a tour de force.' Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
'Selecting three dramatically different case studies of padrone-immigrant worker relationships- encompassing Italians in Canada, Greeks in Utah, and Mexicans on both sides of the Rio Grande - Peck manages at once to convey the specificity of each of these three contexts while at the same time making a larger case for the meaning of such examples of coerced labor within a society self-consciously dedicated to the principles of 'free labor'. Altogether, this is a work of stunning originality, prodigious research, and well-ordered prose.' Leon Fink, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
'Gunther Peck reworks familiar ideas about free labor and reconceives the historical spaces in which they have operated. His analysis is a wonderful combination of engagement with both the structural constraints of capitalism at a given moment and the ways in which seemingly powerless workers contest, challenge and sometimes change the economic and social limits that they face and the ideologies intended to confine them.' Richard White, Stanford University



Book Information
ISBN 9780521778190
Author Gunther Peck
Format Paperback
Page Count 332
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 450g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 21mm