Contributions to this volume examine Brazilian labour history, contextualising their research in the field of global labour history.

Brazilian labour history in global context: some introductory notes Paulo Fontes, Alexandre Fortes and David Mayer; 1. Free and unfree labour in the nineteenth-century Brazilian Amazon Adalberto Paz; 2. Maids, clerks, and the shifting landscape of labour relations in Rio de Janeiro, 1830s-1880s Henrique Espada Lima and Fabiane Popinigis; 3. Revolutionary syndicalism and reformism in Rio de Janeiro's labour movement (1906-1920) Claudio Batalha; 4. Between Rio's red-light district and the league of nations: immigrants and sex work in 1920s Rio de Janeiro Cristiana Schettini; 5. From the streets to the government: socialist militants and labour law in Brazil Aldrin A. S. Castellucci and Benito B. Schmidt; 6. World War II and Brazilian workers: populism at the intersections between national and global histories Alexandre Fortes; 7. The local and the global: neighbourhoods, workers and associations in São Paulo (1945-1964) Paulo Fontes; 8. Sugarcane workers in search of justice: rural labour through the lens of the state Christine Rufino Dabat and Thomas D. Rogers; 9. Looking at the southern cone: American trade unionism in the Cold War military dictatorships of Brazil and Argentina Larissa Rosa Corrêa.