For your information, and with a commitment to protecting your personal data, we would like to inform you that on the ARTE Campus website, ARTE Education (the site's publisher) and third parties use cookies and other tracking tools. These cookies are strictly necessary for the website's operation (for example, authentication cookies, AT INTERNET audience measurement cookies) and, consequently, in line with the guidelines of the CNIL, your consent is not required for their use. For more information, please consult the cookie policy related to this site.

4 episodes

A History Of The European Working Class

Watch the first episode

Synopsis

The working class has played an essential part in the history of European countries – through revolutions, wars and social progress.  In 4 episodes of a spectacular tale, this show reminds us of what our societies owe to the workers’ movements and its struggles.

The story begins in the 18th century. But their fight carries on today. Much of our current democracies’ institutions and values flow from older working class demands: universal suffrage or social solidarity are some of its most telling examples. Our culture – the way we dress, the songs we listen to, the movies we watch and the mass-media themselves – heavily relies on the workers’ erstwhile popular culture. Finally, all across Asia, Africa and Latin America, millions of women and men experience lives similar to the 18th and 19th centuries’ European working class. We will bring out the present’s ever looming shadow by constantly flowing back and forth between history and current situations. Those contemporary testimonies and photographs will help us gather the threads of memory between yesterday and nowadays together again.

Episodes

Thumbnail for A History of the European Working Class - The Factory 1700-1820
1H

A History of the European Working Class - The Factory 1700-1820

Thumbnail for A History of the European Working Class - The Barricades 1840-1913
1H

A History of the European Working Class - The Barricades 1840-1913

Thumbnail for A History of the European Working Class - Chain Time 1914-1939
59min

A History of the European Working Class - Chain Time 1914-1939

Thumbnail for A History of the European Working Class - Time Of Destruction
58min

A History of the European Working Class - Time Of Destruction