Introduction Karin Hofmeester, Gijs Kessler and Christine Moll-Murata; 1. Tributary labour relations in China during the Ming-Qing transition (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries) Christine Moll-Murata; 2. Tributary labour in the Russian Empire in the XVIII century: factors of development Dmitry Khitrov; 3. Colonial organization of the mining labour force in Charcas (present-day Bolivia): its consequences (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries) Raquel Gil Montero and Paula C. Zagalsky; 4. Dynamics of continuity and change: shifts in labour relations in the Potosí mines (1680–1812) Rossana Barragan; 5. Political changes and shifts in labour relations in Mozambique, 1820s–1920s Filipa Ribeiro da Silva; 6. Grammar of difference? The Dutch colonial state, labour policies and social norms on work and gender, c.1800–1940 Elise van Nederveen-Meerkerk; 7. The labour recruitment of local inhabitants as Rōmusha in Japanese-occupied South East Asia Takuma Melber; 8. The role of unfree labour in capitalist development: Spain and its empire, nineteenth to twenty-first centuries Fernando Mendiola; 9. Working for the state in the urban economies of Ankara, Bursa and Salonica: from empire to nation state, 1840s–1940s M. Erdem Kabadayı; 10. The role of the state in employment and welfare regulation: Sweden in European context Max Koch; 11. State policies towards precarious work: employment and unemployment in contemporary Portugal Raquel Varela.