The working conditions of agricultural workers in developing countries, especially those of women and children, and the growing role of multinational corporations in financing, producing, and distributing agricultural products have long been at the forefront of international human rights' and environmentalist concerns. The exploitation of Chinese and Polish flower pickers in Scotland and mass suicides by South Asian peasants indebted to European and American multinationals, to take two examples, are recent illustrations of the economic and social globalisation of agricultural issues. Yet, what is usually forgotten is that issues of labour exploitation, rural development and agricultural industrialisation already truly emerged and were addressed as international challenges in the interwar years. Outside the administrative levels of international organisations, practically no reference is ever made to the cooperative efforts of international regulation made before WWII, although in fact this was a crucial period for economic and social policy development.

The proposed research aims to address this gap by providing the first historical account of how, between the two world wars, 'peasants'' came to be seen by international institutions as a specific category of workers who needed to be economically and socially modernised and at the same time protected, and whose labour needed to be controlled. The study will use the wide array of hitherto neglected published and unpublished outputs held by international organisations and institutions, which were concerned with agricultural labour in the interwar years and beyond. On the basis of the collected evidence, the project will contextualise the international debate on agricultural labour and provide an account of the political and economic factors leading to it and of the diplomatic and colonial framework in which the international organisations operated. Thematically, the research will cover themes discussed by international forums in the interwar years, namely, the social conditions of agricultural workers in the 1930s-60s, the protection of women and children, the modernisation of agricultural production, the migration of agricultural workers, and the use of agricultural labour during war time. One of the leading questions will be how policy-makers thought of peasants both in European and non-European countries as a distinct 'traditional' and rural category as opposed to the urban, industrial workers, and how this affected the related issues of modernisation, development and the rural-urban divide. The study will also consider the theoretical and practical outcomes of these debates and their relevance for current policy questions related to the social sustainability of agricultural development strategies, the elimination of child labour and the creation of healthy and safe livelihoods for the rural poor. International civil servants and policy makers in the field of agriculture, labour and social and environmental sustainability have limited access to research outcomes on historical trends or the foundations of organisations in which they work. The study will increase awareness of the historical context and engage in dialogue with those currently working in professional and policy-making fields. Understanding the institutional predecessors of current international organisations, commissions and conventions is an important factor in explaining the effectiveness of the international policies currently being pursued in this area.

Dr Amalia Ribi has been awarded an ESRC Research Grant to undertake this research project.