Dr Lorenzo Costaguta

I am an historian of race and class with a specialism on the history of U.S. and European socialist movement. My first monograph, Workers of All Colors Unite: Race and the Origins of American Socialism (Illinois University Press, 2023), uses a multi-lingual archival basis to offer the first history socialism and race in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book adopts a transnational approach, exploring the role of European immigrants (in particular from Germany) in shaping American socialist racial thought.

Stemming from my first book is my current research project, a history of ideas of race and class in the Socialist International (1889-1914). My aim is to rearticulate the history of global socialism at the turn of the twentieth century through the lens of race studies and studies of imperialism and colonialism. The 1890-1914 period saw the rise of Jim Crow in the United States, the explosion of antisemitism in Europe, and the consolidation of Western empires in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Yet historians have never studied the interrelated development of ideas of race and class in organized working class movements in this crucial moment of transition. This project identifies the socialist Second International as one of the first transnational spaces of confrontation on ideas of race for workers across the world.

I serve as coordinator of the working group on Labour and Empire within the European Labour History Network (https://socialhistoryportal.org/elhn/wg-empire) and I am an elected member of the Board of the Italian Association for North American Studies (AISNA - https://www.aisna.net/current-board/). I held visting fellowships at the John W. Kluge Center (Library of Congress), the British Library and the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi (Turin). I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Higher Education Academy.