International Institute of Social History

The International Institute of Social History, or Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (IISG), is a research library whose scale is measured not in bookshelves, but in collections: one million volumes across 5,445 archival collections. Founded on 25 November 1935 by Nicolaas Posthumus, it became part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, linking labor history with formal scientific research. From the start, the institute was built to follow how labour relations change over time, collecting international archives that reflected radical leftist and workers’ movements. Among its holdings are papers associated with major figures such as Emma Goldman and Karl Marx, alongside institutional collections connected to organizations like Greenpeace International and the European Trade Union Confederation. World War II disrupted this work. …

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