# Global History Seminar: Siân Davies #### calendar\_today Date and Time **February 9, 2026** 03:45PM - 05:45PM EST #### pin\_drop Location **Robinson Hall, 35 Quincy Street, Room 125** [35 Quincy St., Room 125 Cambridge, MA 02138 United States ]() [ WIGH seminar registration arrow\_circle\_right ](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14201RTqxh6f8Htm7_0wu-lq1SxHlNryo8FuNJhuBNSI/edit) "Between Plantation and Penrhyn Quarry: The Transition to Wage Labour, in Stone, in North Wales, in Jamaica" [**Siân Davies**](https://wigh.wcfia.harvard.edu/people/sian-davies), Postdoctoral Fellow, WIGH. PhD in Economic and Social History, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, The University of Edinburgh. Commentators: [**Tomas Bartoletti**](https://wigh.wcfia.harvard.edu/people/tomas-bartoletti), Postdoctoral Fellow. Senior Lecturer and SNSF-Ambizione Principal Investigator, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich. [**Vincent Brown**](https://vbrown.scholars.harvard.edu/biocv), Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University *Historians focused on the transition to wage labour in one geographic zone have infrequently considered its relationship to this transition elsewhere. The geographic separation of management and business records has contributed to a lack of attention to the connections and interactions between these endeavours. The Pennant family’s papers, containing correspondence and reports related to labour management of both their sugar and slate businesses, permit the examination of two distinct yet connected efforts to establish wage dependency: in North Wales from the late eighteenth into the nineteenth century, and in Jamaica after the end of apprenticeship in 1838. British labourers’ imagined voluntary transition into a working class, as depicted in the monument, helped conceal friction at home and come emancipation legitimised new racist stereotypes that characterised people of African descent as uniquely incompatible with free wage labour. This article analyses efforts to establish wage dependency and ‘industriousness’ through managers’ letters from North Wales before turning attention to similar efforts in post-emancipation Jamaica.* [Register here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1IjKsdYhZWwz6ugCbyxX-op3K7C2Bqt1i0hFrbHHtMjQ/edit)- you will receive the seminar paper approximately one week ahead of time. This graduate-faculty research seminar is designed to bring together interested faculty and students on a continuing basis to cover topics on global history. It is part of History 2950A/B *Approaches to Global History* and includes both reading sessions designed for graduate students and research sessions open to the interested public during which students and faculty participants will present current research. Faculty participants will be drawn from several schools, and, most especially, from the group of fellows in global history who are spending the academic year 2025-2026 at the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global History. Discussions will be moderated by Professors **Sven Beckert**. Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#) Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://wigh.wcfia.harvard.edu/node/1921736/event-feed.ics) Copy link link