International Institute of Social History

The International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam is one of the world's leading archives for the history of labour, migration and social movements. Founded in 1935 by Dutch economic historian Nicolaas Posthumus, it was created to rescue endangered collections from trade unions, anarchists and socialists as dictatorships closed in across Europe. Its vaults now hold the original manuscripts of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the CNT-FAI archive from the Spanish Civil War and material from activists around the globe. Part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the institute welcomes researchers and the merely curious alike. Sit in the reading room and you may leaf through documents that once helped reshape the world.