The world's richest socioeconomic history collection is at your disposal, either online or in our well-equipped reading room overlooking the former harbour area in East Amsterdam. The Institute holds nearly 5,000 archives, more than 1,000,000 printed volumes and an equivalent number of audio-visual items including many posters.

Read about our paradigm-changing research program on the long-term development of global inequality and labour relations. Learn about our research staff, their projects and publications. In 2018 our research quality was rated world class/excellent by an international peer review committee from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Browse through thousands of our datasets with millions of records on demographics, inequality, prices, wages, national accounts, labour relations etc. The IISH is one of the worlds main data hubs on socioeconomic history.

The IISH, like many other scientific institutes, has been closed down by current government measures as a result of the coronavirus. This closure in no way means that its staff like researchers and collection curators – stand idly by. This current crisis encourages reflection on themes in which the IISH as an institute is closely engaged, such as social inequality and labour relations both locally and globally, the role of civil society, but also changes in world views before and after the corona crisis.