Strikebreaking during Europe’s Belle Époque

When it comes to violent labor conflicts and strikebreaking in modern history, the American case is a term of reference. Immediately, images like those of heavy-armed Pinkerton detectives and violent strikes (e.g. Homested Mill and the Ludlow Massacre) come to mind. A stereotype that exalts American exceptionality in terms of violence, brought about a substantial underestimation of strikebreaking in Europe. Although work replacement never reached the peaks of violence that characterised the United States, strikebreaking agencies and private police played a major role in Europe’s working relations.

The paper aims to bring back strikebreaking into European history, by analyzing its role in the period of unprecedented economic and social developments from the 1880s to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It is based on a wide collaborative research carried out within the framework of the ERC-funded project “The Dark Side of the Belle Époque”.

The paper addresses the peculiarities of European strikebreaking and private policing thanks to the examination of four case studies: the Ruhr mining district, the fertile lands of the Italian Po Valley, arms industries in France and the port of Trieste in Austria-Hungary. Special attention would be devoted to concrete violent practices and the legal framework within which they occurred. This twofold approach would allow us to shed light on capital issues, such as: the effectiveness of the so-called state monopoly over legitimate violence, the role of social conflicts in destabilising (or strengthening) political regimes, the role of private forms of organised violence, the inextricable links between violence and processes of democratisation. This allows us to analyze the rootedness of civil, social and political rights and democratic political cultures as well as on the plausibility of authoritarian roads to modernity which characterised the post-WWI period in several European countries.