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French Strike Development and Class Struggle

The Development of the Strike in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Toulouse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Ronald Aminzade*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin- Madison

Extract

The strike, an organized work stoppage to compel employers to accept workers' demands, is a form of class struggle that predates the nineteenth century. During the nineteenth century, however, the strike became one of the most common forms of collective action in Western Europe and a major expression of class struggle. “No doubt concerted work stoppages date back as far as organized work itself,” write Shorter and Tilly (1974: 34), “but the form of work stoppage we call the strike became a standardized and frequent form of collective action in western countries with the industrialization of the nineteenth and twentieth century.” Sociologists and historians have generally recognized that the nineteenth century marked the emergence of the strike as an important form of working-class collective action, but they have offered diverse interpretations as to why early industrialization generated intense strike activity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1980 

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Footnotes

fn00

Author's Note:I would like to thank Harry Boyte, Mary Jo Maynes, David Snyder, Charles Stephenson, Charles Tilly, and Eric Olin Wright for their comments and criticisms on an earlier draft of this article. This research was made possible by the Social Science Research Council, the Center for Research on Social Organization of the University of Michigan, and the Center for Research on Politics and Society of the University of Wisconsin. I am also very grateful to the archivists at the municipal archives of Toulouse, the departmental archives of the Haute-Garonne, and the national archives of France.

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