Peoples' movements and protests


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mobilizations
The peace of God and the commune
The war resistance around 1900
The Algeria movement in France
50-60s nuclear resistance
Vietnam War Resistance in the United States
80s nuclear resistance
Mobilizations against African civil wars

 

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Peace movements around 1900

 

 

 

 

 

In the late nineteenth century, Britain began to have problems maintaining its hegemony. Other states and capital groups began to appear as serious competitors and the rattle of weapons became louder and louder. The groups that tried to resist threatening wars came from three traditions:

- The pacifist tradition. It originated among Christian nonconformists such as Quakers and Baptists and spread from England and the United States to the European continent during the 1830s and 1940s. It was rather ineffective and never managed to counter a single war – perhaps because it was a matter for wealthy citizens who had too much to lose by arguing.

- The feminist tradition. It actually had the same origin, but since its activists were deprived of the benefits of citizenship, they were probably more oppositional. They were e.g. behind the first serious war resistance in a century – the campaign against the Boer War in England shortly after the turn of the century.

- The labour movement tradition. Its activists were also out of citizenship and therefore had nothing to gain from war. Here it was mainly the young people – the intended cannon fodder – who made up the peace movement’s foot soldiers. The strategy of the labour movement was that whenever a war threatened, they would go on strike. Among other things, such a threat contributed to the peaceful dissolution of the union between Sweden and Norway in 1905.

Yet all these aspirations suffered a complete collapse when the First World War broke out in 1914. That is, none of the organizations that expressed the above traditions managed to make a dent.

However, it took only two years before the war resistance had gathered. In France and Russia, soldiers influenced by the anti-militarist labour movement mutinied – they were suppressed in France but ended the war in Russia. In England, it was again women who organized growing demonstrations. In Germany, strikes and food queues demanded that the war end. The resistance to the war did not lead to peace, but it did lead to cautionary warfare; they ended the costly offensives. Which ultimately led to the superior resources, i.e the United States, winning.

At the end of the war, the United States pushed through an old peace movement requirement: that the leaders sit in a permanent conference and discuss common solutions (League of Nations). And the peace movement, for the most part, confined itself to admiring this new state hierarchy. The smaller part, the peace movement of the radical labour movement, confined itself to admiring the new state created by the mutiny in Russia. They both gave up the initiative.

Reading
W.H. van der Linden: The international peace movement 1815-1874, Tilleul 1987
Jill Liddington: The long way to Greenham, Virago 1989
Peter Brock: Pacifism in Europe to 1914, Princeton University Press 1972

 

 

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