Antoon Vrints

Beyond Victimization: Contentious Food Politics in Belgium during World War I

Hunger and dependence on aid among broad sections of the population are often used as a symbol of Belgium’s suffering during World War I. However, to view food consumption and politics from the perspective of victimization does not do justice to the complexity of this history. The reductionist nature of such an approach can be demonstrated by an analysis of the many protests in occupied and liberated Belgium to defend claims to food. Far from resignedly accepting the deprivations of war, various groups within the Belgian population repeatedly attempted to defend their claims to food and thus influenced food politics. In the course of these protests, there was a more pronounced return to a seemingly archaic repertoire of actions than was the case in other countries during the war, an indication that Charles Tilly’s unequivocal thesis of modernization and nationalization of social protest is far too linear. Apparently obsolete forms appeared to function again within the specific context of the occupation, in which a number of structural long-term developments were temporarily reversed.

‘All the Butter in the Country Belongs to Us, Belgians’: Well-Being and Lower-Class National Identification in Belgium During the First World War

In Belgian historiography, the First World War has been elaborately studied from a national perspective (De Schaepdrijver, 2000; Stengers and Gubin, 2002; Wils, 2005). The reasons are obvious: the Great War is generally considered to be the apex of Belgian national feeling, as well as an acceleration in the development of a competing Flemish nationalism. Yet the current literature is limited in two ways: it focuses on nationalism as a political factor, while underestimating it as a sentiment, and it has mainly reproduced (possibly biased) elite and middle-class views. A study on national identification in war-time Belgium among the lower classes is still lacking and is, therefore, the aim of this chapter.

Sociaal protest in een bezet land - Voedseloproer in België tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog

This article evaluates social protest in Belgium during the First World War. Even more than elsewhere in Europe, the war temporarily reversed the shift from old forms of collective action (e.g. food riots) to new ones (e.g. strikes). This reversal of long-term trends was caused by specific features of the German occupation. The capitalist national market disintegrated. The earliest and most industrialized country on the European continent de-industrialized, and agriculture became once again the basis of the economy. The authority of the state weakened dramatically. Political organisations and unions became less active. Life once again took place mostly within a local framework. Informal horizontal ties among neighbours and vertical power relations between local elites and village and city residents regained importance. Confronted with scarcity, earlier forms of collective action (e.g. food riots), local in focus, were revived in order to defend peoples entitlement to food.

Violence and War : measuring Homicide in Belgium (1900-1950)

Ever since the appearance of Ted Gurr’s famous graph presenting homicide rates for 100,000 inhabitants of England, from the 13th to the 20th century, many historians and social scientists have been fascinated by the multi-secular trend described by its curve. Initially focused on English data, the debate spread around the Western World (from Finland to Amsterdam, and to the United States). Pieter Spierenburg gave the first synthetic interpretation of this trend, based on Amsterdam archival material (Spierenburg, 1994, pp. 701–716). Manuel Eisner has recently published a complex interpretation of the data and the theories built around it (Eisner, 2003, pp. 83–142).

Police–public relations in transition in Antwerp, 1840s–1914

Abstract This article examines how police–public relations have evolved during the nineteenth-century expansion of formal policing. Following recent critiques of the ‘state monopolization thesis’, it dismisses the idea of a ‘policeman-state’ progressively assuming dominion over the governance of crime, generating vicious antagonism between police and public, and effectively coercing the latter into obedience. In order to chart changes in police–public relations across the ‘long’ nineteenth century, the analysis draws on Antwerp police statistics from 1842 until 1913. It assumes that movements in different types of offences reflect the initiative of different actors and also constitute a valuable index of conflicts between police and public. The article argues that although police activity in Antwerp did significantly increase towards the end of the nineteenth century, priorities in crime control were not merely dictated from ‘above’ (the police and authorities) but also delivered from ‘below’ (the people). It shows how police interventions were shaped by shifting policy concerns, by the interests of different urban interest groups, and by the practical constraints of police work. Finally, it counters the idea of a repressive police disciplining a hostile public with evidence of growing public use of the police and of complex popular attitudes towards the ‘blue locusts’.

De April-Meistakingen van 1943: belang en betekenis heroverwogen

The April-May strikes of 1943: importance and significance reconsidered The reimprisonment of all Dutch prisoners of war by the German occupier in the spring of 1943 provoked a considerable number of protest strikes throughout the country, which afterwards became known as the April-May Strikes. In contrast with other strikes under German occupation, these have been largely neglected in Dutch war historiography. The only monograph on the April-May Strikes, written by sociologist Pieter Jan Bouman, dates from 1950. The objective of this article, therefore, is to offer a reassessment of the importance and nature of the April-May Strikes. The first step is critically to discuss existing historiography on the topic (Boumans work in particular, in view of its lasting impact) in order to reveal its ideological bias. In the second part this critical reading of existing literature is confronted with new sources in order to formulate new questions and hypotheses about the April-May Strikes.