Introduction. Strikebreaking and industrial vigilantism as a historical problem

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Europe, the United States and large areas of the globe experienced labour unrest and multiple strike waves at an unprecedented pace and intensity, some of which developed a quasi-revolutionary momentum. From the bitter conflicts of the pre-war period, through the epochal tremors of war and revolution, to the violent spasms of the 1920s and 1930s, a sense of impending cataclysm, symbiotically associated with fears of revolutionary upheaval and forebodings of social anarchy, ceaselessly haunted those who had assumed the role of guardians of the established order. While much work has been devoted to socialist parties and revolutionary organisations, the multifaceted experiences of anti-labour mobilisation and privately organised coercion have not received the same degree of scholarly attention.