Contenu du sommaire

When the CGT Did Humanitarian Work: Spanish Children Evacuated to France (1936-1939)The French labour movement determinedly led the efforts to evacuate and host Spanish children in France during the Spanish Civil War. The Committee set up by the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT) supervised more than 10,000 children, a majority of the 15,000 who were sent to France without their parents between 1936 and 1939. The aim of this article is to understand the involvement of the CGT in a cause that was, at first glance, rather remote from its agenda. This issue arrived at the right moment to a specific group within CGT leadership, which used child aid as a way to offset the growing communist hold on the Aid Spain movement. The CGT then set up an accommodation network by converting the resources, practices and structures of the labour movement. However, as it rested on the precarious means of the working-class, this relief action was at risk in the event of an economic downturn or policy backlash, and could not resist the repression that hit the French working-class after the general strike of November 1938. The case of the CGT child aid scheme thus shows the advantages and the limitations of humanitarian actions, specifically, when they are not carried out by humanitarian organisations.

Xenophobia at Sea. French vs Foreign Sailors in the European Community (1971-1975)The article describes a conflict in the first half of the 1970s in the French merchant navy, when the government opened this sector up to sailors from other countries of the European Community. The European Court of Justice ruled against France in this matter. This case highlights the relationships between unions, workers and immigration, as well as the political role of Community institutions. The study refers to the documents of the Ministry of Transport, the National Assembly, the Senate, the CGT labour union, the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and the Council of the European Communities. The article shows how widespread xenophobia was in the French merchant navy. It also reveals the role of the Community's institutional framework in enforcing international agreements and thereby maintaining a European balance.

Fighting and Dying for one's Faith. Joseph-Louis Guérin (1838-1860), Seminarian, Papal Soldier and ‘Martyr'What can lead someone to take up arms on behalf of his faith and to sacrifice his life to a religious cause? The article addresses this topical issue by looking at one individual's itinerary: Joseph-Louis Guérin (1838-1860). This young seminarian from Nantes abandoned his ecclesiastical studies in July 1860 to join the Pope's Army, and was killed in the battle of Castelfidardo a few months later. From the sources provided by his biographies and the records kept in the archives of the Diocese of Nantes, this article attempts to understand Guerin's decision to enlist and his proclaimed aspiration to self-sacrifice in the light of the great Catholic mobilisation of winter of 1860 and of an uncompromising religious culture that conveyed a form of radicalism.

The Swiss Movement against Nuclear Weapons (1950s-60s)This paper focuses on MCAA, the movement against nuclear weapons, which was founded in Switzerland in 1958 to express opposition to the atomic bomb project announced by the Swiss government. Admittedly, MCAA's proposal of banning nuclear weapons was rejected by a referendum in 1962, following a campaign in which proponents of nuclear weapons brandished the threat of a military confrontation between the two superpowers as an argument in favour of their project. This article sheds light on MCAA's importance in Swiss political history despite this failure. This movement was one of the main challengers of Swiss governmental policy in the post-war period. As such, MCAA became a central venue for the transmission of political experience between the generation of pacifists who had been activists since the Great War, and the younger generation that paved the way for the new social movements of the post-1968 period.

Socio-Environmental Crisis and Banditry: A River Piracy Case in Late-19th Century Poland
Circa 1900, Poland experienced a sharp rise in crimes by gangs, including armed robbery, extortion or gruesome crimes. This article examines one such crime: a case of river piracy that was tried by the Płock tribunal in April 1901. The defendants were 11 men accused of committing theft and extortion, over the span of a decade, against wood merchants working on the Vistula River. Our approach aims to reconstruct the defendants' lives and living conditions, in economic, social and environmental terms. Similar in many respects to the ‘primitive rebels' described by Eric Hobsbawm, the Płock ‘pirates' were definitely not activists with clear plans of social upheaval. Instead, they were impoverished workers seeking the means to survive, in a context of unemployment and declining local wood and fish resources. Under the micro-historian's careful investigation, this case reveals the importance of social and environmental change in instances of daily violence in late-19 th century Poland.