ABSTRACT
The actions of strikebreakers and their allies consequently flit across the historical record, lacking the legibility and continuity of their socialist or communist opponents, or of the police or state authorities. The most profound cause of the marginalisation of strikebreaking in the history of the era is however perhaps not so much archival as historiographical. It is within the context-specific perception of European and global history of the era from the 1880s to the 1930s that strikebreaking and related activities acquire their importance. The various forms of strikebreaking, volunteer vigilantism and semi-formal and informal acts of violence that multiplied across this period were direct, often jagged, manifestations of the conflicts that characterised the most chaotic era of global modernisation. The prevalence of strikebreaking and other violent actions within the global economy across the same period extends the perspective into the sphere of labour relations.
