Food riots revisited.

This paper revisits the question of food riots, a form of popular protest generally held to have been common between the seventeenth century and the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Food riots were a reactionary form of collective action - spontaneous and impulsive in nature, purely local in focus, apolitical and communally based - in protest of shortages and/or an unacceptable inflation in the price of basic necessities, usually foodstuffs. They were defensive acts, in which protesters tried to reassert previously established claims or rights which were being challenged or violated, and the actors located their protest in common public gathering places, places of "natural assemblage."

It has been argued that the food riot, in all its forms, disappeared in the mid-nineteenth century and that strikes and other forms of association-based protest, either regional or national in scope, have replaced the food riot of the earlier centuries. This presumably occurred for several reasons. With the establishment of a strong central nation-state and of national markets in the nineteenth century, the loci of relevant politics and of conflict shifted from the local to the national level. The structure of power and of routine politics changed fundamentally. That change largely disempowered the more localized power elites who had dominated society until that time as well as rendered communal groups ineffective agents of protest.(1) The new form of collective action which emerged, of which the strike is a classic example, was one based on complex and durable organizations created around special interests which grew out of formal associations and crystallized around explicit programs and articulated ideologies. The protests organized by these institutions were deliberate assemblies of large numbers occupying public places of political significance, for the purpose of addressing their message to the public as well as to the immediate objects of their claims.(2) Thus, the shift was from a reactive to a proactive form of collective action, and the repertoire of possible forms of collective action in which a population might engage changed, to exclude food riots (because they were no longer effective) and to include strikes and other forms of proactive action (because they had become effective).

It is true that the proactive form of protest became common, even predominant, by the early twentieth century. However, scattered through the periodical literature are accounts of twentieth-century food riots which look surprisingly like those of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, something not expected in modern industrialized nation-states. Food riots occurred in northern France in 1911, in Britain during the winter of 1916-17, in New York City in 1917, in Toronto in both 1924 and 1933, in Barcelona in 1918, in Vichy France in 1942, and in northern France throughout the German occupation.(3) The form of protest was remarkably consistent in each case, and reminiscent of traditional food riots of earlier centuries.

Faced with drastic rises in the prices of eggs, butter and cheese in 1911, as well as a serious shortage of meat due to the spread of hoof and mouth disease in the region's herds, women of northern France marched to the markets in protest, demanded lower prices and dumped carts of eggs and butter if and when their demands were not met. The riots were spontaneous, involving dozens to hundreds of women. In the larger towns, where local syndicats and bourses de travail called meetings to coordinate the protests, they flared into full-fledged riots, with thousands doing battle with police and soldiers.(4)

In December 1916 and January 1917, the British county of West Cumberland erupted in violence.(5) Prices for basic foodstuffs, potatoes, milk, wheat, and thus bread, butter, all sold in the local markets, had skyrocketed over the preceding months, the result of at least the threat of scarcity, if not the actual fact. The British agricultural sector was simply not able to meet the demands being placed on it, because of both a bad harvest year and a long-term decline which had made Britain a net importer of food, a precarious position at a time of war with Germany. At the time, profiteering by both farmers and shopkeepers was widely blamed for the rise. Many also felt that local traders were removing foodstuffs from the district on a grand scale for sale in other regions, where they could get better prices for their goods. (Indeed, there was some evidence that this was the case.) Then, on 20 December 1916, the government decreed that it was going to fix prices for various goods. By January 1917, the women of the county were determined to enforce the set prices. The riots began in the pitch market in Maryport, when women arrived determined not to buy above the decreed price. When one farmer said he did not care what the government said, there was bedlam. The women rushed the farmers' carts, and the "street was filled with hooting, yelling women and young people, while potatoes, cabbages and turnips were flying through the air".(6) The example of Maryport soon spread to other parts of the county.(7) These riots were led by housewives, who had filled the front lines and did much of the fighting, although the miners of Cumberland were also active in supporting their wives' efforts, both as added bodies strengthening the crowds, but also through the Miners' Association and other working-class organizations.(8)

Dana Frank and William Freiburger have studied food riots by Jewish housewives in New York City which also broke out in 1917.(9) In mid-February 1917, an "independent working-class housewives' movement erupted right in the heart of . . . New York City."(10) The women protested violently in the streets against the high cost of living and consequent erosion of their standard of living, launching a boycott of chicken, fish and vegetables that shut down many of the city's food markets for two weeks. It was a spectacular protest movement, particularly because it was initially independent of the organizations which traditionally claimed to represent the community, the Socialist Party and the trade unions (although the Socialist Party later assumed leadership of the protest once it became well-established).(11) Through the boycott movement, the women hoped to force their neighbors to observe their ban on the purchase of certain foodstuffs and to persuade merchants not to sell the boycotted goods. At certain points, this required forceful, sometimes violent, enforcement of the ban, with vigilant women pummelling boycott-breakers, confiscating their contraband and throwing it in the street, and angry crowds threatening shopkeepers in their stores. When the police attempted to restrain and arrest protesters, they also became a target for the crowd's wrath.(12)

Ruth Frager has written about consumer boycotts in Toronto in 1924 and 1933 as a part of a study of housewives in the Toronto Jewish Communist Movement, which included a special women's organization, the Yiddishe Arbeiter Froyen Fareyn (the Jewish Women's Labour League), with a membership of 44 in 1926.(13) In both 1924 and 1933, the Fareyn helped organize consumer boycotts. In March 1933, the price of kosher meat increased sharply and the Communist women mobilized 700 women to protest. Hundreds of women picketed the shops and an estimated 2000 participated in the boycott. The women demonstrated firm resolve, even in the face of butchers turned violent. Within a week, the butchers gave in and reduced their prices.(14) Although men supported the boycott, women led it and formed the ranks. After all, in the words of one of the organizers, "meat that you have to cook - it's a woman's item. . . . We had enough women to help."(15)

Lester Golden and Temma Kaplan both have examined food riots in Barcelona in 1918, part of a wave of riots which occurred between June 1917 and March 1919 throughout Spain.(16) As in previous cases, these riots erupted because of devastating price inflation, this time resulting from the post-war collapse of the economy. The participants were all women (they forbade men's participation) and the actions were led first by feminist Radical Republicans, and then by a small group of female anarchosyndicalists. The women's demands were simple and straightforward, they demanded lower prices for food. They attacked bread shops and coal wagons, and took over a ship laden with fish. When the police and civil guard attempted to break up the crowds of women in the street, the women turned on them, stripping some officers of their pants, spanking or thrashing them and sending them home (rather undermining their authority in the process). After three weeks, the protests ended successfully, with prices dropping 30 percent and the shops once again full of goods for sale.(17)

According to Donna Ryan, in the first quarter of 1942, the department of the Var was wracked with a series of demonstrations by women demanding better food rations, cheaper wine, the elimination of the demarcation line dividing Occupied France from Vichy France,(18) the end of labor service in Germany(19) and the disbanding of the Milice.(20) This was part of a great wave of similar demonstrations that swept at least thirty-three departments during roughly the same period. The winter of 1941/42 had been particularly harsh, and the situation was worsened by extensive Nazi confiscations of food supplies, depletion of the reserves of the previous harvest and the inequities of the rationing system in force. Ryan maintains that these riots were Communist-inspired and -led, although mobilization of the population was made possible by widespread and deep-seated dissatisfaction and frustration with deteriorating living conditions. These were not the first protests, however, nor would they be the last. Protests happened as early as late 1940, and, in those instances, "probably more spontaneously," for the Communist Party was in complete disarray at that point.(21)

Finally, there were food riots during the German military occupation of northern France during World War II.(22) These particular occupation riots erupted for the same reasons as those in the Var; food or fuel shortages, the inadequacy of the rations allotted, or perceived injustices in the allocation of rations. Every demonstration was staged by women, often accompanied by their children, and involved large crowds, ranging from dozens to occasionally hundreds, in each case all from the immediate community, neighbourhood or village, who collected in front of the mayor's office (who was responsible locally for the rationing and distribution system). The protestors were generally successfully in a limited way, gaining relief in the form of an extra distribution of food or a temporary soup kitchen.

So how are we to explain the existence of food riots in the twentieth century and the industrialized world? Charles Tilly argued that food riots disappeared because of the creation of a centralized nation-state with a strong national government and a national market, both of which militated against local protest and encouraged protest on the national level. Further, the national market (and transportation infrastructure) helped to even out the distribution of foodstuffs, thus eliminating the problem of shortages in any particular area. If a local shortage did arise, then supplies could be introduced from elsewhere. Both of these structural changes were supposed to have forced a change in the nature of protest, and so they did. And yet food riots have continued to occur.

Part of the explanation obviously lies in the nature of the times in which the riots occurred. Although dearth had largely disappeared by the late nineteenth century, a large segment of the population still lived close to the poverty line. Interestingly, the notion of what constituted the poverty line apparently had been redefined over the course of a century, as what were considered basic necessities by the working population in the early twentieth century would have been considered unattainable luxuries in the early nineteenth century - meat, eggs, milk and butter, for example. This is clear just by looking at the foodstuffs considered basic necessities by the rioters. Nonetheless, these were now the staples of the working population's diet, and the workers would not be denied them. When circumstances changed and dearth became real again, due to agricultural crises resulting from natural causes, such as in northern France in 1911, or due to the exigencies of war or economic downturn, and neither the national market mechanism nor the state was able to compensate for the shortages or prevent inflation, those who were suffering sought redress. Extraordinary circumstances lent themselves to extraordinary responses. So, in this sense, Tilly is right; in normal times, when the state mechanism and the national market structure are working, protest is usually proactive in form. But the explanation of twentieth-century protest is incomplete. Dearth and breakdown may explain why food riots occurred when they did, but they do not explain why some rioted and others did not (dearth and breakdown were not localized phenomenon), nor why the riots took the shape they did. To answer these questions, we need first to look at the structure of the riots.

There are certain characteristics common to all of the food riots identified in this review. Some of these features bear a marked resemblance to central characteristics of food riots in earlier centuries, especially the manner in which communities were mobilized, while other features, especially the gendered nature of the protest, suggest that there has been an evolution in the riots' form. These characteristics are the manner in which the riots were organized and the generally tenuous connections between the rioters and any formal political organizations and institutions; the locus of protest, which was outside of the established political arena; the nature of the participants, mothers and housewives for the most part; and the apolitical goals of the protestors.

The nature of the riots' organization is both complex and subtle, for the twentieth-century riots do not appear to have been clearly the result of the efforts of "complex and durable organizations created around special interests," nor were they free of connections to such organizations. These riots cannot be dismissed simply as the result of the efforts of political parties or trade unions, the most common forms of mass political organization at the time. In almost every case, the protests' initial inspiration came from outside of the traditional political arena and mobilized apolitical parts of the community. In 1911 northern France, the protests were the idea of mothers and housewives. Indeed, when the Minister of the Interior chose to believe that the protests were the result of political agitation on the part of socialist or trade-unionist organizations, his mistaken assumption was soon corrected in a flood of reports from the departmental prefects, who insisted that the disturbances were not political, but economic in motivation, in spite of the organizational meetings called by the local syndicats and bourses de travail. Furthermore, when the CGT tried to assume leadership of the protests for its own purposes, the women rejected it.(23) Although in the West Cumberland riots, the Miners' Association and other working class organizations lent much support to the women by their physical presence, the protests were acknowledged as led and dominated by housewives.(24) As Freiburger points out in the case of the 1917 New York riots, and Frank concurs, even the authorities of the time realized that these riots were not the work of "agitators," but furious mothers and housewives. In this case, various labor and socialist organizations soon lept into the fray, but the momentum was the women's.(25) The food riots in northern France during the occupation followed the same pattern.(26)

The riots in Barcelona, the consumer boycott in Toronto and the food riots in Vichy France were slightly different in nature. In these three cases, it appears that "durable political organisations" were involved in fomenting and leading the protests; the Radical Republican Party and then anarchosyndicalists in the case of Barcelona, the Fareyn (of the Jewish Communist Movement) in Toronto and the French Communist Party in France at least for the later riots.(27) If we delve a little further, however, even these riots do not neatly fit this criterion. In the case of Barcelona, Golden emphasizes that while the leadership might have been anarchist, that does not mean that the rank and file were, nor did it make the protest an anarchist one. Revolutionary political theory appeared to play no role in the protest. Instead, the community accepted anarchist leadership because "all the experiences of the people of the neighbourhood revolved around anarchist ideas."(28) As Golden puts it, "the community dog wagged the syndicalist tail more often than the reverse."(29) The case of the Toronto riots is similar. Although the organizers were women from Fareyn, the vast majority of women mobilized were not members and had been drawn into the streets by outrageous prices, not a belief in Fareyn and its causes. In the case of 1942 Vichy France, Ryan maintains that the riots were Communist-inspired and -led, but the population's mobilization was only made possible by the widespread and deep-seated dissatisfaction and frustration with deteriorating living conditions. Further, these were not the first protests, nor were they the last. Protests happened as early as late 1940, and, in those instances, "probably more spontaneously," when the Communist Party was in disarray due to persecution and the nation's invasion by Germany. Thus, while the leadership of these various sets of riots was unquestionably drawn from permanent political organizations, the rank-and-file of protesters were not. Furthermore, in all cases, the protesters mobilized along the lines of local community networks, not of political organizations.

In Riots and Community Politics in England and Wales 1790-1810,(30) an extensive study of English and Welsh food riots, John Bohstedt offers a model which proves useful in addressing this dilemma.(31) He finds a curious pattern to the riots. While all the communities examined shared common grievances, only some erupted in riot. His conclusion is that the pattern of riots which he observed cannot be explained either in terms of "attempts to return to a remembered regime of 'just prices' and 'moral economy', nor the invocation of other incidental factors, such as reaction to the rate of change of prices rather than simply to their level."(32) Rather, Bohstedt believed that one must look at the nature of the affected community, and particularly at the strength and stability of the community networks, both vertical and horizontal, for an explanation of why some rioted and others did not.

Horizontal networks were constructed of relations between members of the community, based on kinship, market, neighbourhood and institutional links. Vertical networks reflected relations between that community and the elites and authorities. It was those two types of networks which determined whether action would be taken and what shape it would take if and when it did. Thus riot emerged

not just as a general characteristic of "pre-industrial" society, but as a very practical and realistic concomitant of urbanization and the interplay between town and country. It was in fact, quite specifically not likely to occur in "rural" circumstances, where the bonds of deference were too strong, and the ties of community too weak, to allow a sense of collectivity to develop. It found its ideal environment in small or medium-sized market towns whose occupational structures were primarily non-agricultural. . . . Riot . . . pitted such communities against the authorities in a process of negotiation controlled on both sides by the practical calculation of risks within mutually understood limits. . . . Riot was a product, not of instability, but of stability, which it sought to maintain, not by enforcing a return to an idealized past, but by reaching a realistic and practical compromise on the matters at issue which would re-establish an evolving consensus.(33)

Riots, then, were manifestations of community politics and the actors in riots were, in the first instance, crowds, not individuals. So the question becomes not just how tensions accumulated or what cultural traditions led to riot, but which kinds of groups were capable of taking action on grievances that were much more widespread, but only resulted in violence in certain places and at certain times. Bohstedt identifies three important characteristics of the riots he examined, which appeared to confirm his theory of community-based politics. First, the galvanizing issue was typically some form of external threat to a community and one which united the community. Second, the threats did not create crowds from disassociated individuals, but rather, mobilized pre-existing networks of people and relationships based on kin, market, neighbourhood and institutional ties. Such informal and formal memberships helped to create habits of collaboration that made collective action practicable. Protesters also called upon their established, "vertical" relationships with local authorities when protesting, which shaped the confrontations. So a community dealt with an external threat by mobilizing its horizontal and vertical political relationships. Third, the external threats were concrete and immediate threats, and so the riot was more than just protest, it was direct action, often violent, intended to gain specific, tangible and immediate relief. Rioters practised the art of the possible; they were not likely to take a risk if success was not within reach. The possible outcomes of riot - both gains and costs - were estimated by both rioters and authorities on the basis of both their existing relationships, both vertical and horizontal, and tradition. Those calculations and traditions thus determined the form and incidence of riots.(34)

Those calculations were much more easily made by both the populace and the authorities in communities with stable, dense networks. Vertical, reciprocal relationships between the common people and the elites ensured a protocol of riot would be observed on both sides. Familiarity with the opponent, as well as with the other participants, meant that each participant had a good sense of what the bargaining limits were. A stable community also meant that a history of negotiation and bargaining had developed, as had a protocol of riot. Each member had a "role," and each knew how the others were likely to act and react during the process of bargaining. The stronger, more stable and more cohesive the community, the more coherent and successful the protest. Conversely, in those communities which were unstable due to rapid expansion or turnover in population, and in which the vertical and horizontal relationships were weak, protest was likely to be incoherent, disorganized and less successful. The elites were also less likely to be tolerant of protest or to bargain with the protesters and were more likely to crush protest using force.(35)

Bohstedt's notion of community politics helps explain the shape and protocol of the riots. Our riots were a reflection of the vertical and horizontal networks of the various communities. The key horizontal network in this case was the community of mothers and housewives. This network was an extremely strong one, built upon close ties that had evolved over time, through daily interaction and cooperation and upon a strong sense of common purpose, as exemplified in Temma Kaplan's notion of female consciousness.(36) Another horizontal network which existed in these communities was that of local political institutions. Trade unions and political parties had links with these communities, and could be considered horizontal networks, as well as vertical, in their own right. Apparently these two sets of horizontal networks overlapped only to a limited degree. This lack of integration of the two networks is brought home sharply in those instances when political organizations tried to get involved belatedly, but were rejected by the women, as in the vie chere riots. Furthermore, in those instances when we do see "durable political organisations" involved in, and occasionally leading, food riots, the community dog wagged the syndicalist/political/unionist tail as much as vice versa, as Golden so aptly put it, as in Toronto, Barcelona and Vichy France. Thus, the relationship was a complicated one consisting of two separate sets of horizontal networks in operation, which occasionally, but not necessarily, intersected.

There was also a complicated set of vertical networks which must be taken into account if we are to understand why things happened as they did. It appears that, for these particular community networks, the key vertical relationship initially mobilized was a very localized one, essentially one based upon the age-old, sometimes less than amiable, relationship between consumer and distributor. The rioters' first, and sometimes only, protest was made to the distributor, either to the merchants, as in the vie chere riots, West Cumberland, Toronto (interestingly) and New York City (in spite of the Socialist Party's belated involvement) or to the mayors responsible for rationing, as in the case of occupied France. This was the primary line of mobilization. In the cases of West Cumberland and New York City, political institutions with links to the primary community network (the miners' association in West Cumberland and the Socialist Party in New York) were mobilized in support of the mothers, but their involvement was peripheral.

Only occasionally did the women appeal for or get assistance from beyond that local level, as they did in the Var and Barcelona. However, even in these cases, the involvement of political institutions was not clearcut. In the Var, the French Communist Party organized and led the 1942 food riots, although, significantly, it was not responsible for earlier occupation riots. In Barcelona, first the Radical Party and then anarchosyndicalists led and organized the protests, and acted as mediators between the women in the streets and the regional government to whom appeals and demands were directed.

It was when the women chose to step outside their community network and localized arena of protest - the marketplace - and to appeal to higher authorities that the nature of the vertical networks changed, for they moved into another arena. The women had to organize themselves differently in order to function effectively in this new sphere, and were forced into stronger links with the pre-existing political organizations tied to their communities, such as political parties or trade unions. This was an important shift, for this was a new mode of organizing for them. At this point, the crucial nexus became the mothers' relationships with the government. As Tilly predicted, the structure of regional and national government had required organizational changes, but only when the protest moved outside of its initial arena of action and into the more formal, classically political arena.

Yet the change was not what might have been expected. Barcelona is perhaps the best example. Although local political institutions were involved in the protests, neither the protests nor the protesters were "politicized", i.e. transformed into proactive forms of protest. Instead, as Golden describes it, the women absorbed and adapted the slogans of formally organized political groups and used them to serve in their defense of the community's traditional rights.(37) The women borrowed what suited their needs from the institutions and continued to pursue their own, pragmatic and more narrowly focused goals. The salient points are, first, that this "political space" was a new environment for these women, one in which they did not normally operate, as their particular community network existed largely outside of this arena. Second, we have a form of protest which may have acquired the guise of proactive protest, but not the raison d'etre.

The strength of the one set of community networks and the weak links between it and the more institution-based set of community networks were reflected in the protocol of riot. The participants were almost always solely women. Few men participated. When men did participate, it was in a supporting role, and often only when political organizations became involved. And there were instances when men were forbidden to participate or considered aberrant for having done so, as in the example of the Caudry butcher in occupied northern France, who was sentenced to one month of imprisonment for having been involved in a 1944 riot, when, according to the sources, "he had no reason to be there."(38) This was a change from the riots of the eighteenth century. There has been some debate as to which sex was most prominent in the earlier riots, which E.P. Thompson discusses at length in his essay, "The Moral Economy Reviewed."(39) His conclusion is that, while it was unclear whether eighteenth-century food riots were dominated by women or by men, it did appear that "there were an awful lot of women involved in food riots, sometimes on their own, more often in mixed affairs in which there was a loyal gender partnership" and that they involved both genders for the most part.(40) Cynthia Bouton's study of the French Flour War of 1775 makes clear the mixed nature of traditional food riots. Indeed, the numbers of men involved had increased significantly in the Flour Wars due to the changing male economic, social (including familial) and political status during the Ancien Regime.

Theirs was a life of precarious and declining socio-economic position, disequilibrium in familial structure, and political alienation, one that left them in positions similar to those of their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. The men who rioted had, in crucial ways, been "feminized".(41)

By the twentieth century, this was no longer the case.

A possible explanation could be that, by the twentieth century, the gendered division of labor was that much more firmly entrenched, and issues of provisioning the family were more clearly the responsibility of women. Earlier, it is not clear that the duties of marketing and provisioning were solely the women's lot; Thompson suggests that men were as likely to have been involved in those chores as women.(42) Bouton suggests that men participated in defense of "their precariously balanced family economies" and due to their feminization, which had resulted from the breakdown of the sexual division of labor.(43) By the 1900s, men may have been more clearly removed from the whole process of managing the household, other than providing income. Thus, when protests erupted around problems of provisioning, it was more clearly a woman's issue. In addition, by the twentieth century, most men had gained an important right which women did not share, a voice in the traditional political arena. Laboring men had been rather successful at advancing their claims in the political arena once they had gained the franchise. As well, many men were now organized into trade unions and had won the right to strike. These alternate modes of and loci for protest proved quite successful for those men who were organized. It would make sense, then, that men's attention would be focused increasingly upon that political arena where they had some chance of effecting change.

Women also had the franchise, if perhaps limited in nature, in at least some of the countries in question, and many female workers were also organized in unions. However, the fact of the matter was that women still were largely voiceless in the traditional political arena, in spite of the franchise and unions, and issues of concern to a mother seldom saw the light of day on a parliamentary floor. Thus, that avenue for protest was closed to mothers and they were forced to voice their grievances elsewhere and in another manner. It is plausible to assume, then, that women resorted to food riots because they had no other alternative and that men did not participate in food riots both because issues of provisioning were not considered part of their responsibilities (recall that women occasionally even forbade their participation) and also because they had other avenues for registering grievances.

When the women mobilized, they identified themselves as mothers and housewives, responsible for provisioning their families. In order for this identity to work, and out of a need for consistency, this self-identification dictated the form of protest. Mothers protesting food prices and shortages would protest in locations symbolically appropriate, such as marketplaces and shops. They were unlikely to use traditional political institutions as vehicles for protest, as these were not geared to the problems of mothers nor did they seem particularly concerned about those problems. And it is not clear that the mothers always thought these organizations the appropriate vehicle for protest, as they rejected their help as often as they accepted it. Only those which were able to advance the women's immediate cause were successful in bridging the gap and of bringing the protest into traditional "political space." Still, there was an opportunity for more radical thinking than was evident in the protests, even with the maternal constraints, yet the women did not indulge in it. Perhaps they were practising Bohstedt's "art of the possible," focusing their sights on what seemed achievable, given their position in society and vis-a-vis the state.

The sense of legitimacy granted to the women's protest was a result of the then deep-seated belief in the importance of the family to society and in the gendered division of labor within it. This understanding of the family and its place and importance in society was so hegemonic as to seem natural and immutable. Thus, it was "natural" that mothers would protest when they were unable to feed their families. Their "female consciousness" drove them to it, and provided justification for their actions. For the same reasons, it was hard to quarrel with the women's complaints or to deny the legitimacy of their demands. Finally, these assumptions about the roles of the agents involved, and especially the role of the mothers, meant that the assumptions underlying the protocol of protest were clearly understood by all. Thus, we have quite stable networks in existence, and a set of well-understood ground rules for all participants in the food riots. The result was, however, protest that occurred outside of the formal political arena.

Part of the protocol of riot was the locus of protest. It is significant that the twentieth-century food riots erupted at sites of natural assemblage and at points of distribution (which were, often as not, also sites of natural assemblage - markets, shops et cetera). These were the hubs of the community networks being galvanized into action, for they were the place in which mothers and housewives naturally gathered to work, shop, gossip, socialize and, occasionally, organize. Thus, these sites were invested with great significance to the immediate community, for they were physical manifestations of the networks. In some instances, the protesters chose to take their complaints to higher authorities, such as the city or national government. When that happened, the site of the protest shifted into what could be deemed "political space." These are Charles Tilly's "symbolically significant public places," physical locations invested with significance because of what they represented in the national political culture. At this point, the networks underwent the necessary metamorphosis, in order to be able to function in this new environment. This marked an important transition in the nature of the protest, which incidently highlights the difference between the initial community-based protest and its subsequent manifestation.

The final common element of the twentieth-century food riots involves the protesters' goals. In each case, the women protesting in the marketplaces were there for very pragmatic reasons, generally their inability to adequately feed their families. In those instances when an organization was involved from outside of the network of mothers and housewives, there appears to have been an important disjuncture between the rhetoric and the goals of the mothers in the streets and the organizers. In each case, the organizers had to address the goals of the mothers and modify their rhetoric accordingly if they were to succeed in assuming the leadership of the protest. In that sense, they resemble what Bohstedt found in eighteenth-century Devon, where he insists that the riots were not the result of efforts to defend an ideology embodying a moral economy, but were pragmatic acts of emergency collective self-defense intended to correct the rioters' intolerable situation. They were, quite simply, hungry.(44)

Thus, these protests were in reaction to price inflation and/or food shortages and only sought amelioration of the difficult situation. The rioters did not attempt to advance any cause, nor did they espouse any ideological program beyond their belief in their right, as mothers and housewives, to feed their families at a reasonable cost. They assembled in the places which seemed most significant to them, given the issues at hand, the marketplaces and other places central to the community networks being mobilized. Those networks reflected the fabric and ties of the local community which largely lay outside the traditional political arena, although on occasion, organizations from the political arena with close ties to the community might be mobilized, or their ideas and strategies adapted, all in the community's cause. On the rare occasion, however, that the protest moved beyond the immediate community's boundaries and into classically political space, the horizontal and vertical networks changed, as did the rhetoric and the form of protest. Once this had happened, the protest looked more like proactive protest.

So how do we make sense of twentieth-century food riots? They are examples of politics happening outside of the political arena, practiced by those who had been effectively silenced (or who remained voiceless, as the case may be), including women, by the shift in the nature and location of politics. Women, although not completely excluded formally from the political arena, were informally excluded by being denied a voice in any of the "durable political organisations" created to negotiate for the "masses" in this new arena. Those who were excluded, including women, were forced to resort to other venues and forms of protest in order to be heard. Thus, we have food riots.

Bohstedt's notion of community politics helps us to understand this informal form of protest, and why it took the shape that it did. It also explains the problematic relationship between the protesters and the institutional bases for protest (political parties and trade unions, for example). It acknowledges that people mobilize in different ways depending upon a number of factors, including the reason for the protest, the nature of the economic and political environment in which they are protesting and who is protesting. A crucial point which he makes is that the population will cleave along pre-established lines, the vertical and horizontal community networks, which determine the shape or protocol of the protest, as well as its potential for success. These networks are made up of relations among the various members of the community and can be based on a variety of links. While Bohstedt limits his examples of possible links to kinship, market, neighbourhood and institutions, there is no reason to assume that other links could not be possible, such as race and gender. In certain circumstances and for the right cause, it might make most sense for communities to mobilize based on one of the latter types of linkage. Certainly in the case of these food riots, gender played a role in determining which horizontal networks were mobilized. The importance of Bohstedt's notion of community politics is that it allows us to recognize the great complexity of the societies which we study and gives us a means of addressing it.

Department of History Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L3G1

ENDNOTES

1. Charles Tilly, From Mobilisation to Revolution (Reading, MA, 1978), p. 184.

2. Charles Tilly and Louise Tilly (eds.), Class Conflict and Collective Action (Beverly Hills, 1981), p.20.

3. Paul Hanson, "The Vie Chere Riots of 1911: Traditional Protests in Modern Garb," Journal of Social History (Spring, 1988): 463-481; A.J. Cole, "The Moral Economy of the Crowd: Some Twentieth-Century Food Riots," Journal of British Studies 17/1 (Fall 1978): 157-176; Dana Frank, "Housewives, Socialists, and the Politics of Food: the 1917 New York Cost-of-Living Protests," Feminist Studies 11/2 (Summer 1985): 255-285; William Freiburger, "War Prosperity and Hunger: the New York Food Riots of 1917," Labor History 25/2 (Spring 1984): 217-239; Ruth A. Frager, "Politicized Housewives in the Jewish Communist Movement of Toronto, 1923-1933," in Linda Kealey and Joan Sangster eds., Beyond the Vote: Canadian Women and Politics (Toronto, 1989), pp. 258-275; Lester Golden, "The Women in Command: the Barcelona Women's Consumer War of 1918," UCLA Historical Journal 6 (1985): 5-22; Temma Kaplan, "Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona, 1910-1918," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7/3 (1982):545-566; Donna F. Ryan, "Ordinary Acts and Resistance: Women in Street Demonstrations and Food Riots in Vichy France," Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 16 (1989); Lynne Taylor, "Between Resistance and Collaboration: Popular Protest in Northern France, 1940-1944," unpublished manuscript.

4. Hanson, "The 'Vie Chere' Riots," pp.463, 471.

5. Cole, "The Moral Economy of the Crowd," pp.157-176.

6. Cole, "The Moral Economy of the Crowd," p. 163.

7. Cole, "The Moral Economy of the Crowd," pp. 160-163.

8. Cole, "The Moral Economy of the Crowd," p. 167.

9. Frank, "Housewives, Socialists, and the Politics of Food," pp.255-285 and Freiburger, "War, Prosperity and Hunger," pp. 217-239.

10. Frank, "Housewives, Socialists, and the Politics of Food," p.255.

11. Frank, "Housewives, Socialists, and the Politics of Food," p.255.

12. Frank, "Housewives, Socialists, and the Politics of Food," pp.259-60.

13. Frager, "Politicized Housewives in the Jewish Communist Movement of Toronto, 1923-1933," p.260.

14. Frager, "Politicized Housewives in the Jewish Communist Movement of Toronto, 1923-1933," pp.264-265.

15. Frager, "Politicized Housewives in the Jewish Communist Movement of Toronto, 1923-1933," p.265.

16. Golden, "The Women in Command," pp.5-22 and Kaplan, "Female Consciousness and Collective Action," pp.545-566.

17. Golden, "The Women in Command," pp.21-22.

18. Upon occupation by the Germans in 1940, France was divided into a number of occupation zones, the two largest of which were the Occupied Zone, comprising most of the north and west of France, and Vichy or the Free Zone, which consisted of the southeastern two-fifths of the country. The demarcation line was the boundary between the two and travel and communication across it were difficult, posing numerous problems for the French.

19. One of the numerous Nazi impositions on France was "voluntary" labor service in German factories and on German farms. The purpose was to free German men for the fronts. The service was ostensibly voluntary, but recruitment was often coercive.

20. The Milice were the French Fascist police established in Vichy France.

21. Ryan, "Ordinary Acts and Resistance," p.401.

22. Taylor, "Between Resistance and Collaboration," pp. 173-183.

23. Hanson, "The 'Vie Chere' Riots," pp.471-473.

24. Cole, "The Moral Economy of the Crowd," p.167.

25. Frank, "Housewives, Socialists, and the Politics of Food," p.255; Freiburger, "War Prosperity and Hunger," pp. 229-236, and passim.

26. Taylor, "Between Resistance and Collaboration," pp. 173-183.

27. See respectively: Golden, "The Women in Command," pp.21-28; Frager, "Politicized Housewives," pp.260-261; Ryan, "Ordinary Acts and Resistance," pp. 401-403.

28. Golden, "The Women in Command," p.23.

29. Golden, "The Women in Command," p.23.

30. John Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics in England and Wales 1790-1810 (Cambridge, MA 1983). Bohstedt's study was an examination of 617 riots of various kinds that occurred in England between 1790 and 1810. The focus of his attention, however, was on Devon food riots, political actions in Manchester and a broad sweep of rural disturbances, especially in Lincolnshire. His objective was to try and determine why riots happened in some places at certain times and not in and at others.

31. Interestingly, in his essay, "The Moral Economy Reviewed," E. P. Thompson finds Bohstedt's model of community politics attractive. In Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York, 1991) pp. 259-351.

32. John Money (reviewer), "Constituencies and Communities: Voters, Rioters and Politics in Georgian England," Canadian Journal of History 19 (December 1984): 396. An integral part of Bohstedt's work challenges the notion that a moral economy governed the actions of food rioters in the eighteenth century. He argues that there is no evidence that the rioters of his study were protesting in defense of a moral economy and against the incursion of a market economy. Instead, he maintains that the rioters were outraged at the abuse of capitalist trade, not because capitalist trade was abusive. The riots were acts of "emergency collective self-defense" and very pragmatic in nature. Thus, the protesters justified their actions on the grounds that they were hungry, not on the basis of traditions or a "selective reconstruction of paternalism." What the rioters took from tradition was less a sense of legitimacy than conventions of effective action whose effectiveness rested upon the local political framework. He suggests that if one were to view the moral economy as a collection of pragmatic tactics rather than a corpus of anti-capitalist beliefs, then it would help to explain why some crowds chose to riot and others did not, when they shared common and real grievances. See Bohstedt, "The Moral Economy and the Discipline of Historical Context," Journal of Social History 26/2 (Winter 1992): 266-269.

33. Money, "Constituencies and Communities," pp. 394-5.

34. Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics, pp. 21-26 and passim.

35. Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics, pp. 202-207 and passim.

36. Kaplan, "Female Consciousness and Collective Action," p. 545.

37. Golden, "The Women in Command," p. 24.

38. Archives Departementales du Nord, 43W 39561, record 301.

39. Thompson, "The Moral Economy Reviewed," pp. 303-336.

40. Thompson, "Moral Economy Reviewed," p. 335.

41. Cynthia Bouton, "Gendered Behavior in Subsistence Riots: The French Flour War of 1775," Journal of Social History 23 (Summer 1990): 743.

42. Thompson, "Moral Economy Reviewed," p. 335.

43. Bouton, "Gendered Behavior in Subsistence Riots," p. 745.

44. Bohstedt, "The Moral Economy and the Discipline of Historical Context," pp. 266-269.