Claire Morelon

This article analyzes the role of urban civic militias (burgher corps) in Habsburg Austria from the end of the nineteenth century to the aftermath of World War I. Far from a remnant of the early modern past, by the turn of the twentieth century these militias were thriving local institutions. They fostered dynastic patriotism and participated in the growing promotion of shooting among the population in the lead-up to the conflict. But they also played a major role in upholding the bourgeois ideals of protection of social hierarchies and property. In the context of the rise of the workers' movement and social unrest, the militias saw themselves as bulwarks of social order and bastions of bourgeois virtue. They reflected an exclusive conception of armed citizenship opposed to the egalitarian notion of the citizen-soldier that survived into the twentieth century. The sensory experience of burgher corps parades during the patriotic or church celebrations was supposed to convey stability and express hierarchies in the urban space. This article also links the practices of armed civilians before the war to the paramilitary groups that emerged in 1918 and emphasizes the legacy of local conceptions of armed defense of property and of notions of "good" citizenship in the aftermath of the war.

In early twentieth-century Austria-Hungary, in an age of growing democratisation, the expectation that authorities would be impartial in labour disputes had far-reaching consequences. The need to maintain public order, a cornerstone of state duties, increasingly faced competing challenges. From the 1890s to 1914, the number of strikes (and of strikers involved) significantly rose in Austria-Hungary in a context of growing industrialisation. Consequently, employers were putting more pressure on state authorities to intervene in the management of the strikes. At the same time, the push for democratisation (culminating in 1907 with the introduction of universal and equal suffrage in parliamentary elections) and increased calls for constitutional rights to be respected meant that workers' representatives demanded greater accountability from the Austrian government. This chapter examines how the Austrian state managed these competing demands in the two decades before the First World War. It analyses the regulation of public order in the Habsburg monarchy by examining the interaction between the different authorities at the local level and the centres of power. The interplay between the various levels highlights the discrepancy between central decisions and local practices, as well as the regional differences across the vast Empire.

This article deals with the nature of social conflict during the war. The length of the conflict and growing food shortages on the home front strained relations between individuals and between social groups. Protests for more equal distribution occurred all over the world, and especially in cities: they expressed demands for recognition from the state of the sacrifices made by civilians in the war. In many countries, even victorious ones, the unrest did not stop after 1918 but continued afterwards as citizens felt more entitled to participate in decisions over their state's fate.