Read Online The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror by John Merriman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Merriman
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began to organize in and around Émile Henry's Paris. In 1882, approximately thirteen anarchist groups existed, with at least 200 members in all. Eleven years later, the police counted more than 2,400 anarchists and considered 852 of them dangerous. Most French anarchists were average workers—metalworkers, bricklayers, printers, and others drawn from myriad occupations in late-nineteenth-century France.
In Paris, such groups were based in specific neighborhoods, in keeping with the anarchist view that the revolution would be achieved through local insurrections. Usually groups of anarchists organized street by street. They communicated through the anarchist press, meetings, debates, and brightly colored posters advertising such events. Anarchists opened soup kitchens to feed the hungry and started several anarchist libraries—really just book collections in the homes of certain anarchists. The subculture of ordinary people, including the slang (argot) of the streets and bars, infused the movement with dynamism.
Anarchists did not have to work hard to win recruits in northeastern Paris. For example, in plebeian Belleville, a neighborhood of artisans (particularly brass workers and jewelers) and laborers on the edge of the capital, had more than its share of disaffected poor people. In a place that Maurice Chevalier and Édith Piaf would make famous four decades later, a strong local identity had been forged, in part through the knowledge that the fancy central and western neighborhoods of Paris spurned and feared Belleville's poor while using their labor to maximize their own wealth and comfort. Belleville had suffered disproportionately in the violent repression that followed the Commune, in part because of the leftist political tendencies of its residents. The salient role of the neighborhood in the Commune reinforced the association—at least in the minds of Parisian elites and government authorities—between Belleville and the "dangerous classes," cementing its unjustified reputation as a place of rampant crime.
The anarchist groups in Belleville and the twentieth arrondissement in the mid-188os sported colorful names such as the Libertarians, the Black Flag, the Tiger, the Deserters of Charonne, the Anarchist Group of Belleville, and the Anarchist Group of Père Lachaise (Cemetery). The Anarchist Group of Belleville and the Anarchist Group of the Twentieth Arrondissement had existed for years. Dynamite, Revolver in the Hand, the Starving, Hatred, Social War, and the Indigent also sprang up. In the Marais district on the Right Bank, a good many immigrants brought their anarchism with them from Russia, reading Yiddish publications dedicated to the cause.
Anarchism was also particularly attractive in the growing industrial suburbs. Indeed, one short-lived anarchist newspaper that appeared in 1891 was called simply
The Suburb (Le Faubourg).
In overcrowded Saint-Denis (the population had more than doubled there from 1861 to 1891, to fifty thousand) fewer than a third of the houses had running water. Thousands of people lived in shanties that were literally thrown together, made of bricks or any other material that could be found and covered with sheet metal or asphalt-reinforced cardboard.
Anarchists held their usually modest gatherings in bars or cafés, sometimes in a backroom or upstairs room that was rented, sometimes not (it was understood that the group would at least purchase drinks). Or they would rent a small hall in the neighborhood for the evening. When it was time to pay for the hall rental and drinks, those with money paid up, and the place for the next gathering was decided. Larger halls were rented for meetings that brought together various groups of anarchists to discuss abstaining from elections, propaganda encouraging conscripts to refuse to report for military service, or plans for demonstrations or events to mark the anniversary of the Commune—an enduring source of inspiration as well as a
In Paris, such groups were based in specific neighborhoods, in keeping with the anarchist view that the revolution would be achieved through local insurrections. Usually groups of anarchists organized street by street. They communicated through the anarchist press, meetings, debates, and brightly colored posters advertising such events. Anarchists opened soup kitchens to feed the hungry and started several anarchist libraries—really just book collections in the homes of certain anarchists. The subculture of ordinary people, including the slang (argot) of the streets and bars, infused the movement with dynamism.
Anarchists did not have to work hard to win recruits in northeastern Paris. For example, in plebeian Belleville, a neighborhood of artisans (particularly brass workers and jewelers) and laborers on the edge of the capital, had more than its share of disaffected poor people. In a place that Maurice Chevalier and Édith Piaf would make famous four decades later, a strong local identity had been forged, in part through the knowledge that the fancy central and western neighborhoods of Paris spurned and feared Belleville's poor while using their labor to maximize their own wealth and comfort. Belleville had suffered disproportionately in the violent repression that followed the Commune, in part because of the leftist political tendencies of its residents. The salient role of the neighborhood in the Commune reinforced the association—at least in the minds of Parisian elites and government authorities—between Belleville and the "dangerous classes," cementing its unjustified reputation as a place of rampant crime.
The anarchist groups in Belleville and the twentieth arrondissement in the mid-188os sported colorful names such as the Libertarians, the Black Flag, the Tiger, the Deserters of Charonne, the Anarchist Group of Belleville, and the Anarchist Group of Père Lachaise (Cemetery). The Anarchist Group of Belleville and the Anarchist Group of the Twentieth Arrondissement had existed for years. Dynamite, Revolver in the Hand, the Starving, Hatred, Social War, and the Indigent also sprang up. In the Marais district on the Right Bank, a good many immigrants brought their anarchism with them from Russia, reading Yiddish publications dedicated to the cause.
Anarchism was also particularly attractive in the growing industrial suburbs. Indeed, one short-lived anarchist newspaper that appeared in 1891 was called simply
The Suburb (Le Faubourg).
In overcrowded Saint-Denis (the population had more than doubled there from 1861 to 1891, to fifty thousand) fewer than a third of the houses had running water. Thousands of people lived in shanties that were literally thrown together, made of bricks or any other material that could be found and covered with sheet metal or asphalt-reinforced cardboard.
Anarchists held their usually modest gatherings in bars or cafés, sometimes in a backroom or upstairs room that was rented, sometimes not (it was understood that the group would at least purchase drinks). Or they would rent a small hall in the neighborhood for the evening. When it was time to pay for the hall rental and drinks, those with money paid up, and the place for the next gathering was decided. Larger halls were rented for meetings that brought together various groups of anarchists to discuss abstaining from elections, propaganda encouraging conscripts to refuse to report for military service, or plans for demonstrations or events to mark the anniversary of the Commune—an enduring source of inspiration as well as a
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