Patterns of Elite Co-operation: Comparing Civil-Military Relations in Imperial Germany and the French Third Republic, 1889-1914

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the armies of most European countries were gradually disengaged from their traditional role in the maintenance of public order. Although soldiers and officers continued to play a role in the policing of particularly serious incidents of unrest right up until after the First World War, military involvement in protest policing increasingly became the exception rather than norm. Within the long-term development, the dissimilar paths taken by the German Empire and the French Third Republic are particularly interesting as test-cases for the factors that shaped the process of limiting the involvement of the regular army in the policing of strikes, demonstrations and riots.