Violent Repression or Modern Strategies of Crowd Management? Soldiers as Riot Police in France and Germany, 1890-1914

One of the most intriguing aspects of French policing during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the apparent contradiction between the liberal principles that were constantly invoked as the ideological basis of the French Third Republic, on the one hand, and the extreme frequency of military involvement in the maintenance of public order, on the other. The frequent use of troops in the early decades of the French Third Republic is particularly interesting, because it runs counter to developments in other European countries, notably the German Empire. This is surprising given the German authorities' far less liberal attitude to the disturbance of public order and the strong Prussian tradition of military involvement in the management of civilian society