Banditry in occupied and liberated Belgium, 1914–21. Social practices and state reactions.

The specific combination of massive impoverishment and the disintegration of state authority provided a fertile ground for banditry in Belgium during the First World War. The resurgence of banditry in a heavily urbanized and industrialized western European society and in an established state is difficult to reconcile with the prevailing perceptions of the history of banditry as a rural and ancien régime phenomenon. This indicates that the history of banditry is indeed more complicated and less linear than has been generally assumed. The breeding ground for banditry did not disappear immediately with the armistice. Bands of armed bandits continued to make Belgian regions insecure in what amounted to a serious challenge to the state’s monopoly on violence, one of the cornerstones of its authority. The strategies used to fight the bands fit into the wider operations aimed at re-legitimization of the Belgian state after the intervening war experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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