The Rabassaire Struggle: Long-Term Analysis of a Social and Political Movement

Abstract

The rabassaire struggle of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries represented the most intense unrest in the Catalan countryside since the peasant rebellions of the fifteenth century, and it was one of the main social movements in rural Western Europe in this period. In this article we examine the rabassaire struggle over a period of roughly 150 years. Following Charles Tilly, we understand this social movement as a form of political action, which began in the late eighteenth century, reached maturity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and came to an end with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Beyond the organizational changes arising from the shifting social and political circumstances, a new long-term overview can shed light on the continuities of the movement, especially in terms of building a social identity and legitimating its claims and its struggle.