Abstract
The rioters and their victims are a largely ignored part of nineteenth-century riots. As in many other cases, the historiography has reduced the individual actors to large groups - on the one side stood the "national workers", while on the other side stood the victims - "Czechs" or "Germans".
A deeper look at both groups, however, reveals that they were far from being uniform groups. Studying the diversity of the actors of street politics of 1897, as well as the variety of motives that drove them into the streets, can help us understand not only simply who the rioters were.
It clarifies the significance of certain processes in the late nineteenth century, such as political mobilization or labor migration. Based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, my paper will outline the motivations and goals of different actors in the street politics of 1897.
At the same time, I will reflect on whether and how important national politics actually was for the late nineteenth-century riots.