‘The blood of martyrs is the seed of progress’. The role of martyrdom in socialist death culture in Belgium and the Netherlands, 1880–1940

Abstract

The rhetoric and forms of representation of martyrdom in the death culture of international socialism is explored in relation to Belgium and the Netherlands, notably in Ghent and Amsterdam, 1880–1940. Press material reveals the way forms of commemoration combined Christian and socialist imagery to galvanise followers and offer them a frame of transcendence. The link between narratives of commemoration and social agitation in relation to strikes and other events illustrates the way claims of martyrdom had distinctive functions in generating revolutionary consciousness. The leaders and militants of the socialist movements in both countries made much of the blood split by national and foreign socialist martyrs and of the repression they had to deal with. The memory of certain martyrs was also used as a divisive force between different currents of socialism.