The Red Month

The Red Month (Dutch: De Rode Maand) was an unsuccessful socialist revolution in the Netherlands from 9 November to 4 December 1919. It began on the one year anniversary of an earlier failed revolutionary attempt known as the Red Week.
Inspired by the German Revolution and the Russian Revolution, the revolutionaries initially gathered only a couple thousand followers on the 9 November strike action. The unrest was exacerbated after the military was brought into all major cities as a precaution. Soldiers fired on a group of peaceful demonstrators in Amsterdam on 14 November, killing three. The demonstrations soon grew, with a state of emergency being declared in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. An estimated 20,000 people took part in the largest protest on 19 November. The demonstrations were soon declared illegal and only a small amount of radical protestors were present on the 24 November demonstration, who were dispersed by the army and police. The last demonstration occured on 4 December, where only a few hundred protestors were present. Although the revolutionaries remained a minority among the Dutch population, as previously shown in the Red Week, the Dutch parliament passed a number of anti-socialist laws in 1920 in response to the protests. The votes for these laws were boycotted by the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP).
Category:Conflicts