See also: Sabotage (homonymy)

The sabotage is an action deliberated on opposition carried out on material, by the obstruction of its use and/or its destruction, in order to reach a loss of its effectiveness.

History

The Sabot was used symbolically by the anarchistic at the 19th century (idea developed in particular by Emile Pouget for the lowering of the working time at 8 a.m. per day) and at the beginning of the 20th century (although this symbol is not used any more today).

The word “shoe” is probably the root of the word sabotage, because the workers who wanted a leave, or who wanted to fight against the owner for less work hours, threw certainly a shoe in the machines of a factory or of a farm, thus damaging the tool and did not work any more until the machine is repaired. This action thus put in difficulty the owner.

More probably, this symbol of the shoe (shoe) refers in fact to the shoe used by enrayeurs or saboteurs, whose trade consisted in placing judiciously on the way of the corners out of wooden or metal to slow down the coaches which go down from the Bosse in a Triage.

Military field

In the military field, the word is employed to describe the activity of an individual or groups independent (such as a foreign agent or a resistant ), in particular when the acts of sabotage has like consequence the destruction or the damage of a productive or essential service, such as the equipment, Usine S, public services or surfaces of storage.

With the difference of the acts of Terrorism, the acts of sabotage do not have like primary goal to inflict human losses. The saboteurs are usually regarded as illegal enemy combatants.

Anecdote

• With Philadelphia, there exists an anarchistic bookstore which is called Wooden Shoe (translation of shoe, or literally shoe out of wooden).