"Explosive Agents" analyses the Italian tunnel workers' strike in Göschenen, UR/Switzerland, of 1875. Thousands of Italian migrant workers participated in the construction of the first railway tunnel through the St. Gotthard, Switzerland, the longest European tunnel at that time. Their presence transformed the local village that grew from 300 to 3,000 inhabitants, physically and socially. The striking Italian workers and their families introduced the strike as a method of political action in Switzerland and thus brought about a long-term change in national politics.

The new introduction revisits the method and results of this microhistorical analysis, and positions the social and technological history of tunneling in a transnational perspective.