In the summer of 2013 many Swedish suburbs exploded in violent confrontations between crowds of angry inhabitants and the police. In the public debate both reporters and politicians reacted with condemnation of the violence conducted, not least the destruction of public and private property. While many social scientists took an active part in this public debate striving for a more nuanced analysis of the confrontations the historian community was more or less silent. Why was that? Part of the answer is that historians, working with analysis of context in all its complexity generally hesitate to make general statements. This is unfortunate because historians do have some insights that are important. In this article the argument is that both historians and social scientists would benefit from a dialogue with each other, not least theoretically. The argument is also that it is time for a new history of the society that confrontations such as these in the Swedish suburbs in the summer of 2013 cannot be understood in isolation, but has to be seen and analysed as a part of a society in crisis and change more generally. The article concludes, discussing the classical work of E. P. Thompson on food riots in the 18th century England, that there might be what could be defined as a new moral economy of the 21th century suburban crowd.