Edit]Early 20th century

Michael Collins, IRA leader

Revolutionary nationalism continued to motivate political violence in the 20th century, much of it directed against the British Empire. The Irish Republican Armycampaigned against the British in the 1910s and inspired the Zionist groups Hagannah, Irgun and Lehi to fight the British throughout the 1930s in the Palestine mandate.^[64][65] Like the IRA and the Zionist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood used bombings and assassinations to try to free Egypt from British control.^[66]

[edit]Europe

Political assassinations continued into the 20th century, its first victim Umberto I of Italy, killed in July 1900. Political violence became especially widespread inImperial Russia, and several ministers were killed in the opening years of the century. The highest ranking was prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, killed in 1911 by a leftist radical.

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot and killed inSarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six assassins. The assassinations produced widespread shock across Europe, setting in motion a series of events which led to World War I.

In an action called the Easter Rising or Easter Rebellion, on April 24, 1916, members of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army seized the Dublin General Post Office and several other buildings, proclaiming an independent Irish Republic.^[67] The rebellion failed militarily but was a success for physical force Irish republicanism, leaders of the uprising becoming Irish heroes after their eventual execution by the British government.^[68] Shortly after the rebellion, Michael Collins and others founded the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which from 1916 to 1923 carried out numerous attacks against symbols of British power. For example, it attacked over 300 police stations simultaneously just before Easter 1920,^[69] and, in November 1920, publicly killed a dozen police officers and burned down the Liverpool docks and warehouses, an action that came to be known as Bloody Sunday.^[70] After years of warfare, London agreed to the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty creating an independent Irish nation encompassing 26 of the island's 32 counties.^[71] IRA tactics were an inspiration to other groups, including the Palestine Mandate's Zionists,^[72] and to British special operations during World War II.^[73][74]

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 820