When did people start going on hunger strikes?
Source: Damien Cave in the NYT (7-30-06) … The feudal, pre-Christian Irish were perhaps the first to successfully starve against injustice. Fasting on the doorstep of a lord often embarrassed the powerful into action, according to David Beresfords book, Ten Men Dead, which tells the story of Bobby Sands and nine other Irish nationalists who died from hunger strikes in 1981. India once maintained a similar tradition, called dharna, which typically used public fasting to collect unpaid debts. British suffragists before World War I launched the hunger strike on its 20th-century career, said Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Journalists swarmed when several women began the fast. After the authorities forcibly fed them in 1910 to prevent the spectacle of death, they only became more famous. The force-feeding was as shocking as the starving, Mr. Mead said. They basically jammed food down the throats of the women, wedging their mouths open. It was an
