The use of hunger strikes and fasts in political protest is a global phenomenon. Last Weapons book explains how that came to be. It examines the proliferation of hunger as a form of protest between the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, demonstrating how this radical tactic spread through trans-imperial networks among revolutionaries and civil-rights activists from Russia to Britain to Ireland and finally to India. It illuminates how the significance of hunger strikes and fasts refracted across political and cultural boundaries, and how prisoners experienced and understood their own starvation, which was then barely understood by medical research. It explores the struggles of prison staff and political officials to manage this challenge not only to their authority, but to society’s faith in the justice of liberal governance. Whether starving for the vote or national liberation, prisoners embodied proof of their own assertions that the rule of law enforced injustices that required redress and reform. Drawing upon deep archival research, Kevin Grant offers a highly original meditation on the role of hunger in contesting an imperial world still resonant today. 

Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890-1948 (Berkeley Series in British Studies) (Volume 16) PDF

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