Editing Civil disobedience (section)

==History==
An early depiction of civil disobedience is in [[Sophocles]]' play ''[[Antigone (Sophocles play)|Antigone]]'', in which [[Antigone]], one of the daughters of former King of [[Ancient Thebes (Boeotia)|Thebes]], [[Oedipus]], defies [[Creon of Thebes|Creon]], the current King of Thebes, who is trying to stop her from giving her brother [[Polynices]] a proper burial. She gives a stirring speech in which she tells him that she must obey her conscience rather than human law. She is not at all afraid of the death he threatens her with (and eventually carries out), but she is afraid of how her conscience will smite her if she does not do this.<ref>[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31/31-h/31-h.htm#antigone Sophocle's ''Antigone''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511074212/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31/31-h/31-h.htm#antigone |date=11 May 2011 }}, Project Gutenberg, F. Storr translation, 1912, Harvard University Press</ref>

[[Conrad Grebel]] and Anabaptists advocated civil disobedience to oppression.<ref name="Adolf 2013 p. 117">{{cite book | last=Adolf | first=A. | title=Peace: A World History | publisher=Polity Press | year=2013 | isbn=978-0-7456-5459-1 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J1kh_7BmkoMC&pg=PT117 | access-date=2023-01-24 | page=117}}</ref> [[Étienne de La Boétie]]'s thought developed in his work ''[[Discourse on Voluntary Servitude|Discours de la servitude volontaire ou le Contr'un]]'' (1552) was also taken up by many movements of civil disobedience, which drew from the concept of rebellion to voluntary servitude the foundation of its instrument of struggle. Étienne de La Boétie was one of the first to theorize and propose the strategy of non-cooperation, and thus a form of nonviolent disobedience, as a really effective weapon.

In the lead-up to the [[Glorious Revolution]] in Britain—when the [[1689 Bill of Rights]] was documented, the last Catholic monarch was deposed, and male and female joint-co-monarchs elevated—the [[Midlands Enlightenment|English Midland Enlightenment]] developed a manner of voicing objection to a law viewed as illegitimate and then taking the consequences of the law. (For example, they might refuse to swear [[allegiance]] to the king, and, as a consequence, accept the prison sentence legally and normally meted out to people who refused to take this oath.) This was focused on the illegitimacy of laws claimed to be "divine" in origin, both the "divine rights of kings" and "divine rights of man", and the legitimacy of laws acknowledged to be made by human beings.<ref>Douglas R. Burgess, Jr., ''The Politics of Piracy: Crime and Civil Disobedience in Colonial America'' (University Press of New England, 2014). {{ISBN|9781611685275}}</ref><ref>Jack Greene, "Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution", in P.J. Marshal, ed., ''Oxford History of the British Empire'', vol. 2 (Oxford University Press, 2001), 208–30</ref><ref>Greene, Jack. ''Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History'' (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of VA, 1994).</ref>{{Relevance inline|paragraph|reason= How is "a manner of voicing objection to a law" an example of disobedience?|date=June 2023}}

Following the [[Peterloo massacre]] of 1819, the poet [[Percy Shelley]] wrote the political poem ''[[The Mask of Anarchy]]'' later that year, that begins with the images of what he thought to be the unjust forms of authority of his time—and then imagines the stirrings of a new form of [[social action]]. According to [[Ashton Nichols]], it is perhaps the first [[modern history|modern]] statement of the principle of nonviolent protest.<ref name="AFP">[http://www.morrissociety.org/JWMS/SP94.10.4.Nichols.pdf] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110105232938/http://www.morrissociety.org/JWMS/SP94.10.4.Nichols.pdf|date=5 January 2011}}</ref> A version was taken up by the author [[Henry David Thoreau]] in his essay [[Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)|''Civil Disobedience'']], and later by Gandhi in his doctrine of ''[[Satyagraha]]''.<ref name=AFP/> Gandhi's Satyagraha was partially influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action.<ref>Thomas Weber, ''Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor'', Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 28–29.</ref> In particular, it is known that Gandhi often quoted Shelley's ''Mask of Anarchy'' to vast audiences during the campaign for a free India.<ref name=AFP /><ref>Weber, p. 28.</ref>

Thoreau's 1849 essay ''[[Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)|Civil Disobedience]]'', originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government", has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. The driving idea behind the essay is that citizens are morally responsible for their support of aggressors, even when such support is required by law. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having [[tax resistance|refused to pay taxes]] as an act of [[protest]] against [[slavery]] and against the [[Mexican–American War]]. He writes,

<blockquote>If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico;—see if I would go;" and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute.</blockquote>

By the 1850s, a range of minority groups in the [[United States]]: African Americans, Jews, [[Seventh Day Baptists]], Catholics, anti-prohibitionists, racial egalitarians, and others—employed civil disobedience to combat a range of legal measures and public practices that to them promoted ethnic, religious, and [[racial discrimination]]. Pro Public and typically peaceful resistance to political power remained an integral tactic in modern American [[minority rights]] politics.<ref>Volk, Kyle G. (2014). ''Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy''. New York: Oxford University Press.{{page needed|date=June 2020}}</ref>

In Ireland starting from 1879 the [[Ireland|Irish]] "[[Land War]]" intensified when Irish nationalist leader [[Charles Stewart Parnell]], in a speech in [[Ennis]] proposed that when dealing with tenants who take farms where another tenant was evicted, rather than resorting to violence, everyone in the locality should shun them. Following this Captain [[Charles Boycott]], the land agent of an absentee landlord in [[County Mayo]], [[Ireland]], was subject to social [[ostracism]] organized by the [[Irish Land League]] in 1880. Boycott attempted to evict eleven tenants from his land. While Parnell's speech did not refer to land agents or landlords, the tactic was applied to Boycott when the alarm was raised about the evictions. Despite the short-term economic hardship to those undertaking this action, Boycott soon found himself isolated – his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail. The movement spread throughout Ireland and gave rise to the term to [[Boycott]], and eventually led to legal reform and support for Irish independence.<ref>{{cite book|last=Marlow|first=Joyce|title=Captain Boycott and the Irish|year=1973|publisher=[[André Deutsch]]|isbn=978-0-233-96430-0|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wW4uAAAAMAAJ&q=Captain+Boycott|pages=133–142}}</ref>

Egypt saw a massive implementation on a nation-wide movement starting 1914 and peaking in 1919 as [[Egyptian Revolution of 1919|the Egyptian Revolution of 1919]]. This was then adopted by other peoples who campaigned against European colonial rule from 1920 onwards.<ref name="Egypt">{{Citation|author=Zunes, Stephen (1999:42)|title=Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective|publisher=Blackwell Publishing}}</ref> [[Saad Zaghloul|Zaghloul Pasha]], considered the mastermind behind this massive civil disobedience, was a native middle-class, [[Al-Azhar University|Azhar]] graduate, political activist, judge, parliamentary and ex-cabinet minister whose leadership brought Christian and Muslim communities together as well as women into the massive protests. Along with his companions of [[Wafd Party]], who have achieved an independence of Egypt and a first constitution in 1923.
Civil disobedience is one of the many ways people have revolted against what they deem to be unfair laws. It has been used in many [[nonviolent resistance]] movements in [[British Raj|India]] ([[Mahatma Gandhi]]'s campaigns for [[Indian independence movement|independence]] from the [[British Empire]]), in [[Czechoslovakia]]'s [[Velvet Revolution]], in early stages of the Bangladeshi independence movement against Pakistani colonialism and in [[East Germany]] to oust their [[Stalinist]] government.<ref>{{Citation|author=Michael Lerner|title=Tikkun reader}}</ref> In [[South Africa]] during the leftist campaign against the far-right [[Apartheid]] regime, in the [[American civil rights movement]] against [[Jim Crow laws]], in the [[Singing Revolution]] to bring independence to the [[Baltic countries]] from the [[Soviet Union]], and more recently with the 2003 [[Rose Revolution]] in Georgia, the 2004 [[Orange Revolution]]<ref name="The Orange Revolution">{{cite magazine|date=12 December 2004|title=The Orange Revolution|url=http://www.time.com/time/europe/html/041206/story.html|url-status=dead|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100410051430/http://www.time.com/time/europe/html/041206/story.html|archive-date=10 April 2010|access-date=30 April 2010}}</ref> and the 2013–2014 [[Euromaidan]] revolution in Ukraine, the 2016–2017 [[Candlelight Revolution]] in South Korea, and the [[2020–2021 Belarusian protests]], among many other various movements worldwide.