‘Fusillades’ and tipping points

Americans are brought up on the story of the Boston Massacre in which five people were shot dead by British troops in March 1770 during an angry demonstration. There was provocation, and no less a lawyer than John Adams, who would become his country’s second president, got the soldiers acquitted of murder. But although the loss of life was comparatively small, prospects for a peaceful settlement between the Colonies were severely diminished.

In October 1795, the streets of Paris saw demonstrations against the revolutionary regime. Napoleon Bonaparte issued his famous order to give them “a whiff of grapeshot,’’ which meant firing little bits of iron into the crowd from cannons. This had the desired effect in the tightly-packed Rue Honore. The republic was saved for the moment, but it was clear that only the army could save the regime, and it wasn’t long before Bonaparte took power for himself.

On Jan. 9, 1905, thereafter known as “Bloody Sunday,’’ a crowd of 200,000 peaceful Russian workers and peasants, many of them carrying religious icons and singing “God Save the Czar,’’ gathered in St. Petersburg to protest their grievances in front of the Winter Palace. Although police had given permission for the march, soldiers opened fire, killing several hundred - an act that helped sever the mystic bond between the ruler and the ruled in Russia. The 1905 revolution failed, but destiny was set. Twelve years later the monarchy was swept away in a far more violent revolution.

A less peaceful crowd gathered in the Indian city of Amritsar in 1919, agitated by Gandhi’s “Quit India’’ campaign. In a confined space called the Jalianwala Bagh, on another bloody Sunday, British troops opened fire on thousands of unarmed demonstrators. When the firing stopped 379 people lay dead. It would take several decades more, but the end of the British Raj was set that April Day.

The fusillade in Sharpsville, South Africa, in the spring of 1960, which killed 69 Africans, marked another turning point. It took many years, but, in hindsight, apartheid became untenable after that May day.

Kent State University in May 1970 saw Ohio National Guardsmen open fire on students protesting the widening of the Vietnam war into Cambodia. Four students died in what arguably turned out to be a tipping point. Hundreds of thousands protested across the country. It would take three years more, but the American people and Congress shut down the Indochina wars.

The British had their own “Bloody Sunday’’ in Northern Ireland in January 1972 when a confrontation between British troops and civilians turned to bloodshed in the streets of Londonderry. Thirteen civilians lay dead in the aftermath. Perhaps shots were fired from the crowd. No one has been able to pin down exactly who shot first, but, whatever the provocation, the incident so soured relations with the Catholic minority that any hope of subduing the province by force lay in shambles.

It is too soon to say how history will judge the fusillade in Fallujah in April 2003, when soldiers of the 82d Airborne gunned down Iraqis protesting against a school being taken over by the American military. Fifteen Iraqis died that morning, and an American trooper as well. Seventeen more died that afternoon when a frightened trooper opened up on mourners descending on the scene. It was the opening shot of what became the Sunni insurgency.

In Afghanistan today’s fusillades come from the air. The deaths of between 30 and 90 civilians, depending on who is counting, in Azizabad last summer, and a similar incident in Farah Province in May from American bombing runs has caused a change in the rules of engagement. From now on close air support is supposed to be less indiscriminate, but American battle tactics so depend on airpower we can expect many more such incidents. We cannot know whether civilian deaths will tip the balance of the Afghan people against us irrevocably, but it has done much damage to America’s cause.

H.D.S. Greenway’s column appears regularly in the Globe.