Battlefield Europe: The Recurrence of Continental Violence in the Troubles

Abstract

This study analyses the continental attacks by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, who aimed to achieve the reunification of Ireland through violent means against the British state. Much has been written about the IRA and how their support decreased over the years, but in these studies the effects of the continental campaign are often excluded. More so, the continental campaign as a whole seems to have been forgotten, as it received little attention in existing academic literature on the IRA. By analysing how the renewal of continental violence shaped the Dutch view on the IRA, this study puts the continental campaign central in the analysis of the IRA. Using Dutch newspapers, this study will analyse the narrative as well as the extent of coverage. This study found that the difference between domestic and international attack as well as the difference between civilian and military casualties matters for both the coverage and the narrative deployed by the Newspapers. The narrative of a newspaper becomes increasingly negative when the attack is domestic, and the victim is a civilian.