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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In this third edition of his widely acclaimed survey, historian Randall D. Law makes sense of the history of terrorism by examining it within its broad political, religious and social contexts from the ancient world to the present day. In Terrorism: A History, Law reveals how the very definition of the word has changed, how the tactics and strategies of terrorism have evolved, and how those who have used it have adapted to revolutions in technology, communications, and political ideologies.
Terrorism: A History extensively covers topics as wide-ranging as jihadist violence, state terror, the Israeli/Palestianian conflict, Northern Ireland, anarcho-terrorism, and racist violence, plus lesser-known movements in Uruguay and Algeria, as well as pre-modern uses of terror in the ancient world, medieval Europe, and the French Revolution.
This brand-new revision edition features up-to-the-moment analysis of:
• The state of al-Qaeda, its franchises, and global jihad today
• New incarnations of far-right extremism, including the Oathkeepers, Proud Boys, and conspiracy theorists
• The continuing presence of religiously inspired terrorism in North America and across the world
Law’s expert analysis also includes updated and expanded chapter bibliographies, even more scholarly citations, and a new conclusion exploring the future of terrorism. Terrorism: A History remains the go-to book for those wishing to understand the real nature and importance of this ubiquitous phenomenon.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Abbreviations
Introduction
Note on the second edition
Note on the third edition
Bibliography
Notes
1 Terror and Tyrannicide in the Pre-Modern World
Warfare in the ancient world
Tyrannicide and the ancient Hebrews
Tyrannicide in ancient Greece
Tyrannicide, terror, and political violence in ancient Rome
Cicero and the last decades of the Roman Republic
Julius Caesar and the end of the Roman Republic
Terrorism in Judea: the case of the Sicarii
Church, state, and violence in medieval Europe
The theory and practice of tyrannicide in the High and Late Middle Ages
Sources of violence in the medieval Islamic world
The Assassins
Muslim and Western perceptions of the Assassins
Terror and tyrannicide in the early modern era in Europe
Tyrannicide, terror, and state-sponsored assassination in the Renaissance, 1054–1585
The Reformation and tyrannicide in France and England
The English Civil War
Review of tyrannicide in medieval and early modern Europe
Bibliography
Notes
2 The Dawn of Revolutionary Terrorism
Tyranny as a system
L’Ancien Régime and the French Revolution
The Revolution turns radical
The Reign of Terror
“Virtue and terror”
The end of the Revolution
The Restoration and conservatism
Revolutionary secret societies
Babeuf and Buonarroti
The Carbonari
The authorities and revolutionary terrorism
The Luddites
Heinzen and conspiratorial terrorism
Bibliography
Notes
3 Russian Revolutionary Terrorism
The Russian Empire
Populism and nihilism
Sergei Nechaev and the professional revolutionary
Russian Marxism and anarchism
Populism into terrorism
Revolutionary heroes: Zasulich and Kravchinsky
The People’s Will and the assassination of Alexander II
Propaganda of the deed
The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Combat Organization
The Revolution of 1905
“A new type of revolutionary”
Marxism and terrorism
Responses to terrorism
Russian counterterrorism
Bibliography
Notes
4 The Era of the European Attentat
Propaganda of the deed and terrorism
Johann Most and anarcho-terrorism
Police and terrorists
The peak of anarcho-terrorism
Spanish anarcho-terrorism
Explaining terrorism
Literary responses to terrorism
The decline of anarcho-terrorism
Bibliography
Notes
5 Labor, Anarchy, and Terror in America
The Molly Maguires
Violence and labor organizations
Anarchy in the United States
The Haymarket Riot
The spread of anarcho-terrorism
Luigi Galleani and the Galleanists
Labor, terrorism, and immigration
The terrorist scare of 1919–1920
Bibliography
Notes
6 White Supremacy and American Racial Terrorism
Bleeding Kansas and John Brown
Reconstruction and white supremacy
Radical Reconstruction and white Southern resistance
The Ku Klux Klan
Forms and functions of white supremacist terrorism
Membership in white supremacist organizations
The federal response
The end of Radical Reconstruction
Jim Crow and the institutionalization of terrorism
Lynching
The Klan returns
The Klan in the post-war era and the Civil Rights Movement
Bibliography
Notes
7 The Dawn of Ethno-nationalist Terrorism
Imperialism and state terror
Ireland and England
Irish ethno-nationalist terrorism and assassination
The Easter Uprising
Michael Collins and the Black and Tan War
Terror and counterterror: the British and “small wars”
The Russian Method
Ethno-nationalist terrorism in India
Europe and the Balkans and the coming of the Great War
Serbia and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand
The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
The uses of ethno-nationalist terrorism
Bibliography
Notes
8 The Era of State Terror
Russia’s revolutions
The Civil War and the Red Terror
Stalin and the Terror
Germany after the First World War
Italian fascism
Hitler’s Brownshirts
The Nazi state
The Second World War
Bibliography
Notes
9 Decolonization and Ethno-nationalist Terrorism from the 1930s to the Early 1960s
Ethno-nationalist terrorism and its varieties
The growth of ethno-nationalist terrorism
Palestine: Arab, Jew, and Briton
Irgun and LEHI
The strategy behind Zionist terror
The impact of Zionist terror
Zionist success
The creation of Israel
The Cold War, Marxism, and ethno-nationalist movements
Malaya and the communist terrorists
The Malayan Emergency and the Briggs Plan
Kenya
Mau Mau insurrection
British counterinsurgency in Kenya
Cyprus and EOKA
Empire and counterterrorism
France and Algeria
The Battle of Algiers
French counterterrorism
French success in the Battle of Algiers and beyond
The French win the battle, but lose the war
French terrorism and the OAS
Frantz Fanon and anti-colonial violence
Bibliography
Notes
10 Decolonization and Ethno-nationalist Terrorism from the Late 1960s to the Present
Palestinians, the Palestinian cause, and intra-Arab rivalries
Fatah and Yasser Arafat
Arafat and terrorism
PLO factions and international terrorism
Black September, from Jordan to Munich and beyond
Arafat: terrorist or statesman?
Rejectionism: Abu Nidal and Carlos the Jackal
The PLO in Lebanon and Israeli counterterrorism
Arafat in Tunisia, Rejectionist terror, and Gaddafi of Libya
The first Intifada
Arafat’s hits and misses
Arafat as statesman
The Irish Republican Army
Northern Ireland ignites
The Provisional Irish Republican Army
IRA vs. UVF vs. Britain
The Provos’ “long war”
The IRA abroad
Alternatives to terrorism
Negotiations and terrorism
The final spasms of violence
Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers
The Tamil Tigers: terrorism, guerrilla war, and conventional struggle
The Tamil Tigers and suicide terrorism
The end of the Tamil Tigers
ETA: Basque Nation and Liberty
Bibliography
Notes
11 The Era of Leftist and International Terrorism
The return of revolutionary terrorism
Latin American revolutionary movements
Uruguay and the Tupamaros
Marighella and the urban guerrilla
The Tupamaros and terrorism
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and narco-terrorism
The Shining Path
Peruvian counterterrorism and counterinsurgency
The United States, the New Left, and Weatherman
The Weather Underground
The Symbionese Liberation Army
The left in Europe
The Baader–Meinhof Gang / Red Army Faction
The German Autumn of 1977
Italy – left vs. right
The Red Brigades
The rise of international terrorism
The United States: international terrorism as a communist conspiracy
Terrorism and security
Bibliography
Notes
12 The Return of Religious Terrorism
Jihadism
Islam and Europe
Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood
Sayyid Qutb
Islamism finds an audience
Egyptian radical Islamists organize
The Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis
The assassination of Sadat
Violent Islamists in Saudi Arabia and Syria
Hezbollah and Iran
Hezbollah and terrorism
The Afghan mujahideen
Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan, and the birth of jihadism
Bin Laden focuses on the US
Ramzi Yousef and the first World Trade Center attack
Jihad in Egypt
The Taliban and bin Laden
American reactions
Al-Qaeda attacks
Hamas
Suicide bombing in Israel and Palestine
Jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya
Jihadism in Algeria
White supremacy, Christian Identity, and Aryan Nations
Leaderless resistance
Anti-abortion terrorism
Judaism and terrorism
Cults and terrorism
Aum Shinrikyo
Bibliography
Notes
13 9/11 and the War on Terror
Planning 9/11
American intelligence failures
September 11, 2001
The anthrax attacks
The War on Terror and Afghanistan
The Iraq War and insurgency
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India
The franchising of al-Qaeda and AQAP
The further franchising of al-Qaeda
Lone-wolf jihadism in Europe
Lone-wolf jihadism in the United States
The Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, and the ISIS insurrection
Global ISIS terrorism
The state of al-Qaeda, its franchises, and global jihad today
Bibliography
Notes
14 Right-Wing and Other Recent Terrorism
American militias
Christian Identity and American militias
Christian Patriotism vs. the US government
The Oklahoma City bombing
Far-right small cell and lone-wolf violence
Populism and extremism in Germany and Europe
The Unabomber
Eco-terror or eco-defense?
Bibliography
Notes
15 The Future of Terrorism … in Light of Its History
Antiterrorism today
Counterterrorism, civil liberties, and the rhetoric of the War on Terror
Religion and terrorism
A Final Word
Bibliography
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1
Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598) (Wikimedia Commons)
Figure 1.2
The Old Man of the Mountain Giving Instructions to His Followers, from a fifteenth…
Figure 1.3
Contemporary drawing of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators (© Bettmann/Getty Images)
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1
Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat (1793) (Wikimedia Commons)
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1
The Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood, St. Petersburg (© Cavan Ima…
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1
Meunier avenges Ravachol, as illustrated in a contemporary French newspaper (© Roger …
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1
A fanciful contemporary drawing of the Haymarket Riot from Harper’s Weekly (Wikimedia …
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1
The Klan prepares to lynch its victim in The Birth of a Nation (1915) (© Smith Collection / Gado / …
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1
“Bolshevik Freedom”: a Polish poster featuring Trotsky and denouncing the Red Terror…
Figure 8.2
The German Reichstag on fire, February 1933 (Wikimedia Commons)
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1
The King David Hotel in Jerusalem, after Irgun bombing, July 1946 (Wikimedia Commons)
Figure 9.2
French paratroopers search an Algerian suspect on the outskirts of Algiers, January 1957 …
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1
Leila Khaled, photographed shortly after hijacking an international flight, 1969 (© Bettmann/Getty …
Figure 10.2
Black September terrorists at the Munich Olympics, September 1972. In the lower photo, an International …
Figure 10.3
Mural of Bobby Sands in Belfast, Northern Ireland …
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1
Funeral of Ulrike Meinhof, May 1976 (© Keystone/Getty Images)
Figure 11.2
Aldo Moro in captivity, 1978 (© Getty Images)
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1
US Marine barracks bombing, Beirut, October 1983 (© Bettmann/Getty Images)
Figure 12.2
Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan, November 2001 (© Stéphane Ruet/…
Figure 12.3
Japanese authorities clad in chem-suits respond to a sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway, March 1995 …
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1
United Airlines flight 175 veers toward the South Tower of New York’s World Trade Center. …
Figure 13.2
In the aftermath of the January 2015 attacks, many across the globe expressed their solidarity with the …
Chapter 14
Figure 14.1
The devastated Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, April 1995 (Wikimedia Commons)
Chapter 15
Figure 15.1
Detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, January 2002 (Wikimedia Commons)
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Abbreviations
Introduction
Begin Reading
Index
End User License Agreement
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M. L. Bush, Servitude in Modern Times
Peter Coates, Nature
Mark Harrison, Disease and the Modern World
Jonathan Hart, Empires and Colonies
Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood (Second Edition)
Randall Law, Terrorism: A History (Third Edition)
Kim M. Phillips and Barry Rea, Sex before Sexuality
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Terrorism
A History
Third Edition
Randall D. Law
polity
Copyright © Randall Law 2024
The right of Randall Law to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First edition published in 2009 by Polity Press
Second edition published in 2016 by Polity Press
This edition published in 2024 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5134-7
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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
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Acknowledgments
The publication of the third edition gives me yet another chance to recount with great pleasure the support that has made it possible for me to write this book. My approach to teaching and scholarship remains guided by my abiding faith in the power of a liberal arts education. Thus, it should not be a surprise that this book grew out of a course I began teaching in 2002; in fact, the course and the book’s growth have been closely intertwined. I thank my students at Northwestern College of Iowa, where I taught from 2001 to 2003, and Birmingham-Southern College, in Birmingham, Alabama, where I have taught since 2003. They have asked the questions that have in large part provoked the writing of this book.
I wish to thank the faculty, staff, librarians, and administrators of Birmingham-Southern (BSC) for their extraordinary support. In particular, I want to thank my fellow historians at BSC: Guy Hubbs, Will Hustwit, Mark Lester, Matthew Levey, Bill Nicholas, Victoria Ott, and Mark Schantz. I cannot imagine a more stimulating, friendly, and supportive group; every one of them has provided me with extensive assistance. The book is much better for the input from all of them, but, of course, any errors of fact or interpretation are mine alone. Other colleagues at Birmingham-Southern – current and former – read and commented on chapters or sparked my imagination with their ideas. They include Steve Cole, Amy Cottrill, Vince Gawronski, General Charles Krulak (USMC, ret.), Mark McClish, Michael McInturff, Sam Pezzillo, Shane Pitts, David Resha, Gail Smith, and David Ullrich. While studying at BSC, Daniel Mauldin worked as my research assistant and developed ideas that I incorporated into my coverage of Ireland’s Troubles.
Those beyond my campus who have provided valuable information, advice, and/or support include Colonel Tony Abati (USMC), Laura Anderson, Steve Barnes, Mark Brighton, Stuart Finkel, Steven Isaac, Jeffrey Kaplan, Andrew Konitzer, Gregory Miller, Jack Owens (FBI, ret.), Lynn Patyk, Colonel Ed Rowe (US Army, ret.), Thomas Sharp, and Stephen Shellman. While in graduate school at Georgetown University, I worked with three outstanding teacher-scholars who continue to influence me twenty-plus years later: Catherine Evtuhov, in whose course I first began to explore Russian and European terrorism in comparative perspective; David Goldfrank, who always helped me to see above, around, and behind every issue I sought to tackle; and the late Richard Stites, who filled me with a passion for scholarship and engaging historical writing.
I have been fortunate to work with Polity through three editions of this book. Everyone there has been supportive and professional, and I thank them, especially Andrea Drugan, Jonathan Skerrett, Elliott Karstadt, Pascal Porcheron, Ellen MacDonald-Kramer, Justin Dyer, Julia Davies, Lindsey Wimpenny, Helena Heaton, Neil de Cort, and Leigh Mueller.
Every member of my family has graced me not only with their considerably learned advice, but also with their unflagging emotional and logistical support. To my father-in-law, Lewis Wolfson – thank you. And, despite their passing, the love and generosity of my mother, Patricia Law, my father, Elmo Adrian Law, and my mother-in-law, Barbara Delman Wolfson, still help sustain me. My greatest thanks – and debt – are due to my wife, Hannah Wolfson, without whom this project would not have been conceived, sustained, and completed through three editions. As before, this book is dedicated to our son and daughter, Alexander Ward and Vera Adrian Law, who remain my source of so much happiness in the present and so much hope for the future.
Chronology
647 BCE
Assyrian Emperor Assurnasirpal II terrorizes the city of Susa
514 BCE
Assassination of Athenian tyrant Hipparchus by Harmodius and Aristogeiton
63 BCE
Catiline conspiracy
44 BCE
Assassination of Julius Caesar by Roman senators
66–70
Jewish–Roman War
73
Fall of Masada
1090s
First Assassin leader, Hassan-i Sabbah, seizes the castle of Alamut
1159
Publication of
Policraticus
by John of Salisbury
1256
Destruction of Alamut and Assassins by Mongols
1407
Assassination of Louis, the French duke of Orléans
1532
Publication of
The Prince
by Niccolò Machiavelli
1605
Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes
1649
Execution of England’s King Charles I
1793–4
Jacobins’ Reign of Terror during the French Revolution
1795
First documented use of the word “terrorist” in English, by Edmund Burke
1811–16
Luddite violence in England
1820s
Carbonari uprisings in Italy, France, and Spain
1828
Publication of
The Conspiracy of Equals
by Filippo Buonarroti
1831
Nat Turner Revolt in Virginia
1849
Publication of “Murder” by Karl Heinzen
1849
Composer Richard Wagner declares desire to commit “artistic terrorism”
1850
Publication of
History of Secret Societies
by Lucien de la Hodde
1857
Carlo Pisacane introduces the term “propaganda of the deed”
1858
Assassination attempt on Napoleon III by Felice Orsini
1859
John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia
1860s
Development of nitroglycerin by Alfred Nobel
1865
Assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth
1867
National organizational meeting of Ku Klux Klan
1869
Nechaev Affair and publication of Sergei Nechaev’s “Catechism of the Revolutionist”
1876–9
Execution of Molly Maguires
1877
End of US Reconstruction
1878
Assassination attempt on Teodor Trepov by Vera Zasulich
1879
Johann Most begins publishing
Die Freiheit
(
Freedom
)
1881
Assassination of Alexander II by the People’s Will
1882
Phoenix Park murders committed by Irish National Invincibles
1885
Leopold II of Belgium establishes private state in Congo
1886
Haymarket Riot
1892–4
Bombings by François Claudius Ravachol, Émile Henry, and Auguste Vaillant
1893
Bombing of Barcelona’s opera house by Santiago Salvador French
1901
Assassination of US President William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz
1902–5
High-profile assassinations by Combat Organization of the Socialist Revolutionaries
1905–7
Russian Revolution of 1905
1907
Publication of
The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad and
The
Man Who Was Thursday
by G. K. Chesterton
1908
Alipore Bomb Conspiracy in India
1914
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip
1915
Formation of second Ku Klux Klan
1916
Easter Uprising in Dublin, Ireland
1918–20
Russian Civil War and Red Terror
1919
Galleanists’ bombing campaign
1920
Wall Street bombing
1920
IRA attacks on British during Black and Tan War
1928
Formation of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
1929
Attack on Indian Legislative Assembly by the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association
1933
Reichstag fire
1934
Assassination of Sergei Kirov
1936–8
Great Terror and Stalinist show trials
1937
League of Nations issues Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism
1938
Irgun market bombings in Palestine
1938
Night of Broken Glass (
Kristallnacht
)
1944
Assassination of Lord Moyne by LEHI agents
1946
Bombing of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel by Irgun
1948
Formation of Israel, First Arab–Israeli War, and Arab
Nakba
1948–60
Malayan Emergency
1953–9
Mau Mau Insurrection
1954–62
Algerian War of Independence
1955–9
Terrorist campaign of National Organization of Cypriot Fighters
1956–7
Battle of Algiers
1960–2
Terror campaign of Secret Army Organization in Algeria and France
1961
Publication of
The Wretched of the Earth
by Frantz Fanon
1963
Bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama
1966
Execution of Sayyid Qutb in Egypt
1967
Six Day War in Middle East
1968
First hijacking by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
1968–72
Urban guerrilla campaign of Tupamaros of Uruguay
1969
British troops return to Northern Ireland
1969
Publication of
Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla
by Carlos Marighella
1969
Bombing of Milan’s Piazza Fontana by Italian neo-fascists
1970
“Skyjack Sunday” staged by PFLP
1970
Initial bombings by the Weather Underground
1972
Provisional IRA detonates twenty-two bombs in Belfast
1972
Munich Olympics massacre by Black September
1973
Assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco, prime minister of Spain, by ETA
1974
Robbery of Hibernia Bank by Symbionese Liberation Army and Patty Hearst
1975
Publication of
The Monkey Wrench Gang
by Edward Abbey
1976
Anti-Castro terrorists bomb Cuban airliner
1977
German Autumn of Red Army Faction trial and terrorism
1978
Kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro by Red Brigades of Italy
1978
Publication of
The Turner Diaries
by William Pierce
1979
Iranian Revolution and start of Tehran hostage crisis
1979
Seizure of Grand Mosque of Mecca by Juhayman al-Utaybi and followers
1979
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and beginning of mujahideen campaign
1980
Bombing of Bologna train station, Italy, by Armed Revolutionary Nuclei
1980–1
Hunger strike by Provisional IRA inmates
1980s
Spain’s “Dirty War” against ETA
1980s
Argentine government and Triple-A “disappear” thousands
1981
Publication of
The Terror Network
by Claire Sterling
1981
Suicide bombing of Iraq’s embassy in Lebanon by al-Dawa
1981
Assassination of Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat by Jama‘at al-Jihad
1983
Bombing of US Marine and French paratrooper barracks in Beirut by Hezbollah / Islamic Jihad
1984
Salmonella attack in Dalles, Oregon, by followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
1984
IRA bombs the Grand Hotel, Brighton, during the Conservative Party’s conference
1985
Seajacking of
Achille Lauro
by PLO
1987
Massive Tamil Tiger car bomb explodes in Colombo, Sri Lanka
1987
First Tamil Tiger suicide attacks
1987
Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, by Provisional IRA
1987
Hamas formed during first Palestinian Intifada
1988
Bombing of Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, by Libyan agents
1988
Yasser Arafat renounces terrorism
1988
Creation of al-Qaeda by Osama bin Laden
1991
Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the prime minister of India, by Tamil Tigers
1992
Baltic Exchange bombing in London by Provisional IRA
1992
Capture of Abimael Guzmán, leader of the Shining Path, by Peruvian police
1992
Ruby Ridge, Idaho, shoot-out between survivalists and US marshals
1992–2000
Terrorist campaign of Armed Islamic Group during Algerian Civil War
1993
FBI siege of Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas
1993
Bombing of World Trade Center by Ramzi Yousef
1993
Hamas carries out first suicide bombing against Israel
1994
Cave of the Patriarchs mosque massacre in the West Bank
1995
Sarin gas attack on Tokyo subway by Aum Shinrikyo cult
1995
Bombing of Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh
1995
Arrest of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber
1996
Osama bin Laden “declares war” against US
1996–8
Bombings of Atlanta Summer Olympics and abortion clinics by Eric Rudolph
1997
Luxor Temple massacre in Egypt
1998
Good Friday Agreement and Omagh bombing by Real IRA in Northern Ireland
1998
Fires set at Vail Ski Resort by Earth Liberation Front cell
1998
Bombings of US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, by al-Qaeda
2001
9/11 attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon by al-Qaeda
2001
Anthrax attacks in US
2002
Chechen terrorists seize Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow
2002
Bombings at resorts in Bali, Indonesia, by the Islamic Group
2003
US and Coalition forces invade Iraq
2003–4
AQAP campaign peaks in Saudi Arabia
2004–5
Bombings of public transportation in Madrid and London by al-Qaeda-inspired jihadists
2006
Bombing of al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, by al-Qaeda in Iraq
2008
Attacks in Mumbai by Lashkar-e-Taiba
2009
Tamil Tigers defeated by Sri Lankan government
2009
Attack on Fort Hood in Texas by Nidal Malik Hasan
2009–10
AQAP’s international attacks against US thwarted
2011
ETA announces permanent ceasefire in Spain
2011
Osama bin Laden killed in US raid
2011
Attacks on Labor Party camp in Norway by Anders Breivik
2013
Attack on Westgate Mall in Nairobi by al-Shabaab
2013
Bombings of Boston Marathon by two Chechen-Americans
2013
Emergence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq
2014
Boko Haram kidnaps 300 girls from a Nigerian school
2015
AQAP-inspired jihadists attack Parisian targets, including the offices of
Charlie Hebdo
2015
Parishioners at Charleston, SC, church massacred by Dylann Roof
2015–16
ISIS attacks targets in Istanbul, Paris, Jakarta, and Brussels
2016–17
ISIS-inspired lone wolf attacks in US, UK, and Spain
2017
Massacre of mosque congregants in Bir al-Abed, Egypt, by ISIS affiliate
2018
White supremacist carries out mass shooting at synagogue in Pittsburgh
2019
White supremacist carries out mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand
2020
Black Lives Matter and Antifa demonstrations and property damage in US
2021
Storming of US Capitol
Abbreviations
AdF
Alternative for Germany
ALF
Animal Liberation Front (US)
ANFO
ammonium nitrate and fuel oil [bomb]
AQAP
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia and Yemen)
AQI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
AQIM
al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (North Africa)
ATF
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (US)
BLM
Black Lives Matter (US)
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency (US)
COIN
counterinsurgency
COINTELPRO
Counterintelligence Program of the FBI (US)
ELF
Earth Liberation Front (US)
EOKA
National Organization of Cypriot Fighters
ETA
Basque Nation and Liberty (Spain)
FARC
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation (US)
FLN
National Liberation Front (Algeria)
GAL
Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups (Spain)
GIA
Armed Islamic Group (Algeria)
HSRA
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (India)
IDF
Israel Defense Forces
IG
The Islamic Group (al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya) (Egypt)
IMRO
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (Balkans)
IRA
Irish Republican Army
ISI
Inter-Services Intelligence (Pakistan)
ISIS/ISIL
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria / Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
ISWAP
Islamic State – West Africa Province
JDL
Jewish Defense League
JI
Jemaah Islamiyah (The Islamic Group) (Southeast Asia)
KKK
Ku Klux Klan (US)
KLFA
Kenya Land and Freedom Army
KPD
Communist Party of Germany
LEHI
Fighters for the Freedom of Israel
LTTE
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Sri Lanka)
MCP
Malayan Communist Party
MNLA
Malayan National Liberation Army
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NRBC
nuclear, radiological, biological, or chemical weapons
NSA
National Security Agency (US)
OAS
Secret Army Organization (Algeria)
PFLP
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
PIJ
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
PLO
Palestine Liberation Organization
RAF
Red Army Faction (West Germany)
RUC
Royal Ulster Constabulary (Northern Ireland)
SA
Storm Division of Nazi Party (Germany)
SDLP
Social Democratic and Labour Party (Northern Ireland)
SDS
Students for a Democratic Society (US)
SLA
Symbionese Liberation Army (US)
SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
SPLC
Southern Poverty Law Center (US)
SRs
Socialist Revolutionary Party (Russia)
UN
United Nations
Unabomber
University Airline Bomber (US)
UUP
Ulster Unionist Party (Northern Ireland)
UVF
Ulster Volunteer Force (Northern Ireland)
Introduction
Terrorism is as old as human civilization … and as new as this morning’s headlines. For some, it seems obvious that individuals and organizations have used terrorism for millennia, while others insist real terrorism has only been around for decades. Both camps are right – up to a point. The weapons, methods, and goals of terrorists are constantly changing and thus always acquiring the veneer of novelty, but core features have remained since the earliest times.
Terror has always been a weapon of both war and politics, but there are only a few clear-cut examples of terrorism before the eighteenth century. These include the dagger-wielding Sicarii of Judea, who hoped to provoke a war with the Romans; and the twelfth-century assassins who killed and terrorized their Muslim rivals. Both predate the advent of the word “terrorism” in revolutionary France. Since the 1790s, terrorism has been used by Italian secret societies hoping to establish a liberal democratic state, Russian revolutionaries eager to introduce socialism, and European anarchists keen to abolish all governments. American workers intimidated industrialists with terrorism, while German fascists used it to open the way to a semi-legal seizure of power. Zionists and Arabs alike have employed it in attempts to win themselves states in Palestine. Cults have hoped to intimidate their enemies and trigger the apocalypse, while environmental extremists have sought to save wilderness. More recently, an American blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City out of disgust for his government. And 19 Arabs so loved death that they piloted planes into American landmarks, killing 3,000 people. All of these actors and events are unique, but every single one belongs to the history of terrorism.
When I started teaching a course on the subject soon after September 11, 2001, I could not find a book to assign to my students that told this story in a clear chronological fashion, provided a sufficient analytical framework, made use of the most recent scholarly work, and was comprehensive but succinct. My goal has been to provide students and readers with that book, a true history of terrorism, not simply a survey of the phenomenon as it exists today.
But what is terrorism? Any discussion of the subject must start with a definition, which means we immediately venture into a minefield. Scores of definitions have been proposed, and the chaos extends beyond academia. Although some progress has been made to achieve more consistency, most American agencies involved in security – the State, Defense, and Treasury Departments, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, among others – have their own definitions of terrorism (thankfully, all must comport theirs with the one contained in the US legal code). Under these circumstances, most people are likely to react along the lines of US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who tried to define pornography by claiming “I know it when I see it.”
The problem is that scholars, policy analysts, and laypeople alike tend to use the word “terrorism” in mutually exclusive ways. On the one hand, we use it normatively, as a moral judgment against violence deemed to be inherently wrong. On the other hand, we imagine we are using it analytically, as an objective descriptor. In other words, scholars and analysts might try to pretend that terrorism is a neutral phenomenon even as their societies’ fundamental understanding of terrorism is rooted in an emotional reaction and moral revulsion. We thus end up with a definition that may satisfy our rational search for objectivity but fails to match how the term is used in practice. For instance, what does it do to our definitional clarity when we note that the Israelis and Palestinians call each other terrorists, as did Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush? The term packs more wallop as an epithet than it does as an analytical term. What to do, short of descending into the cheeky relativism of that well-worn cliché that one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter?
Perhaps we should begin with a definition consisting of just one criterion. For example, suppose we define the term as violence against civilians. But for nearly all such deceptively simple definitions, at least two instances exist that make its application problematic: one that excludes something we want to call terrorism (in our example, there was Hezbollah’s 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut), and one that demands we label something terrorism that we do not want to (the Allied bombing of German cities in the Second World War). If we string together enough criteria to produce a compound definition, it robs the word of many of the ways we actually use it. Such jury-rigged definitions also tend to be narrowly applicable to certain times, places, and circumstances, restricting us, for example, to imagining terrorism as a sub-state force, even though nation-states have often employed terrorist methods.
Another complicating factor is that people, misled by the word’s suffix, tend to mistake the core nature of terrorism. Terrorism is not an ideology and does not exist as a specific worldview, a system of thought, or a political program. In this regard, it is not comparable to liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, socialism, or any of the other myriad “isms” that populate our history books and guide our behavior in the modern world, despite terrorism’s existence as one of the defining phenomena of the modern era. Looked at another way, terrorists are always something else, be they communists, nationalists, or fascists (among many possibilities). Terrorism is a strategy that makes use of certain tactics, a means to an end – although often one that eventually overshadows the putative goals toward which its users ostensibly strive.
I begin with two core assertions well founded in the broad literature on the topic. The first is that individuals or groups choose to commit terrorist acts as part of a process of rational and conscious decision-making within particular political and cultural contexts. Thus, terrorism is not, as it is often colloquially described, a kind of madness – although individual terrorists have certainly been known to exhibit the signs of various forms of mental illness. My second basic assertion is that terrorism is a communicative act intended to influence the behavior of one or more audiences. I address this point in more detail below.
Rather than trying to pigeonhole this elusive phenomenon with an artificially precise definition, I will explore terrorism in three different ways, illuminating it from three different angles: as a set of tactics; as an act of symbolic and provocative violence; and as a cultural construct.
The first approach to terrorism describes, over the course of the book, the emergence and development of what we could call the terrorist toolbox: a list of behaviors, tactics, and methods typically associated with terrorism. I will also explore elements of common definitions, such as violence against civilians, various methods of organization, the dependence on conspiratorial existence, the use of fear, interaction with the media, and so on. Such an approach is helpful in identifying tactics and the influence of technological change, though it may fail to distinguish terrorism from other forms of violence, such as crime, war, or guerrilla activity.
The second approach I take is to explore terrorism as violent theatre that fundamentally relies on symbolism and provocation. In short, seen from this angle, terrorism is a strategy used to sway the behavior of the many by targeting the few. Terrorists choose targets not for their military value, but for their ability to create an extreme reaction – often, but not only, fear – and their utility in prodding others to act. Many terrorists have hoped their feats would lure their enemy into self-destructive behavior. For instance, the Marxist Tupamaros of Uruguay tried to use terrorism in the late 1960s and early 1970s to provoke the state into revealing itself as the fascist entity they believed it was. Other groups use terrorism to inspire the masses to rise up in revolution, as European and Russian anarchists and populists did in the late nineteenth century. Others have hoped to attract international attention through spectacular acts of violence – such was the Palestine Liberation Organization’s strategy in the late 1960s and much of the 1970s. A more limited goal has often been to keep the spirit of opposition alive and convince the enemy it is not worth the lives, the resources, or the time to stay engaged. This was the plan behind Irgun’s terrorism in British Palestine in the 1940s.
This approach highlights the role of ideology and motive and distinguishes terrorism from other forms of violence. And, since it has essentially just one criterion – the presence of symbolic, provocative violence – it is flexible and can be applied over decades and even centuries, revealing continuities in the practice. This approach does rely on the assumption, as noted above, that terrorism is a rational, consciously chosen strategy with, broadly speaking, political aims. Organizations whose members have regarded violence as a sacramental act, such as the group responsible for the Tokyo subway gas attack in 1995, often appear to act out of wholly religious aims, but these are always articulated within a particular historical and cultural context, however bizarre it might appear to outsiders. Moreover, this approach can reveal the different roles of leaders and followers in terrorist groups. For instance, al-Qaeda’s foot soldiers see their acts as sacramental but their leaders are far more calculating.
The third approach is the most abstract, exploring how the term “terrorism” itself has evolved over the centuries. In this sense, the word has no meaning except that which has been invested into it. Such an approach acknowledges that “terrorism” is a word used to deem another’s goals or methods illegitimate within a particular matrix of culture, history, or perception. One political scientist used such an approach to observe, “An action of violence is labeled ‘terrorist’ when its psychological effects are out of proportion to its purely physical result.”1 Sometimes the process is unconscious and merely the result of changing norms about legitimate violence. More often, the “terrorist” label is a conscious effort by governments, dominant populations, or influential organizations to frame debates, find scapegoats, and vilify enemies.
All three of these approaches – terrorism as a tactic, terrorism as a strategy, and terrorism as a social or linguistic construct – yield results only when an instance of terrorism is presented in context. Therefore, the fundamental goal of this book is to provide the reader with a comprehensive history of terrorism in which the major actors and organizations are presented alongside the salient details of the political, social, cultural, religious, and economic environments that gave their acts meaning. In other words, this book interweaves the history of terrorism and the history of the societies that spawned it.
Terrorism as I have described it above naturally hinges on the ability of violent actors to ensure that news of their acts and intentions reaches their target audiences, sometimes through direct impact, but most probably and more effectively through rumors, government responses, newspapers, television, entertainment sources, and countless other forms of information dissemination. In this sense, the media, broadly imagined, provides the oxygen without which terrorists cannot survive. The noted television journalist Ted Koppel famously remarked that “without television, terrorism becomes rather like the philosopher’s hypothetical tree falling in the forest: no one hears it fall and therefore it has no reason for being.”2 Thus, woven into my book’s narrative is the critically important story of the relationship between terrorism and the media.
It is also worth considering the development of the field of “terrorism studies” itself, in large part because it can illuminate some of the quandaries that we now face in making sense of terrorism. The first issue is that, as Lisa Stampnitzky has argued in her groundbreaking study of the emergence of the discipline, the biases that become visible when we examine terrorism as a linguistic or social construct have become hardwired into much of the field itself.3 Traditionally trained scholars in the West have formed the field’s core since the 1970s but have usually not served as its most prominent faces. In the United States, that role has typically gone to pundits in think tanks or government service, who have tended to reflect the state’s attitudes and thus stigmatized what used to be called simply “insurgency.” In other words, the field of terrorism studies has been just as likely to shape the broader society’s view of terrorism as an irrational strategy pursued solely by sub-state agents as it has to bring a much needed objectivity and comparative perspective to the phenomenon. Such a development helps to explain the strained distinctions sometimes drawn between terrorism and wartime collateral damage or “legitimate” guerrilla movements. It also helps to explain the ways in which “terrorism” and various forms of political violence find themselves at the center of broader contests of legitimacy between governments or rival organizations.
Another issue associated with the emergence of terrorism studies is the disciplinary backgrounds of its academic practitioners. I accept without proof or caveat the assertion that no scholarly discipline has a monopoly on the truth. Yet different disciplines have different strengths and weaknesses, and the domination of any field of interest by any one discipline produces certain distorting effects. The study of terrorism is an excellent case in point. First of all, within academia, terrorism studies has been dominated by social scientists. The end of the Cold War and the events of 9/11 created the impression that terrorism had only recently become a pressing global challenge (an understanding that obviously ignored the historical origins of terrorism); and the study of contemporary issues, particularly those that demand data-driven, resource-intensive government responses, tends to become the purview of social scientists. Secondly, historians’ natural predisposition against generalizing and theorizing has limited their ability or desire to tackle the broad sweep of the history of terrorism. Furthermore, most historians require lots of documents, often held in distant archives and written in foreign languages; thus, they tend to focus on a particular time and place instead of tackling global, epochspanning themes such as terrorism, which stretches from ancient Judea to medieval Europe to modern Latin America. In turn, the limited forays by historians into the subject reinforce the general belief that terrorism can be narrowly construed as a contemporary problem requiring only practical solutions. Historians have tended to concede the point, even though the effort to use violence to indirectly sway behavior is as old as humanity itself.
The constant push for governmental plans that will “solve” terrorism has exacerbated the state-driven biases that dictate that the symbolic violence of sub-state actors is inherently immoral, irrational, and illegitimate, while that of states is functionally different. This push has also reinforced the turn to social science since policy initiatives and the social sciences share a common starting point: clear definitions that enable the collection of quantifiable data sets but that also typically assume that only small groups and not states could employ terrorism. To be sure, criteria-driven definitions of terrorism have produced extraordinary insights into the nature of the phenomenon. Examples of this can be found in every issue of the journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, as well as more general publications such as the American Political Science Review. One of the best books in this vein is Walter Enders and Todd Sandler, The Political Economy of Terrorism. Unfortunately, the definitions that suit today’s political purposes also shape the long-term debates, which both reinforces assumptions about terrorism and marginalizes the contributions of those in history and the humanities who may ask philosophical questions about the very construction of our perception of terrorism.
Ironically, it has actually been the social sciences that have recently produced the most challenging and disruptive voices in terrorism studies. Shortly after 9/11, a number of scholars led by Richard Jackson began to use critical theory to interrogate academic, governmental, and popular constructions of the terrorist “other.” They quickly coalesced around the journal Critical Terrorism Studies, which has provided the group and the approach with a name. While the school still qualifies as something of an outsider voice in terms of policy and popular understandings of terrorism, much of academia has embraced critical terrorism studies’ core claims.
My approach follows a middle course between more traditional scholars of terrorism studies – who are driven by criteria and believe that we can identify some forms of violence objectively as terrorism – and the practitioners of critical terrorism studies – who understand the labeling of “terrorism” as an act that nearly always serves a powerful agent’s agenda. My approach is to find the patterns in the tactics and strategies that have come to be identified as terrorism; rather than starting with definitions of terrorism designed to produce quantifiable data, I trace the emergence, evolution, and manipulation of the definitions themselves.
Wherever possible, I take my cues from those who have used terrorism and gone to the trouble to describe their methods and motives. Until government actors and the broader public grew accustomed to wielding “terrorist” as an epithet starting in the 1960s and 1970s, many militants who have used terrorism have readily – even proudly – admitted to doing so. After all, those who use terrorism embrace the publicity associated with both their violence and their cause – and they have always understood that the former was a way to achieve the latter. This was the case with French revolutionaries of the 1790s, Russian revolutionaries and European anarchists of the late nineteenth century, and many anti-colonial insurgents through the mid twentieth century. I have paid particular attention to those explanations.
Of course, it is impossible to write an all-inclusive history of terrorism that addresses every group, movement, and event relevant to the subject. So what guided my selection of material to include in this text? Why is this terrorist group worthy of inclusion, but not that one? The most important point to recognize is that my understanding of terrorism, as described above, does not revolve around traditional definitions or extensively demarcated criteria. I have not let a checklist of definitional elements build my pool of actors and events and thus my narrative. Rather – and remember the three approaches I described earlier – I have included individuals and groups that have contributed in particularly important ways to the forms of conspiratorial organization, the specific justifications, the innovative uses of technology, or the pioneering of new tactics in the history of terrorism. For instance, although the People’s Will of Russia killed only a few people in the 1870s and 1880s, the group warrants lengthy treatment for its pioneering use of underground cells, its deliberate attempt to use terror to cultivate a heroic public persona, and its influence on subsequent generations of terrorists in Russia and, indeed, around the world.
I have also included the most illustrative historical examples of terrorism as a specific form of provocative and symbolic violence, as well as examples that demonstrate how terrorism frequently overlaps with other types of violence, such as war, insurgency, guerrilla activity, crime, and psychopathic behavior. For example, long before the invention of the word “terrorism,” the Sicarii of ancient Judea used violence for its impact on distant audiences, not its military utility against its targets. And although the 1960s Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella never carried out a significant terrorist attack himself, he devised a widely emulated strategy of using provocative violence to build a revolutionary movement.
In addition, since terrorism has long been used as an epithet to delegitimize groups, ideologies, motives, and forms of violence deemed deviant or dangerous by the dominant powers, I have included a generous selection of actors denounced as terrorists who would not otherwise meet the definition thereof. Most historians, for instance, dismissed until recently the notion that a group or organization plotted the violence that erupted at the Haymarket in Chicago in 1886; nonetheless, the authorities’ allegations about shadowy conspiracies inaugurated an obsession with leftist terrorism in the United States that lasted for two generations.
Because I am not wedded to definitions of terrorism that hinge on a particular terrorist profile, I am free to investigate the use of so-called state terror where it has influenced the history of terrorism. The French Jacobins of the 1790s, for example, used terror against civilians only after they seized state power – but in so doing laid the foundation for revolutionary terrorism and inspired the first use of the word “terrorist.” Furthermore, Soviet and Nazi violence appears in this context to be a near mirror image (except in scale) of the sort of sub-state terrorism that had stalked Europe for decades: revolutionaries and state actors alike killed to achieve aims beyond just destroying their enemies. I have chosen not to provide lengthy accounts of later purveyors of state terror, such as the far-right regimes of Argentina, Spain, and South Africa, because those governments typically followed earlier patterns.
This understanding of terrorism as, variously, a set of tools, a commitment to symbolic violence, and a contest for legitimacy also demands that counterterrorism be treated as a critical component of its history. First, counterterror has a dual meaning, since states engaging in it not only try to destroy terrorists, but also often terrorize the populations that they believe harbor terrorists. Second, poorly executed counterterrorism enables terrorism, since terrorists can often capitalize on a population’s anger, fear, or humiliation; at the same time, successful counterterrorism demands a clear understanding of the factors that make terrorism possible. Thus, the two phenomena are always intertwined. This book does not purport to be a comprehensive history of counterterrorism. Yet in several instances I have included descriptions and analyses of counterterror efforts where the links between terrorism and counterterrorism are very clear, and where the consequences of poorly executed counterterror are especially negative. The example of the French in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s is particularly illuminating on both counts.
A word is in order concerning the relationship between terrorism and insurgency. The two terms are all too often used interchangeably, sometimes as a result of the well-intentioned effort to avoid overuse of the inflammatory word “terrorist.” But “insurgent” (like “guerrilla”) is not a synonym for “terrorist.” In short, an insurgency is a violent rebellion against a widely recognized state authority waged by a group that is, conversely, not widely recognized as a legitimate belligerent. Those engaged in insurgencies might make use of a wide range of tactics and strategies, including terrorism as well as guerrilla and conventional fighting. In other words, while many terrorists are insurgents, not all insurgents are terrorists. The distinction is partially one of tactics, scale, and targets, but there can also be a difference in intent. Insurgents generally seek to topple governments and claim or establish states, while many terrorists have either transnational aims or simply seek to change policies. As for guerrillas, they are usually uniformed, and they likewise usually target the uniformed security forces of their enemy (although these tendencies have been muddled in the last half-century by the “urban guerrilla” phenomenon).
My intent has been to produce a highly readable and useful narrative history of terrorism that is sensitive to the twin concerns of historians: the march of time and differences of place. The temporal and geographic sweep of this subject, however, demands that the historian find a way to address simultaneous narrative threads. My solution has been to stick generally to a chronological treatment of terrorism, deviating from that when necessary to trace consecutively developments occurring simultaneously in multiple places. I frequently juggle two or more storylines within a chapter, such as in the middle section of chapter 1, which addresses developments in Europe and the Islamic world during the Middle Ages. I have resorted twice to a more drastic solution when simultaneous developments were particularly detail-rich and distinct. From the 1860s to the 1910s terrorism was used by Russian revolutionaries, European anarchists, American racists, and Irish ethno-nationalist separatists. Likewise, during the second half of the twentieth century, terrorism was a byproduct of decolonization and ethno-nationalist struggles, leftist millenarianism, the rise of Islamism/jihadism, radical environmentalism, and the American Patriot movement. For each of these two time periods, I pursue individual narrative threads one at a time. I encourage the reader to turn to the chronology of important dates for these chapters in particular.
Because I have chosen to prioritize the overall chronology of the history of terrorism, the history of several groups, movements, and regions is separated across two or more chapters. I have adopted this method of organization in the case of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) because nearly 50 years separated the activity of the IRA of Michael Collins and the Black and Tan War from that of the Provisional IRA of the 1970s and beyond. In the case of the Middle East, the story of Irgun and the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (known by its acronym in Hebrew, LEHI) is presented alongside other mid-century opponents of the British Empire, while the activities of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are laid out as a separate but intertwined struggle that touches the present. The story of jihadism is presented in yet another chapter, because its proponents provide such a stark alternative to the PLO’s secular ethno-nationalism. The white supremacist beliefs of the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan obviously have much in common with recent American militia activity, but they are discussed in separate chapters because they are divided by a century of history that includes the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the urban guerrilla movement – two historical developments that have as much to do with the last two decades of militia violence as they do with earlier American racism.
On a final organizational note, some recent terrorist groups (Jaish-e-Muhammad, al-Shabaab, the Kurdistan Workers Party, the Animal Liberation Front, etc.) get relatively short shrift if judged solely in terms of their current importance. Some readers might ask why Russian revolutionaries of the 1870s and Algerian ethno-nationalist separatists of the 1950s are accorded more space than terrorists active today. The reasons are many: these groups were the pioneers that developed the tactics and strategies and made terrorism the tool it is today; they are rarely covered in sufficient detail in texts on modern terrorism; and many complementary works are available on contemporary terrorism. In short, I have allocated space and attention to individuals, groups, and movements based on their overall historical significance rather than body counts or their current scale of activity.
The perceptive reader will note that I abstain throughout the text from presenting this work as a set of “historical lessons” about terrorism. The past teaches us nothing on its own; rather, it is our interpretations of history that are significant and guide us in our future action. We extract blueprints for action at our peril, for the same circumstances never occur twice. The human record – both at the national and personal levels – is strewn with the wreckage of “lessons” and their blueprints misapplied. Indeed, one of the major storylines of this book is the repeated effort by various authorities to apply blueprints in the effort to combat and curtail terrorism. The results are often disastrous. As a historian, what motivates me is the search for richer, more incisive questions – questions that can illuminate the present through an informed exploration of the past. My hope is that the pages that follow will prompt readers to ask those questions.
Note on the second edition
It is a commentary on our modern world that a second edition of this book was so quickly warranted. After all, one might ask, how much has changed in the history of terrorism in only seven years? A lot, it turns out.
The changes and additions made to the first edition fall into four categories. The first is the most obvious: much has happened since the publication of Terrorism: A History in 2009. The “wars against terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan escalated and then officially drew to a close, only to explode into startling and new bloody conflicts, particularly with the rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Al-Qaeda’s central operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has clearly waned, with most operations now carried out by local affiliates – “franchises” – across Africa, the
