An accessible, authoritative history of terrorism, offering systematic analyses of key themes, problems and case studies from terrorism's long past.

The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939 investigates the political and social imaginaries of "terrorism" in the early twentieth century. Chris Millington traces the development of how the French conceived of terrorism, from the late nineteenth-century notion that terrorism was the deed of the mad anarchist bomber, to the fraught political clashes of the 1930s when terrorism came to be understood as a political act perpetrated against French interests by organized international movements. Through a close analysis of a series of terrorist incidents and representations thereof in public discourse and the press, the book argues that contemporary ideas of terrorism in France as "unFrench"—that is, contrary to the ideas and values, however defined, that make up "Frenchness"—emerged in the interwar years and subsequently took root long before the terrorist campaigns of Algerian nationalists during the 1950s and 1960s. Millington conceptualizes "terrorism" not only as the act itself, but also as a political and cultural construction of violence composed from a variety of discourses and deployed in particular circumstances by commentators, witnesses, and perpetrators. In doing so, he argues that the political and cultural battles inherent to perceptions of terrorism lay bare numerous concerns, not least anxieties over immigration, antiparliamentarianism, representations of gender, and the future of European peace.

"Terrorists' strength derives from the difficulty in defining the term terrorism itself ... Whether terrorism represents a resurgent barbarism to be combatted by all civilization or a new and legitimate mode of armed conflict remains a topic of debate. The debate is reflected in this volume, the collective product of 43 authors ... The anthology ... presents a kaleidoscope of philosophies, prejudices, and purposes ... [and is] an ... illustration of how the world addresses the topic of terrorism and incidentally why terrorism persists"--Page xix-xx.

Transnational terrorism organized and inspired by Al Qaeda is a scourge of the early 21st century. It is essential that the international community should work together to eliminate it. The framework with which the U.S. government under President George W. Bush chose to confront it in the aftermath of the atrocities in New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, was the Global War on Terror, or GWOT. This was an unfortunate choice as it directed the United States and other leading democratic countries to try to wage war against terrorism, a method, not an opponent. This put the United States and its allies on a mission that could not be accomplished, because method cannot be defeated in a war in the sense that an identifiable enemy can.

This newly revised and updated Dictionary contains a wealth of information regarding major terrorist groups, significant terrorist events and the weapons behind the terror. Beginning with acts of terrorism from the first century Judean Zealots and Sicarii to latter-day leftist, rightist and fundamentalist militants, this book offers insight into how and why such groups originated.