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1 - History and the Study of Terrorism

from Part I - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2021

By
Richard English
Edited by
Richard English
Richard English
Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast
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Summary

Terrorism and responses to terrorism have repeatedly had a profound influence in shaping human experience. The mutually shaping intimacy of non-state and state violence, together with the often agonising legacies emerging from that terrorising relationship, continue to determine the contours of many people’s experience (in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Spain, the UK, Colombia and across so much of the polarised world). Given this importance within the human past, what can we say about history and the study of terrorism? In introducing the present volume, this chapter asks five central questions. First, what has been the relative contribution of historians to the existing study of terrorism? Second, what are the distinctive insights potentially brought by historians to our understanding of the subject? Third, what are the particular challenges for historians as they engage with the study of terrorism? Fourth, what are the opportunities for historians in studying this phenomenon? Fifth, given these aspects of the relationship between history and terrorism (the contribution to date, the distinctive insights, the challenges, the opportunities), what will this book decisively and originally offer?

Keywords

Terrorismcounterterrorismhistoryhistoriographyhistorians
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Terrorism , pp. 3 - 28
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Chenoweth, E., English, R., Gofas, A. and Kalyvas, S. N. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019)Google Scholar
English, R., Does Terrorism Work? A History (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar
Evans, R. J., Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History (London, Little, Brown, 2014)Google Scholar
Guldi, J. and Armitage, D., The History Manifesto (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobsbawm, E., On History (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997)Google Scholar

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