26 - The Origins of Modern Terrorism

Summary

This chapter surveys the history of terrorism from the eighteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Terrorism is defined here as a strategy that uses symbolic violence that seeks to change the behavior of the many by targeting the few. After a brief historiography of the phenomenon, the chapter discusses the origins of modern terrorism in the nineteenth-century paradox of growing individualism and state power; thus, while terrorism can be used in pursuit of any ideology, it is closely associated with the emergence of modern democracy. Particular attention is paid to the role of violence in the French Revolution, early efforts to theorize and organize conspiratorial violence, and three late nineteenth-century terrorist movements: revolutionary terrorism in the Russian Empire, white supremacist terrorism in the United States, and anarchist terrorism in Europe and the United States. The essay uses primary and secondary sources and includes a lengthy annotated bibliography.