Title: A Brief History of Terrorism
Headings: A Brief History of Terrorism
A Brief History of Terrorism
Religious Roots [4]
Nationalists and Anarchists
Terrorism and the State
Terrorism Since World War II
Contemporary Terrorism
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Content: The NV’s actions inspired radicals elsewhere. Anarchist terrorist groups were particularly enamored of the example set by the Russian Populists (although not, it must be noted, their keenness to avoid casualties among bystanders). Nationalist groups such as those in Ireland and the Balkans adopted terrorism as a means towards their desired ends. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, terrorists attacks were carried out as far a field as India, Japan, and the Ottoman empire, with two U.S. presidents and a succession of other world leaders victims of assassination by various anarchists and other malcontents ‑ often affiliated to groups but operating without their explicit knowledge or support. [ 10]
As with Europe, terrorism arrived on America’s shores before the 20th century. Not only were Anarchists active in America throughout the 1880s, but the country’s recent Civil War had seen acts deserving of the name committed on both sides as well as the formation of the Ku Klux Klan to fight the Reconstruction effort which followed. [ 11]
Terrorism and the State
Long before the outbreak of Word War I in Europe in 1914, what would later be termed state-sponsored terrorism had already started to manifest itself. For instance, many officials in the Serbian government and military were involved (albeit unofficially) in supporting, training and arming the various Balkan groups which were active prior to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo – an act carried out by an activist from one such group, the ‘Young Bosnians’ and credited with setting in progress the chain of events which led to the war itself. [ 12] Similarly, the IMRO (Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) survived largely “because [as Walter Laqueur reminds us] it became for all intents and purposes a tool of the Bulgarian government, and was used mainly against Yugoslavia and well as against domestic enemies.” As such examples illustrate, state-sponsored terrorism is not a new phenomenon.