Historical Dictionary of Terrorism (3rd edition)
- Reviewer(s):
Terry O'Brien (Deputy Librarian, Waterford Institute of Technology Libraries, Waterford, Ireland)
- Citation:
- Terry O'Brien, (2010) "Historical Dictionary of Terrorism (3rd edition)",
Reference Reviews , Vol. 24 Iss: 8, pp.19 - 21 - DOI
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09504121011091006
- Downloads:
- The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 98 times since 2010
- Keywords:
- Dictionaries, History, Terrorism
- Review Number:
- 2010/361
- Review Subject:
- Historical Dictionary of Terrorism (3rd edition) Sean K. Anderson
, with Stephen Sloan - Publisher Name:
- Scarecrow Press
- Place of Publication:
- Lanham, MD and Plymouth
- Publication Year:
- 2009
- ISBN:
- 978 0 8108 5764 3
- Price:
£70/$115 - Type:
Review - Review DOI:
- 10.1108/09504121011091006
- Emerald Journal:
Reference Reviews - Volume:
- 24
- Number:
- 8
- Year:
- 2010
- pp.
- 19 - 21
- ISSN:
0950-4125 - Publisher:
- Emerald Group Publishing Limited
- 1.
Who are they – what sort of group or actor is behind the action (State, Revolutionary or Entrepreneurial)?
- 2.
What do they want – i.e. what are the long‐term political goals (Regime Maintenance, Regime Change, Sub systematic [policy] Change)?
Article
My family and I were fortunate enough to recently visit the USA on a holiday. On arrival at our east coast airport, we made our way through the various security checkpoints. My nine‐year‐old daughter, who was already barefoot, jewelry‐less, belt‐less and had disposed of her bottled water, set off the alarm going through the security gates. After seeking my acquiescence, a female security guard, as her job required, “patted down” my daughter. We took this in good spirits, in holiday mode we understood that these checks were for our own good and were no more than a minor inconvenience and less than mildly irksome. The offending item was seemingly a button on her shorts. What this experience shows, however, is the extent to which terrorism or the perceived threat of terrorism has entered our daily lives. It is now against the law to carry more than 30 ml of shower gel on your hand luggage on an international flight, nose hair clippers may well be seized and those holes in your favourite socks may result in a more public embarrassment than you had anticipated. The football authorities at the World Cup in South Africa were more concerned about the terrorist threat than dodgy refereeing decisions.
Terrorism has gone “mainstream” since 9/11. Those living in Northern Ireland from the 1970s through to the turn of the century, those still living in the midst of regular incidents in the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, Chechnya and many other hot‐spots around the world may argue that they have lived with the reality of terrorism for years. Few would disagree that the very public arrival of terrorism (although nor the first) on North American shores has put terrorism and counter‐terrorism centre stage and resulted in not only huge media coverage, but has elevated terrorism to a political status throughout the world hitherto unheard of since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (and his oft forgotten wife Sophie) by Gavrilo Princip of the Black Hand in Sarajevo in 1914, precipitating First World War.
Number 38 in the prestigious Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution, and Civil Unrest series, this is the third edition of the dictionary first published in 1995 and subsequently in 2002 by Sean K. Anderson and Stephen Sloan. Authors, series editor Woronoff points out, with “excellent credentials” and wide ranging expertise in the fields of terrorism, counterterrorism, policy and political science. The third edition is a really fine resource, with a vast array of information covering terrorist movements, incidents, plots, legislation, groups both major and minor, theory, concepts, significant figures, technology, and cyber and eco terrorism. The Dictionary which forms the main part of the publication runs for over 700 pages with entries ranging from a paragraph on the June 2 Movement to in‐depth accounts on Hamas, the IRA and the Sikh Movement to name a few. The entries are insightful and clearly written for those new to the subject matter or those who some prior knowledge. The focus in keeping with terrorism is international, and the geographic span of information and detail is highly impressive. The authors navigate a potentially emotive and raw subject matter with balance and rationale, steering clear of simplistic clichés such as freedom fighters versus terrorists, whilst acknowledging how in the case of WMD the low probability of use by terrorists does not prevent “false claims of their use to create real public panic”. The publication is as current as any such book can claim to be.
The bibliography, stretching to over 80 pages, has also been expanded from the previous edition and is impressive in its scope. New sections on the internet and cyber‐terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and US government documents have been added to general reference works, theory, terrorism by region, international, law and enforcement issues, mass media, state terrorism, sociological studies and selected internet resources.
As the language of terrorism is replete with acronyms, the list of abbreviations is particularly functional, from the rather obvious SUV – sports utility vehicle to the less well known such as the MPLA – Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Cross‐references are in bold. Although the dictionary is historical and the chronology dates back to the Zealots in CE66‐70, and notes the publication of Nechayev's influential Catechism of the Revolutionist in 1869, the scope is very much contemporary and modern with a firm focus on the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. The chronology outlines many of the well‐known and significant terrorist incidents of the past 100 or so years, such as the first recorded hijacking of an airplane in Peru in 1931, the execution of Che Guevara in 1967, to more recent incidents many of which remain fresh in the public consciousness such as the Munich Olympics in 1972, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini on the publication of the Satanic Verses in 1989, the Omagh Real IRA bombings in 1998, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Wall Street reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, the attacks on Madrid trains in 2004, to the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008, in which 173 people were killed.
The introductory essay is also updated and gives a very worthwhile standalone analysis and contextualization of the academic study of terrorism. The authors write of the difficulty in staying detached from human and natural responses to terrorism and the subjectivity of terrorism. There is agreement that terrorism is political in nature or at least has “political content” and has common elements such as violence (or the threat of) and is a form of effective communication. The potential impact of technology on non‐territorial terrorism, e.g. not confined to any one geographical area is outlined and the point is made that terrorism is not a modern phenomenon, but has roots in the “ancient tradition”. Other area's touched on include contemporary terrorism, “terror from below” as manifested in Latin America, Germany and Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, state sponsored terrorism in the Middle East, fundamentalism, threats of mass destruction, changing motivations, cyber‐terrorism and the use of the internet and YouTube as communication and propaganda tools, the emergence of “entrepreneurial terrorists” such as NGO's, narco‐terrorists and private security firms used by national governments. Future trends such as those involving terrorism and WMD, chemical, nuclear and biological weapons are an “ominous possibility”. Finally the essay also outlines the classification system used throughout the dictionary broadly based on two essential questions:
