Terror's Triumph

Reviews / Votes

Meier's provocative re-interpretation locates terrorism's origins in colonial violence and traces its evolution within the framework of the British Empire. He convincingly argues that British officials and media categorized violent resistance to imperial repression as terrorism, an illegitimate form of violence which justified increasingly brutal counter-measures. By focusing on historical context, particularly the role of imperial rule in perpetuating violence, Meier provides a welcome alternative to standard studies of terrorism emphasizing tactics, technology and ideology. Terror's Triumph's combination of meticulous scholarship, sharp analysis and straightforward prose makes it a particularly valuable contribution to both the history of terrorism and the history of Empire. -- Padraic Kennedy, York College of Pennsylvania Terror's Triumph offers a lively, trenchant, impressively wide-ranging genealogy of terrorism as a concept and counterterrorism as a technique of rule in the British Empire. It is especially astute in its analysis of how the popular press constructed the image of the terrorist as someone who was fundamentally un-British, and in its discussion of how British actions often fostered or provoked the very violence they sought to quell. While Meier is consistently critical of British actions and policies throughout the empire, this is no black-and-white morality tale. Rather, he helps illuminate the muddled and often conflicting motives of the men who ran the empire and the nationalists who sought to overturn it. The result is a persuasive and highly readable contribution to debates about the legacies of the British Empire, and one that deserves a wide audience. -- Mark Doyle, Middle Tennessee State University