Terrorism in the Age of Revolutions

Abstract

The Reformation was the forerunner to what is often called the Age of Revolutions that lasted from the mid-seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. The Reformation highlighted communal identities in the form of the religious persecution that went hand in hand with the religious diversity that appeared in this period. Kings and princes often saw minority religious groups as potentially disloyal to the crown. The resulting religious persecutions, however, usually qualify as repression rather than state terrorism. Individuals knew they would be arrested if they were caught practicing an unacceptable religion. There were attacks by indigenous Muslims in South and Southeast Asia against the European colonizers. There are no examples of terrorism in the Puritan Revolution and the Glorious Revolution in England, but there were terrorist incidents connected with the outbreak of the American Revolution, the uprising in Haiti, a series of rebellions in the Andes in Spanish America, and, of course, the French Revolution—including the period of the Reign of Terror.