ABSTRACT
Terrorism has always engendered violent emotions and greatly divergent opinions and images of it. The study of terrorism is not made any easier by the fact that most terrorists have been neither popular heroes in the mold of Wilhelm Tell nor plain horse thieves but both these as well as many other things. The terms "terrorism" and "terrorist" are of relatively recent date; the meaning of terrorism was given in the 1798 supplement of the Dictionnaire of the Academie Francaise as systeme, regime de la terreur. Armenian terrorism against Turkish oppression began in the 1890s but was shortlived and ended in disaster because the Armenians faced an enemy less patient and good-natured than did the Irish. Among other nationalist terrorist groups that appeared before the First World War were the Polish socialists and some Indian groups, particularly in Bengal. Urban terrorism was regarded at best as a supplementary form of warfare, at worst as a dangerous aberration.
