ABSTRACT
The strengths and weaknesses of British research and writing on terrorism reflect, to an almost uncanny extent, the basic paradox of the recent British experience of political violence. For successive British governments in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, serious internal violence was essentially a colonial problem, an inescapable element of the White Man's Burden which only reached British popular awareness as a series of battle honors won by the small all-volunteer British Army in defense of the Empire. Hence, from the British perspective, terrorism, violent insurrection, and guerrilla warfare were phenomena experienced by unfortunate and unruly foreigners. A much larger group, including leading politicians of British three main political parties, is prepared to accept that everyone must act as good neighbors within the North Atlantic alliance and the European Community by helping to foster cooperation in combatting terrorism, at least within the frontiers of the Alliance.
