ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the historical context for the subsequent analysis of state terrorism as a tool in the service of the elite interests of liberal democracies from the North. To make sense of state terrorism as used or sponsored by those states, we must first understand their foreign policy objectives, and identify the tools used to achieve those objectives. From the European colonial period onwards, the foreign policy objectives of powerful, and now liberal democratic, states from the North have been shaped by continuities. The European colonial powers were driven by the aim of acquiring territory in order to increase their global presence and dominance and to secure access to resources in the interests of the economic elite. Their efforts to seize territory and assets were accompanied by considerable violence, and the terrorising of indigenous populations, often to induce slave labour. While contemporary Northern liberal democracies do not seek to expand their territory, they still wish to maintain their positions of relative strength in political, economic, military and ideological terms. The primary way of achieving this is to increase and sustain their access to resources and markets in the South, which is achieved through the spread of global capitalism. This is a process that is led by the US, through various mechanisms, especially the international financial institutions (IFIs).
