ABSTRACT
Readers may be interested in the early stages in the development of the academic study of terrorism. A valuable pioneering essay by J.B.S. Hardman, offering a social scientific analysis of the subject, appeared in the 1934 edition of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. 1 Important contributions were made by two scholars working on different aspects of terror in Eastern Europe: Feliks Gross on political violence and terror in 19th and 20th century Russia and Eastern Europe, 2 and J.S. Roucek’s essay ‘Sociological Elements of a Theory of Terror and Violence’, published in 1962. 3 Two years later came two significant efforts at developing conceptual and taxonomic tools for the further exploration of the field: T.P. Thornton’s seminal essay on ‘Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation’, 4 and Eugene V. Walter’s classic work on regimes of terror, Terror and Resistance: A Study of Political Violence with Case Studies of some African Communities. 5
