Fellow in Focus – Professor Julian Bourg

Recorded November 4, 2019. Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research
fellow Professor Julian Bourg joins us from Boston College in
association with Trinity's School of Histories & Humanities.
The focus of his research visit is a project on the conceptual
history of terrorism since the eighteenth century. Dr. Daniel
Geary, Mark Pigott Associate Professor in American History, will
sit down with Professor Bourg to discusses his work on terrorism in
this 'in conversation' event. About Professor Julian Bourg's
Research How and why did we come to think about terrorism the way
we do? When and where did this concept originate and develop? My
interest is in the history of the idea of terrorism since the word
first dramatically appeared during the French Revolution of the
1790s. Since then, slowly over the nineteenth century and
quickening during the twentieth, the notion of terrorism was shaped
by the intersecting forces of revolution, empire, law, and war—by
Russian radicals and British colonial officials, Eastern European
jurists and Western military strategists. Only in the 1970s did
these accumulating dynamics culminate in a fully developed concept:
illegal, barbaric violence attacking humanity as a whole, tied to
communism and religion, and allegedly rising mainly from former
European colonies. This story reveals a basic paradox of the modern
democratic era: although violence is often justified “in the name
of the people,” the belief that human beings should not be
victimized by political violence continues to spread and take hold.
Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/