Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism by Michael Burleigh

My first secondary source is the book, “Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism” written by Michael Burleigh. In his book, he investigates the nature of terrorism, with its origins in the West to the current global acts of terrorism. Burleigh examines the roots of terrorism in the last 150 years such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Russian Nihilists, Red Brigades, Black International, Tamil Tigers and Al Qaeda. He also explores the political impact of those who cause violence and those who are affected by it. He shows that the groups are not only religiously motivated but are also motivated by ideological and separatist motives. He further shows how contrary to popular belief, terrorist are big fans of technology and much of their agitation is driven by the acts of Western Governments themselves. He towards the end of his book shows the positive side of his book and gives recommendations on how terrorism can be defeated.
In the paper, Economic Conditions and the Quality of Suicide terrorism , the authors study the relationship between economic conditions with the characteristics of terrorists and the targets they attack. The poor economic conditions coupled with high unemployment in regions have enabled terrorist organizations to recruit individuals who are more educated, mature and experienced for their suicide attacks. This gives the terrorist organizations the ability to attack more important targets which are located closer to their district of residence. Nevertheless, he also shows that there is no correlation between the qualities of terror attacks and bad economic conditions but rather affect groups that provide excludable public goods by increasing their ability to commit terror attacks during difficul...

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...Historical outcomes. Even though, the schools are slightly different, I see these three schools of approaching history as intertwined. Contrary to the Annales school of thought, who conclude the historical outcomes on class, my research will disapprove that it is not the social setup but rather the economic and diplomatic scenarios that lead to the backdrop of terrorism and its causes.
With Annals, I also will use the methods of Bolch, who in his book, “The Historians Craft” , tells how it is outmost necessary to compare sources amongst each other to ensure their accuracy of events. This is because historians can have biased feelings about a particular topic or field of study, and by comparing a series of publications from different authors on the same fields; we can bring about the real picture of any historical topic, in this case, the real history of terrorism.