Beyond Friend or Foe? Terrorism, Counterterrorism and a (Transnational) Gesellschaftsgeschichte of the 1970s

This essay takes stock of recent historical literature on terrorism in West Germany, Italy and the U.S. and argues that the almost obsessive attention to this narrow topic now needs to be integrated into a larger history of the 1970s. It contends that the best work on terrorism deepens our understanding of the decade as a whole, while the history of the 1970s exposes the shortcomings of a history of terrorism that excludes the concept of state terror. The potential payoff for bringing these literatures closer together is thus twofold: a Gesellschaftsgeschichte of the 1970s along both national and transnational lines and an even greater understanding of terrorism.