The British Jacobins and the unofficial terror of loyalism in the 1790s

Abstract

The terrorist attacks in the United States of America on 11 September 2001 are commonly considered a tumultuous moment that thrust the world into an unprecedented age of terror. They are thought to mark the threshold of a new era of modern history. As one scholar notes, the ‘idea that September 11 had “changed everything” was ubiquitous, the date a dividing line between a “before” and an “after” ’. The stud in the narrative framework of history is often a moment of change, a fracture point that distinguishes one period from the next, and we see the manifestation of this in the volume of publications that analyse issues in reference to either before or after the terrorist attacks of September 11. Certainly the impact of the attacks was both broad and deep, with profound consequences and implications for issues such as civil liberties as well as international relations and foreign policy. Moreover, recent socio-demographic research has shown the terrorist events had a significant psychological and behavioural impact on those individuals directly affected by it and those who, in some way, are indirectly connected to the moment, such as the mental health practitioners, occupational health therapists and policy makers mobilised after the disaster.