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The social, legal, and economic arrangements that most directly affected the daily lives of the great majority of the population in medieval Germany were those set up and enforced between the peasants and the landowners who were their lords. In the great variety of its forms and in its evolution, the organisation of the manor provided the landowners with the type of controls that they desired. But peasants were not rightless either, and the demands of lords were to some extent curtailed by what could realistically be demanded in a relatively backward agrarian structure. The reaction of peasant society to what was undoubtedly an exploitative system ranged from the intelligently cooperative over to armed resistance. Such controls are evident in the structure of the medieval manor.

This chapter reinterprets Robert F. Williams as a new kind of black male publisher, who challenged the civil rights establishment and the mainstream black press. Northern black papers had often challenged southern black papers to be as militant as they were, but Williams, a publisher based in the South, accepted this challenge, prompted by escalating racial violence in the South following the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Lacking the commercial resources of the mainstream black press, Williams used a mimeograph machine to publish The Crusader to address these issues and promote a vision of black manhood rooted in black self-defense against the non-violent strategy promoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. Williams came to believe in “print and practice,” and issued a challenge to mainstream black newspapers to do the same, which helped expose the black press for not being as militant as it had long claimed to be. Many black newspapers now sided with nonviolent activists, elevating Martin Luther King especially, a move that helped usher in the decline of mainstream black newspapers and the rise of radical ones.

This chapter recalls the experiences of the members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the state of Louisiana. Unlike the freedom movement in Tuscaloosa, civil rights activism in the rural areas of the Pelican State confronted the hard-core of white violent resistance. In this environment, few of those locals who joined the freedom movement viewed nonviolence as a way of life. Rather, in virtually all of the civil rights campaigns that CORE helped organize between 1963 and 1965, tactical nonviolence and voter registration worked hand in hand with armed resistance. The Deacons for Defense and Justice, a self-defense organization that formed in 1964, was the most sophisticated example of this type of southern black militancy. In addition to providing protection against the Ku Klux Klan, the Deacons also symbolized a new form of assertive manhood that challenged white myths of black powerlessness.

This chapter highlights the year 1808 as the most successful of all ci-devants after Napoleon Bonaparte had created an entirely new titled hierarchy to serve his own purposes. He tried to add to its brilliance by incorporating men of pre-revolutionary rank, but no renewed recognition was given to the status and titles were abolished in 1790. Although it had proved impossible to abolish nobility, French rulers found it easy to manipulate the structure of the nobility for their own purposes. The chapter concludes that the revolutionaries had driven a number of ci-devants to abandon their country and to accept armed resistance to the new regime.

This introductory chapter outlines the armed resistance of African Americans during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, otherwise known as the Black Power era. It serves as an entry point in the entire discussion of book, which explores black protection efforts in various southern and northern locales, and analyzes the evolution of armed militancy, the significance of tactical nonviolence, and the intricate relationship between self-defense and manhood. Armed resistance served as a significant auxiliary to nonviolent protest in the southern civil rights struggle. Such protective efforts helped local freedom movements survive in the face of white violence, bolstered the morale of civil rights activists, instilled pride in black protectors, and sometimes served as an additional means of coercion in the fight against racism and inequality, specifically against the Jim Crow laws.

This concluding chapter describes how armed self-defense could be detrimental to the Black Power movement. Clashes between black armed groups and the Ku Klux Klan underscore that armed resistance to segregationist violence was far from exceptional and raise crucial questions about its limitations. One can only speculate why no sweeping actions were taken against these groups. Perhaps southern authorities feared that disarming the black population might prompt federal authorities to intervene more forcefully on behalf of African Americans. It is likewise conceivable that white politicians were concerned that such illegal actions might trigger racial warfare in rural southern communities. The fact that blacks had guns and were determined to use them certainly lent credibility to such apprehensions. Regardless of the reasons, restrained responses by law enforcement could not halt the activities of black defense squads.

This chapter outlines the path to war in the Caucasus and the Balkans. It studies the social networks that gave information to the armed resistance movements in Kosovo and Chechnya. It then studies the 1998 battle of Gudermes in Chechnya in and the 1999 incursion into Dagestan, which shows the ways the former nationalist-separatist movement split. It also studies the first few months of the second war of the 1990s using a more localised perspective and the formation of the Kosovan armed resistance movement. Finally, it studies the two armed resistance movements as examples of social networks.

This chapter focuses on the Deacons for Defense and its place in the civil rights movement in Mississippi. It examines the role of the Deacons as an option for African Americans who perceived a lack of local or federal government protection for protest efforts. It traces the roots of the Deacons to Louisiana, where they began as a paramilitary group in 1965, and their eventual foray into Mississippi, where they gained new public significance during the James Meredith “March against Fear and Intimidation” in 1966. The chapter explores the tradition of armed resistance in Mississippi and its distinction from paramilitary organizations, along with issues of organizing and self-defense and the multiple strategies employed by the Deacons. It also highlights the role of the Deacons in the Natchez consumer boycott in order to contextualize the group’s political relevance in the communities where they were active.

This chapter argues that there are some Americans who do not believe that the Second Amendment is a revolutionary text and that it does not explicitly recognize the right to resist a corrupt government. Most of these antirevolutionists also believe that neither the government nor the people have the right to arms for resistance. They also argue that the Second Amendment only guaranteed the government to keep their militias well-armed so that they could maintain order. Hence, the amendment only responded to one concern: the states' worry that Congress might use its new powers to disarm the militias.

This chapter discusses several background themes that influence the groups and affiliations, networks and latterly distinctive armed resistance movements in the Balkans and the Caucasus during the mid-1990s. It outlines some of the prominent features of the recent history of Kosovo and Chechnya and emphasises how particular events in the twentieth century shaped the different resistance movements. It then explains how regional politics helped shape some aspects of each movement, before differentiating the two movements.

This chapter examines the modern myth of Morohood in light of historical evidence from Cotabato concerning the nature of armed resistance to Spanish aggression in the Muslim Philippines. It investigates how political and economic relations within and between the indigenous polities of precolonial Cotabato were shaped and transformed by external perturbations in international trade and European conquest. The chapter also evaluates assertions that an oppositional identity as Philippines Muslims is ancient, deep, and broadly shared.

This chapter explores Muslim efforts to craft an autonomous and future-oriented policy in the midst of civil and world wars. It begins with an overview of Sarajevo's experience with the largest armed resistance movements—the Partisans and Chetniks—analyzing how these movements developed early in the war, what they stood for, and how the Ustashas and the Germans responded to them. Although Sarajevans showed very little support for the armed insurgents, the Ustashas and Germans feared that mass discontent over food, housing, health care, and refugee policies indicated that the city might be preparing for an uprising. These fears led to a spike in police brutality, which in turn contributed to a surge in efforts among the local Muslim elite to break from the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The new Muslim movements developed into the purest example of collaboration that wartime Bosnia had to offer: the Handžar Division. By examining the internal rifts within the Muslim leadership and the diverse factions that eventually came to support a Muslim-German alliance, the chapter suggests that Muslims aligned with the Germans because they desired a political stake in the new order and an army that could compete against the Partisans, Chetniks, and Ustashas.

This chapter examines the civil rights movement in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, led by Reverend T. Y. Rogers, who followed Martin Luther King’s Christian-Gandhian philosophy of nonviolent social change. Rogers utilized his position as the minister of the First African Baptist Church to support the southern freedom struggle. His arrival in 1964 marked the beginning of a rejuvenated nonviolent freedom movement, which would force white authorities to integrate the city by 1965. Just like King and other prominent black civil rights leaders, Rogers accepted and benefitted from the black Tuscaloosans to arm for protection against white aggression. A highly sophisticated defense group that formed in June 1964 made sure that the minister remained unharmed, especially against the Ku Klux Klan. Tuscaloosa’s indigenous freedom movement, thus provides another example of how nonviolent direct action and armed resistance worked side by side in southern civil rights campaigns.

This chapter reviews the book The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War (2014), by Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, translated by Jessica Setbon. The Story of an Underground is about the Jews of Kovno (Kaunas) who founded an underground movement during the Holocaust. The armed underground developed a plan to escape to the forests and join the partisans. The ghetto was liquidated in the summer of 1944. Many of the remaining Jews were sent to the Stutthof and Dachau concentration camps. The book highlights the dilemmas of Jewish armed resistance such as difficulties in obtaining weapons and training, some of the failures of the resistance, and some of the positive aspects of those who thought differently from members of the armed resistance.

Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung investigates the life of Mahn Nyunt Maung, a Karen national, who has personally witnessed the emergence and evolution of the Karen armed struggle and survived an incredible span of personal and professional experiences. This delta-born Karen joined the armed resistance led by the Karen National Union (KNU) against the newly independent Burmese government in the 1950s and then worked in a pro-Burmese government Karen political party. He unsuccessfully ran as a candidate for an opposition party in the national election of 1990, subsequently leading to his flight into the KNU-controlled areas as a refugee. Thaunghmung argues that Mahn’s life offers a rare insight about Burmese history, the evolution of the Karen-Burman relationship, and the Karen armed revolt. Most importantly, his story sheds light on the presence of diverse segments of Karen population in Burma who have experienced the policies and practices of successive Burmese military governments differently.