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This is the first comprehensive study of the phenomenon of the armed-struggle revolutionary organisation. The Revolutionary Organisation covers the period from the late 18th century to the present, is global in scope, and discusses organisations inspired by all main ideological traditions: communist, anti-colonialist, nationalist, democratic, Islamist, fascist, and white supremacist. The condition of life-and-death struggle with the state imposes similar patterns of operation upon these organisations, irrespective of their ideological inclinations. This work interprets armed-struggle revolutionary organisations as hybrids of three orientations: an apparatus of professional revolutionaries; an emotional community sustained by ideology, battle comradeship, and ritual; and an instrument of physical force nurturing an heroic organisational ethos.
Price: $173.00
Pages: 418
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Studies in Global Social History
Publication Date:
25 September 2025
ISBN: 9789004737211
Format: Hardcover
"Revolutionary organisations have shaped our world—think of the Bolsheviks, the African National Congress, or the Taliban. Yet there is no comprehensive study of what they are and how they function, as distinct formations. Erik van Ree’s brilliant new book fills that gap, transforming our understanding of how revolutionaries have crafted their sense of identity. In an extraordinary work of breadth, erudition, and insight, van Ree demonstrates that armed-struggle revolutionary organizations find definition and emotional community in their preparedness to take and retain power through violent means, acting according to their own standards of propriety and sanctity."
– James Ryan, Reader (associate professor) in Modern European History, Cardiff University, and author of Lenin's Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence (2012)
"This study of violent revolutionary organizations and revolutionaries over several centuries and continents is remarkable for the breadth and depth of its analysis. Based upon a deep reading of primary and secondary literature, it is original and challenging, as we have come to expect from Erik van Ree’s brilliant and penetrating scholarship. This is a work of genuine world history that will be essential reading for historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and students of international terrorism."
– Ian D. Thatcher, Professor in History, Ulster University
"Sometimes someone writes a book that makes us wonder why it wasn’t written sooner. The Revolutionary Organisation is such a book. A global account of one of the great world-making forces of the modern era, it’s a massive undertaking, but Erik van Ree pulls it off beautifully, perhaps above all because his succinct fusion of history and sociology so successfully exposes for us the singular ethos of revolutionaries and their epic lives across great swaths of space and time. Cohesive in scope, convincing in its argumentation, and extremely clear in its writing, The Revolutionary Organisation is immensely useful for scholars of political violence, but also directly engaging for all readers interested in the history of revolutionary movements and moments."
– Claudia Verhoeven, Associate Professor of History, Cornell University, and author of The Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity, and the Birth of Terrorism (2011) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism (2022)
– James Ryan, Reader (associate professor) in Modern European History, Cardiff University, and author of Lenin's Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence (2012)
"This study of violent revolutionary organizations and revolutionaries over several centuries and continents is remarkable for the breadth and depth of its analysis. Based upon a deep reading of primary and secondary literature, it is original and challenging, as we have come to expect from Erik van Ree’s brilliant and penetrating scholarship. This is a work of genuine world history that will be essential reading for historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and students of international terrorism."
– Ian D. Thatcher, Professor in History, Ulster University
"Sometimes someone writes a book that makes us wonder why it wasn’t written sooner. The Revolutionary Organisation is such a book. A global account of one of the great world-making forces of the modern era, it’s a massive undertaking, but Erik van Ree pulls it off beautifully, perhaps above all because his succinct fusion of history and sociology so successfully exposes for us the singular ethos of revolutionaries and their epic lives across great swaths of space and time. Cohesive in scope, convincing in its argumentation, and extremely clear in its writing, The Revolutionary Organisation is immensely useful for scholars of political violence, but also directly engaging for all readers interested in the history of revolutionary movements and moments."
– Claudia Verhoeven, Associate Professor of History, Cornell University, and author of The Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity, and the Birth of Terrorism (2011) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism (2022)
Erik van Ree, Ph.D. (1988), University of Amsterdam, is Research Associate at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam. He has written numerous journal articles, and among his earlier books are The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin (2002) and Boundaries of Utopia – Imagining Communism from Plato to Stalin (2015).