The study of vigilantism is a relatively recent development in social anthropology, and a substantial body of new fieldwork-based material has been amassed since my own (1987) and Suzette Heald's (1982, 1986) first discussions of the subject. Prior to these, most accounts were by historians dealing with vigilante movements in North America, and especially those operating in San Francisco and Montana and the southern USA (the Ku Klux Klan) during the second half of the 19th century. This material became the subject of an important pioneer survey by Richard Maxwell Brown (1975), who had himself studied early vigilantism among South Carolina settlers (1963). My own book, Vigilant Citizens (1998), was a broader comparative study of such cases along with many others from South America, south-east Asia, Africa and Europe.