Discontent in Britain’s Thirteen Colonies had built to open violence by the mid-1770s, much of it occurring in and around Boston. (See Map 19.) A lack of representation and perceptions that British leaders pursued overbearing policies because they were indifferent or even hostile to the plight of the inhabitants pushed ever more colonists towards open rebellion. In response, the tools Britain possessed to confront its colonial troubles were limited by the nature of its government and the few instruments at its disposal. These included the army and navy, but their use at Boston only exacerbated tensions. Fighting flared on 19 April 1775 when British soldiers attempted to seize munitions at Concord, Massachusetts. Along the way, at Lexington, shots were fired and several colonists were killed. Afterwards, colonists sniped at and harried the British on their return to Boston. In the wake of Lexington and Concord, American militia gathered around Boston, surrounding its British garrison. Nearly two months after the outbreak of hostilities, the Americans seized and fortified the strategic Charlestown Peninsula overlooking Boston harbour. In response, the British stormed the position in what became known as the battle of Bunker Hill: the first major battle of the American Revolution. At the end of the day, the British held the field, but at the cost of nearly a quarter of their army in Boston.

This chapter explores the assassination of crusading city councilwoman Marielle Franco in 2018, the mobilization of her supporters in the wake of that assassination, and the election of several Black women legislators in the ensuing years. The chapter traces Franco’s trajectory as the daughter of Black and Northeastern residents of the Maré favela complex, her path through growing educational opportunities in the early 2000s, her political emergence in connection with politician Marcelo Freixo and the PSOL party. It also explores the reactionary militias apparently responsible for her death, and their connection to police corruption and territorial violence, particularly on Rio’s west side.

There were practical limits to these political imaginaries and projects. People needed to work, and the war was a source of employment for many displaced people. This chapter explores the parallel systems of governance in Khartoum that southern militia-running businessmen (including Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, Paulino Matip, Abdel Bagi Ayii Akol, and others) organised in Khartoum, including their own prisons, barracks, and offices. Many residents drew on their jobs, sympathetic policing, and ‘traditional’ courts, but these rebel authorities also propagated their own ideas of future structures of political community based on regional zones of ethno-political authority. This is an unrecorded history of militia governance, looking beyond these authorities’ immediate mercenary aims and exploring their leadership’s and members’ own critiques of governance and models of power. This sets a challenge to current studies of rebel governance systems, which rarely examine pro-government proxy militias. It also outlines how the more creative, inclusive, and imaginative intellectual work detailed in this book was undermined (and ultimately buried) by these wartime exigencies and practical (if mercenary) structures of militia work and ethnic self-defence.

This concluding chapter first brings the reader up to date in Complexo da Maré and Rio de Janeiro. Since concluding fieldwork in 2015, much has changed in Brazil. Dilma Rousseff was impeached in 2016 and Jair Bolsonaro became president in 2018. More importantly for Rio de Janeiro, Wilson Witzel, an extreme right wing candidate, was elected governor in 2018 and took control of the state’s public security apparatus. The dynamics of policing and violence have changed accordingly. Rio’s public security apparatus confronted and violently engaged Rio’s gangs with an intensity never before seen. Police shot into densely populated favelas from helicopters, showing little restraint even when innocent bystanders were present. In 2019 alone, Rio police killed an estimated 1,600 citizens. This chapter reflects on these developments and contemplates possibilities for the future. Finally, it addresses the generalizability of the book’s findings for other cities in Brazil and beyond while suggesting several avenues for future research.

Mexican independence was the result of a complex process initiated in 1808 due to a problem of dynastic legitimacy and ended in 1825 with the surrender of the last Spanish fortress in Veracruz. In 1810, armed uprisings began, led by hundreds of clergymen who rejected the authorities that were supposedly foisted on the colonies by orders of Napoleon Bonaparte. In the absence of an army capable of subduing the rebels, the government had to form it with armed civilians. Without a political and government program to define the course to be followed by the rebels, little by little the territories they controlled fell into the hands of the king’s defenders. In the territories affected by the war, governability was guaranteed through civic-military self-governments. Everything changed after 1820, with the reestablishment of the Constitution of Cadiz, when the militarized self-governments gave way to liberal governments. The military reacted against them a year later with the military pronunciamiento led by Agustín de Iturbide. He proposed an independence subordinated to the House of Bourbon. In the end, a republic was imposed as the form of government in Mexico.

To understand the ways in which Saudi Arabia and Iran have engaged with Iraqi politics and sought to define the principles of vision within Iraq’s political field, one must understand the structural factors conditioning and curtailing the deployment of capital. Here, tracing the evolution of Iraq’s political field is essential as a means of understanding the actions of Riyadh and Tehran. This tracing involves reflecting on identity politics and the interplay between identity groups and the state. The nature of this interplay, in turn, allows for the development of relations with regional powers, on both an individual and a communal level.

Chapter 4 looks specifically at the reorganisation of military power in this period, which is closely related to the declining power of aristocracies. The rise of the modern state and its monopoly of legitimate force made militaries and law enforcement bureaucratic functions of the state, rather than localised privileges of divided nobilities. The pacification of the nobilities, the subduing of their traditions of martial competition to the modern state, opens up the scope for the more civil forms of competition. The ‘wild’ can now be replaced by the ‘domesticated’.

Chapter 5 turns to the strategy of violence outsourcing by examining a party that shared many of the same incentives in Karachi as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement for carrying out violence but which did not possess the capacity to do so itself. I focus on how the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) relied on the People’s Aman Committee (PAC), an ethnic militia in Karachi, both to meet the demands of its constituents in the neighborhood of Lyari and to carry out the “dirty work” of violence, intimidation, and extortion. Through the PAC, the PPP was able to engage in voter fraud and intimidation; engage in criminal activity and ‘turf wars’ with the MQM and ANP over valuable economic property; and maintain support among its co-ethnic base by further polarizing the electorate along ethnic lines. In Karachi’s polarized environment, the PPP had a generally captive support base of Sindhi and Baloch voters in the city who imposed minimal electoral costs on the party for violence given their lack of alternative options. Despite evident principal–agent problems, the PPP relied on the gang because it did not have the local-level organizational capacity to carry out violence – or gather votes – itself.

Although the nature, organisation and behaviours of ‘non-State armed groups’ (NSAGs) are issues of increasing concern for the international community, in particular due to the participation of these entities in the majority of armed conflicts, relatively little is known about them within the legal realm. When compared to other actors affecting or being affected by different regimes, normative studies dealing with the way in which these non-State entities behave seem to be scarce. This chapter examines NSAGs’ limited position within the international legal architecture. This is because understanding what these actors are allowed to do, or rather are restricted from doing, is determined by a set of rules, the creation and further development on which NSAGs had, at least a priori, no say. This basis serves to assess later in the chapter how international law, political sciences, and different institutions and bodies address NSAGs. A typology of these actors is provided for the purposes of this book.

Chapter 6 assesses why ‒ though facing similar stalemates and other structural challenges ‒ two adjacent districts in Zambézia province experienced the diffusion of militias so differently. The chapter shows that communities learned from neighboring communities about how militias formed and “diffusion agents” migrated to spread the message of militia success, which helped initiate militia diffusion. However, “sustained diffusion” ‒ the persistence of militia activity in a district and integration of the militia into the local security apparatus ‒ depended on the cohesion of elites. The chapter explores the validity of the argument by analyzing the diffusion of the Naparama to a district in Nampula province.

Chapter 5 shows that, while community responses to the violence were widespread, the Naparama militia formed at a strategic moment in time, when “community-empowering military stalemates” emerged. Tracing the process of how Naparama formed over time, the chapter shows that local stalemates shaped community residents’ and local elites preferences and gave rise to windows of opportunity for militia formation. Community residents were willing to engage in armed responses to insurgent violence, as other options appeared inviable. Local administrative elites complained about insufficient support from the provincial government and supported alternative military solutions such as the Naparama. This chapter draws on evidence from an over-time analysis of Naparama’s formation in Zambézia province in Mozambique.

Chapter 1 introduces the topic and relevance of the book, links the arguments to previous work and provides an overview of the book's chapters.

Chapter 7 demonstrates that militias successfully mobilize members when they appeal to common social conventions, create innovative institutions and provide an opportunity for self-empowerment. In particular, the chapter shows that the appeal to common social conventions such as traditional healing facilitated the mobilization process, as the new militia institution resonated with local communities and created a belief in agency, which enabled the large-scale mobilization of members. The chapter develops these arguments with evidence from Nicoadala district in Zambézia province and explores their validity with evidence from the main district of militia activity in Nampula province, Murrupula.

Chapter 2 contains a theoretical framework to analyze how militias form. It also introduces a definition and typology of militias, introduces the theory that guides the subsequent analysis, and provides an overview of the research design of the study.

The concluding chapter reviews the theory and evidence and derives implications for how civilian agency, violent resistance, and the rise of third actors affect the dynamics of civil war. The chapter explores how the arguments can shed light on similar developments in past and contemporary armed conflicts and reflect on Naparama’s legacy for postwar politics in Mozambique. Overall, the chapter shows that, while this book explains when, where, and how militias originate, there is much work to be done to understand how militias evolve and develop their relations with governments, rebels, and civilians. Militias are important third actors in civil wars, but we do not yet completely understand the challenges that come along with their rise.

Whereas Americans had quickly won redress amid the Stamp Act controversy, over the following decade the use of similar, affiliated social movement organizations exacerbated rivalries with Britain and eventually mobilized the War of Independence. First, colonists responded to the hated Townshend Acts of 1767 with boycotting associations that sought to overturn the measure through economic warfare – that only led to partial changes. American rights became a partisan issue with Britain, as colonial patriots increasingly allied with the Wilkes and Liberty movement. The enduring tax on tea and the colonial resistance it inspired in 1774 motivated British passage of the Coercive Acts, that militarized the colonial networks and led them to prepare for war. Committees of Safety and Security seized power in many locales and proved integral in mobilizing the civil war against the British.

In the Mekong Delta, in addition to directly fighting against the communist-led Resistance, the French also allied with semi-autonomous militias against the Resistance, particularly those associated with the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao. A situational logic of alliance and opposition, understood by all participants, shaped the overarching "system." Within this system, both the French and the Resistance competed to co-opt smaller groups, from parastates to local militias, to their side, which in turn tried to establish their autonomy. This chapter looks at these allies, some of which were parastates, their funding, their economic bases, and their interactions. It gives particular attention to those affiliated with the Cao Dai (Pham Cong Tac, Trinh Minh The) and the Hoa Hao militias (Tran Van Soai, Ba Cut). It also examines the complexity of control at local levels, where in some villages, up to three different political actors, including the Vietnamese state, vied for dominance.

By 1953, the communist-led Resistance had been marginalized in much of the Mekong delta. But the cost was high. "Traditional" institutions of the village had, in large swaths of the delta, been destroyed. The Franco-Vietnamese "coalition" had defeated the communist-led Resistance. But who would win the peace? The militia leaders, so skilled in war, were not fluent in the arts of peace. This chapter looks at the endgame of empire, when France was withdrawing from rural areas all over the South, downsizing its military presence, and shifting its support to the State of Vietnam. The end result by 1954, however, was a balkanized southern Vietnam with fragmented sovereignty where militias entrenched themselves in rural fiefdoms. The chapter shows how Ngo Dinh Diem, faced with this divided South, won the battle for post-war control of the South. It pays particular attention to his expulsion to Cambodia of the Cao Dai leader Pham Cong Tac, the co-optation of the Hoa Hao militia leader Tran Van Soai, and the arrest, trial, and execution of the Hao Hao militia leader Ba Cut. The chapter also examines the regional, national, and international legacies of the war.