Colonial constructions of terrorism: representations of identity, threat and race in Britain’s Corona journal, 1949–1962

This article explores constructions of political violence within the Corona journal of the British Colonial Service. Analysing news summaries, parliamentary reports, and other pieces, the article explores how the language of ‘terrorism’ was attached to ongoing events including in Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus. Two arguments are made. First, the journal presupposes international familiarity with the language of ‘terrorism’ and its pertinence to diverse threats to British imperialism. Second, heterogeneous applications of this language illustrate racialised assumptions in colonial conceptions of Britain’s ‘others’. Three contributions are made. First, we extend work on terrorism discourse through original engagement with an important, entirely neglected, text. Second, we offer new evidence of the longevity of ‘terrorism’ discourse, highlighting continuities in framings of this threat from the mid-twentieth century onward. Third, by tracking different applications of the language of ‘terrorism’, we also extend contemporary discussion on the prominence of race in terrorism discourse.