Much sensationalist attention has been devoted to the militia movement since the fateful events at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas in 1992 and 1993. In this groundbreaking study, Robert Churchill provides the most comprehensive, erudite and scholarly refutation of the conventional wisdom about the militias yet published. Using a combination of archival research and extensive interviews with their members, Churchill demonstrates how the militias' remarkable growth in the 1990s relied upon a combination of political influences (the end of the Cold War, the Clinton administration's push for new gun-control laws, and the paramilitarization of police units) and technological developments (the rise of faxes, email, and the Internet) that facilitated the emergence of a loose coalition of groups with a shared interest in firearms and martial training. Central to the rise of the militias, however, was the recovery of a libertarian understanding of the American Revolution. The conviction that civilians had not only a right but also a duty to take up arms against what they perceived as the wanton exercise of unconstitutional power by the federal government proved the most important factor both uniting and driving the disparate militia forces.

Drawing on the historical case studies of Fries's Rebellion in Pennsylvania at the end of the eighteenth century, the Sons of Liberty Conspiracy in Civil War-era Indiana and Illinois, and the Black Legion in Michigan and Ohio during the Depression, Churchill effectively locates the contemporary militia movement in the context of earlier insurrectionist movements that shared the libertarian interpretation of the Revolution. With care and precision, he then details the distinct constitutional (or Whig) and millenarian wings of the militia movement. In relation to the former, Churchill convincingly refutes the commonplace misconception that the militias' members are offshoots of the white supremacist and Christian Identity movements, instead elaborating on a far more nuanced and subtle set of convictions and concerns that animate a heterodox set of Americans to join and promote a primarily defensively oriented set of groups.

This is a landmark study that deserves widespread attention. A model of careful and dispassionate scholarship, it marries an immersion in the historical literature on American political violence to a supremely well-reasoned and far-reaching exploration of one of the least understood of contemporary social movements. Churchill has provided a rigorous and methodical analysis of the various militias operating in the US, one that substantially advances our understanding of a set of Americans whose modern preoccupations – far from being esoteric and bizarre – have powerful echoes throughout American history.