This special issue deals with the phenomenon of the emergence of radical violence in what might be called ‘shatter zones’ of empires after the end of the First World War. It argues that the emergence of violence was due to the absence of functioning state control and facilitated by the effects of experiencing mass violence during the First World War. In the multi-ethnic regions of the former empires, the rising wave of nationalism directed this violent potential against ethnic and religious minorities.

The article looks at how the collapse of the tsarist regime in Russia and the civil war which followed created the conditions wherein a class of violent paramilitary entrepreneurs, usually veterans of the Great War, were able to operate almost entirely without restraint. The author terms this phenomenon ‘warlordism’, and shows how the rise and eventual fall of warlords was connected to the absence and restoration of state control during 1917–23. The article calls for an interpretation of violence during this period which eschews the reductive dualism of ‘red’ and ‘white’ terror in favour of an analysis which emphasises the role played by individual and largely autonomous warlords.

Although the Turkish mafia is increasingly recognised as a powerful force in the ongoing trade in weapons, narcotics and people in Europe and beyond, there are few critical histories of organised crime's origins in Turkey. Rather than present some pedantic general survey of the history of organized crime in modern Turkey, this essay attempts to address two broader critical points of departure. First, how did Anatolia's journey from imperial to republican rule impact, and how was it impacted by, criminal gangs? Second, how do we situate the experience of modern gangs in Turkey in a global context? In attempting to answer these questions, this paper looks at the development of criminal syndicates among Laz migrants in the greater Istanbul area during the first half of the twentieth century. The case of the Laz shows particularly how war, migration, imperial politics, urbanisation and the rise of the international drug trade shaped the parallel development of organised crime and the nascent Turkish Republic.

This article analyses excesses carried out against civilians in Ireland and Poland after the First World War. It shows how the absence of a centralised state authority with a monopoly on violence allowed for new, less inhibited paramilitary groups to operate in parts of Ireland and Poland. The article argues that certain forms of violence committed had a symbolic meaning and served as messages, further alienating the different ethnic and religious communities. By comparing the Irish and Polish case, the article also raises questions about the obvious differences in the excesses in Poland and Ireland, namely in terms of scale of the excesses and the number of victims and, central to the Polish case, the question of antisemitism.

This article looks at the transition of the Habsburg South Slav lands, in particular Croatia, from empire into (Yugoslav) nation-state from 1917 to 1923, and the violence which attended it. While this transition was less cataclysmic in the South Slav lands than in other parts of the former Habsburg Empire, patterns of paramilitary violence and counter-revolution similar to those elsewhere in Europe were also present here. The article looks at these patterns from a transnational perspective and shows that although state control was effectively restored in Croatia by 1923, paramilitary networks forged during 1917–23 would return as Yugoslavia faced greater external threats and internal disequilibrium in the 1930s.

In this comparative conclusion, the authors consider some of the most influential trends in the historiography of political and paramilitary violence, with particular reference to the relationship between wartime and post-war violence. The heuristic value of the ‘aftershocks’ metaphor is considered, as are the advantages (and potential pitfalls) of the contributors’ transnational approach. Finally, the authors suggest an agenda for future research on paramilitary violence, which looks at the phenomenon in a global perspective.