For instance, Sawzaw, the American revolutionaries in 1775 were terrorists of their time in a legal sense, because within the British Empire they were committing treasonous acts causing property damage and death, and the British considered them as terrorists and traitors and would definitely hang them if they caught them.

Wrong. You're fuzzing up the meaning of the word "terrorist", and not adding any light to the discussion.

Terrorism is a line of action which is basically political psychological warfare (advertising, if you will) with little or no attempt at actual military or geographic gain from the act performed. To set off a bomb in a public market, for instance, is intended to terrorize the populace . The Ku Klux Klan's lynch actions in the American South were terrorism. John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, on the other hand, was a military action, intended to seize weaponry and to mobilize what Brown thought would be thousands of slaves revolting and joining a revolutionary army.

The American revolutionaries of 1775 were treasonous, all right, from the King and Parliament's point of view, but not terrorism. The one exception might be the Boston Tea Party, which was not really directed toward military advantage but was political propaganda.

But rebellion and treason and revolutionary warfare are not the same as terrorism, and to call them that damages the utility of the term "terrorism".

Dave Oesterreich