Why Confederate warships were treated like American ones abroad
During the American Civil War, no foreign power recognised the Confederacy as a sovereign nation. It was, however, recognised as a belligerent, so its warships enjoyed the same rights in foreign ports as those of the United States. That legal status is one reason scholars would not class the Confederate cause as a mere insurgency.
An insurgency, in the usual scholarly sense, is an armed rebellion by small, lightly equipped bands using guerrilla tactics against a much stronger authority. Its defining feature is asymmetry. Rather than risk pitched battles they would lose, insurgents melt into the civilian population, often in the countryside, and slowly expand the territory and forces they control. The political scientists James Fearon and David Laitin describe it as a technology of warfare waged from rural bases, and others stress that its central aim is control over civilians, exercised through violence, taxation, dispute settlement and rules on movement.
Conflicts need not have only two sides. The Russian Civil War, for instance, involved many factions rather than a simple duel between government and rebels. Definitions also strain against history. The analyst Robert Tomes listed typical elements such as cell-based organisation and terror meant to drive people toward the rebels for protection, yet the French Revolution had no cell system and American revolutionaries made little or no attempt to terrorise civilians.
Why do people take such risks? Elisabeth Wood argues that participants in dangerous activism weigh costs and benefits with open eyes, citing volunteers in the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi who faced serious danger challenging racial exclusion. Insurgent movements can also offer members tangible rewards, such as protection from a predatory government and access to political networks.
Prevention may depend on institutions. Barbara Walter contends that strong institutions check governments, open several peaceful routes for resolving grievances, bind rulers to their political promises and remove the need for rebels to raise militias. Autocrats, however, tend to resist such institutions because they curb privilege and corruption. Steven Metz adds that modern insurgencies are more often transnational, entangled with militias, outside sponsors and even international media.
Source: Insurgency
