Gérard Chaliand (born in 1934) is a French expert in geopolitics who has published extensively on irregular warfare and military strategy. Chaliand’s analyses of insurgencies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, mostly based on his field experience with insurgent forces, have appeared in more than 20 books and in numerous media articles. An independent thinker, he has worked as an autonomous agent throughout his entire career, unconstrained by the perspectives of national governments and policy institutes. His work thus provides a nonpartisan viewpoint on many of the major conflicts that have characterized the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He is also a published poet.

Selected bibliography

Chaliand is the author, co-author or editor of more than 50 books, more than 20 of which have been translated into English.

• The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to ISIS (ed. with Arnaud Blin) (2016), University of California Press, Oakland.

• A Global History of War: From Assyria to the Twenty-first Century (2014), University of California Press, Avid Woods.

• Nomadic Empires: From Mongolia to the Danube (2006), Routledge, New York.

• Mirrors of a Disaster: The Spanish Military Conquest of America (2005), Routledge, New York.

• The Penguin Atlas of the Diasporas (con Jean-Pierre Rageau) (1995), Viking Press, New York,.

• A Strategic Atlas: A Comparative Geopolitics of the World’s Powers (con Jean-Pierre Rageau) (1995), Viking Press, New York.

• The Art of War in World History: From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age (1994), University of California Press, Oakland.

• The Kurdish Tragedy (1994), comisionado por las Naciones Unidas para informar por la situación de los kurdos tras la Guerra del Golfo, Zed Books, London, and University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

• A People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan (ed.) (1993), Interlink Publishing, Northampton MA. Minorities at the Age of Nation-States (ed.) (1988), Pluto Press, London. Out of print.

• Terrorism: From Popular Struggle to Media Spectacle (1987), Saqi Books, London.

• The Armenians: From Genocide to Resistance (1984) (con Yves Ternon), Zed Books, London.

• Guerrilla Strategies: An Historical Anthology from the Long March to Afghanistan (ed.) (1982), University of California Press, Oakland.

• Struggle for Africa: Conflict of the Great Powers (1982), Macmillan, London.

• Report from Afghanistan (1982), Viking Press, New York.

• Revolutions in the Third World from 1945 to the Present: Myths and Prospects (1977), The Harvester Press, Herz UK; edición actualizada (1979), Branch Line Press, Pepperell MA; edición revisada Revolution in the Third World: Currents and Conflicts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (1989), Penguin Press New York.

• The Palestinian Resistance (1972), Pelican Penguin, London.

• The Peasants of North Vietnam (1970), Pelican Penguin, London.

• Armed struggle in Africa: with the guerrillas in Portuguese Guinea (1969), Monthly Review Press, New York.