Roger Petersen | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Military History
July 23, 2026
Roger Petersen, SSP's Emeritus Professor, published a new entry for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Military History on "People’s War in the 20th Century."
Abstract
While “people” have always been fighting in wars, the concept of “People’s War” came to hold a special meaning in the 20th century. Most succinctly enunciated in his 1937 book On Guerrilla Warfare, Mao laid out a theory and rough template for mobilizing and organizing the rural population for war against superior conventional opponents. Mao’s model called for a protracted war that would unfold in stages. Steps included building new state and economic structures at the village level, forming and spreading guerrilla units to harass and attrit government forces, and slowly building a regular army able to win decisive battles. With the successful Chinese Communist Revolution as an example, rebels in many regions around the world built their own versions of People’s War. These revolutionaries most notably included General Vo Ngyuyen Giap in Vietnam, Che Guevarra in Latin America, and Abimael Guzman and his Shining Path in Peru. Despite these cases all employing ideas of People’s War, these leaders and their organizations exhibited vast differences in hierarchy, use of violence, and adherence to Marxist ideology. They also differed in terms of success, with Guevarra and Guzman ultimately failing. Furthermore, People’s War never caught on in Africa and other developing areas. By the turn of the century, the ideas behind People’s War still possessed some cultural and political residue but no longer served as an effective blueprint for war.