"Civil resistance is a form of collective action that seeks to affect political, social, or economic status quo without using violence or the threat of violence against people to do so. It is organized, public, and explicitly nonviolent in means and ends. This book will introduce you to some of the main takeaways from history about the ways that civil resistance campaigns have formed, strategized, organized, and mobilized. This chapter will introduce you to the impressive history of civil resistance over the millennia, but it will also grapple with some of the key controversies that persist regarding how to define civil resistance and how to understand its impact on the world around us. But before we discuss this technique's development over the centuries, let's define our terms"--