The origins of the study lay in a chance visit to the Smaraniya Bichar Sangrahalaya (Museum of Memorable Trials) in the premises of the Alipore Sessions Court, Kolkata, which houses a valuable collection of records of the revolutionary nationalist (earlier known as the terrorist) movement in Bengal. In this museum, I came across a number of documents pertaining to the Alipore Bomb Trial of 1908 and a few pamphlets written and circulated by the revolutionary nationalists. Shri Anando Raha, the then Director of the Museum, was kind enough to let me have a closer look at the documents. My interest was aroused, and I followed up with further research in the West Bengal State Archives. When I first began to think of a book on the subject, it was conceived as a straightforward study of the role of propaganda in the dissemination of revolutionary nationalist ideas in Bengal. But as the work progressed, I realized that the subject held immense possibilities. It could help throw light on a number of issues that were of crucial importance to the shaping of nationalist consciousness in the early twentieth century in Bengal, issues that have generated important historiographical debates ever since. But I was ill-equipped to handle these questions at the time. In the course of the next few years, though sometimes distracted by my other research interests, I kept returning to this study that has, at last, been completed!