The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism

The first global history of the secret diplomatic and police campaign against anarchist terrorism from 1880 to the 1920s.

"This is the first global history of the secret diplomatic and police campaign that was waged against anarchist terrorism from 1878 to the 1920s. Anarchist terrorism was at that time the dominant form of terrorism and for many continued to be synonymous with terrorism as late as the 1930s. Ranging from Europe and the Americas to the Middle East and Asia, Richard Bach Jensen explores how anarchist terrorism emerged as a global phenomenon during the first great era of economic and social globalization at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries and reveals why some nations were so much more successful in combating this new threat than others. He shows how the challenge of dealing with this new form of terrorism led to the fundamental modernization of policing in many countries and also discusses its impact on criminology and international law"--

The state bounds politics: it constructs and enforces boundaries that separate what it controls from what lies outside its domain. However, states face a variety of threats that cross and challenge their geographical and conceptual boundaries. Transnational violent actors that transcend these boundaries also defy the state’s claims to political authority and legitimacy. Mark Shirk examines historical and contemporary state responses to transnational violence to develop a new account of the making of global orders. He considers a series of crises that plagued the state system in different eras: golden-age piracy in the eighteenth century, anarchist “propagandists of the deed” at the turn of the twentieth, and al-Qaeda in recent years. Shirk argues that states redraw conceptual boundaries, such as between “international” and “domestic,” to make sense of and defeat transnational threats. In response to forms of political violence that challenged boundaries, states developed creative responses that included new forms of control, surveillance, and rights. As a result, these responses gradually made and transformed the state and global order. Shirk draws on extensive archival research and interviews with policy makers and experts, and he explores the implications for understandings of state formation. Combining rich detail and theoretical insight, Making War on the World reveals the role of pirates, anarchists, and terrorists in shaping global order.

Terrorism's roots in Western Europe and the USA This book examines key cases of terrorist violence to show that the invention of terrorism was linked to the birth of modernity in Europe, Russia and the United States, rather than to Tsarist despotism in 19th century Russia or to Islam sects in Medieval Persia. Combining a highly readable historical narrative with analysis of larger issues in social and political history, the author argues that the dissemination of news about terrorist violence was at the core of a strategy that aimed for political impact on rulers as well as the general public. Dietze's lucid account also reveals how the spread of knowledge about terrorist acts was, from the outset, a transatlantic process. Two incidents form the book's centerpiece. The first is the failed attempt to assassinate French Emperor Napoléon III by Felice Orsini in 1858, in an act intended to achieve Italian unity and democracy. The second case study offers a new reading of John Brown's raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859, as a decisive moment in the abolitionist struggle and occurrences leading to the American Civil War. Three further examples from Germany, Russia, and the US are scrutinized to trace the development of the tactic by first imitators. With their acts of violence, the "invention" of terrorism was completed. Terrorism has existed as a tactic since then and has essentially only been adapted through the use of new technologies and methods.

Takes a chronological approach to provide a history of modern rebel or non-state terror. In addition to articles in academic journals the collection includes discussions, statements and government documents.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a wave of political violence swept across the globe, causing widespread alarm. Described by the media of the day as “propaganda of the deed,” assassinations, bombings and assaults carried out by anarchists—both individuals and conspirators—were intended to incite revolution and established the precedents of modern terrorism. Much has been written about these actions and the responses to them yet little attention has been given to the actors themselves. Drawing on wide range of sources, the author profiles numerous insurgents, their deeds and their motives.

The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists is the culmination of seven years of research into the 1886 Haymarket bombing and subsequent trial. It not only overturns the prevailing consensus on this event, it documents in detail how the basic facts, as far as they can be determined, have been distorted, obscured, or suppressed for seventy years.

The Anarchist Cookbook will shock, it will disturb, it will provoke. It places in historical perspective an era when "Turn on, Burn down, Blow up" are revolutionary slogans of the day. Says the author" "This book... is not written for the members of fringe political groups, such as the Weatherman, or The Minutemen. Those radical groups don't need this book. They already know everything that's in here. If the real people of America, the silent majority, are going to survive, they must educate themselves. That is the purpose of this book." In what the author considers a survival guide, there is explicit information on the uses and effects of drugs, ranging from pot to heroin to peanuts. There i detailed advice concerning electronics, sabotage, and surveillance, with data on everything from bugs to scramblers. There is a comprehensive chapter on natural, non-lethal, and lethal weapons, running the gamut from cattle prods to sub-machine guns to bows and arrows.