by Richard Bach Jensen
Cambridge University Press
11/26/2015, paperback
SKU: 9781107595538
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.
Reviews:
"I cannot imagine a more nuanced and comprehensive history of the diplomatic efforts of the Great Powers to forge an international alliance against the threat posed by anarchist terrorism at the turn of the twentieth century. Jensen's narrative is particularly judicious in its interpretation as he carefully distinguishes government responses to events of real, perceived, and manufactured events of anarchist violence. His account is rooted solidly in archival evidence, much of it previously unexplored. Careful readers will perhaps glean lessons for our own twenty-first-century wars against terrorism." -- Martin A. Miller, Duke University, North Carolina
"...[an] impressively researched and readable history... Jensen combed through police memoirs, newspaper accounts, and diplomatic archives in no fewer than five languages to track how the besieged states came to coordinate their antianarchist efforts. He has meticulously reconstructed two little-known diplomatic initiatives: an 1898 conference in Rome and the St Petersburg Protocol of 1904 (and helpfully includes their resolutions as an appendix)... the author suggests that a satisfactory understanding of the rise and decline of 'propaganda by the deed' requires the history of policing to be embedded in broader social histories. Jensen makes some admirable moves in this direction." -- The Journal of American History
About the Author:
Richard Bach Jensen is Professor of History at the Louisiana Scholars' College at Northwestern State University. He is a recognized authority on the repression of anarchist terrorism and has published widely in the field. His previous publications include Liberty and Order: The Theory and Practice of Italian Public Security Policy, 1848 to the Crisis of the 1890s (1991).