The Invention of Terrorism in Europe, Russia, and the United States

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 decisi