The First War on Terror: How Europe Fought Anarchist Suicide Attacks, From 1850 to WW1

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

At the end of the nineteenth century, the world came to know and fear terrorism. Much like today, this was a time of progress and dread, in which breakthroughs in communications and weapons were made, political reforms were implemented, and immigration waves bolstered the populations of ever-expanding cities.
This era also simmered with political rage and social inequalities, which drove nationalists, nihilists, anarchists and republicans to dynamite cities and discharge pistols into the bodies of presidents, police chiefs and emperors. The most notorious incidents were Tsar Alexander II’s murder by the People’s Will in 1881, and the dynamiting of the Café Terminus in Paris in 1894, specifically targeting innocents.
This wave of terrorism was seized upon by an outrage-hungry press that peddled hysteria, conspiracy theories and, sometimes, fake news in response, convincing many a reader that they were living through the end of days.
Against the backdrop of this world of fear and disorder, today’s guest, James Crossland, author of “The Rise of Devils,” discusses the journeys of the men and women who evoked this panic and created modern terrorism “revolutionary” philosophers, cult leaders, criminals and charlatans, as well the paranoid police chiefs and unscrupulous spies who tried to thwart them. We examine how radicals once thought just in their causes became, as Pope Pius IX denounced them, little more than “devils risen up from Hell”.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This guy here with another episode of the History and Plug podcast.
0:07.8	The first age of modern terrorism began in the 1850s when anarchists and revolutionaries
0:14.0	attacked heads of state with improvised explosives, handguns, and dynamite, but they also started
0:18.9	targeting innocents.
0:20.4	Most infamously, when a rogue anarchist dynamited the Cafe Terminus in Paris in 1894.
0:26.0	What's interesting is that the public reaction to these attacks were very similar to today,
0:30.5	and a scene that wouldn't have been out of place after 9-11, when a car bomb was detonated
0:35.1	on Wall Street 1920, New Yorkers flocked to the blast site to sing the National Anthem,
0:40.1	demonstrating patriotic defiant in the face of a terrorist attack.
0:43.2	In fact, George W. Bush's Declaration of War and Terror was actually used with those exact
0:47.4	words once before.
0:48.9	In 1881, the New York Times called for a similar war and terrorism to be waging response
0:53.6	to a suicide bomber murdering Zara Alexander II of Russia.
0:57.2	An international movement against these attacks coalesced in 1898, when police officials
1:02.6	from several European states met in Rome, and agreed to fight a unified war against this
1:07.0	terrorist threat, sort of like Interpol-2 today, sharing intelligence and police services.
1:12.4	To explore this first age of terrorism from 1850 up to World War I, this today's guest
1:17.5	James Croslin, author of the Rise of Devils, we look at why political terrorism rose,
1:22.5	who are the sorts of people who are attracted to it, by anarchism lends itself to so much
1:26.7	terrorism, and how the human responses to these attacks are very similar, and what we can
1:31.1	learn from the past to avoid similar pitfalls today.
1:33.3	Hope you enjoy this discussion with James Croslin.
	...

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