"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
"This impressive and deeply researched study of the transnational rise and fall of anarchist terrorism establishes Richard Bach Jensen as one of our leading historians of political violence. Charting the symbiotic development of anarchist violence and its repression by governments world-wide, in the process dispelling longstanding myths of far flung anarchist conspiracies and government complots, it is indispensable for anyone struggling to understand past and present global wars on terrorism."
Mats Fridlund, Aalto University and University of Copenhagen Center for Advanced Security Theory
"Employing his remarkable command of foreign languages, Richard Bach Jensen has scoured archives across Europe and the Americas to reconstruct the world of diplomats and police involved in the first global campaign against anarchism. Meticulously researched and crafted, this book provides an essential historical context for present debates about appropriate governmental responses to terrorism."
Mary Gibson, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
"Well before 9/11 and jihadists, there were anarchists and the fear they generated in various capitals throughout the world. No single group in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries engendered as much concern among the power brokers in Europe and North America as anarchists. Jensen has completed a splendid volume concerning these radicals … Unknown to many readers, and described ably by Jensen, were the roles played by the police and intelligence services, which infiltrated terrorist cells as informers or as agents provocateurs. A must-read for anyone interested in the historical evolution of counterterrorism in modern world history."
Choice
"… [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
"Impressively researched and readable history … The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism offers insights to historians of the Left, and perhaps even to contemporary organizers looking to craft strategies that achieve redistribution and resist recuperation.’
Kirwin Shaffer, American Historical Review
"This is a comprehensive and pioneering study of the multilateral governmental responses to the fear and reality of anarchist violence during 1878–1914. Jensen convincingly demonstrates how official anxieties surrounding "propaganda of the deed" - political assassinations conceived as exemplary violence to arouse the masses from their slumber - fostered secret diplomacy and international cooperation, reshaped extradition policies and aroused utopian hopes among some governments of a global anti-anarchist alliance."
Chris Ealham, European History Quarterly
"Jensen has written the definitive work on the subject of European and, to a lesser extent, American and international government and police responses to anarchism. Jensen’s book rests not only on a comprehensive knowledge of the scholarly and published primary literature on anarchism and its foes but also on archival work of incredible breadth, encompassing the diplomatic and police archives of Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Britain, Spain, the United States, and Argentina, as well as several collections of personal papers and numerous contemporary newspapers. The book … written in a lively and clear style, stands as a landmark of careful scholarship."
Elun Gabriel, The Journal of Modern History
'This is an authoritative and detailed account, based on extensive historical documents, of the history of the campaigns waged by American and European police services against anarchist terrorists from 1878 to the mid-1930s.' Joshua Sinai, Perspectives on Terrorism
