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

This chapter examines the emergence of terrorism. It argues that five men invented terrorist tactics in a transnational learning process between 1858 and 1866 in Europe, the United States, and Russia. After a systematic reflection on terrorism’s sociopolitical logic and its preconditions, the chapter analyzes Felice Orsini’s attempt to assassinate Napoleon III and the media reactions. This case is interpreted as the beginning of the invention of terrorism. News of Orsini’s deed traveled to America and had inspired John Brown, who changed his tactics from guerilla war to terrorism when he planned his raid on Harpers Ferry. Oskar Wilhelm Becker, John Wilkes Booth, and Dmitrii Vladimirovich Karakozov were the three most significant imitators of both Orsini’s and Brown’s deeds. They finalized the tactic by universalizing it politically and developing the claim of responsibility (Bekennerschreiben). With these developments the terrorist tactic as we know it today was fully developed.