ABSTRACT
This article will focus on four acts of violence committed before World War I by lone anarchists (or apparent lone anarchists) and on police and government responses to this violence. I will explore the motivations of the different anarchists, as far as we know them, and compare and contrast the state’s responses. The four cases are the 1896 bombing of a Corpus Christi procession in Barcelona, the 1901 assassination of President McKinley, a 1902 bombing in Livorno (Leghorn) Italy, and the 1912 attempted assassination of King Victor Emmanuel III. While the different targets and possible motivations of the anarchist terrorists are interesting, even more striking are the sharply differing actions of the authorities. In all these cases the police and government responses were far from flawless, but the ruthless measures of the Spanish provoked violent acts of revenge, whereas the briefly violent and mostly
2014 DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2014.849919 uncoordinated responses of the Americans led to no further terrorist deeds. The
American government was long on anti-anarchist rhetoric but short on concrete acts of repression. This approach produced no martyrs. The Italian approach led to the same result as the American, but was conducted in a more controlled, low-key fashion, and avoided a violent, popular backlash.
