The Global War on Anarchism: The United States and International Anarchist Terrorism, 1898–1904

Two decades before the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 sparked the First World War, a wave of anarchist terrorism had taken the lives of seven heads of state in Russia, Europe, and the United States, and caused hundreds of civilian causalities. In response to these attacks, continental European governments called for collective action against the common danger. Despite European overtures for American involvement in an anti-anarchist league, particularly after President William McKinley’s assassination by a self-proclaimed anarchist in 1901, U.S. policy makers rejected collective, multilateral action with European governments in favor of a unilateral, nationalized response through exclusionary immigration legislation. The Immigration Act of 1903, America’s first encounter with modern terrorism set significant legal precedent, orienting the United States away from international cooperation and toward domestic policies of exclusion and deportation.