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Irish-American Terrorism and Anglo-American Relations, 1881–1885
by Jonathan W. Gantt, Columbia College
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During the 1880s Irish terrorism posed significant difficulties for American international relations. State Department officials at home and abroad monitored and assessed the activities and ideologies of many radical groups throughout Europe, but few were more burdensome and frustrating than Irish-American dynamiters. Recurrent threats to life and property in the United Kingdom and allegations of ties to American institutions and citizens eventually prompted American diplomats to articulate an aversion to terrorism. State Department officials also faulted the British colonial system for creating an environment that nurtured violent resistance and for using counter-terrorist measures believed to be repressive and largely ineffective. The diplomatic complications created by Irish nationalists eventually gave way to a mutual Anglo-American ideological repulsion to terrorism. |
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Recent literature conveys the false impression that the United States had little experience and virtually no contact with international terrorism until the end of World War II.1 As is becoming increasing evident, however, terrorism occupied an important place in nineteenth-century American history, both domestically and diplomatically.2 Frequent episodes of labor and racial violence, perpetrated by individuals, corporations, private police forces, or governments at various levels amounted in many cases to anti-establishment or state-sponsored domestic terrorism. Heavy European immigration fueled popular perceptions that foreigners imported radical ideologies, such as socialism, anarchism and nihilism, which bred terrorist violence in industrialized America. Heightened immigration combined with existing labor tensions, according to a recent study, contributed to terrorism's "cultural force" in Gilded Age and Progressive Era public discourse. Even though Americans often misinterpreted the connection between violence and immigrant culture—a misunderstanding exemplified by the Molly Maguires in the 1860s-1870s—there was an increasing awareness that terrorism was a tool for political change.3 Despite such studies, historians have generally failed to appreciate the extent of interaction between the United States and international terrorism before World War II. Since the end of the Civil War the United States government has dealt regularly, if usually indirectly with international terrorism. In the case of the Irish terrorism, that interaction was long term and at times uncomfortably close. |
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As most readers know, defining terrorism is a daunting task. According to current scholarship, terrorism is directed towards noncombatant targets, deploys violence indiscriminately, and includes multiple targets. In addition to the actual physical violence, terrorists attempt to influence and manipulate public opinion. According to terrorism expert Albert Bandura, "Public intimidation is a key element that distinguishes terrorist violence from other forms of violence."4 In Western society, the term "terrorism" has attained a negative label, laden with pejorative meanings and hostile moral judgments. Because it violates America's ideological commitment to the constitutional rule of law and democratic political ideals, many Americans have historically tended to conceptualize terrorism very simplistically, as merely something "bad guys do."5 The assumption that terrorism is solely the work of insane social malcontents is naïve and fails to recognize that the resort to terrorism results from circumstances and opportunities and that terrorists carefully calculate their decisions.6 For the purpose of this study, terrorism is a type of political violence with a psychological component, whereby perpetrators strike noncombatant persons or property to instill fear and dread in a political audience in order to manipulate, affect, or change the existing status quo or certain governmental policies. Anti-imperialist terrorism, as in the case of Irish national extremists, includes acts by individuals or small groups using particular types of violence—e.g. dynamite-bombings, assassinations, murder, assault, and physical intimidation—to destroy the ability or will of the colonial power to exercise control. |
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