On April 4, 1866, just as Alexander II stepped out of Saint Petersburg's Summer Garden and onto the boulevard, a young man named Dmitry Karakozov pulled out a pistol and shot at the tsar. He missed, but his "unheard-of act" changed the course of Russian history-and gave birth to the revolutionary political violence known as terrorism. Based on clues pulled out of the pockets of Karakozov's peasant disguise, investigators concluded that there had been a conspiracy so extensive as to have sprawled across the entirety of the Russian empire and the European continent. Karakozov was said to have been a member of "The Organization," a socialist network at the center of which sat a secret cell of suicide-assassins: "Hell." It is still unclear how much of this "conspiracy" theory was actually true, but of the thirty-six defendants who stood accused during what was Russia's first modern political trial, all but a few were exiled to Siberia, and Karakozov himself was publicly hanged on September 3, 1866. Because Karakozov was decidedly strange, sick, and suicidal, his failed act of political violence has long been relegated to a footnote of Russian history. In The Odd Man Karakozov, however, Claudia Verhoeven argues that it is precisely this neglected, exceptional case that sheds a new light on the origins of terrorism. The book not only demonstrates how the idea of terrorism first emerged from the reception of Karakozov's attack, but also, importantly, what was really at stake in this novel form of political violence, namely, the birth of a new, modern political subject. Along the way, in characterizing Karakozov's as an essentially modernist crime, Verhoeven traces how his act profoundly impacted Russian culture, including such touchstones as Repin's art and Dostoevsky's literature. By looking at the history that produced Karakozov and, in turn, the history that Karakozov produced, Verhoeven shows terrorism as a phenomenon inextricably linked to the foundations of the modern world: capitalism, enlightened law and scientific reason, ideology, technology, new media, and above all, people's participation in politics and in the making of history.

On April 4, 1866, just as Alexander II stepped out of Saint Petersburg's Summer Garden and onto the boulevard, a young man named Dmitry Karakozov pulled out a pistol and shot at the tsar. He missed, but his "unheard-of act" changed the course of Russian history-and gave birth to the revolutionary political violence known as terrorism. Based on clues pulled out of the pockets of Karakozov's peasant disguise, investigators concluded that there had been a conspiracy so extensive as to have sprawled across the entirety of the Russian empire and the European continent. Karakozov was said to have been a member of "The Organization," a socialist network at the center of which sat a secret cell of suicide-assassins: "Hell." It is still unclear how much of this "conspiracy" theory was actually true, but of the thirty-six defendants who stood accused during what was Russia's first modern political trial, all but a few were exiled to Siberia, and Karakozov himself was publicly hanged on September 3, 1866. Because Karakozov was decidedly strange, sick, and suicidal, his failed act of political violence has long been relegated to a footnote of Russian history. In The Odd Man Karakozov, however, Claudia Verhoeven argues that it is precisely this neglected, exceptional case that sheds a new light on the origins of terrorism. The book not only demonstrates how the idea of terrorism first emerged from the reception of Karakozov's attack, but also, importantly, what was really at stake in this novel form of political violence, namely, the birth of a new, modern political subject. Along the way, in characterizing Karakozov's as an essentially modernist crime, Verhoeven traces how his act profoundly impacted Russian culture, including such touchstones as Repin's art and Dostoevsky's literature. By looking at the history that produced Karakozov and, in turn, the history that Karakozov produced, Verhoeven shows terrorism as a phenomenon inextricably linked to the foundations of the modern world: capitalism, enlightened law and scientific reason, ideology, technology, new media, and above all, people's participation in politics and in the making of history.

This book traces the history of revolutionary movements in nineteenth- century Russia, ending with the great famine of 1891-92, by which time Marxism was already in the ascendant. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

David Warren Sabean was a pioneer in the historical-anthropological study of kinship, community, and selfhood in early modern and modern Europe. His career has helped shape the discipline of history through his supervision of dozens of graduate students and his influence on countless other scholars. This book collects wide-ranging essays demonstrating the impact of Sabean’s work has on scholars of diverse time periods and regions, all revolving around the prominent issues that have framed his career: kinship, community, and self. The significance of David Warren Sabean’s scholarship is reflected in original research contributed by former students and essays written by his contemporaries, demonstrating Sabean’s impact on the discipline of history.

First published in English in 2007 under title: The history of terrorism: from antiquity to al Qaeda.

Literary history meets economic policy in this entertaining polemic on the ethical and potentially destructive power of terrible literature.

"The Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism presents a re-evaluation of the major narratives in the history of terrorism, exploring the emergence and the use of terrorism in world history from antiquity up to the twenty-first century. The volume presents terrorism as a historically specific form of political violence that was generated by modern Western culture and then transported around the globe, where it interacted with and was transformed in accordance with local conditions. It offers cogent arguments and well-documented case studies that support a reading of terrorism as a modern phenomenon, as well as sustained analyses of the challenges involved in the application of the theories and practices of modernity and terrorism to non-Western parts of the world, both for historical actors and academic commentators. The volume presents an overview of terrorism's antecedents in the pre-modern world, analyzes the emergence of terrorism in the West, and presents a series of case studies from non-Western parts of the world that together constitute terrorism's global reception history. Essays cover a broad range of topics from tyrannicide in ancient Greek political culture, the radical resistance movement against Roman rule in Judea, the invention of terrorism in Europe, Russia, and the United States, anarchist networks in France, Argentina, and China, imperial terror in Colonial Kenya, anti-colonial violence in India, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and the German Autumn, to right-wing, religious and eco-terrorism, as well as terrorism's entanglements with science, technology, media, literature and art. Keywords: terrorism studies, terrorism, history of terrorism, history of violence, radicalism, global history, transnational history, international history, modernity, modernization, modernism"--