Was there a global anarchist conspiracy in the late nineteenth century? How did the wave of attacks of the years 1880–1900, often referred to as “propaganda by the deed”, come about? Was it the result of individual or small-group initiatives largely unrelated to anarchist organizations and ideologies, or an integral part of the movement's strategies, unanimously endorsed? These questions have attracted considerable academic and public attention in recent years, at a time when the study of ideologies of political violence and destruction and transnational terrorism has proved very topical. Timothy Messer-Kruse's own contribution to these discussions is very interesting and extremely controversial: relying on hitherto unused archives, he sets out to revise drastically existing interpretations of the Haymarket bombing and trial, one of the founding moments of American labour history, turning the established narrative of innocence and martyrdom into one of intentional violence, political cynicism and misplaced hagiography. His book reassesses both the events of Chicago and the nature of mid-1880s anarchism, with far-reaching implications: “understanding the revolutionary anarchist movement on the participants’ own terms rather than in the romantic ways their martyrs have been eulogized changes the meaning of their trial, their movement, and their memory” (p. 8).

This ambition is achieved through a fairly conventional retelling of the anarchist movement's history from the 1870s to the mid-1880s. Unlike The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism in the Gilded Age (New York, 2011), Messer-Kruse's other recent study on “Chicago”, as it was known at the time, The Haymarket Tragedy does not focus exclusively on the events of 1886–1887, replacing them instead in the broader context of the radicalization of late nineteenth-century anarchism, political exile, and trade-union militancy.

The first chapter details “The Conspiracy”, arguing that the events of 4 May were the outcome of a concerted and deliberate attack on the police by Chicago anarchists, who aimed to capitalize on the social effervescence brought about in the city by militancy for the eight-hour working day. The evidence hinges on coded messages published in the German-language anarchist paper, the Arbeiter Zeitung, (the trigger word, ironically, being “Ruhe” – i.e. rest or calm) and secret meetings, as well as the fact that the rally organized on 4 May was “suspiciously unlike any the anarchists or socialists of the Chicago area had ever held” (p. 15). Messer-Kruse claims that two different goals had been set: to provoke a rally in the centre of the city and coordinate an attack on its periphery. The second chapter takes us ten years back in time and charts the transition from “red to black”, rehearsing the fairly familiar history of the anarchist split within the First International Workingmen's Association, the development of propaganda by the deed and its dissemination amidst German-speaking groups, including in the United States. Chapter 3 examines “The Black International” supposedly founded at the July 1881 London Social Revolutionary Congress, followed by the 1881 US-based Chicago Conference and 1883 Pittsburgh Congress, and their role in elaborating and advertising propaganda by the deed. Chapter 4 shows how widespread the use of dynamite became in the United States in the early 1880s, and analyses responses to this within and outside the anarchist movement. Chapter 5, “Anarchists, Trade Unions and the Eight-Hour Workday”, details the anarchists’ views on the emergent trade-union movement and its militancy for the eight-hour working day. Messer-Kruse's key contention is that the majority of anarchists were opposed to trade unionism and its palliatives, and seized the eight-hour workday as an opportunity to trigger a revolutionary upheaval, a “Trojan Horse” of sorts (p. 157). The final chapter narrows down to the days immediately preceding 4 May, before an interesting epilogue which surveys historiographic attempts to account for the violent rhetoric of the Chicago Eight whilst restating the progressive and pacific intents of anarchism in general.

It is hard to dispute Messer-Kruse's evidence and the resounding conclusion that “Haymarket's blast […] was the culmination of an ideological movement” (p. 178). It is now widely accepted that propaganda by the deed was diffused and taken up in anarchist quarters across the world; in this sense, anarchist terrorism was indeed the very concrete outcome of a defined ideology rather than a mad outburst of violence bearing no relation to anarchist ideology. However, the exact implications and modalities of this claim must be examined and qualified.

Apart from registering Benjamin Tucker's repeated objections, Messer-Kruse does not really replace propaganda by the deed in the context of the broader movement, occasionally conflating both in an all-encompassing “guilty” verdict. This is suggested by his initial definition of the terms “anarchism” and “anarchist” as “those ideas, groups, or individual radicals who are distinguished by their complete rejection of ameliorative legal reforms and the voting systems that bring them about, by their advocacy of violence both collective and individual, and by their belief in the imminence of mass insurrection” (p. 7). This bias is compounded by a fuzzy use of terminology, evident in the book's sensationalist title. Anarchists are referred to as “hard-boiled militants”; they have “leaders” – a lexical choice which, considering the anarchists’ rejection of formal hierarchies, ought at least to be discussed.

Similarly, it is to some extent fine to assert that there existed an anarchist “conspiracy” in the nineteenth century – quoting the very word used during the Chicago trial – but this requires close scrutiny, as does the heavily connoted notion of “transatlantic anarchist networks”. These themes have been the subject of substantial research in recent years, which has greatly refined our understanding of the specificities of libertarian organization. The role and functioning of networks have been highlighted, especially in the context of transnational activism. It is puzzling not to find any trace of this recent literature in The Haymarket Tragedy. The bibliography, which contains an impressive number of archives, omits key references on anarchist terrorism, transnationalism, and exile. It is largely confined to the years before 1990 and relies quite uncritically on questionable primary and secondary sources: examples include Michael J. Schaack's Anarchy and Anarchists (Chicago, IL, 1889) and Hermia Oliver's The International Anarchist Movement in Late-Victorian London (London, 1983) respectively.

A comparative study of the east-coast German connection with other examples from the anarchist diaspora would have helped to disentangle the relation between terrorist discourses and actual undertakings, and the exact modalities of cross-border interactions and transfers, with the press as a key organizational link. It would also have provided some much-needed terminological caveats. Tom Goyens's Beer and Revolution (Urbana, IL, 2007), for instance, provides a far less sensationalist perspective on New York City's German exiles and their links with the Old Continent. Jose Moya's study on another anarchist metropolis, Buenos Aires, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley, CA, 1998) is another example.

Similarly, a number of key questions are not theorized, let alone answered, until the book's epilogue. What were the links between terrorists and the organizations to which they belonged? What was the exact part of bravado in anarchist terrorist rhetoric, but also in the informers’ reports? Thus, the role of the French anarchist periodical Le Révolté is repeatedly quoted, appearing as an unequivocal champion of terrorism, when in fact it was a lot more nuanced. The London Congress of 1881 is taken to have marked the launch of the Black International, whereas its existence was far more prominent in the yellow press and informers’ reports than in actual militancy. Although Messer-Kruse makes a convincing case for a reassessment of propaganda by the deed as both a discourse and an actual practice among German-speaking circles, it must also be stressed that planning attacks, printing codes, and even fabricating bombs are not proof of a full-blown conspiracy, because of the importance of bragging and the complex relations between the individual and the group.

Equally striking is the tendency to dismiss the cultural importance and wider appeal of anarchism as a result of the monograph's revision. Thus, Messer-Kruse concludes that “the Haymarket bomb […] snuffed out the very movement that had created it”, which is plainly false, unless one adopts an incredibly narrow view of anarchist activism. The creative and symbolical importance of Chicago is dismissed, on the basis that it rested on an erroneous assumption of innocence. After reading the book, one concludes that this may well be the case, but may not have mattered as much as Messer-Kruse suggests; after all, to name just one example, the cult of Ravachol in France and beyond shows that anarchists did not shrink from celebrating actual terrorists as martyrs of the capitalist order.