The United States, International Policing and the War against Anarchist Terrorism, 1900-1914

In 1901 the anarchist assassination of President McKinley aroused tremendous anger throughout the United States and was the catalyst for diplomatic efforts to coordinate transatlantic measures against the anarchists. Why, then, did America refuse to sign the St. Petersburg Protocol on international anti-anarchist police cooperation agreed to in 1904 by much of continental Europe? This article seeks to answer that question as well as to chart the little-known role in the war against anarchism of the Secret Service and, beginning in 1910, of the nascent Bureau of Investigation.