The Anarchist Inquisition explores the groundbreaking transnational human rights campaigns that emerged in response to a brutal wave of repression unleashed by the Spanish state to quash anarchist activities at the turn of the twentieth century. Mark Bray guides readers through this tumultuous era—from backroom meetings in Paris and torture chambers in Barcelona, to international antiterrorist conferences in Rome and human rights demonstrations in Buenos Aires.

Anarchist bombings in theaters and cafes in the 1890s provoked mass arrests, the passage of harsh anti-anarchist laws, and executions in France and Spain. Yet, far from a marginal phenomenon, this first international terrorist threat had profound ramifications for the broader development of human rights, as well as modern global policing, and international legislation on extradition and migration. A transnational network of journalists, lawyers, union activists, anarchists, and other dissidents related peninsular torture to Spain's brutal suppression of colonial revolts in Cuba and the Philippines to craft a nascent human rights movement against the "revival of the Inquisition." Ultimately their efforts compelled the monarchy to accede in the face of unprecedented global criticism.

Bray draws a vivid picture of the assassins, activists, torturers, and martyrs whose struggles set the stage for a previously unexamined era of human rights mobilization. Rather than assuming that human rights struggles and "terrorism" are inherently contradictory forces, The Anarchist Inquisition analyzes how these two modern political phenomena worked in tandem to constitute dynamic campaigns against Spanish atrocities.

Mark Bray is a historian of human rights at Rutgers University. He is the author of the nationally bestselling Antifa and Translating Anarchy. Follow him on X @Mark__Bray.

[T]he virtues of The Anarchist Inquisition are considerable, making it one of the most important studies of European politics at the turn of the twentieth century that I have ever read—whether it was part of the history of human rights or not.

Natasha Lennard, author of Being Numerous:

The Anarchist Inquisition is narrative history at its finest, told in thrilling detail, and an essential challenge to entrenched human rights discourses. At this moment of calcifying nationalisms, Bray calls our attention to anarchism's history of potent internationalism, which we would do well to rediscover.

Kim Kelly, author of Fight Like Hell:

Mark Bray is one of the world's preeminent scholars of anarchism, and there is no one better to shine a light into this dark, bloody—yet still hopeful—chapter in the leftist tradition's complex and evolving global history.

Michael T. Taussig, author of My Cocaine Museum:

As enthralling as it is sobering, Mark Bray's riveting tale of the legendary anarchist violence in Barcelona and Paris circa 1900 considers the burning question: can throwing bombs be understood as defending human rights against state violence?