Exploring the Terrorist Nature of Political Assassinations: A Reinterpretation of the Orsini Attentat

This paper reassesses the suggestion, advanced among others by David George, that the 1858 failed attentat by the Italian patriot Felice Orsini against Napoleon III can be considered as a paradigmatic instance of “terrorist assassination.” Drawing on a new interpretation of the acts of Orsini's trial, the paper argues that Orsini's motivations were to a large degree “idiosyncratic”; however, it also discusses evidence suggesting that the significant collateral damage caused by the attack was, in Orsini's mind, one of the aims of the action and cannot be portrayed as unintended.