I watched recently the 1992 version,so this one has come around too quick but I am liking it.
But,no spoilers,the story is slightly different in this version.
Knowing a lot of it was filmed in Edinburgh,where I live,I am a little distracted by trying to spot the locations used,but it is a good looking drama and well acted.
But did they really use the word cell to describe a terrorist group or gang in the 1880s?
That made me curious so I Googled it. The term terrorism was first used in the 1790s to describe terror used by government during the French Revolution. The structure of terrorist organizations were then called cells. Cells in such a context itself having been coined shortly after the coining of the word in 1660 when body cells were first seen in a microscope.
"What kind of tea do you want?"
"There's more than one kind?"
If you are right then I am wrong.
shareI figure that easily half the internet is incorrect. So it is a coin flip. I didn't spend much time checking my sources.
"What kind of tea do you want?"
"There's more than one kind?"
Occams, is absolutely correct. Historically, the first act of terrorism is associated with the French Revolution-despite there isn't an internationally accepted definition of "terrorism."
I am an American Political Scientist of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region (traveled throughout the region and then moved to Egypt)-with an emphasis in EU and US Democracy Promotion in the Middle East.
My other research interest is American-Muslim communities and have lectured various law enforcement agencies on Terror Threat Management.
There also were a lot of anarchists kicking around back in the 1890's who liked to bomb stuff.
"... wave of bombings and assassinations that had swept Europe and America at the end of the nineteenth century, perpetrated by anarchists and nihilists for whom London and Switzerland had provided refuge. Then, as now, it was remarked, disaffected young men from swollen immigrant communities had been radicalized by preachers of an extremist ideology and lured into violence."
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sorry my question was badly written,I know there were terrorists in the period the drama is set in,my point was about the use of the word cell,I don't think that the term was used until later,maybe by the Comintern?
As for the other comments,I have a book somewhere about bombers in the USA in the period 1900-1920 years,called the Dynamite Years? so it was not just europe.
I'm old and I don't remember ever hearing it used until around when the al Qaeda era started.
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I'm old and I don't remember ever hearing it used until around when the al Qaeda era started.'Terrorist Cell' was used a lot in the 1970s, e.g., with respect to Red Army brigades, the IRA., and the like. I also *think* it was used in the famous mid '60s movie The Battle of Algiers which has a lot of discussion of terrorist/resistance network structure. share
ib011f9545i: I've checked the online Oxford Dictionary and as much of britannica.com as I can access; so far, no joy.
The online Merriam Webster dictionary states that the term sleeper cell was 1st used in 1968, tho weirdly/annoyingly the site lacks an entry for terrorist cell or terror cell or terrorism cell...
And, the term resistance cells is commonly used to describe groups active during WW II, though I don't yet know whether that's the term they themselves used or whether it was applied later, by historians writing about them.
I too am curious about whether cell was used in this context in the 1890s (I would think not, with no disrespect to the imdb-ers who did some research), and I'll continue to do some research.
"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."