ACADEMIA Letters

Reorienting and Renovating Anarchist History

Michael Schmidt

Abstract
Anarchist historiography has long been dominated by what I term a “North Atlanticist” bias.
Even though this traditional approach recognised the emergence of a self-described mass “an-
archist,” “federalist,” or “revolutionary socialist” movement within the trade unions of the
First International in 1868 which included Latin American formations, it mistakenly located
its geopolitical epicentre between France, Spain, Ukraine, and the USA. This was a de facto
“white, Western” narrative and it has remained largely unchallenged – despite the assiduous
inclusion of Latin American, Far Eastern, and other global Southern movements from Max
Nettlau’s great synoptic A Short History of Anarchism (1931), to Peter Marshall’s Demanding
the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (1993). The weakness of the North Atlanticist ap-
proach is demonstrated by, for example, that an anarchist/syndicalist mass movement had not
yet arisen in the USA by 1880, a year in which, John M. Hart asserts in Revolutionary Syndi-
calism in Mexico (1990), the anarchist-founded revolutionary syndicalist Congreso General
de Obreros Mexicanosachieved over 50,000 members. Yet a plethora of new histories de-
mands that this Western polarity be inexorably reoriented towards the global South. In my
recent and forthcoming works, I synthesise a wide range of primary and secondary studies in
about 15 languages, providing the mass organisational evidence in the historical record that
justifies this reorientation.

Academia Letters, March 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Michael Schmidt, michael.schmidt@riseup.net

Citation: Schmidt, M. (2021). Reorienting and Renovating Anarchist History. Academia Letters, Article 805.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL805.

1
A Snapshot
On a sweltering Friday 16 June 1922, the famous Guomindang General Sun Yat-Sen was
forced to flee the port city of Guangzhou – where anarcho-syndicalist and federalist forces
under General Chen Jiongming had repulsed him – and seek refuge on a British gunboat.
This was a signal defeat of the nationalists which enabled the anarchists and federalists to
consolidate their social revolution in the Guangdong and southern Fujian provinces until dis-
mantled in 1925.1 This was a territory of 240,500km² at its greatest extent (larger than Great
Britain), with a population I estimate at some 41-million people (close to Australia, New
Zealand and the rest of Oceania today), accounting for arguably the largest number of people
ever living under an anarchist-framed revolutionary administrative dispensation.2 Yet it has
attracted almost no scholarship – and the North Atlanticist myth prevails.

Addressing a “System Error”

Studies of anarchist history have often been debilitated by a “system error” of definition,
analysis, timeline, geopolitical scope, and intent that is only in recent years beginning to be
rectified by new attempts at rebalancing and reframing. These new histories are arising in
parallel to new approaches to (re)conceptualising anarchism’s ideological project – notably
as a coherent revolutionary praxis3 – and on globalising its themes.4
Hostile interpretations leading to error have been propagated by, among others, statist his-
torians who have criminalised anarchism as a spectre haunting proper social order and thus a
terrorist subject for police repression, like Ersel Aydelini.5 Also by leftist – mostly Marxist
– historians claiming anarchism as a primitive revolt against modernism and thus incapable
1
Leslie H.D. Chen, Chen Jiongming and the Federalist Movement: Regional Leadership and Nation Building
in Early Republican China, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, 1999.
2
Oceania currently has a population of 43-million. Here I combined the official population figures for Guang-
dong at the time with an estimate of the population of half of Fujian – the southern 26 counties – which appear,
according to Chen, to have largely fallen under anarchist-republican control. By comparison, I calculate that the
republican-revolutionary zone in Spain (excluding Basque country) accounted at its height for about 153,227km²
(slightly smaller than Tunisia) with a population at the time of roughly 11,8-million.
3
Felipe Corrêa, Rafael Viana da Silva & Alessandro Soares da Silva (eds.), Teoria e História do Anarquismo
[Theory and History of Anarchism], Editoria Prismas, Curitiba, Brazil, 2015. Lucien van der Walt & Michael
Schmidt, Black Flame: the Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, AK Press, Edinburgh,
UK, 2009.
4
Robert Graham, Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Vols. 1-3, Black Rose Books,
Montreal, Canada, 2005, 2007, 2012.
5
Ersel Aydelini, Before there were Jihadists there were Anarchists: A Failed Case of Transnational Terrorism,
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames, UK, 2010.

Academia Letters, March 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Michael Schmidt, michael.schmidt@riseup.net

Citation: Schmidt, M. (2021). Reorienting and Renovating Anarchist History. Academia Letters, Article 805.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL805.

2
of mature, concrete revolutionary action, like Eric Hobsbawm.6 Unintentional errors have
been propagated by, among others, those whose overly broad definitions and incorrect origin
stories create an ahistorical picture of a supposedly incoherent movement, like George Wood-
cock,7 and by those whose linguistic limitations replicate the old North Atlanticist bias, like
James Joll.8 Ironically, these errors have often been absorbed by the self-described anarchist
movement, (mis)shaping its understanding of its own history – and this in turn has distorted
the academy’s view of the subject.
The revival of anarchist fortunes within the anti-corporate globalisation movement as an
alternative to the failed god of authoritarian socialism since the implosion of the Soviet Union
in 1991 has also seen a start being made to reassess anarchism. The field has been hotly
contested between, roughly, those who lean heavily towards the modern mass organisational
forms of anarchism’s classic period,9 and those who prefer postmodern forms more akin to the
fluid networks of the current era,10 schools which David Graeber famously termed “capital-A”
and “small-a” anarchisms respectively.11 There are many more sub-divisions and even con-
fluences within anarchist theory and historiography than these two supposedly polar-opposite
positions,12 yet I argue that this structural division forms the most significant watershed in
contemporary definitions of anarchism and thus, by extension, how to read its history: while
theory illuminates history, history fleshes out theory, so there is a mutually-challenging dy-
namic tension between the theorists and the historians.
6
Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Cen-
turies, Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, 1978.
7
George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements, Penguin Books, Toronto,
Canada, 1992.
8
James Joll, The Anarchists, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA, 1980.
9
Michael Schmidt, Cartographie de l’anarchisme révolutionnaire [Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism],
Éditions Lux, Montreal, Canada, 2012. Felipe Corrêa, Bandeira Negra: rediscutindo o Anarquismo [Black Flag:
Rediscussing Anarchism], Editora Prismas, Curitiba, Brazil, 2015.
10
Saul Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, Lexington
Books, Lanham, USA, 2001. Uri Gordon, Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory,
Pluto Press, London, UK, 2007.
11
David Graeber, The New Anarchists, New Left Review, London, UK, January/February 2002, online at https://
newleftreview.org/issues/ii13/articles/david-graeber-the-new-anarchists
12
Michel Luc Bellemare, The Structural-Anarchism Manifesto: The Logic of Structural-Anarchism Versus the
Logic of Capitalism, Blacksatin Publications, location unknown, 2016.

Academia Letters, March 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Michael Schmidt, michael.schmidt@riseup.net

Citation: Schmidt, M. (2021). Reorienting and Renovating Anarchist History. Academia Letters, Article 805.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL805.

3
Challenging the North Atlanticist Narrative
It is instructive that “the idea” often travelled inwards from the periphery to the metropole.
The emergence of a first wave of anarchist organising in territories as far-flung as Mexico
(1869), Argentina (1872), Anatolia (1877), Cuba (1877), New Caledonia (1878), Tripolitania
(1880), Persia (1880), Egypt (1881), and Macao (1892) gives fair warning that the North
Atlanticist geopolitical framework needs be challenged – and indeed it has in recent years by
new studies on, for example, South Asia,13 South-East Asia,14 Africa,15 the Maghreb,16 the
Levant,17 and the global South.18 The movement was strongly shaped by libertarian elements
of indigenous cultures: the Aymara and Quechua feminine autonomy of Bolivia,19 the mutual-
aid “Vlassovden syndicalism” of Bulgaria,20 the Amazigh federalism of Morocco,21 and the
“leveller” anti-racism of the outcaste Burakumin of Japan22 – not to mention how the world’s
tribal cultures informed Kropotkin’s theory of collaborative association.23
In two forthcoming works, I challenge conventional anarchist historiography in signifi-
13
Maia Ramath, Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to
Overthrow the British Empire, California World History Library, USA, 2011, and Decolonizing Anarchism: an
Antiauthoritarian History of India’s Liberation Struggle, AK Press, Edinburgh, UK, 2012.
14
Vadim Damier and Kirill Limanov, The Indonesian Anarchist Movement, undated but probably 2017, online
at https://libcom.org/library/short-essay-about-history-anarchism-indonesia. Benedict Anderson, Under Three
Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Administration, Verso, New York City, USA, 2005.
15
Sam Mbah & I.E. Igariwey, African Anarchism: The History of a Movement, See Sharp Press, Tucson, USA,
1997. Michael Schmidt, African Anarchist Movements: Race, Class & Liberation, 2018, online at https://www.
academia.edu/38037893/African_Anarchist_Movements_Race_Class_and_Liberation
16
David Porter, Eyes to the South: The French Anarchists and Algeria, AK Press, Edinburgh, UK, 2011.
17
Ilham Khuri-Makdisi Levantine Trajectories: the Formulation and Dissemination of Radical Ideas in and
between Beirut, Cairo and Alexandria 1860-1914, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA, 2003.
18
Steven Hirsch & Lucien van der Walt (eds.), Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Post-colonial
World 1879-1940: the Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution, Brill, Leiden, the
Netherlands, 2010.
19
Ineke Dibbits, Elizabeth Peredo, Ruth Volgger & Ana Cecilia Wadsworth, Polleras libertarias: Federación
Obrera Femenina, 1927-1964 [Libertarian Skirts: Feminine Workers’ Federation, 1927-1964], Taller de Historia
y Participación.
20
Michael Schmidt & Jack Grancharoff, Anarquismo Búlgaro em Armas [Bulgarian Anarchism Armed], Faísca
Publicaçiões Libertarias, São Paulo, Brazil, 2009.
21
Brahim Fillali, On Pre-Colonial Morocco: Does Berber Federalism serve as an indigenous African model
of Anarchist Federalism?, first published Morocco, then translated from French into English by Pat Murtagh and
published online in 2008 at http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=9536
22
Matthew Turner, Museifushugi: A Brief History of Anarchism in Pre-War Japan, Libertarian Press,
Christchurch, New Zealand, undated.
23
Piotr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Freedom Press, London, UK, 1993, online version
available at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1902/mutual-aid/

Academia Letters, March 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Michael Schmidt, michael.schmidt@riseup.net

Citation: Schmidt, M. (2021). Reorienting and Renovating Anarchist History. Academia Letters, Article 805.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL805.

4
cant geopolitical ways that inform my core thesis. Firstly, with my book In the Shadow of
a Hurricane,24 I significantly reorient the movement’s geopolitical epicentre from the North
Atlantic to the “Latin Heartland” of Latin Europe and Latin America – with significant out-
liers in China and Manchuria. This is based on the historical size, diversity, militancy, and
socio-politico-economic impact of an anarchist/syndicalist movement which proved far more
influential in its heyday in the likes of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico
than it ever was in the United Kingdom where it was more comparable to the movements of
Japan, or Bulgaria where the anarchists were only the third-largest left-wing force.
Secondly, in the forthcoming monograph Critical Mass,25 I downgrade the famed Spanish
Revolution of 1936-1939 from its unchallenged status as the pre-eminent (often supposedly
“the only”) anarchist social revolutionary experiment in building counter-power (proletarian
dual-power institutions intended to replace the state and capital) to the status of a “developing”
counter-power. My analysis and grading of evolving degrees of counter-power is rooted in the
durability of social revolutions and the extent of their territorial control, the dominance of an-
archist praxis in supplanting the state and capital, and the fullness of their organisational forms
– from social nuclei, political organisations, and militia, to revolutionary unions, consumer
collectives, and plenary decision-making bodies.
The renown of the Spanish Revolution pales under this microscope as its movement let
the state run on relatively unmolested, allowing bourgeois power to reconsolidate, while pay-
ing scant regard to its own plenaries. Notably its salience is challenged by the first academic
thesis on the forgotten Manchurian Revolution of 1929-1932 by Emilio Crisi,26 an experi-
ment which has been so occluded by communist scholarship. The anarchist-liberated zone of
Heilongjiang and Jilin in Manchuria at its height comprised some 350,000km² (larger than
Germany), though being inhospitable terrain, it was lightly populated – although it included
the industrial city of Harbin;27 there the state was replaced by counter-power institutions with
proletarian plenaries deciding on praxis. Along with Guangdong-Fujian, the Manchurian ex-
perience appears as a significant large-scale libertarian socialist revolutionary experiment in
the Far East; although critically understudied, the preliminary indications are that, together
they might alone reweight the geopolitical centre of anarchist historiography away from the
outdated “white, Western” hegemonic narrative.
24
Contents page online here: https://www.academia.edu/42444264/In_the_Shadow_of_a_Hurricane_contents
25
Michael Schmidt, Critical Mass: How Anarchists Wield Counter-power (forthcoming).
26
Emilio Crisi, Revolución Anarquista en Manchuria (1929-1932) [Anarchist Revolution in Manchuria (1929-
1923)], Editorial Libros de Anarres, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2015.
27
The territorial extent is my own calculation based on Crisi’s map, which includes Harbin.

Academia Letters, March 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Michael Schmidt, michael.schmidt@riseup.net

Citation: Schmidt, M. (2021). Reorienting and Renovating Anarchist History. Academia Letters, Article 805.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL805.

5
Recalibrating Regional Movements
Even within the “known” histories, we have seen a refreshing recalibration: for example, ex-
plorations of the supposedly peasant Makhnovists of the Ukraine administering cities like
Berdyansk28 (1917 population 47,000) and Mariupol29 (1917 population 45,000), of their
transnational reach as far as Siberia and Poland,30 and of anarchist mass organisations in
Odessa31 (1920 population 428,000).32 There are libertarian socialist analyses of key post-
Soviet developments such as the Zapatista Revolt,33 and the Rojava Revolution,34 new ven-
tures into marginal and colonial regions,35 and long-needed articulations of the usually-atomised
US,36 Italian,37 and French movements.38 Even outworn Spain has been significantly over-
28
Vladimir M. Chop and Igor I. Liman, “Free Berdyansk”: The City During the Anarchist Social Ex-
periment (1918-1921 [title translated], AA “Tandem-U”, Zaporyzhia, Ukraine, 2007, online at www.i-ly-
man.name/FreeBerdjansk.html
29
Lev D. Yarutsky, Makhno and the Makhnovists [title translated], self-published, Mariupol, Ukraine, 1995,
online at http://www.padaread.com/?book=52032
30
Vyacheslav Azarov, Kontrrazvedka: The Story of the Makhnovist Intelligence Service, Black Cat Press, Ed-
monton, Canada, 2009.
31
Viktor A. Savchenko, The Anarchist Movement in Odessa 1903-1916 [title translated], Almanac Publishing
House, Odessa, Ukraine, 2014.
32
The population statistics of all three cities are from official Russian/Ukrainian demographic records of the
time.
33
Andrew Flood, The Zapatistas: An Anarchist Analysis of their Structure and Direction, Workers’ Solidarity
Movement, Dublin Ireland, 2005, online at http://www.struggle.ws/pdfs/pamphlets/zapatista/ZapatistaA5.pdf
34
Michael Knapp, Anja Flach & Ercan Ayboga, Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women’s
Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan, Pluto Press, London, UK, 2016. Michael Schmidt, The Rojava Rev-
olution of 2012-Today, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2019, online at https://www.academia.edu/39995596/
The_Rojava_Revolution_of_2012_Today
35
David Berry & Constance Bantman (eds.), New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism:
the Individual, the National, and the Transnational, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne,
UK, 2010. Václav Tomek & Ondřej Slačálek, Anarchismus: Svoboda Proti Moci [Anarchism: Freedom
Against Power], Vyherad, Prague, Czech Republic, 2006. Yuri Glushakov, The Revolution is Dead. Long
Live the Revolution!: Anarchism in Belarus (1902-1927) [title translated], SzSS, St Petersburg, Russia,
2015. Daniell Marcussen, Da Syndikalisterne Mødte Lenin… [When the Syndicalists Fought Lenin…], His-
toriestudiet, Aalborg Universitet, Aalborg, Denmark, 2009, online at https://www.academia.edu/10459236/
Da_syndikalisterne_m%C3%B8dte_Lenin_. Houssine Alloul, Edhem Eldem & Henk de Smaele (eds.), To Kill a
Sultan: A Transnational History of the Attempt on Abdülhamid II (1905), Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK, 2018.
Luka Pejić,Historija klasičnog anarhizma u Hrvatskoj – fragmenti subverzije [History of Classic Anarchism in
Croatia – Fragments of Subversion], DAF Hrvatska, Zagreb, Croatia, 2016.
36
Andrew Cornell, “For a World Without Oppressors”: U.S. Anarchism from the Palmer Raids to the Sixties,
New York University, USA, 2011.
37
Nunzio Pernicone, Italian Anarchism, 1864-1892, AK Press, Edinburgh, UK, 2009.
38
David Berry, A History of the French Anarchist Movement 1917 to 1945, AK Press, Edinburgh, USA, 2009.

Academia Letters, March 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Michael Schmidt, michael.schmidt@riseup.net

Citation: Schmidt, M. (2021). Reorienting and Renovating Anarchist History. Academia Letters, Article 805.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL805.

6
hauled and thus refreshed by sympathetic yet unsentimental and rigorously critical eyes pro-
viding penetrating politico-structural analyses of the balance of power between revolutionaries
and reformists.39 The intention behind such studies, whether anarchist-partisan, or otherwise,
tends towards not novelty-seeking for its own sake, but rather towards an illumination and rein-
tegration of formerly excluded narratives and a more balanced assessment of vital processes.
This too is my intent.
Taken holistically, the resulting renovation of anarchism as an international(ist) movement
of coherent praxis gives us a strong new impression of a fluid yet constructive, transnational
yet locally astute, rural and industrial, pluralistic yet intersectional set of social revolutionary
forces that were primarily grounded – in their mass organisational expressions – in parts of the
Far East well into the 1950s and in parts of the Latin Heartland well into the 1970s, with, in
numerical terms alone, significant counter-power revivals from Spain40 to Bangladesh41 in our
post-Soviet era. In this reorientation, the North Atlantic is not only a geopolitical outlier but
also somewhat of a minority aberration in terms of the prominence of its post-war “small-a”
praxis – on which much attention has been focused.
39
Stuart Christie, We, the Anarchists! A study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927-1937, The Meltzer
Press, Hastings, UK / Jura Media, Petersham North, Australia, 2000. Antony Beevor, The Spanish Civil War,
Cassell Military Paperbacks, London, UK, 2000. Martha Ackelsberg, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the
Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, AK Press, Edinburgh, UK, 2004. Agustín Guillarmón, Ready for Revo-
lution: The CNT Defense Committees in Barcelona 1933-1938, AK Press, Edinburgh, UK / Kate Sharpley Library,
London, UK, 2014. Chris Ealham, Class, Culture and Conflict in Barcelona 1898-1937, Routledge, Abingdon-
on-Thames, UK, 2005, and Living Anarchism: José Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-syndicalist Movement, AK
Press, Edinburgh, UK, 2015.
40
The historic Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) attained 100,000 members by 2018 – making it the
third largest union centre in Spain after the communist CCOO and socialist UGT with about 900,000 members
each – trailed by its smaller anarcho-syndicalist rival the Confederación National del Trabajo (CNT) with 50,000
members, according to Alfredo Pascual, Del 8M a Amazon: CNT y CGT resucitan a costa de los dinosaurios
sindicales [From 8M to Amazon: CNT and CGT are resurrected at the expense of union dinosaurs], El Confiden-
cial, Spain, 25 March 2018, online at: https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2018-03-25/cnt-cgt-sindicatos-ugt-
ccoo-huelga-amazon-feminismo_1540327/
41
An overwhelmingly women-dominated union, the National Garment Workers’ Federation (JPSP) was founded
in 1984 and now has offices in Dhaka, Chitagong, Savar, and Tongi, with 87 registered factory unions and 1,261
factory committees. It has 41,300 members and is affiliated with the National Shop Employees’ Federation
(JDKP). Previously a supporter of the anarcho-syndicalist international, the International Workers’ Association
(IWA-AIT) founded in 1922, the JPSP today is affiliated to the 50-million-member IndustriALL Global Union
founded in 2012: http://www.industriall-union.org/

Academia Letters, March 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Michael Schmidt, michael.schmidt@riseup.net

Citation: Schmidt, M. (2021). Reorienting and Renovating Anarchist History. Academia Letters, Article 805.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL805.

7
Conclusion
New approaches which employ clear definitions and demanding structural analyses have had
the unexpected result of revealing in the historical record a remarkably cogent anarchist move-
ment far larger in the global South than the “white, Western” narrative assumed, challenging
both Marxist assumptions about the movement’s ability to build viable mass libertarian social-
ist counter-power institutions, and the movement’s own rather pale, fragmentary self-image.

Acknowledgment
I am indebted to Mandy Moussouris, Tristen Taylor, Máirtín Ó Catháin, and Greg Hall for
their critical input into refining this synopsis.

Academia Letters, March 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Michael Schmidt, michael.schmidt@riseup.net

Citation: Schmidt, M. (2021). Reorienting and Renovating Anarchist History. Academia Letters, Article 805.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL805.