Anarchist archives preserve records from the international anarchist movement in personal and institutional collections around the world. [1] This primary source documentation is made available for researchers to learn directly from movement anarchists, both their ideas and lives. [1]
Anarchism, an anti-authoritarian political philosophy of self-governed societies without hierarchies, has spread chiefly through published propaganda literature: pamphlets, books, and newspapers. As a result, American and European anarchists have a history of collecting the movement's written work and anarchist libraries naturally followed. [2]
Small, independent archival collections include the Kate Sharpley Library and the Boston Anarchist Archives Project. [3] The Kate Sharpley Library (KSL) is maintained by a group [4] and has a special focus on Spanish anarchist materials, based on donations from those who settled in England after the Spanish Civil War. [5] The Kate Sharpley collection extends to class conflict history, as well. The Alternative Gallery (or A Gallery) in Greece has a wider focus, of which anarchism is one part. [4] Jerry Kaplan's Anarchist Archives Project (AAP) is a 12,000-item archive of global anarchism held privately in Cambridge, Massachusetts and developed from 1982 through at least the late 1990s. [6] It has a special focus on Italian-American anarchism, based on individual donations, and is strongest in late-20th century American and Canadian anarchism. [5] Beyond its anarchist collections, it includes some situationist and council communist items, [4] and has exchanged items with the Kate Sharpley Library, which are each located in a private residence. [5]
These independent archives tend to have a narrower focus than their institutional counterparts, whose other collections are either unrelated or part of larger leftist or labor categories. Smaller collections also benefit from personal connections to the movement, receiving leaflets and other ephemera that institutions can miss. [4]
Major institutional collections include the University of Michigan's Labadie Collection and the Netherlands' International Institute of Social History (IISG). The Labadie Collection started as an independent archive, [4] and the Dutch IISG is the foremost repository of anarchist documents in the world. [7] [8] Other collections in institutions not wholly dedicated to anarchism include the Joseph Ishill collection in Houghton Library at Harvard University. These institutions tend to have larger acquisition budgets than the small, independent collections, as well as more advanced machinery and more accessible space and staffing. Older, rare documents are most likely housed in institutions, who often arrange to receive an activist's personal papers and can afford to maintain them. [4]
Other notable anarchist collections include Das Anarchiv (Basel), Anarchistisches Dokumentationszentrum (Wetzlar, Germany), Centro Studi Libertari "Giuseppe Pinelli" (Milan), Centre d'Etudes et de Documentation Librairie (Lyon), Fundación Salvador Seguí (Madrid), and the Centre International de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme (CIRA) in Lausanne, Switzerland, Marseille, France and Fujinomiya, Japan. [5] [9]
Albert Isidore Meltzer was an English anarcho-communist activist and writer.
Sam Dolgoff was an anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist from Russia who grew up, lived and was active in the United States.
Anarchism in the United Kingdom initially developed within the religious dissent movement that began after the Protestant Reformation. Anarchism was first seen among the radical republican elements of the English Civil War and following the Stuart Restoration grew within the fringes of radical Whiggery. The Whig politician Edmund Burke was the first to expound anarchist ideas, which developed as a tendency that influenced the political philosophy of William Godwin, who became the first modern proponent of anarchism with the release of his 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.
AK Press is a worker-managed, independent publisher and book distributor that specializes in publishing books about anarchism and the radical left. Operated out of Chico, California, United States, with a branch in Edinburgh, Scotland, the company is collectively owned.
Paul Avrich was an American historian specializing in the 19th and early 20th-century anarchist movement in Russia and the United States. He taught at Queens College, City University of New York, for his entire career, from 1961 to his retirement as distinguished professor of history in 1999. He wrote ten books, mostly about anarchism, including topics such as the 1886 Haymarket Riot, the 1921 Sacco and Vanzetti case, the 1921 Kronstadt naval base rebellion, and an oral history of the movement in the United States.
Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie was an American labor organizer, anarchist, Greenbacker, libertarian socialist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet.
Clément Duval was a famous French anarchist and criminal. His ideas concerning individual reclamation were greatly influential in later shaping illegalism. According to Paul Albert, "The story of Clement Duval was lifted and, shorn of all politics, turned into the bestseller Papillon."
The Kate Sharpley Library is a library dedicated to anarchist texts and history. Started in 1979 and reorganized in 1991, it currently holds around ten thousand English language volumes, pamphlets and periodicals.
The Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, originating from the collection of radical ephemera built by Detroit Anarchist Jo Labadie, is recognized as one of the world's most complete collections of materials documenting the history of anarchism and other radical movements from the 19th century to the present.
Abel Paz was a Spanish anarchist and historian who fought in the Spanish Civil War. He is considered one of the noted Spanish anarchist historians, writing multiple volumes on anarchist history, including a biography of Buenaventura Durruti, an influential anarchist during the war. He kept the anarchist tradition throughout his life, including a decade in Francoist Spain's jails and multiple decades in exile in France.
Anarchism in Russia developed out of the populist and nihilist movements' dissatisfaction with the government reforms of the time.
Anarchism in Israel has been observed in the early Kibbutz movement, among early Labor Zionists as well as an organised movement in Israel following the 1948 Palestine war. Anarchism has also had a mixed relationship with Zionism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with +972 Magazine publishing an article claiming anarchists were "the only group in Israel engaged in serious anti-occupation activism." Animal rights are notably popular among Israeli anarchists, even when compared to anarchist movements in other countries.
CIRA or International Center for Research on Anarchism is an anarchist archive, infoshop and library of anarchist material in different languages based in Lausanne, Switzerland with other branches in Marseille and Fujinomiya, Japan.
Contemporary anarchism within the history of anarchism is the period of the anarchist movement continuing from the end of World War II and into the present. Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in anti-globalisation, peace, squatter and student protest movements. Anarchists have participated in armed revolutions such as in those that created the Makhnovshchina and Revolutionary Catalonia, and anarchist political organizations such as the International Workers' Association and the Industrial Workers of the World have existed since the 20th century. Within contemporary anarchism, the anti-capitalism of classical anarchism has remained prominent.
Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas is a three-volume anthology of anarchist writings edited by historian Robert Graham. The anthology is published by Black Rose Books. Each selection is introduced by Graham, placing each author and selection in their historical and ideological context. The focus of the anthology is on the origins and development of anarchist ideas; it is not a documentary history of the world's anarchist movements, although the selections are geographically diverse.
Alexei Alexeyevich Borovoi (1875–1935) was a Russian individualist anarchist writer, orator, teacher and propagandist.
The International Institute of Social History (IISH/IISG) is one of the largest archives of labor and social history in the world. Located in Amsterdam, its one million volumes and 2,300 archival collections include the papers of major figures and institutions in radical leftist thought. The IISH was founded in 1935 by Nicolaas Posthumus as an independent scientific institute. It is part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Anarchism in Hungary emerged from the social democratic movement in the late 19th century, coming to play a prominent role in the anti-militarist movement during World War I and in the subsequent revolution that culminated in the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The anarchist movement was then repressed by the Horthy regime, before re-emerging as part of the anti-fascist resistance movement during World War II. This second wave of anarchism was also repressed, this time by the newly established communist regime. Anarchist ideas were briefly expressed during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but remained largely suppressed until the fall of socialism, which gave way to a third wave of anarchism in Hungary.
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