The recent attention for anarchist movements in the non-European world is very welcome, but it seems that this growing literature still need a complementary analysis of the attitudes of European anarchists towards the European colonies and the people who lived there.
Anarchists were and are cosmopolitans. They consider the whole world as their fatherland. Spanish anarchists helped their Cuban comrades against Spanish colonialism. English syndicalists aided with the build-up of trade unions in Australia and South-Africa. After 1945 French anarchists defended autonomy for Algeria. Dutch anarchists propagated the decolonisation of the Dutch East Indies. However, during the Spanish Civil War among anarchists even racist voices against Moroccans were heard and did the English comrades only concern themselves with the colonies of white settlement? What was the anarchists' vision of empire and what did they know about the people who lived in the colonies?
Proposals of about 250 words should be sent to Bert Altena (bertalte@xs4all.nl) before April 20, 2015.
Panel to be held at the European Social Science History Conference, Valencia
30 March - 2 April 2016, Valencia
http://geschichte-transnational.clio-online.net/termine/id=27407