I do not see anarchism as an ideology rooting to Europe, nor even to the first people to call themselves anarchist. Anarchism is a lens of analysis and the usage of that lens is found in a variety of cultures and thinkers throughout history, far predating the usage of the name.
If you want to understand what I mean, I recommend this video:
They have also written about the influence of the indigenous American Kandiaronk on the Enlightenment and how a lot what was valuable therein was a shallow understanding of indigenous thought, encountered when Europe was first colonizing the continent. journaldumauss.net/?La-sagesse-de…
I think the belief that anarchism is a narrow political movement which got its start from Proudhon and the IWMA and whose primary application was embodied in a series of European experiments, flattens a complex history where similar principles and ideological forms have prevailed
It is probably most coherent to say that Proudhon and the IWMA and the contemporary thinkers and organizations, were the beginning of European (or Western) Anarchism. And it is not wrong to make this delineation. After all, European Anarchism did have some very unique trends.
Early European Anarchism, for example, differed heavily from indigenous forms, in that it was anti-theistic, physicalist, worker-centric, and, for the most part, unconcerned with humanity's relationship with the environment. This has only been mostly reconciled in recent decades.
And make no mistake, the aspects that I have listed above are very much in the process of being reconciled, even if they are currently unresolved. There is a very substantive and important debate taking place which I believe is invigorating and expanding the study of anarchism.
Modern anarchism is expanding what was already an inherently intersectional analysis of power, re-conceptualizing the importance of ecology, and encouraging the tolerance and integration of a more diverse metaphysics.
I have a great deal of admiration for how the Black anarchic, indigenous American, and broadly non-European anarchist traditions are currently transforming and reclaiming anarchism, applying it to their conditions and histories. It only improves our theory and our practice.
Each of these traditions is notable in that they are all connecting anarchist principles with their own histories; histories which were never explicitly called anarchist and which all predate "anarchism" as a word, but which embody decidedly anarchist forms of organization.
