PC/WI: Anarchist communes in Colonial Africa?

I might be off the rails here slightly, but is it plausible that a cabal of 19th century anarchists could of tried to set up anarchist commutes in colonial Africa sometime during the 19th century?
(similar to the way utopian socialists tried in America)

If so, which imperial power might've allowed it and which area of Africa could it have worked?
 
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It's definitely possible but I doubt it would ever attract more than a small following and wouldn't last long. The anarchist movement had its roots in and close ties with trade unionism and bordered on socialism/marxism. I don't think that crowd, usually urban and industrial is going to want to trade that for living on a commune in Africa where their defense, security, and connection to Europe is at the mercy of the imperialism and oppression that they moved there to avoid.

I think the commune isn't unlikely, especially if it's the brainchild of someone who can finance it, but anything other than short term success seems improbable as they'll basically be reduced to farmers. As to which countries would allow it, I think most of the European powers would jump at the chance. "A bunch of our anarchists want to go into voluntary exile in colonial Africa? Where do we sign?"
 
If anarchist communes were to be set up anywhere, it would make far more sense that they would try somewhere in America, possibly the Midwest, due to a more similar climate, almost none of the environmental hazards posed by life in Africa (mosquitoes, disease etc), and ultimately closer links back to industrial civilisation. New Harmony was just one of the more prominent utopian experiments that were attempted in the States. The libertarian portion of libertarian socialist ideology (which is broadly the same as what Kropotkin and Bakunin advocated) would mesh well with the American spirit, although the socialist element - at least arising from an urban industrial concept of the idea - might take longer to instil.
 
If anarchist communes were to be set up anywhere, it would make far more sense that they would try somewhere in America, possibly the Midwest, due to a more similar climate, almost none of the environmental hazards posed by life in Africa (mosquitoes, disease etc), and ultimately closer links back to industrial civilisation.

You could try Rhodesia, Malawi, or the Kenyan highlands, all of which have pleasant enough climates for those of European descent, comparable to parts of Southern Brazil or the Southern US (but not as cold in the winter).
 
You could try Rhodesia, Malawi, or the Kenyan highlands, all of which have pleasant enough climates for those of European descent, comparable to parts of Southern Brazil or the Southern US (but not as cold in the winter)

I'll agree on the climate, but 19th century anarchism was never about pastoralism. It would be a push getting them to set up an ideal society rather than simply aiming for revolution. For example, in The Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin uses historical precedent (most notably the Parisian Commune) as an example of how existing structures can be reorganised. He talks about redistributing housing as opposed to rebuilding it outright, for example. The closest he comes to building something new is his advocacy of market gardening to increase local food supplies.

In fact, it's the very existence of entrenched urban society that Kropotkin builds his theory off of: generations of labour are so mixed and intertwined that it's impossible to ascribe property to anyone, following his interpretation of the labour theory of value and ownership. How can you - or your landlord - own a house that was built 100years ago, in a valley cleared 300 years ago, along the path of a road dug 2,000 years ago? How can the owner of your factory claim that the product he sells is 'his'? Well, you could say you own it because you made it - but how would you have made it if the resources were mined by someone else, using pickaxes someone else made, and transported by a ship made by yet more people? End result is that labour is so mixed that no one person can claim, in an industrial society, to own anything, therefore it's best that it's held communally and distributed on the basis of need as opposed to wealth.

But the principle of building a new settlement out of whole cloth would run contrary to the principles of anarchism (or at the very least Kropotkin's interpretation of it). In the early years at least, the exact nature of who made what would be far clearer, creating far more of a justification for private property than you'd ever find in an old city like Paris or Berlin or Kiev or London. Although they could rotate on undertaking jobs, which is a pretty strongly shared principle across all branches of socialism 100-150 years ago.

Anyway, I think to make a plausible timeline of this, you'd have to create a specific subset of anarchism that's interested enough in pastoralism to make this a reality. The portion of the urban working class and intelligentsia that described themselves as anarchists were far more interested in more efficiently redistributing the existing system in the area they knew through revolution, rather than uprooting themselves from their existing lives and creating and experimenting with an alternative, preferring to take their evidence from past examples (realistic or romanticised).
 
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