Month: March 2006

From the Archives

Oscar C. McColloch, The Tribe of Ishmael (1888)

March 30, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
Fans of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie or Ron Sakolsky and James Koehnline’s Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture will be familiar with the story of the Tribe of Ben Ishmael, a nomadic, mixed-race group that may have had Muslim origins and were eventually the target of a 1907 “eugenic” program of forced sterilization in Indiana. In 1923, Arthur H. Estabrook published an account of the family. The Eugenics Archive also has online a number of pictures of Ishmaelite homes and such. None of this material is uncontroversial. On the genealogy sites, members of the Ishmael family […]
anarchist mutualism

What Mutualism Was – I: Prehistories

March 21, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] [This post seems to have been lost at some point, but there was a draft preserved in my Blogger account.] This is the first of a series of explorations of the mutualist tradition—or, perhaps more appropriately, traditions. The particular perspective they present is, I’m afraid, somewhat revisionist in a variety of ways. It is also a work in progress, so if anyone out there thinks they can set me straight, I would welcome the attempt. Anyway, to begin… As anyone who has explored the matter—or perhaps fought about it on the Wikipedia talk pages—knows, the […]
Uncategorized

Josiah Warren, The First American Anarchist

March 13, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
William Bailie’s Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist remains the best single source we have on Warren’s career, but it’s a bit hard to get your hands on. I was fortunate enough to pick up an original copy awhile back, and I’ve finally got around to preparing an electronic version. I think there’s still a typo or two in this version, and I’ll have to find some time to mark up a good scholarly version with original page numbers, but for all of you who have yet to get a look at the work, here it is. Enjoy!
Contr'un

How I Spent My Spring Vacation

March 13, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
I celebrated a birthday, had my main email account compromised (so if you’ve tried to contact me, I’m not ignoring you, but it may be another day or so before I see you mail), reread What Is Mutualism? and a lot of Proudhon, edited a Wikipedia entry or three, tried to organize my mounting collection of land bank references, started a William B. Greene timeline and miscellany (coming soon), did a lot of class prep, met another of Greene’s great-great-grandchildren online, and started the web-site redesign I need to finish before the Libertarian Labyrinth is really up and available at […]