Did they challenge popular understanding of the concept? What was their opposing explanation?
Moses, I think the first best advice I can give is to really look at the history behind each particular event. Historic uniquenesses have so much to do with how 'rebels' frame their issues. In my own country's break from Britain, major issues, though framed as "freedom", were primarily about the right to control trade and international relations (especially with France and Spain), and only secondarily with individual rights. But, they were FRAMED in individual rights terminology for the purposes of both giving and expecting each free American to govern himself: Anarchistic concepts of self-rule VS rule from the top, were defined as, and woven-into a new nationalism. The United States could do this and became the nation it did because it had a frontier, and independence and self-efficacy were paramount in that environment.
Anarchism shared with Socialism a theoretically universalist and internationalist basis. However, when we look at the political practice, a nationalism of the oppressed emerged too. States are not the only source of nationalism and some nationalisms are actually state-subverting and emancipatory.
As a point of departure, check Wikipedia's "Anarchism and Nationalism" entry, and Benedict Anderson's book Anarchists and the Anticolonial Imagination.
Please see this site: http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/faq/sp001547/secD6.html
I would agree with Paula: If anarchism in the strictest sense is about resisting the creation/continuation of the form we call 'the state'-formalized, centralized power through institutionalized government. I believe it is naive to suggest that we could have a Modern/Post-Modern technology without a state--at least for now. Perhaps I'm too anthropological, but when you start talking about doing away with a state, you have to realistically consider a major down-shift in your technology. I say this from the evidences of history: the only really successful anarchistic communities have been small, and much more Mechanical in their solidarity (look at Durkheim for this), suggesting a simpler technology that everyone in the community understands and can operate with near-equal capacity, once given basic skills training.
Yes, I agree with Paula and Lehman on the anti-state philosophy of anarchism. And the call to look at the uniqueness of each historical case is well taken. I thought it intriguing the way anarchists sought an internationalist interpretation to politics, as Raul rightly observed. Reading American anarchists' objections to World War I, for instance, reveals anarchists' fear about and distrust of nationalism as "a product of state action and elite rule," as Paula notes. Such a class-inclined notion of nationalism intrigued me and encouraged me to dig into this. I find it significant that questions of national security (conflict and security are my research focus) were framed around the rhetoric of nationalism and patriotism. Karen Greenberg notes how, through this, people mortgaged their freedoms to the institutions of state. I am looking to understand how anarchists redefine and explained nationalism in reaction to those nationalistic propaganda of the national security state during WWI.
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