Max Nettlau was a remarkable historian not only because of the huge variety of sources he endeavored to explore but also because of his tenacity as to detail, his convictions regarding interpretative models of history, and, lastly, his ideas about the use of historical investigation. Basically, he was a positivist historian with a commitment to learning lessons from history. The first peak in globalization occurred in the 50 years leading up to World War I. That was also the heyday of classic and transnational anarchism. Anarchism was the most developed stage of socialism. It was made by people with independent minds, and it raised socialism above economic questions by putting political and cultural topics on the agenda. Nettlau's history of anarchism contains some interesting indications of how to include the transnational scale. To investigate the transnational actions of militants, his almost prosopographical procedure, which involved following individuals and revealing their networks, seems highly apt.