Copyright by Rondel Van Davidson 1970 ^X^''--V
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Copyright by Rondel Van Davidson 1970 ^x^''--V VICTOR CONSIDERANT: FOURIERIST, LEGISLATOR, AND HUMANITARIAN by RONDEL VAN DAVIDSON, B.A., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN HISTORY Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December, 1970 SOI Mo.25 ACKN0V7LEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to Professor Lowell L. Blaisdell for his direction of this dissertation and to the other members of my committee. Professors Jacquelin Collins, Kenneth Davis, Lawrence Graves, James Harper, and George Robbert, for their helpful criticism. I would also like to thank Professor Louise Robbert of the Department of History at Texas Tech University, Professor Sylvan Dunn, Director of the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech Univer sity, and Madam.e Chantal de Tourtier Bonazzi, Chief Archivist at the Archives Nationales, Paris, France, for valuable assistance. Ill CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii CHAPTER I. BACKGROUI-ro AND EARLY LIFE, I808-I832 . II. THE ENGINEER AS A FLEDGLING IN RADICAL SOCIALIST THEORY, I832-I837 . 25 III. THE RADICAL SOCIALIST AS THEORIST, 57 1837-1848 , 100 IV. THE SOCIALIST AS ACTIVIST, l837-l848 . , V. THE HUMANIST AS POLITICIAN, FEBRUARY 138 1848-NOVEMBER l848 , VI. THE PACIFIST AS REVOLUTIONIST, NOVEMBER 1848-JUNE 1849 , 181 VII. THE EXILE AS OPTIMIST, JULY l849- 222 DECEMBER l854 , 242 VIII. THE OPTIMIST AS DEFEATIST, I855-I869 . , IX. THE FRONTIERSM-AN AS SOCIALIST SAGE, 267 1869-1893 . BIBLIOGRAPHY 288 IV CHAPTER I BACKGROUND AND EARLY LIFE, I808-I832 At noon, on December 28, I893, a funeral proces sion made its way down the Avenue de la Bourdonnais in Paris toward the cemetery at Pere-Lachaise. The cortege bore the remains of Victor Considerant to the famous city resting place for a final memorial service and then cre mation. Although few people noticed the procession, it included some of the leading French socialists of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Almost every school of radical thought had sent delegates to pay their last respects: Marxist, syndicalist, revisionist, and anarchist. Most noticeable, both by numbers and by rank of those in attendance, were the democratic socialists whose delegation was led by Jean Jaur^s and Alexandre Millerand. Upon reaching the Pere-Lachaise, the digni taries gathered to hear Monsieur Caumeau, the representa tive of the Municipal Council of Paris, bid adieu to this "Pioneer of socialism," the "great figure of the repub lican party, who lived for the Republic and not by the Republic."-^ Journal des debats (Paris), December 29^ I893, p. 3. Petite republiaue-^aris), December 30, lt-93, p. 2. For the reader's convenience, the author has translated all quotations from French contained in the text to English Born into the Empire of the great Napoleon, Victor Considerant's life stretched across the Congress Of Vienna, the Revolution of I83O, the Revolution of 1848, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Com mune of Paris, and the first two decades of the Third Republic, Considerant played an important role in the unfolding of many of these events. As the leading propa- 2 gandist and chief of the Fourierist school, he authored almost forty books and numerous pamphlets and essays, edited three newspapers, served in the Constitutional Assembly in 1848-49, was elected to the National Assembly in 1849, was a leading participant in the attempted coup d^etat of June 13, 1849, against Louis Napoleon, founded a Fourierist colony in Texas, opposed the Franco-Prussian War, and verbally supported the Paris Commune in I87I. On the basis of this record, Considerant has earned ranking as one of the outstanding contributors to the heritage IW?"^ — W^' ^The Fourierist movement, founded upon the ideas of Charles Fourier (1772-1837), became one of the leading socialistic movements in western Europe during the period from 1837 to 1848. Brilliant, but eccentric and reclu sive, Fourier advocated a form of Utopian socialism based upon communal type experiments. Because of the tedious, ambiguous, and often preposterous nature of his writings, Fourier's ideas did not take hold during his lifetime. The popularity of Fourierism during the thirteen years following his death can be attributed largely to the leadership and the propagandist activities of Victor Con siderant and his followers in the Fourierist school. q ^ of democratic socialism and as an important figure in the establishment of France's tradition of liberal, democratic government. Victor Considerant's importance does not derive from the few successes he attained during his lifetime. His political life was full of frustrations. What few victories he attained were usually short-lived. For example, Victor's efforts in the National Assembly in 1848-49 to make France into a social, democratic republic stood no chance against the resurging Right, while his attempt to establish a Fourierist phalanstery in Texas was a miserable flop. Nevertheless, throughout his ca reer, he remained imbued with the principles of the En lightenment: the belief in the basic goodness of human ity, faith in the perfectibility of mankind, belief in natural laws, and reliance on the scientific approach to the problems of society. Never losing faith in man's ability to seek, find, and create a better environment for all classes of people, Victor Considerant' s life v/as dedicated to that search. Aside from the fantasy that man could solve his social problems by life in a phalan stery, Victor held ideas which can still arouse reason able hope: economic reorganization to provide opportu nity for all and to stabilize the economic situation of the state, the abolition of class conflicts, the securing of individual liberties, the establishment of government by the people, the abolition of war, and the destruction of nationalistic rivalry through the unification of Europe, Although his ideas were rejected during his life time, some of them continued to influence a later genera tion of more practical minded men who made an immediate reality of democratic socialism. Some of the seeds of democratic socialism are to be found in the concepts of Victor Considerant, For the beginnings of this poignant career, one must look in the little city of Salins, located in the Jura departement in the old Franche-Compte area not far from the Swiss border. On October 12, 1808, Considerant's life began in a stable, middle-class family. From the very beginning, Victor reaped the benefits of enlightened paternal guidance. His mother, Suzanne Courbe, was the daughter of the Notary of Salins. Although she v/as in telligent and well educated, she was shy and sensitive and apparently played a secondary role in the life of her son. Victor's father, Jean-Baptiste, a distinguished humanist and author, was the dominant influence in Victor's early development. Jean-Baptiste Considerant, the son of an employee of the salt-works in Salins, already had dem onstrated liberal republican tendencies. When the V/ars of the French Revolution erupted, he immediately volun teered to serve in the defense of the new Republic. Rapidly rising to officers' rank, Jean-Baptiste evidently c ^ served the Republic well as an aide-de-camp in the Army of Italy.3 After Napoleon came to power in 180O, Jean- Baptiste resigned his position in the army and returned to Salins to begin his scholarly and intellectual pur suits. At the time of Victor's birth in 1808, he was serving simultaneously as the librarian for the College of Salins and as operator of a printing shop which was housed in the buildings of the college. In l8l2, the college appointed him Professor of Humanities and in 1821 Professor of Rhetoric. While performing his duties as Professor and librarian, Jean-Baptiste engaged in personal research and study, publishing and translating various English, Spanish, and Latin works. The most significant of these was The English Fox by the British author, ti -i^ m ••! •••••• 1111 -^ M ••! •• w — - John Gay. Jean-Baptiste's contemporaries described him as a man of remarkable intelligence, v;ith a high character and a strong humanitarian sense of self-sacrifice and '^Hubert Bourgin, Victor Considerant, son oeuvre (Paris, 1909), p. 11. Hereafter referred to as Bourgin, Considerant. Georges Gazier, Jean-Baptiste Considerant de Salln~1771-l827 (Besancon, 1909)^ pp. b-12. Here after referred to as Gazier, Jean-Baptiste. pi Wi • •- • » II"! II ^"-^ •• H IH I ^Gazier, Jean-Baptiste, pp. 12-19. For the reader's convenience, the author has translated all titles of French books in the text from French to English. devotion. At once a foe of hypocrisy and of material istic accumulation, he was concerned primarily with in tellectual and spiritual pursuits. One of his friends said of him: "This rare man sees nothing, feels nothing, expresses nothing even similar to the vulgar." His biog rapher, George Gazier, argued that Jean-Baptiste most certainly would have made a name for himself in letters if his economic and domestic situation had not forced him to spend most of his time eking out a meager existence for himself and his family.^ Little is known about Victor's early life before 1818. It is certain that his parents had very high aspi rations for him, for they worked diligently to provide him with the best education possible. When Victor was six, they enrolled him in the Brissot Boarding School in Salins. At that time, this school was one of the best primary schools in Jura. In school, Victor buoyed his parents' hopes by demonstrating an aptitude for mathe- matics, calculations, and mental organization. ^Ibid., pp. 21-24. ^Pierre Collard, Victor Considerant, I808-I893, sa vie, ses idees (Bijon, 191O), pp. 1-3- Hereafter referred to as Collard, Considerant.