Victor Prosper Considerant was a French politician and founder of a Utopian community in Texas.
Background
Victor Prosper Considerant was born on October 12, 1808 in Salins, France. He was a remarkable son of a remarkable father. The latter, Jean-Baptiste Considérant, learned professor of the humanities and librarian at Salins, in his efforts to preserve the college buildings during a fire, deliberately permitted two houses of his own, constituting his entire fortune, to burn to the ground. His son was equally public-spirited.
Education
He was ducated in the École polytechnique (Paris) and the École de Metz.
Career
He was quickly advanced to captain in the engineering division of the army, taking part in the war against Algiers in 1830. He sacrificed a promising military career at the call of a philanthropic ideal.
On March 13, 1830, he published in the Mercure de France his adherence to the unpopular communistic theories of Fourier, and therewith, at the age of twenty-one, began his lifework. He resigned from the army and soon made the personal acquaintance at Lyons of Fourier himself, whose trusted lieutenant he became, assisting him to establish a monthly magazine, Le Phalanstère (which became with No. 15 La Reforme Industrielle and in 1836 La Phalange).
In a long series of works Considérant expounded the philosophy of his master, pruned of its extravagancies and patent absurdities. Of these writings the most important were: Destinée sociale; Manifeste de l'école societaire (1841); Exposition abrégée du système Phalansterien de Fourier (1845); Principes du socialisme (1847); Théorie du droit de propriété et du droit au travail (1848); Socialisme devant le vieux monde (1849). After Fourier's death in 1837 Considérant became the acknowledged leader of the movement, winning many previous followers of Saint-Simon, such as Jules Lechevalier and Abel Transon.
He established a Fourierist library in Paris, and, in 1843, a Fourierist daily, La Democratie Pacifique. He was much ridiculed by the conservative press, which, taking advantage of an unfortunate speculation of Fourier to the effect that human beings in a state of perfection would become endowed with tails equipped with eyes, always portrayed Considérant, really a man of much dignity, with a caudal appendage, and delighted to tell of English visitors who came desiring to witness his "perfection. " Nevertheless his influence increased, and through the financial assistance of Arthur Young, an Englishman, he established short-lived phalansteries at Condé-sur-Vesgres and elsewhere.
After the Revolution of 1848 he was elected to represent the Department of the Loire in the Constitutional Assembly in which he introduced an abortive measure to confer the franchise on women. In 1849 he was elected deputy of the Seine, but having taken part in Ledru-Rollin's armed demonstration, on June 13, 1849, against Louis Napoleon's Roman expedition, he was accused of treason and fled to Brussels. In 1852 he paid a visit to America, where, in New York, he obtained the support of Albert Brisbane and subsequently journeyed, largely on horseback, as far as the western part of Texas. On his return he published Au Texas (1854), full of extravagant enthusiasm for the land, climate, and inhabitants of the new region. Plans for colonization, temporarily halted by Considérant's brief imprisonment in Belgium on a charge of conspiracy against a neighboring state, were completed immediately after his release, and a company was formed with a capital of $300, 000, which purchased 57, 000 acres in various parts of Texas. Headed by Considérant himself, the first colonists in April 1855 formed the settlement of Reunion, on the bank of the Trinity River three miles west of Dallas, Texas. Subsequent arrivals brought the number up to between 350 and 500 settlers. Most of these were artisans, with a large sprinkling of writers, musicians, and artists; there were only two farmers in the entire company. As might have been anticipated, with two successive years of drought, the cooperative community was soon in financial difficulties. The opposition of a partially Know-Nothing legislature was overcome by Considérant's eloquent European Colonization in Texas, an Address to the American People, but the cooperative feature was abandoned, and Considérant with his wife and mother-in-law, Mme. Clarice Vigoureux, herself a gifted Fourierist writer, withdrew in disgust to San Antonio where he became an American citizen.
In 1869 he returned to Paris and died there in poverty and obscurity in 1893. His colony had perished even earlier, the company finally selling all its assets in 1875. Today an old cemetery with crumbling headstones is the only vestige of Reunion, but many of its descendants became notable in the subsequent history of the state.