Reclus, Jacques Élisée (sold)

Jacques Élisée Reclus (March 15, 1830 - July 4, 1905) was a French geographer and anarchist. His massive, nineteen-volume Nouvelle Géographie universelle would win him the acclaim of the Paris Geographical Society, in spite of his having been banished from the country for his anarchist activism. He was born at Sainte-Foy-la-Grande to a Protestant family of pastors and teachers. From early on, his political views would take a toll on his pursuits, contributing to his expulsion from his baccalaureate in Sainte-Foy. He relocated to Berlin, and completed his studies in the University there, studying geography among other disciplines. He stayed out of France during Louis-Napoléon's coup and the authoritarian suppressions that followed; instead, he traveled in Great Britain and the Americas. He worked as a tutor for American cousins in Louisiana between 1853 and 1856, and would publish an account of his passage through the Mississippi Delta and his visit to New Orleans. Afterwards, he returned to Paris, where he wrote and published his geographical studies. During the 1870-71 Siege of Paris, Reclus would serve in the National Guard, aiding Félix Nadar in his efforts to use hot air balloons to provide Parisians with a link to the world beyond the siege. A public supporter of the Paris Commune, he would be taken prisoner by the Versailles government and banished from France for life. He resettled in Switzerland, where he would produce most of his Nouvelle Géographie, which was notable in focusing on the effects of geographic features on human population - and the primacy of those physical elements over political boundaries, presaging the modern discipline of bioregionalism. He would also publish an anarchist newspaper - Le Travailleur - and would initiate a movement in support of 'free unions' to replace formal marriage, on both anarchist and feminist grounds. He encouraged his daughters to choose such unions, and after the death of his first wife would do so himself. He operated his home as a haven for worldwide dissidents, notably Luigi Galleani. He relocated to Brussels upon his appointment as chair of comparative geography at the Free University of Brussels in 1894. Before his death in 1905, he completed his capstone work, L'Homme et la terre, which explored further the role of the environment in shaping human development.