September 25, 2024 • 40 mins
In the mid-19th century Étienne Cabet had an idea to establish a utopian society in Texas, and he moved his followers from France to do it. Things went badly, but he persisted, and established multiple communities in North America.
Research:
- American Experience. “Timeline: The Early History of the Mormons.” https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/mormons-timeline/
- Beautiful Nauvoo. “Nauvoo German-Icarian History.” https://beautifulnauvoo.com/nauvoo-german-icarian-history/
- Christopher E. Guthrie, “Cabet, Étienne,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed September 04, 2024, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/cabet-etienne.
- "Étienne Cabet." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, Gale, 1998. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631001065/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=e54772f5. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
- JOHNSON, CHRISTOPHER H. "Cabet, Étienne." Europe 1789-1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire, edited by John Merriman and Jay Winter, vol. 1, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006, pp. 337-338. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3446900127/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=2e6d79bb. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
- Kagay, Donald J. “Icaria: An Aborted Utopia on the Texas Frontier.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly , April, 2013, Vol. 116, No. 4. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24388374
- Last, John. “The 19th-Century Novel That Inspired a Communist Utopia on the American Frontier.” Smithsonian. 11/28/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-19th-century-novel-that-inspired-a-communist-utopia-on-the-american-frontier-icarians-180983302/
- Nordhoff, Charles. “The Communistic Societies of the United States From Personal Visit and Observation.” London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1875. https://www.google.it/books/edition/The_Communistic_Societies_of_the_United/EXsRAAAAYAAJ
- Rousselière, Damien. “’It Was Not a Failure, and It Will One Day Be Recognized as the Only Right Social Order’. On Icarian Communism.” American Communist History, 22:1-2, 51-67, DOI: 10.1080/14743892.2022.2142020
- Shaw, Albert. “Icaria : a chapter in the history of communism.” New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1884. https://archive.org/details/icariachapterinh00shaw/
- Sutton, Robert P. “Etienne Cabet and the Nauvoo Icarians: The Mormon Interface.” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal , 2002. Via JSTOR. http://www.jstor.com/stable/43200389
- Vallet, Emile. “Communism: history of the experiment at Nauvoo of the Icarian settlement.” Nauvoo, Illinois : Printed by The Nauvoo Rustler. 1917. https://archive.org/details/communismhistory01vall/
- Wiegenstein, Steve. “The Icarians and Their Neighbors.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology , September 2006. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20853106
- Winnerman, Jim. "Icarians went West in search of utopia: the colonies are long gone, but lowans recall the movement." Wild West, vol. 28, no. 4, Dec. 2015, pp. 20+. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A431578978/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=f46ed77e. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I dropped everything to learn more about Ettien Cabe after
he and his utopian experiments came up in the Narcisse
Montreal episode, which was the last thing I worked on
before this one. I'm not exaggerating. I had a whole
different plan for what I was going to work on next,
which I threw out the window and said, Ettien Cabe
(00:40):
and so here we are. That's today's episode.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Dun Dun Dun. Ettienkaba was born on January first, seventeen
eighty eight, in Dijon, France. His father, Claude, was a
cooper and his mother's name was Francoise. Various sources described
Claude as a radical, including being a member of the
Jacobin Club and the follower of Maximilian Robespierre during the
(01:03):
French Revolution. These sources are not entirely clear on whether
Claude's support of Robespierre continued throughout the Reign of Terror,
but Etienne was definitely raised in a household that was
passionately anti monarchy and unafraid to take a stand against
real or perceived injustice.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Etienne got an education as a boy, and he spent
some time studying medicine before eventually earning a law degree
in eighteen twelve. Unlike Narcis Montsorial, he definitely became a lawyer,
and he practiced law. A lot of his work focused
on defending or advocating for people who were socially or
politically oppressed, or making things harder for the people or
(01:45):
the entities that were doing that oppressing. He developed a
reputation for being both eloquent and skilled, but his ongoing
activism and political views led to him being banned from
practicing in Dijon, so he moved to Paris.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
By this point, the French Revolution was well in the past.
Napoleon Bonaparte had come and gone, and the Bourbon monarchy
had been restored in France. For about five years after
Napoleon's final downfall, the French government had been fairly moderate.
That changed in February of eighteen twenty with the assassination
of Charles Ferdinand de Bourbon, Duc de Berrie, nephew of
(02:24):
King Louis the eighteenth The Assassin had been one of
Napoleon's supporters and had explicitly stated that his purpose was
to end the Bourbon line of succession. This led to
a backlash that brought a more right wing ultra royalist
government into power, which led to another backlash by Republicans
and others on the left, including the establishment of a
(02:46):
secret revolutionary society called the Charbonarie patterned after the similar
Carbonari in Italy.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Came became director of the Charbonarie as it planned for
an armed uprising against the king. This plot was discovered
and four French soldiers who were connected to it were tried, arrested,
and guillotined. This fate did not befall Cabe. He continued
his anti monarchy pro republic work through things like politics, journalism,
(03:18):
and pamphleteering, and then he took an active part in
the July Revolution of eighteen thirty. During this revolution, Charles
the Tenth, who had become king after Louis the eighteenth's
death in eighteen twenty four, abdicated and was replaced by
Louis Philippe, who had been a member of the Jackoman
Club and for the most part pretty supportive of the
(03:39):
liberal opposition.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Louis Philippe was styled as King of the French, not
King of France. A revised constitution established France as a
constitutional monarchy and preserved various rites that had been achieved
during the French Revolution. There were also efforts to establish
a government and administration that would satisfy people on both
the left and the right, including appointing people from both
(04:04):
sides to various positions. Ettienn Kabe, at this point, well
known for his radical and revolutionary activities, was named Attorney
General of Corsica. This appointment did not last very long, though.
Trying to satisfy to diametrically opposed factions was an impossible task,
(04:25):
and the king faced continual challenges from both ends of
the political spectrum, including from Cabe. Kabe wrote a book
about what he saw as the failure of the revolution
and established a radical newspaper called Le Populaire. Ultimately, Kabe
either left his position as Attorney General or was removed
(04:46):
from it. I'm not totally clear on the details, but
he still had enough support from like minded people to
be elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the French parliament.
The government suppressed Kabe's newspaper in eight thirty four, and
he was charged with les majeste, or crime against the sovereign.
After being convicted, he was given a choice of going
(05:09):
to prison or going into exile, and he chose exile.
He went to London, where he stayed for almost five years.
One of the sources that Tracy used in this episode
says that he took his common law wife, Delphi Lossage
with him along with their daughter Celine, but another says
that he met and married Delphine while he was in London.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
In London, Kabe taught French. While working on his English,
he wrote a history of the French Revolution, which came
out in eighteen thirty nine, as well as the six
hundred page History of Christianity, which focused on Jesus Christ
as an advocate of economic equality and described the Kingdom
of Heaven as communist in nature. And he started reading
(05:53):
works like Thomas Moore's Utopia and writings by Robert Owen,
who we talked about in our most recent Saturday Classic.
Cabe and Owen also met to talk about these ideas.
At this point, Owen had ended his efforts with communal
living in New Harmony, Indiana, and he had returned to Britain.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Here's how Kabay saw the state of things, as described
by journalist Albert Shaw in a book about him in
eighteen eighty four. Quote. What had been at first a
movement of the middle class against an absolute monarch and
an intolerable aristocracy had almost imperceptibly come to be a
movement of the lowest class against the middle class. The
(06:33):
first and second estates were no longer formidable. Louis Philippe
was the king of the bourgeoisie. Money was the new tyrant.
Capital controlled the electorate. The government was in league with bankers, manufacturers,
and the mercantile classes. Democracy now meant the movement of
the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Society was breaking into two
(06:56):
more and more clearly defined classes, the rich and pro prosperous,
the capitalized class numbered by thousands, and the laboring class,
numbered by millions. Oppression was no longer conceived of as political,
but as industrial.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Kabey also saw all of this not as a new phenomenon,
but as something that had been playing out over and
over again throughout history. He saw humanity as continually divided
into a quote, crude, idle arrogant minority that hoarded all
the wealth and imposed poverty on everybody else. He thought
(07:32):
the only way forward was to find some way to
prevent this one small portion of humanity from continually praying
on everyone.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So he wrote a book about a place that was
free of all this. Voyage on Icari or Voyage to Acaria,
also known as Voyage and Adventures of Lord William Caresdale
in Acaria. It's presented as the journal of a young
English nobleman detailing his experiences in a nation ruled by
a benevolent dictator known as a car. Akaria is presented
(08:05):
as an ideal society, completely egalitarian and almost like an
enormous family. Each province is divided into self governing communes,
which make decisions by consensus. Representatives from each commune do
the same at the provincial and national level, with a
car guiding the nation through a transition into this perfect system.
(08:28):
Everyone in Akaria worked, but thanks to all that collective
labor and access to various technologies, the work was easy
and the days were short. Everyone had what they needed,
and there was no money or need to buy or
sell anything, no private property and no crime kebe returned.
To Paris in eighteen thirty nine after the end of
(08:50):
his period of exile, and Voyage to Ikaria was published.
The following year, he also relaunched Le Populaire, and his
ideas and write became really popular, especially among skilled crafts
people whose work was being affected by mechanization and industrialization.
One example was tailors who were seeing a shift from
(09:12):
making bespoke garments to mass production. Kabay's ideas were also
appealing to a lot of women. He talked and wrote
a lot about how women were oppressed by the same
systems as men were, but then were further oppressed by
being stripped of their rights and relegated to domestic roles
in servitude. This included both paid and unpaid labor in
(09:35):
their own families and for others.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Soon people were having discussion groups in places like coffee
shops and other gathering places to talk about Kabay's work
and the idea of a truly egalitarian society. For the
next few years, Kabay continued his writing and his printing work.
He published the book on Christianity that he had written
back in London as well. Eventually, he started making plans
(10:02):
to establish a real life Akaria. In the words of
journalist Charles Nordoff, who visited an Akarian community much later,
quote Ettien Cabe had a pretty dream. This dream took
hold of his mind, and he spent sixteen years of
his life in trying to turn it into real life.
He advocated for this plan in Le Populaire, announcing it
(10:24):
in May of eighteen forty seven with a proclamation that
began Alonsonicerie. Updates on arrangements and fundraising and proposals for
where to go played out in the paper, and the
following year Le Populaire included an announcement that the settlement
would be established in Texas. We'll have more on that
(10:46):
after a sponsor break. Eten CABE's idea to establish an
Acarian society in Texas was influenced by Robert Owen. Shortly
after the end of Owen's efforts in New Harmony, he
(11:08):
had looked at the possibility of establishing another community in
northern Mexico. This never came to fruition, in part because
of an immigration law passed by Mexico in eighteen thirty.
This was when huge numbers of US citizens were immigrating
to Mexico and Mexico was afraid that the United States
(11:28):
would try to annex this part of its territory. This
law limited immigration into Mexico from the United States and
also banned enslaved people being brought into Mexico. That was
an issue because a lot of the Americans who were
wanting to go to Mexico also wanted to bring an
enslaved workforce with them. Of course, this law did not
(11:53):
have the intended effect of keeping Mexico from losing this territory.
Americans moved there illegally anyway, and Texas declared itself independent
in eighteen thirty six. It became a US state in
eighteen forty five, so by the time Kabe started looking
for a place to establish Acaria, the region Owen had
(12:14):
been considering was part of the United States. Owen connected
Kaba to a land agent named William Smalling Peters, who
worked out a deal for one thousand acres of land
along the Trinity River, along with another ten thousand, two
hundred forty acres of land farther away from the river.
But this land would only be theirs if the Acarians
(12:35):
established homesteads on each of the parcels by July first,
eighteen forty eight. Meanwhile, the front page announcement in the
Populaire announcing a plan to go to Texas came out
on November fourteenth, eighteen forty seven, just a little more
than six months before that deadline. The first group of
sixty nine Akarians didn't set sail from the hav France
(12:57):
until February third, eighteen forty eight. When this group got
to the United States, things went very badly. They arrived
in New Orleans, Louisiana, and then they went on to
Shreveport by steamboat. Once they got to Shreveport, they had
to go west about three hundred miles or four hundred
and eighty two kilometers over roads that barely existed. Once
(13:22):
they got to their allotted land, they discovered that this
was not thousands of contiguous acres. Plots of about six
hundred and forty acres each were scattered in almost a
checkerboard pattern, with the state of Texas still controlling the
rest of the board. The whole point was to establish
a community where people would live and work and eat collectively.
(13:45):
So this arrangement of separated plots of land that were
not connected to each other, that was just not suited
to what they were trying to do. It's a little
unclear whether Kabay or these first arrivals were aware of
this setup beforehand, or whether a language barrier might have
(14:05):
affected what the Akarians understood about exactly what the land
that they were getting. Also, since that first group of
Acarians did not even get to Texas until June second,
they had less than a month to try to build
a house on each of these parcels. This was not
the end of it, though a lot of the land
(14:27):
was swampy and there were lots of mosquitoes. We mentioned
earlier that Kabe's ideas were really appealing to skilled crafts
people whose trades were being affected by industrialization. So these
are the kind of people who might be able to
make things to use or sell to keep a colony
going once it was established. But they were not farmers,
(14:47):
and they were not accustomed to the kind of labor
required to farm completely unbroken ground. They seemed to have
escaped a yellow fever outbreak that struck New Orleans that year,
but many of them contracted malaria. At least four people
died of it or other illnesses. One person was struck
by lightning and their doctor got sick and then had
(15:09):
some kind of serious mental health crisis. Although the Akarians
did manage to get some shacks built on these parcels
of land, trying to do that by their deadline meant
that they had almost no crops planted by the start
of August. Then the late summer heat made that health
situation even worse. It became clear that there was just
(15:31):
no way that they would be able to plant enough
food to live off over the winter. They finally decided
to go back to Shreveport, where they handed over all
the materials and tools and oxen that they had bought
from the Peters Company. A second group of twenty one
men had arrived in Texas just days before this decision
(15:52):
was made, and one of them wrote to Kaba with
just a really discouraging report of what was going on.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
To add to all of this, events back in France
had called this whole project into question. Kabey had an
estimated four hundred thousand followers, and fewer than one hundred
had actually left to go to the United States. Many
more had put their money toward this cause, though, and
Kabey started to face a lot of suspicion about exactly
(16:20):
what he was doing with that money. As the first
group had been preparing to leave, Kabey had been charged
with fraud. He was cleared, but this was a huge disruption.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
And on February twenty second, just about three weeks after
that first group had departed for the United States, a
revolution began in France. It was one of a series
of revolutions that started across parts of Europe in eighteen
forty eight. By February twenty fourth, King Louis Philippe had
been deposed and France had once again become a republic.
(16:54):
Acarians in France were split over what they should do.
Should they continue on with their plan of establishing a
colony in the United States, or should they try to
make this new French republic more like what they envisioned
for Akaria. Some went so far as to argue for
that advance group to be recalled, and after hearing the news,
(17:15):
some of the ones who had gone to the United
States wanted to return to France.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Kabey thought there was no possible way to turn France
into the communist utopia he envisioned. While he had a
lot of followers, there was just too much antipathy for
his ideas and for the entire concept of communism, so
he continued making preparations to go to the US. Kabe
arrived in New Orleans with more followers in December of
(17:42):
eighteen forty eight. Everybody found temporary places to stay while
they and those earlier arrivals all decided what to do.
Although some did go back to France and some filed
suit against Kabe for fraud. Once they got there, the
majority decided they should find another more suitable place to
(18:02):
build their utopia. A small group set out to look
for a new location along the Mississippi River. What they
found was Navu, Illinois. Navu was built on land purchased
by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints
in eighteen thirty nine, after the church had been expelled
from the state of Missouri the year before. The church's
(18:23):
headquarters were located in Navu from eighteen thirty nine to
eighteen forty six, and during that time the city's population
was predominantly made up of church members. Navu had grown
into one of the largest cities in Illinois, but the
Latter day Saints had started leaving in eighteen forty four.
After founder Joseph Smith and his brother Hiram were shot
(18:44):
and killed while in jail facing charges of treason in
nearby Carthage. This is, of course a whole long story,
but the treason charge stemmed from Smith calling out the
militia to enforce martial law during a dispute involving a
newspaper that had been highly critical of him. Harassment and
persecution of church members had escalated after the Smiths were killed,
(19:07):
including the burning down of more than two hundred homes
and farms in September of eighteen forty five, so by
eighteen forty six, much of Navu was abandoned.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
When Kabe's Location Scouts arrived there in early eighteen forty nine,
Navu really seemed ready made for their purposes. There were
already homes, farms, stores, and other buildings. The land had
been prepared and tended. It was not an undrained swamp
or an uncultivated prairie. Since it was on the Mississippi River,
(19:39):
it would be pretty easy for new arrivals to get there.
The remaining Ofkareans in the United States voted to move
to Navu at the end of February, and once they
were there they bought and leased various buildings and parcels
of land from the church trustees. One of these buying
decisions was controversial. Kabai wanted to buy the ten which
(20:00):
had been badly damaged in a fire. Most of what
was left was the stone work. Kabe hoped to turn
this into the community's school, dining hall, and gathering space.
People who objected to this plan thought it was too expensive,
it needed a lot of work to make it usable,
and buying it meant they couldn't afford to buy more
practical buildings. Akaria was at least theoretically supposed to make
(20:25):
decisions based on consensus, although only men had voting rights,
but they had also elected Kabe to essentially act as
a dictator for a ten year period while the colony
was getting started. He went ahead with that purchase, but
the temple was struck by a tornado in eighteen fifty
when the work on it had barely begun. From that point,
(20:47):
its stones were repurposed into other buildings. Yeah in addition
to the tornado, they had possibly been ripped off by
somebody they bought large timbers from for the work that
needed to be done on the interior. At this community's peak,
there were about five hundred Akarians living in Navu, although
people were continually deciding to return to Europe and being
(21:10):
replaced by new arrivals, mostly from France, but from other
parts of Europe as well. Emil Valet, whose family joined
the Navu community in eighteen forty nine, described it this way,
to the exception of the family, everything was in common
among them. No private property, no monies, no poor, no rich,
no competition, no antagonism, complete solidarity, the strong working for
(21:35):
the feeble, the sick, the one working for all, and
all working for one, everyone producing according to his strength,
his talent, his skill, and consuming according to his wants.
No lawyers but arbitrators. The schools open to all children,
equally universal suffrage for men above twenty years of age.
(21:56):
Women having the deliberative right, and as soon as an enlightened,
the consultative right. The people having its full and complete sovereignty,
making its own laws and willing to submit to the
dictation of the majority. Women rehabilitated, cherished and respected, love, confidence, security, happiness.
(22:18):
Just to be clear that passage was part of an
essay in which Valet hoped to show quote the demoralizing
influence of communism on men and its inadaptability to human nature. Yeah,
that this paragraph sounded so idealistic to me that it
seemed weird to just not make it clear he was
not saying that this turned out great. It's funny because
(22:39):
he does make it sound fantastic. He makes it sound
pretty awesome. To join this community, people had to pay
an entry fee. The amounts changed at various points, but
generally it was around six hundred francs. If somebody left
the community, this money was returned to them. They also
had to be prepared with enough clothing to survive for
(23:00):
about five years, so that money plus clothing meant that
people had to have some income some amount of wealth.
To join up, parents had to agree for their children
to be educated in what was basically a boarding school
with pretty limited contact with the rest of the family.
Divorce was allowed, but marriage was also expected, so if
(23:20):
somebody got divorced, they were supposed to find a new
spouse quickly.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
The community was also non theistic, and many members were
atheist or agnostic, but people could also continue to uphold
their own religious beliefs if they had them, and much
of Kabe's writing was underpinned with what he saw as
Christian morality. Kabai also wanted Akaria to function within the
scope of local and federal laws, like getting their community
(23:47):
formally chartered by the Illinois legislature and Akarian's becoming US citizens.
Kabey himself became a citizen in eighteen fifty four, and
there was at least one mass naturalization ceremony held in Navu.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
At least twenty people died in a cholera outbreak aboard
the steamboats on their way to Navu from New Orleans,
but apart from that, this effort went far more smoothly
than what had happened in Texas. Soon the Akarians purchased
a distillery and a flour mill to be used as
sources of income for the community. They also acquired a
(24:24):
printing press and established a library. But things took a
turn after Kabe had to return to France in eighteen
fifty one to face charges of fraud. Although he was
cleared of these charges, he was appalled by how he
found things when he returned to Navu. Although some Akarians
had occasionally consumed alcohol, now people were drinking to excess,
(24:47):
and some of them had taken up smoking, which he
also despised.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Some of the women had started wearing perfume and having
individual personal items that they considered their own. Kabe wrote
up a new, much stricter code of conduct called the
forty eight Articles that a lot of people found really tyrannical,
in which the majority voted against implementing. Although Navu had
a lot of advantages for the Akarians, Kabey had intended
(25:15):
it to be a temporary home and had planned for
the community to eventually move farther west. To that end,
in eighteen fifty two, a group of Akarians traveled to
Adams County, Iowa, and they acquired land there near Courning.
This community became known as a welcoming stop on the
thirteen hundred mile trek from Navu, Illinois that members of
(25:37):
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints followed
to Salt Lake City. This trek was known as the
Mormon Trail. Much of this migration took place in eighteen
forty six in eighteen forty seven, but it continued until
the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in eighteen sixty nine,
at which point most people just went by train, so
this community in Iowa was a plan for a future move,
(25:59):
not schism, but there were schisms to come, and we're
going to get into those after we paused for a
sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
As an Akarian community was being established in Adams County, Iowa,
the community at Navu, Illinois was becoming increasingly contentious. Kabe's
approach to being sort of a limited time benevolent dictator
was falling apart. The community had held annual elections at
which he had been unanimously voted president every time, but
(26:39):
when he wanted to change the community's charter so that
the president would be elected every four years instead of annually,
people objected. There were also growing divisions over the role
of women. Although Kabe had talked a lot about the
ways that women were at a disadvantage in society, Akarian
women still did not have the right to vote, and
(27:01):
a lot of the times they were the ones doing
most of the domestic work.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
In eighteen fifty six, as Kabai's decisions became increasingly unpopular,
the Akarians elected JB. Girard to be their president, but
Kabai refused to allow him and the newly elected governing
board to be installed. There had also been some back
and forth leading up to this election, in which Kabey
agreed to withdraw his proposals for changing their charter in
(27:29):
exchange for being elected for another term, but then didn't
actually withdraw them. Kabay started undermining the community, doing things
like raising questions about their financial position with their creditors
and keeping the account books secret from the people who
were supposed to be taking responsibility for them. Some of
his critics petitioned the Illinois legislature asking them to repeal
(27:52):
the community's active incorporation, but that effort failed. This eventually
led to an extremely acrimonious schism, with the majority of
the community voting to expel Kabey. Afterward, kab took about
one hundred and eighty people who still supported him to
Saint Louis. Here's how Albert Shaw described the aftermath of
(28:15):
this quote. It need scarcely be said that the community
at Navu had been greatly weakened by the split. Much
of the movable property, all of the account books, a
large portion of the library had been carried off by
the cecidars. The titles to the real estate, both in
Navu and in Iowa, were in Kabay's name, and long
(28:38):
tedious suits were required in order to give the community
perfect legal title to its own premises. The whole system
of industry had been deranged, crops had failed, debts had
greatly increased. The Saint Louis party, claiming as we have
already shown to be the real Akarians and maintaining the
(28:59):
old bureau in Paris, had so industriously circulated their version
of the story in France that the Navu majority were
there regarded by their still numerous Akarian fellow disciples as
base ingrates who had overturned the society for selfish ends,
driven away their noble benefactor, Cabe broken his heart and
(29:23):
caused his death by their brutal treatment. Letters of explanation
sent from Navu to France were returned unanswered. No more
funds or recruits came to Navu. If that phrase caused
his death by their brutal mistreatment, caught your attention. On
November eighth, eighteen fifty six, about a week after arriving
(29:45):
in Saint Louis, Ettienkabe had a stroke and he died
at the age of sixty eight. The people who had
followed him to Saint Louis were truly devastated. One of
them took their own life, but the rest decided to
try to carry on. They remained in Saint Louis while
they tried to work out a plan, and then in
May of the following year they bought an estate called Cheltenham,
(30:07):
west of the city. It only came with twenty eight
acres of land, but it already had a large house
and some cabins, and was close enough to Saint Louis
that people who had gotten jobs there could go back
and forth to work to help keep the community afloat.
About one hundred and fifty Acarians moved to Cheltenham, but
they soon faced similar divisions to what had happened back
(30:29):
in Navu, with some people wanting the community to be
united under one powerful leader and others wanting a system
that was more egalitarian. People continually left and were continually
replenished with new arrivals from France, who again thought this
one was the real Akaria, but eventually there were more
(30:50):
people leaving than arriving. After the start of the Civil War,
a lot of young men left to join the US army.
By eighteen sixty four, there there were only about twenty
Akarians left at Cheltenham, which was not enough to keep
the community going, and it was disbanded that March.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
The community at Navu was also following through on the
plan to move to Iowa, although there were some people
who decided to return to France instead. The Akarians had
established a new charter with the state of Iowa in
eighteen sixty, and that charter did allow for some individual
property ownership. Unlike the group at Cheltenham, which had lost
(31:30):
so many members that it could not survive a further
reduction during the Civil War, the Aekarians in Iowa found
that their crops and their wool were in very high demand,
so they weathered the war and they were even able
to acquire some more land for the community. We read
from the writing of journalist Charles Nordhoff earlier in the show.
(31:51):
He visited the Akarians in Iowa in eighteen seventy four.
At that point, their community had sixty three members described
their life as hard, a huge contrast to what Kabe
had envisioned in recruitment pamphlets that the Akarians produced earlier
on For example, back in eighteen fifty four, the Akarians
(32:11):
in Navou published a German language pamphlet that had described
what Kabe thought he could do if he was able
to secure half a million dollars, an amount that would
give him access to a lot more credit, which he
could then use to secure all kinds of necessities and
even some luxuries. Nordhoff also pointed out the contradiction in
(32:32):
the idea of starting a commune based on the idea
of total economic equality by taking on an enormous amount
of debt. In this pamphlet, Kabe had described quote dwellings
supplied with gas and hot and cold water, of factories
fitted up on the largest scale, of fertile farms, under
(32:53):
the best culture of schools, high and elementary, of theaters
and other places of amusement, of elegantly kept pleasure grounds,
and so on. But the Acarians in Iowa had started
out twenty thousand dollars in debt, and at first they
were able to build only mud huts to live in.
(33:13):
They eventually upgraded to log cabins and then two frame houses,
plus a dining hall, a wash house, a dairy, a schoolhouse,
and various workshops for things like carpentry, blacksmithing, and shoemaking.
A two story building served as their common dining room
and their kitchen, and it also did have a library
(33:34):
and living space on the upper floor. They'd built a
sawmill and a gristmill that they could use to bring
in more income, and they had paid off all of
their debt.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
In other words, for more than twenty years, they had
worked really, really hard, often living in a way that
was barely above subsistence, to get out of debt and
keep their community going. In Nordhoff's words, quote a moderate
degree of prosperity is possible to them now, but they
have waited long for it. I judged that they had
(34:05):
but poor skill in management and no business talent, but
certainly they had abundant courage and determination.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
However, they were still facing similar ideological divisions to what
had played out in the other Akarian communities. One of
the big issues was still women's suffrage, but there were
also disagreements over how strict the community should be and
how open to newcomers, as well as whether they should
(34:35):
be focused on their own community or on trying to
spread communist ideals to the wider public. They gradually coalesced
into two groups known as Young Ikaria and New Ikaria.
Although some of these divisions felt very broadly along age lines.
There were some older people in the young group and
(34:57):
some younger people in the new group. One of the
difficulties in all of this was that the more progressive
people had an overall majority, but they did not have
a majority among the people who were both male and
old enough to vote. These two groups wound up in court,
and in August of eighteen seventy eight, the Akarians charter
(35:20):
was declared to be forfeit. The circuit court designated trustees
from outside the community to divide its property, resulting in
the Iowa settlement being divided into east and west portions.
The young Akarians went to one side and the new
Akarians to the other, with new charters being established in
eighteen seventy nine. I don't know if in practice it
(35:43):
felt like they just put a big tape line down
down the middle of town. That is what it sounds like.
That's how it comes across from me. Eventually, seventeen of
the young Kharians left and they joined a small group
that had previously gone to California. They called themselves the
Acaria Speranza community, with Sporanza coming from Lesperance. That name
(36:05):
was taken from other utopian writing. This group disbanded in
eighteen eighty six. The Akarian community in Iowa carried on
until eighteen ninety eight, and it was the last Akarian
community to disband. It had existed for forty six years,
making it the longest known non religious communal living experiment
(36:25):
in the US. Some of the Akarian communities buildings in Navu,
Illinois and in Corning, Iowa, are still standing and at
least at some points they've been operated as living history museums.
I had trouble tracking down whether any of these are
still operating currently. It seemed like in one case maybe
(36:46):
by appointment, but like no longer functioning websites, phone numbers
hard to track down.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
That kind of a thing. Oh, do you also have
some listener mail? I have so many thoughts about this.
I can't wait for behind this.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
This email is from Mary and it is titled Revolutionary Cookies,
Sweet History, And it's like, we have the email and
we also have a story about the email. The email
starts Hello, Holly and Tracy, and then that's followed by
a series of photographs and the photographs are on a
(37:21):
cookie package for a Jovita edar Concha cookie. Yeah, and
so scrolling pastologies as well as a very cute picture
of a very cute dog can return to the email,
which says, recently, I took a motorcycle ride to the
Claremont packing House In Claremont, California. There are restaurants and stores,
(37:44):
but there was also a kiosk called Revolutionary Bites Bakery,
and since I love cookies and revolutionaries, I stopped to
buy all of their cookies pay tribute to various historical revolutionaries,
many of whom I've never heard of. The strawberry concha
cookie clebrating Hovey to Dar caught my eye. I'm attaching
pictures of the cookie and the history behind Miss Dar
(38:05):
possible future episode. I actually got to see you live
in Los Angeles a few years ago for a spooky
Halloween show. The picture I took with you is one
of my treasured memories for my pet tax I'm attaching
a picture of my granddog Cooper and his silhouette I
had done of him at Disneyland. Thank you Mary, So First,
thank you Mary for this email. Second, when I read it,
(38:27):
I felt like I had fallen into some kind of
wormhole because this email arrived after we had recorded our
episode on Hovey to Edar, but before the episode had
come out, So.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
In my head I was like.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Oh, wow, we already have email about the Hovi' to
Edar episode that just came out.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
No, it was not out yet.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
It was just a serendipitous discovery of this cookie. I
looked at the website and the Instagram page of Revolutionary
Bites Bakery. I found that whole thing very charming. If
I were closer to there, I would definitely go check
out and try some of these cookies. There's the packaging
(39:17):
for the Hovi toa Edark cookie on the back has
like a very brief biography of her and again just
incredibly incredibly cute puppy dog.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
It's also interesting because contra cookies are like have a
long pre colonial history. Oh yeah, yeah, like they're an
interesting historical thing in and of themselves. That's great.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I did not know this, so thank you so much
for this email and these pictures, even though it caused
me to kind of go, what day am I? Where
am I living? Did I fall through time by accident?
If you would like to send us a note about
this or any other podcast, including episodes that we have recorded,
(39:59):
but not really at least yet. You can We're at
History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com and you can find
us on various social media ad Missed in History and
you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app
or wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff
(40:20):
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I dropped everything to learn more about Ettien Cabe after
he and his utopian experiments came up in the Narcisse
Montreal episode, which was the last thing I worked on
before this one. I'm not exaggerating. I had a whole
different plan for what I was going to work on next,
which I threw out the window and said, Ettien Cabe
(00:40):
and so here we are. That's today's episode.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Dun Dun Dun. Ettienkaba was born on January first, seventeen
eighty eight, in Dijon, France. His father, Claude, was a
cooper and his mother's name was Francoise. Various sources described
Claude as a radical, including being a member of the
Jacobin Club and the follower of Maximilian Robespierre during the
(01:03):
French Revolution. These sources are not entirely clear on whether
Claude's support of Robespierre continued throughout the Reign of Terror,
but Etienne was definitely raised in a household that was
passionately anti monarchy and unafraid to take a stand against
real or perceived injustice.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Etienne got an education as a boy, and he spent
some time studying medicine before eventually earning a law degree
in eighteen twelve. Unlike Narcis Montsorial, he definitely became a lawyer,
and he practiced law. A lot of his work focused
on defending or advocating for people who were socially or
politically oppressed, or making things harder for the people or
(01:45):
the entities that were doing that oppressing. He developed a
reputation for being both eloquent and skilled, but his ongoing
activism and political views led to him being banned from
practicing in Dijon, so he moved to Paris.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
By this point, the French Revolution was well in the past.
Napoleon Bonaparte had come and gone, and the Bourbon monarchy
had been restored in France. For about five years after
Napoleon's final downfall, the French government had been fairly moderate.
That changed in February of eighteen twenty with the assassination
of Charles Ferdinand de Bourbon, Duc de Berrie, nephew of
(02:24):
King Louis the eighteenth The Assassin had been one of
Napoleon's supporters and had explicitly stated that his purpose was
to end the Bourbon line of succession. This led to
a backlash that brought a more right wing ultra royalist
government into power, which led to another backlash by Republicans
and others on the left, including the establishment of a
(02:46):
secret revolutionary society called the Charbonarie patterned after the similar
Carbonari in Italy.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Came became director of the Charbonarie as it planned for
an armed uprising against the king. This plot was discovered
and four French soldiers who were connected to it were tried, arrested,
and guillotined. This fate did not befall Cabe. He continued
his anti monarchy pro republic work through things like politics, journalism,
(03:18):
and pamphleteering, and then he took an active part in
the July Revolution of eighteen thirty. During this revolution, Charles
the Tenth, who had become king after Louis the eighteenth's
death in eighteen twenty four, abdicated and was replaced by
Louis Philippe, who had been a member of the Jackoman
Club and for the most part pretty supportive of the
(03:39):
liberal opposition.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Louis Philippe was styled as King of the French, not
King of France. A revised constitution established France as a
constitutional monarchy and preserved various rites that had been achieved
during the French Revolution. There were also efforts to establish
a government and administration that would satisfy people on both
the left and the right, including appointing people from both
(04:04):
sides to various positions. Ettienn Kabe, at this point, well
known for his radical and revolutionary activities, was named Attorney
General of Corsica. This appointment did not last very long, though.
Trying to satisfy to diametrically opposed factions was an impossible task,
(04:25):
and the king faced continual challenges from both ends of
the political spectrum, including from Cabe. Kabe wrote a book
about what he saw as the failure of the revolution
and established a radical newspaper called Le Populaire. Ultimately, Kabe
either left his position as Attorney General or was removed
(04:46):
from it. I'm not totally clear on the details, but
he still had enough support from like minded people to
be elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the French parliament.
The government suppressed Kabe's newspaper in eight thirty four, and
he was charged with les majeste, or crime against the sovereign.
After being convicted, he was given a choice of going
(05:09):
to prison or going into exile, and he chose exile.
He went to London, where he stayed for almost five years.
One of the sources that Tracy used in this episode
says that he took his common law wife, Delphi Lossage
with him along with their daughter Celine, but another says
that he met and married Delphine while he was in London.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
In London, Kabe taught French. While working on his English,
he wrote a history of the French Revolution, which came
out in eighteen thirty nine, as well as the six
hundred page History of Christianity, which focused on Jesus Christ
as an advocate of economic equality and described the Kingdom
of Heaven as communist in nature. And he started reading
(05:53):
works like Thomas Moore's Utopia and writings by Robert Owen,
who we talked about in our most recent Saturday Classic.
Cabe and Owen also met to talk about these ideas.
At this point, Owen had ended his efforts with communal
living in New Harmony, Indiana, and he had returned to Britain.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Here's how Kabay saw the state of things, as described
by journalist Albert Shaw in a book about him in
eighteen eighty four. Quote. What had been at first a
movement of the middle class against an absolute monarch and
an intolerable aristocracy had almost imperceptibly come to be a
movement of the lowest class against the middle class. The
(06:33):
first and second estates were no longer formidable. Louis Philippe
was the king of the bourgeoisie. Money was the new tyrant.
Capital controlled the electorate. The government was in league with bankers, manufacturers,
and the mercantile classes. Democracy now meant the movement of
the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Society was breaking into two
(06:56):
more and more clearly defined classes, the rich and pro prosperous,
the capitalized class numbered by thousands, and the laboring class,
numbered by millions. Oppression was no longer conceived of as political,
but as industrial.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Kabey also saw all of this not as a new phenomenon,
but as something that had been playing out over and
over again throughout history. He saw humanity as continually divided
into a quote, crude, idle arrogant minority that hoarded all
the wealth and imposed poverty on everybody else. He thought
(07:32):
the only way forward was to find some way to
prevent this one small portion of humanity from continually praying
on everyone.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So he wrote a book about a place that was
free of all this. Voyage on Icari or Voyage to Acaria,
also known as Voyage and Adventures of Lord William Caresdale
in Acaria. It's presented as the journal of a young
English nobleman detailing his experiences in a nation ruled by
a benevolent dictator known as a car. Akaria is presented
(08:05):
as an ideal society, completely egalitarian and almost like an
enormous family. Each province is divided into self governing communes,
which make decisions by consensus. Representatives from each commune do
the same at the provincial and national level, with a
car guiding the nation through a transition into this perfect system.
(08:28):
Everyone in Akaria worked, but thanks to all that collective
labor and access to various technologies, the work was easy
and the days were short. Everyone had what they needed,
and there was no money or need to buy or
sell anything, no private property and no crime kebe returned.
To Paris in eighteen thirty nine after the end of
(08:50):
his period of exile, and Voyage to Ikaria was published.
The following year, he also relaunched Le Populaire, and his
ideas and write became really popular, especially among skilled crafts
people whose work was being affected by mechanization and industrialization.
One example was tailors who were seeing a shift from
(09:12):
making bespoke garments to mass production. Kabay's ideas were also
appealing to a lot of women. He talked and wrote
a lot about how women were oppressed by the same
systems as men were, but then were further oppressed by
being stripped of their rights and relegated to domestic roles
in servitude. This included both paid and unpaid labor in
(09:35):
their own families and for others.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Soon people were having discussion groups in places like coffee
shops and other gathering places to talk about Kabay's work
and the idea of a truly egalitarian society. For the
next few years, Kabay continued his writing and his printing work.
He published the book on Christianity that he had written
back in London as well. Eventually, he started making plans
(10:02):
to establish a real life Akaria. In the words of
journalist Charles Nordoff, who visited an Akarian community much later,
quote Ettien Cabe had a pretty dream. This dream took
hold of his mind, and he spent sixteen years of
his life in trying to turn it into real life.
He advocated for this plan in Le Populaire, announcing it
(10:24):
in May of eighteen forty seven with a proclamation that
began Alonsonicerie. Updates on arrangements and fundraising and proposals for
where to go played out in the paper, and the
following year Le Populaire included an announcement that the settlement
would be established in Texas. We'll have more on that
(10:46):
after a sponsor break. Eten CABE's idea to establish an
Acarian society in Texas was influenced by Robert Owen. Shortly
after the end of Owen's efforts in New Harmony, he
(11:08):
had looked at the possibility of establishing another community in
northern Mexico. This never came to fruition, in part because
of an immigration law passed by Mexico in eighteen thirty.
This was when huge numbers of US citizens were immigrating
to Mexico and Mexico was afraid that the United States
(11:28):
would try to annex this part of its territory. This
law limited immigration into Mexico from the United States and
also banned enslaved people being brought into Mexico. That was
an issue because a lot of the Americans who were
wanting to go to Mexico also wanted to bring an
enslaved workforce with them. Of course, this law did not
(11:53):
have the intended effect of keeping Mexico from losing this territory.
Americans moved there illegally anyway, and Texas declared itself independent
in eighteen thirty six. It became a US state in
eighteen forty five, so by the time Kabe started looking
for a place to establish Acaria, the region Owen had
(12:14):
been considering was part of the United States. Owen connected
Kaba to a land agent named William Smalling Peters, who
worked out a deal for one thousand acres of land
along the Trinity River, along with another ten thousand, two
hundred forty acres of land farther away from the river.
But this land would only be theirs if the Acarians
(12:35):
established homesteads on each of the parcels by July first,
eighteen forty eight. Meanwhile, the front page announcement in the
Populaire announcing a plan to go to Texas came out
on November fourteenth, eighteen forty seven, just a little more
than six months before that deadline. The first group of
sixty nine Akarians didn't set sail from the hav France
(12:57):
until February third, eighteen forty eight. When this group got
to the United States, things went very badly. They arrived
in New Orleans, Louisiana, and then they went on to
Shreveport by steamboat. Once they got to Shreveport, they had
to go west about three hundred miles or four hundred
and eighty two kilometers over roads that barely existed. Once
(13:22):
they got to their allotted land, they discovered that this
was not thousands of contiguous acres. Plots of about six
hundred and forty acres each were scattered in almost a
checkerboard pattern, with the state of Texas still controlling the
rest of the board. The whole point was to establish
a community where people would live and work and eat collectively.
(13:45):
So this arrangement of separated plots of land that were
not connected to each other, that was just not suited
to what they were trying to do. It's a little
unclear whether Kabay or these first arrivals were aware of
this setup beforehand, or whether a language barrier might have
(14:05):
affected what the Akarians understood about exactly what the land
that they were getting. Also, since that first group of
Acarians did not even get to Texas until June second,
they had less than a month to try to build
a house on each of these parcels. This was not
the end of it, though a lot of the land
(14:27):
was swampy and there were lots of mosquitoes. We mentioned
earlier that Kabe's ideas were really appealing to skilled crafts
people whose trades were being affected by industrialization. So these
are the kind of people who might be able to
make things to use or sell to keep a colony
going once it was established. But they were not farmers,
(14:47):
and they were not accustomed to the kind of labor
required to farm completely unbroken ground. They seemed to have
escaped a yellow fever outbreak that struck New Orleans that year,
but many of them contracted malaria. At least four people
died of it or other illnesses. One person was struck
by lightning and their doctor got sick and then had
(15:09):
some kind of serious mental health crisis. Although the Akarians
did manage to get some shacks built on these parcels
of land, trying to do that by their deadline meant
that they had almost no crops planted by the start
of August. Then the late summer heat made that health
situation even worse. It became clear that there was just
(15:31):
no way that they would be able to plant enough
food to live off over the winter. They finally decided
to go back to Shreveport, where they handed over all
the materials and tools and oxen that they had bought
from the Peters Company. A second group of twenty one
men had arrived in Texas just days before this decision
(15:52):
was made, and one of them wrote to Kaba with
just a really discouraging report of what was going on.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
To add to all of this, events back in France
had called this whole project into question. Kabey had an
estimated four hundred thousand followers, and fewer than one hundred
had actually left to go to the United States. Many
more had put their money toward this cause, though, and
Kabey started to face a lot of suspicion about exactly
(16:20):
what he was doing with that money. As the first
group had been preparing to leave, Kabey had been charged
with fraud. He was cleared, but this was a huge disruption.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
And on February twenty second, just about three weeks after
that first group had departed for the United States, a
revolution began in France. It was one of a series
of revolutions that started across parts of Europe in eighteen
forty eight. By February twenty fourth, King Louis Philippe had
been deposed and France had once again become a republic.
(16:54):
Acarians in France were split over what they should do.
Should they continue on with their plan of establishing a
colony in the United States, or should they try to
make this new French republic more like what they envisioned
for Akaria. Some went so far as to argue for
that advance group to be recalled, and after hearing the news,
(17:15):
some of the ones who had gone to the United
States wanted to return to France.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Kabey thought there was no possible way to turn France
into the communist utopia he envisioned. While he had a
lot of followers, there was just too much antipathy for
his ideas and for the entire concept of communism, so
he continued making preparations to go to the US. Kabe
arrived in New Orleans with more followers in December of
(17:42):
eighteen forty eight. Everybody found temporary places to stay while
they and those earlier arrivals all decided what to do.
Although some did go back to France and some filed
suit against Kabe for fraud. Once they got there, the
majority decided they should find another more suitable place to
(18:02):
build their utopia. A small group set out to look
for a new location along the Mississippi River. What they
found was Navu, Illinois. Navu was built on land purchased
by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints
in eighteen thirty nine, after the church had been expelled
from the state of Missouri the year before. The church's
(18:23):
headquarters were located in Navu from eighteen thirty nine to
eighteen forty six, and during that time the city's population
was predominantly made up of church members. Navu had grown
into one of the largest cities in Illinois, but the
Latter day Saints had started leaving in eighteen forty four.
After founder Joseph Smith and his brother Hiram were shot
(18:44):
and killed while in jail facing charges of treason in
nearby Carthage. This is, of course a whole long story,
but the treason charge stemmed from Smith calling out the
militia to enforce martial law during a dispute involving a
newspaper that had been highly critical of him. Harassment and
persecution of church members had escalated after the Smiths were killed,
(19:07):
including the burning down of more than two hundred homes
and farms in September of eighteen forty five, so by
eighteen forty six, much of Navu was abandoned.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
When Kabe's Location Scouts arrived there in early eighteen forty nine,
Navu really seemed ready made for their purposes. There were
already homes, farms, stores, and other buildings. The land had
been prepared and tended. It was not an undrained swamp
or an uncultivated prairie. Since it was on the Mississippi River,
(19:39):
it would be pretty easy for new arrivals to get there.
The remaining Ofkareans in the United States voted to move
to Navu at the end of February, and once they
were there they bought and leased various buildings and parcels
of land from the church trustees. One of these buying
decisions was controversial. Kabai wanted to buy the ten which
(20:00):
had been badly damaged in a fire. Most of what
was left was the stone work. Kabe hoped to turn
this into the community's school, dining hall, and gathering space.
People who objected to this plan thought it was too expensive,
it needed a lot of work to make it usable,
and buying it meant they couldn't afford to buy more
practical buildings. Akaria was at least theoretically supposed to make
(20:25):
decisions based on consensus, although only men had voting rights,
but they had also elected Kabe to essentially act as
a dictator for a ten year period while the colony
was getting started. He went ahead with that purchase, but
the temple was struck by a tornado in eighteen fifty
when the work on it had barely begun. From that point,
(20:47):
its stones were repurposed into other buildings. Yeah in addition
to the tornado, they had possibly been ripped off by
somebody they bought large timbers from for the work that
needed to be done on the interior. At this community's peak,
there were about five hundred Akarians living in Navu, although
people were continually deciding to return to Europe and being
(21:10):
replaced by new arrivals, mostly from France, but from other
parts of Europe as well. Emil Valet, whose family joined
the Navu community in eighteen forty nine, described it this way,
to the exception of the family, everything was in common
among them. No private property, no monies, no poor, no rich,
no competition, no antagonism, complete solidarity, the strong working for
(21:35):
the feeble, the sick, the one working for all, and
all working for one, everyone producing according to his strength,
his talent, his skill, and consuming according to his wants.
No lawyers but arbitrators. The schools open to all children,
equally universal suffrage for men above twenty years of age.
(21:56):
Women having the deliberative right, and as soon as an enlightened,
the consultative right. The people having its full and complete sovereignty,
making its own laws and willing to submit to the
dictation of the majority. Women rehabilitated, cherished and respected, love, confidence, security, happiness.
(22:18):
Just to be clear that passage was part of an
essay in which Valet hoped to show quote the demoralizing
influence of communism on men and its inadaptability to human nature. Yeah,
that this paragraph sounded so idealistic to me that it
seemed weird to just not make it clear he was
not saying that this turned out great. It's funny because
(22:39):
he does make it sound fantastic. He makes it sound
pretty awesome. To join this community, people had to pay
an entry fee. The amounts changed at various points, but
generally it was around six hundred francs. If somebody left
the community, this money was returned to them. They also
had to be prepared with enough clothing to survive for
(23:00):
about five years, so that money plus clothing meant that
people had to have some income some amount of wealth.
To join up, parents had to agree for their children
to be educated in what was basically a boarding school
with pretty limited contact with the rest of the family.
Divorce was allowed, but marriage was also expected, so if
(23:20):
somebody got divorced, they were supposed to find a new
spouse quickly.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
The community was also non theistic, and many members were
atheist or agnostic, but people could also continue to uphold
their own religious beliefs if they had them, and much
of Kabe's writing was underpinned with what he saw as
Christian morality. Kabai also wanted Akaria to function within the
scope of local and federal laws, like getting their community
(23:47):
formally chartered by the Illinois legislature and Akarian's becoming US citizens.
Kabey himself became a citizen in eighteen fifty four, and
there was at least one mass naturalization ceremony held in Navu.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
At least twenty people died in a cholera outbreak aboard
the steamboats on their way to Navu from New Orleans,
but apart from that, this effort went far more smoothly
than what had happened in Texas. Soon the Akarians purchased
a distillery and a flour mill to be used as
sources of income for the community. They also acquired a
(24:24):
printing press and established a library. But things took a
turn after Kabe had to return to France in eighteen
fifty one to face charges of fraud. Although he was
cleared of these charges, he was appalled by how he
found things when he returned to Navu. Although some Akarians
had occasionally consumed alcohol, now people were drinking to excess,
(24:47):
and some of them had taken up smoking, which he
also despised.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Some of the women had started wearing perfume and having
individual personal items that they considered their own. Kabe wrote
up a new, much stricter code of conduct called the
forty eight Articles that a lot of people found really tyrannical,
in which the majority voted against implementing. Although Navu had
a lot of advantages for the Akarians, Kabey had intended
(25:15):
it to be a temporary home and had planned for
the community to eventually move farther west. To that end,
in eighteen fifty two, a group of Akarians traveled to
Adams County, Iowa, and they acquired land there near Courning.
This community became known as a welcoming stop on the
thirteen hundred mile trek from Navu, Illinois that members of
(25:37):
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints followed
to Salt Lake City. This trek was known as the
Mormon Trail. Much of this migration took place in eighteen
forty six in eighteen forty seven, but it continued until
the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in eighteen sixty nine,
at which point most people just went by train, so
this community in Iowa was a plan for a future move,
(25:59):
not schism, but there were schisms to come, and we're
going to get into those after we paused for a
sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
As an Akarian community was being established in Adams County, Iowa,
the community at Navu, Illinois was becoming increasingly contentious. Kabe's
approach to being sort of a limited time benevolent dictator
was falling apart. The community had held annual elections at
which he had been unanimously voted president every time, but
(26:39):
when he wanted to change the community's charter so that
the president would be elected every four years instead of annually,
people objected. There were also growing divisions over the role
of women. Although Kabe had talked a lot about the
ways that women were at a disadvantage in society, Akarian
women still did not have the right to vote, and
(27:01):
a lot of the times they were the ones doing
most of the domestic work.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
In eighteen fifty six, as Kabai's decisions became increasingly unpopular,
the Akarians elected JB. Girard to be their president, but
Kabai refused to allow him and the newly elected governing
board to be installed. There had also been some back
and forth leading up to this election, in which Kabey
agreed to withdraw his proposals for changing their charter in
(27:29):
exchange for being elected for another term, but then didn't
actually withdraw them. Kabay started undermining the community, doing things
like raising questions about their financial position with their creditors
and keeping the account books secret from the people who
were supposed to be taking responsibility for them. Some of
his critics petitioned the Illinois legislature asking them to repeal
(27:52):
the community's active incorporation, but that effort failed. This eventually
led to an extremely acrimonious schism, with the majority of
the community voting to expel Kabey. Afterward, kab took about
one hundred and eighty people who still supported him to
Saint Louis. Here's how Albert Shaw described the aftermath of
(28:15):
this quote. It need scarcely be said that the community
at Navu had been greatly weakened by the split. Much
of the movable property, all of the account books, a
large portion of the library had been carried off by
the cecidars. The titles to the real estate, both in
Navu and in Iowa, were in Kabay's name, and long
(28:38):
tedious suits were required in order to give the community
perfect legal title to its own premises. The whole system
of industry had been deranged, crops had failed, debts had
greatly increased. The Saint Louis party, claiming as we have
already shown to be the real Akarians and maintaining the
(28:59):
old bureau in Paris, had so industriously circulated their version
of the story in France that the Navu majority were
there regarded by their still numerous Akarian fellow disciples as
base ingrates who had overturned the society for selfish ends,
driven away their noble benefactor, Cabe broken his heart and
(29:23):
caused his death by their brutal treatment. Letters of explanation
sent from Navu to France were returned unanswered. No more
funds or recruits came to Navu. If that phrase caused
his death by their brutal mistreatment, caught your attention. On
November eighth, eighteen fifty six, about a week after arriving
(29:45):
in Saint Louis, Ettienkabe had a stroke and he died
at the age of sixty eight. The people who had
followed him to Saint Louis were truly devastated. One of
them took their own life, but the rest decided to
try to carry on. They remained in Saint Louis while
they tried to work out a plan, and then in
May of the following year they bought an estate called Cheltenham,
(30:07):
west of the city. It only came with twenty eight
acres of land, but it already had a large house
and some cabins, and was close enough to Saint Louis
that people who had gotten jobs there could go back
and forth to work to help keep the community afloat.
About one hundred and fifty Acarians moved to Cheltenham, but
they soon faced similar divisions to what had happened back
(30:29):
in Navu, with some people wanting the community to be
united under one powerful leader and others wanting a system
that was more egalitarian. People continually left and were continually
replenished with new arrivals from France, who again thought this
one was the real Akaria, but eventually there were more
(30:50):
people leaving than arriving. After the start of the Civil War,
a lot of young men left to join the US army.
By eighteen sixty four, there there were only about twenty
Akarians left at Cheltenham, which was not enough to keep
the community going, and it was disbanded that March.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
The community at Navu was also following through on the
plan to move to Iowa, although there were some people
who decided to return to France instead. The Akarians had
established a new charter with the state of Iowa in
eighteen sixty, and that charter did allow for some individual
property ownership. Unlike the group at Cheltenham, which had lost
(31:30):
so many members that it could not survive a further
reduction during the Civil War, the Aekarians in Iowa found
that their crops and their wool were in very high demand,
so they weathered the war and they were even able
to acquire some more land for the community. We read
from the writing of journalist Charles Nordhoff earlier in the show.
(31:51):
He visited the Akarians in Iowa in eighteen seventy four.
At that point, their community had sixty three members described
their life as hard, a huge contrast to what Kabe
had envisioned in recruitment pamphlets that the Akarians produced earlier
on For example, back in eighteen fifty four, the Akarians
(32:11):
in Navou published a German language pamphlet that had described
what Kabe thought he could do if he was able
to secure half a million dollars, an amount that would
give him access to a lot more credit, which he
could then use to secure all kinds of necessities and
even some luxuries. Nordhoff also pointed out the contradiction in
(32:32):
the idea of starting a commune based on the idea
of total economic equality by taking on an enormous amount
of debt. In this pamphlet, Kabe had described quote dwellings
supplied with gas and hot and cold water, of factories
fitted up on the largest scale, of fertile farms, under
(32:53):
the best culture of schools, high and elementary, of theaters
and other places of amusement, of elegantly kept pleasure grounds,
and so on. But the Acarians in Iowa had started
out twenty thousand dollars in debt, and at first they
were able to build only mud huts to live in.
(33:13):
They eventually upgraded to log cabins and then two frame houses,
plus a dining hall, a wash house, a dairy, a schoolhouse,
and various workshops for things like carpentry, blacksmithing, and shoemaking.
A two story building served as their common dining room
and their kitchen, and it also did have a library
(33:34):
and living space on the upper floor. They'd built a
sawmill and a gristmill that they could use to bring
in more income, and they had paid off all of
their debt.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
In other words, for more than twenty years, they had
worked really, really hard, often living in a way that
was barely above subsistence, to get out of debt and
keep their community going. In Nordhoff's words, quote a moderate
degree of prosperity is possible to them now, but they
have waited long for it. I judged that they had
(34:05):
but poor skill in management and no business talent, but
certainly they had abundant courage and determination.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
However, they were still facing similar ideological divisions to what
had played out in the other Akarian communities. One of
the big issues was still women's suffrage, but there were
also disagreements over how strict the community should be and
how open to newcomers, as well as whether they should
(34:35):
be focused on their own community or on trying to
spread communist ideals to the wider public. They gradually coalesced
into two groups known as Young Ikaria and New Ikaria.
Although some of these divisions felt very broadly along age lines.
There were some older people in the young group and
(34:57):
some younger people in the new group. One of the
difficulties in all of this was that the more progressive
people had an overall majority, but they did not have
a majority among the people who were both male and
old enough to vote. These two groups wound up in court,
and in August of eighteen seventy eight, the Akarians charter
(35:20):
was declared to be forfeit. The circuit court designated trustees
from outside the community to divide its property, resulting in
the Iowa settlement being divided into east and west portions.
The young Akarians went to one side and the new
Akarians to the other, with new charters being established in
eighteen seventy nine. I don't know if in practice it
(35:43):
felt like they just put a big tape line down
down the middle of town. That is what it sounds like.
That's how it comes across from me. Eventually, seventeen of
the young Kharians left and they joined a small group
that had previously gone to California. They called themselves the
Acaria Speranza community, with Sporanza coming from Lesperance. That name
(36:05):
was taken from other utopian writing. This group disbanded in
eighteen eighty six. The Akarian community in Iowa carried on
until eighteen ninety eight, and it was the last Akarian
community to disband. It had existed for forty six years,
making it the longest known non religious communal living experiment
(36:25):
in the US. Some of the Akarian communities buildings in Navu,
Illinois and in Corning, Iowa, are still standing and at
least at some points they've been operated as living history museums.
I had trouble tracking down whether any of these are
still operating currently. It seemed like in one case maybe
(36:46):
by appointment, but like no longer functioning websites, phone numbers
hard to track down.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
That kind of a thing. Oh, do you also have
some listener mail? I have so many thoughts about this.
I can't wait for behind this.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
This email is from Mary and it is titled Revolutionary Cookies,
Sweet History, And it's like, we have the email and
we also have a story about the email. The email
starts Hello, Holly and Tracy, and then that's followed by
a series of photographs and the photographs are on a
(37:21):
cookie package for a Jovita edar Concha cookie. Yeah, and
so scrolling pastologies as well as a very cute picture
of a very cute dog can return to the email,
which says, recently, I took a motorcycle ride to the
Claremont packing House In Claremont, California. There are restaurants and stores,
(37:44):
but there was also a kiosk called Revolutionary Bites Bakery,
and since I love cookies and revolutionaries, I stopped to
buy all of their cookies pay tribute to various historical revolutionaries,
many of whom I've never heard of. The strawberry concha
cookie clebrating Hovey to Dar caught my eye. I'm attaching
pictures of the cookie and the history behind Miss Dar
(38:05):
possible future episode. I actually got to see you live
in Los Angeles a few years ago for a spooky
Halloween show. The picture I took with you is one
of my treasured memories for my pet tax I'm attaching
a picture of my granddog Cooper and his silhouette I
had done of him at Disneyland. Thank you Mary, So First,
thank you Mary for this email. Second, when I read it,
(38:27):
I felt like I had fallen into some kind of
wormhole because this email arrived after we had recorded our
episode on Hovey to Edar, but before the episode had
come out, So.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
In my head I was like.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Oh, wow, we already have email about the Hovi' to
Edar episode that just came out.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
No, it was not out yet.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
It was just a serendipitous discovery of this cookie. I
looked at the website and the Instagram page of Revolutionary
Bites Bakery. I found that whole thing very charming. If
I were closer to there, I would definitely go check
out and try some of these cookies. There's the packaging
(39:17):
for the Hovi toa Edark cookie on the back has
like a very brief biography of her and again just
incredibly incredibly cute puppy dog.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
It's also interesting because contra cookies are like have a
long pre colonial history. Oh yeah, yeah, like they're an
interesting historical thing in and of themselves. That's great.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I did not know this, so thank you so much
for this email and these pictures, even though it caused
me to kind of go, what day am I? Where
am I living? Did I fall through time by accident?
If you would like to send us a note about
this or any other podcast, including episodes that we have recorded,
(39:59):
but not really at least yet. You can We're at
History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com and you can find
us on various social media ad Missed in History and
you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app
or wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff
(40:20):
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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