Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854-1939 (Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements) 3030666174, 9783030666170

Table of contents :
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction: A Networking Anarchist
Defining Anarchist Networks
Grave’s Place in the Movement: The Gatekeeper of Anarchist Communism?
Grave the Editor: Anarchist Print Cultures, Materiality and Community-Building
Understanding “The Pope of rue Mouffetard”
Pitfalls and Caveats
Order of Exposition
Chapter 2: The Making of an Anarchist (1854–1885)
“My Childhood Was That of All Children of Workers”
“Le Parti des Révoltés”: Grave and the Early 1880s Paris Anarchist Milieu
Le Révolté and Anarchist Communities: Print Transnationalism, Ideological Differentiation and Police Repression
Transnational Connections
Leaving Geneva
Conclusion
Chapter 3: A Sedentary Transnationalist (1885–1892)
The “Attic Philosopher”: 140 Rue Mouffetard and Militant Sociability
La Révolte, a Journal of Anarchist Communism
The Financial Life of a Radical Newspaper
Complex Circulations and Transnational Networks
A “Monitor of Anarchy”?
Grave, Women and Feminism
Conclusion: The Brink of Revolution
Chapter 4: A Philosopher Among Criminals: Grave and The Era of Propaganda by the Deed (1892–1894)
Legal Troubles, Act I. Propaganda by the Word and Its Perils: Pélagie Prison and the Conflict with the SGDL
Grave, La Révolte and the Conspiratorial Imagination
Legal Troubles, Act II. Moribund Society and the Trial of the Thirty
The Trial of the Thirty, the Trial of Anarchy
Conclusion: The Republic’s Anti-hero?
Chapter 5: The Perils of Mainstreaming? (1895–c. 1905)
Les Temps Nouveaux: Continuities and Editorial Innovation
“Mon cher Grave”: Artistic and Literary Networks
Expanding Horizons: Global Print Networks and the Emergence of an Anticolonial Consciousness
Grave on Syndicalism and Individualism
Grave as a Campaigner
The Cancelled 1900 Paris Congress: Organisation and the Repression of Anarchism
Conclusion
Chapter 6: The Limitations of Print Activism (1905–1918)
“A Sort of Family”
Campaigning
Globalising Anarchism
From War Mobilisation to the Manifesto of the Sixteen
The Manifesto of the Sixteen
Conclusion
Chapter 7: “Dreaming of Reorganising”: Isolation and (Self-)Memorialisation (1918–Present)
Excommunication
“Dreaming of Reorganising”: Networking Efforts
The Post-mortem of the Heroic Period and the War
(Self-)Memorialisation: An Honorary Republican?
The Making of Historical Oblivion
Conclusion: Grave’s Many Legacies
Chapter 8: Conclusion: The Binding Ties of Anarchism
Bibliography
Archives
Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte (AN)
Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Pré St Gervais (APP)
Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF)
Centre d’Histoire Sociale (CHS), Paris
Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale, Paris (IFHS)
International Institut fur Sozial Geschichte, Amsterdam (IISG)
State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow (GARF)
Periodicals Cited
Grave’s Theoretical Writings
This is a selective list of key works cited in this book. A comprehensive inventory of Grave’s writings is available at https://cgecaf.ficedl.info/?mot39, accessed 22 July 2020
Printed Primary Sources
Websites Hosting Digitised Anarchist Periodicals, Bibliographic and Biographical Resources
Secondary Sources
Index

Citation preview

Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939 Constance Bantman

Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements Series Editors Stefan Berger Institute for Social Movements Ruhr University Bochum Bochum, Germany Holger Nehring Contemporary European History University of Stirling Stirling, UK

Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested, actors in  local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajectories of their development. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually-informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early modernity to the present. We conceive of ‘social movements’ in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organisations and mere protest events. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in which social movements can emerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. This new series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements, while also helping to historicise the concept of ‘social movement’. It hopes to revitalise the conversation between historians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the ‘dynamics of contention’. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14580

Constance Bantman

Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939

Constance Bantman School of Literature and Languages University of Surrey Guildford, UK

ISSN 2634-6559     ISSN 2634-6567 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ISBN 978-3-030-66617-0    ISBN 978-3-030-66618-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Zuri Swimmer / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Series Editors’ Preface

Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested, actors in  local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajectories of their development. Our series reacts to what can be described as a recent boom in the history of social movements. We can observe a development from the crisis of labour history in the 1980s to the boom in research on social movements in the 2000s. The rise of historical interests in the development of civil society and the role of strong civil societies as well as non-­ governmental organisations in stabilising democratically constituted polities has strengthened the interest in social movements as a constituent element of civil societies. In different parts of the world, social movements continue to have a strong influence on contemporary politics. In Latin America, trade unions, labour parties and various left-of-centre civil society organisations have succeeded in supporting left-of-centre governments. In Europe, peace movements, ecological movements and alliances intent on campaigning against poverty and racial discrimination and discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation have been able to set important political agendas for decades. In other parts of the world, including Africa, India and South East Asia, social movements have played a significant role in various forms of community-building and community politics. The contemporary political relevance of social movements has undoubtedly contributed to a growing historical interest in the topic. Contemporary historians are not only beginning to historicise these relatively recent political developments; they are also trying to relate them v

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to a longer history of social movements, including traditional labour organisations, such as working-class parties and trade unions. In the longue durée, we recognise that social movements are by no means a recent phenomenon and are not even an exclusively modern phenomenon, although we realise that the onset of modernity emanating from Europe and North America across the wider world from the eighteenth century onwards marks an important departure point for the development of civil societies and social movements. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the dominance of national history over all other forms of history writing led to a thorough nationalisation of the historical sciences. Hence social movements have been examined traditionally within the framework of the nation state. Only during the last two decades have historians begun to question the validity of such methodological nationalism and to explore the development of social movements in comparative, connective and transnational perspective taking into account processes of transfer, reception and adaptation. Whilst our book series does not preclude work that is still being carried out within national frameworks (for, clearly, there is a place for such studies, given the historical importance of the nation state in history), it hopes to encourage comparative and transnational histories on social movements. At the same time as historians have begun to research the history of those movements, a range of social theorists, from Jürgen Habermas to Pierre Bourdieu and from Slavoj Žižek to Alain Badiou as well as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to Miguel Abensour, to name but a few, have attempted to provide philosophical-cum-theoretical frameworks in which to place and contextualise the development of social movements. History has arguably been the most empirical of all the social and human sciences, but it will be necessary for historians to explore further to what extent these social theories can be helpful in guiding and framing the empirical work of the historian in making sense of the historical development of social movements. Hence the current series is also hoping to make a contribution to the ongoing dialogue between social theory and the history of social movements. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early modernity to the present. With this series, we seek to revive, within the context of historiographical developments since the 1970s, a conversation

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between historians on the one hand and sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists on the other. Unlike most of the concepts and theories developed by social scientists, we do not see social movements as directly linked, a priori, to processes of social and cultural change and therefore do not adhere to a view that distinguishes between old (labour) and new (middle-class) social movements. Instead, we want to establish the concept “social movement” as a heuristic device that allows historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to investigate social and political protests in novel settings. Our aim is to historicise notions of social and political activism in order to highlight different notions of political and social protest on both left and right. Hence, we conceive of “social movements” in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organisations and mere protest events. But we also include processes of social and cultural change more generally in our understanding of social movements: this goes back to nineteenth-century understandings of “social movement” as processes of social and cultural change more generally. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in which social movements can emerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. In short, this series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements while also helping to historicise the concept of “social movement.” It also hopes to revitalise the conversation between historians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the “dynamics of contention.” Constance Bantman’s Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939 uses the biography of the French anarchist Jean Grave to shed light on broader features of European anarchism and the networks that sustained it. Grave (1854–1939) is perhaps not one of the most well-­ known anarchist activists and campaigners. Together with his close collaborator Peter Kropotkin he was an influential networker: he was editor of the anarchist journal Le Révolté (La Révolte from 1886) and, from 1895 to 1922, of Les Temps Nouveaux. It was through these journals that he established networks with many artists, including Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac and Théo van Rhysselberghe. Having moved to London to work with Kropotkin in 1914, Grave helped draft the Manifesto of the Sixteen in 1916 in support of the alliance against Germany and the central powers, a

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move that was met with much disapproval within the international anarchist movement as it was seen as an endorsement of war. Bantman’s biography of Grave deploys social network theory to highlight a number of key tensions at the heart of Grave’s writing and activism. These were tensions that characterised anarchism and anarchist networks more generally, but that also sat oddly with some of the more general trends: Grave was an intellectual at a time of violent activism; he was at the heart of global anarchist networks at the time but hardly left his flat in Paris; he was an intellectual who influenced debates primarily through his writing and editing as opposed to his personal charisma; and he was an activist who remained at one place at a time when the anarchist movement was increasingly characterised by its diasporic character. Thus, this book offers much more than a conventional intellectual history of anarchist thought through the prism of a biography. Instead, Bantman makes use of network analysis to illuminate these tensions and highlight how Jean Grave came to sit at the centre of global anarchist networks without doing much travelling himself. The author is therefore able to demonstrate how transnationalism was not necessarily tied to activists’ movements. Bantman emphasises how Grave’s thought and strategy was internationalist. At the same time, she interrogates the “the very notion of influence in a horizontal, global movement” by focusing on Grave’s networks that reached outwards from Paris, a European imperial capital. In doing so, she also brings out the ideological implications of such contradictions by historicising “hegemonic, Euro- and western-centric assumptions” against the “egalitarian claims of anarchism.” Bantman thereby makes three distinctive contributions to the history of anarchism and social movements. First, she highlights the importance of movement intellectuals. Second, she emphasises Grave’s engagement with culture and art more broadly, thus revisiting from a historical perspective work on culture and social movements by James Jasper and others. Perhaps most importantly, Bantman proposes to re-conceptualise the relationship between the local and the global in the history of social movements, highlighting the ways in which a euro-centric orientation went hand in hand with global networks of thought and contestation. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany University of Stirling, Stirling, UK 

Stefan Berger Holger Nehring

Acknowledgements

The scope of Grave’s connections has made this project an arduous and, often, a collaborative one. I am incredibly grateful to the many friends and colleagues whose work has inspired me and who have helped me locate and secure material, suggested research leads and supported me in many ways. Ole Birk Laursen talked me through Indian connections and shared some of his archival material with me, and also gave away some of his time at the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (IISG) to help me access rare material—as did Danny Evans with entire years of La Révolte. James Yeoman brought invaluable help, in the form of a detailed analytical list of mentions of Grave (aka Juan Grave) in the Spanish press. David Struthers shared fascinating unpublished material on the coverage of the Baja raids. Tom Goyens helped me identify mysterious initials, and Matthew Adams and Mark Bray gave me access to their paywalled publications and manuscripts, feeding into helpful exchanges of views on the overlaps between our respective areas of research. Thank you also to all my European Social Science and History Conference (ESSHC) friends and colleagues—you know who you are!—for such interesting discussions and reading over the years. Bert Altena, who gave me so much advice and shared his encyclopaedic knowledge at the very start of this project, is greatly missed. Thank you also to Mark Antliff, Fabrice Bensimon, Dave Berry, Richard Cleminson, Máire Cross, Pietro Di Paola, Marianne Enckell, Martyn Everett, Federico Ferretti, Ruth Kinna, Patricia Leighten, Carl Levy, Julien Lucchini, Gursimran Oberoi and Jessica Thorne for many interesting and formative conversations, and for often helping with references too. Being part of such a generous and lively research ix

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community is a great pride, and I am very lucky to have made many good friends along the way. Many colleagues have helped with archival queries and access in France or outside, in particular Marianne Enckell, Marie-Geneviève Dezès, Pascal David-Dormien and Vanda Wilcox. Securing copies of the Grave-­ Kropotkin correspondence, held in Moscow’s State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), was a drawn-out collaborative endeavour; thank you to Maria Alekseeva, Pascale Siegrist and Federico Ferretti for helping along the way. Lyuba Vinagradova and Alex Butterworth resolved this considerable problem by putting me in touch with Zhanna Beresneva—thank you. I am greatly indebted to the anonymous proposal and manuscript reviewer who supported this project and really improved it through their feedback. Charlotte Faucher was a very insightful reader before publication, whose comments on Introduction gave me the confidence to keep going with my interpretations. Nadine Willems’s scrutiny of the discussion of Grave’s Japanese links was both much needed and greatly appreciated. Dawn Marley stepped in at a critical time to help me with her customary kindness, generosity and insightfulness: thank you. The early stages of this research were supported by a British Academy Small Research Grant (RG6005) as well as a Faculty of Ar ts and Social Sciences (FASS) Research Grant from the University of Surrey. Findings were shared at various stages, in seminars held at the Institute of Historical Research (in both London and Paris), Lincoln University, the European University Institute in Florence, and Newcastle University; these discussions were important steps in taking this project to fruition, and my thanks go to the organisers and participants who made them possible. I have been very lucky to work with Raghupathy Kalyanaraman, Molly Beck and Lucy Kidwell at Palgrave Macmillan. At the University of Surrey, I am grateful to Declan Purcell for his copy-editing assistance, patience and kindness, and to Dawn Marley (again!), Alison Stubley, Milda Balse and Bran Nicol for their constant support and encouragement, and for making work always fun and interesting, even in lockdown. And finally, thank you to Ajneet Jassey, to my mother, Béatrice (like Grave, a fantastic journalist), and to Tony, Amélie and Ben for putting up with both me and Jean Grave for several years, and especially during the final stages of writing in lockdown.

Contents

1 Introduction: A Networking Anarchist  1 Defining Anarchist Networks   2 Grave’s Place in the Movement: The Gatekeeper of Anarchist Communism?   6 Grave the Editor: Anarchist Print Cultures, Materiality and Community-Building   8 Understanding “The Pope of rue Mouffetard”  11 Pitfalls and Caveats  13 Order of Exposition  14 2 The Making of an Anarchist (1854–1885) 17 “My Childhood Was That of All Children of Workers”  18 “Le Parti des Révoltés”: Grave and the Early 1880s Paris Anarchist Milieu  23 Le Révolté and Anarchist Communities: Print Transnationalism, Ideological Differentiation and Police Repression  33 Transnational Connections  36 Leaving Geneva  43 Conclusion  45

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3 A Sedentary Transnationalist (1885–1892) 47 The “Attic Philosopher”: 140 Rue Mouffetard and Militant Sociability  48 La Révolte, a Journal of Anarchist Communism  56 The Financial Life of a Radical Newspaper  60 Complex Circulations and Transnational Networks  62 A “Monitor of Anarchy”?  68 Grave, Women and Feminism  74 Conclusion: The Brink of Revolution  76 4 A Philosopher Among Criminals: Grave and The Era of Propaganda by the Deed (1892–1894) 77 Legal Troubles, Act I. Propaganda by the Word and Its Perils: Pélagie Prison and the Conflict with the SGDL  80 Grave, La Révolte and the Conspiratorial Imagination  87 Legal Troubles, Act II. Moribund Society and the Trial of the Thirty  92 The Trial of the Thirty, the Trial of Anarchy  98 Conclusion: The Republic’s Anti-hero? 104 5 The Perils of Mainstreaming? (1895–c. 1905)107 Les Temps Nouveaux: Continuities and Editorial Innovation 109 “Mon cher Grave”: Artistic and Literary Networks 115 Expanding Horizons: Global Print Networks and the Emergence of an Anticolonial Consciousness 121 Grave on Syndicalism and Individualism 128 Grave as a Campaigner 133 The Cancelled 1900 Paris Congress: Organisation and the Repression of Anarchism 142 Conclusion 144 6 The Limitations of Print Activism (1905–1918)145 “A Sort of Family” 146 Campaigning 155 Globalising Anarchism 158 From War Mobilisation to the Manifesto of the Sixteen 164 The Manifesto of the Sixteen 171 Conclusion 176

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7 “Dreaming of Reorganising”: Isolation and (Self-) Memorialisation (1918–Present)179 Excommunication 180 “Dreaming of Reorganising”: Networking Efforts 190 The Post-mortem of the Heroic Period and the War 195 (Self-)Memorialisation: An Honorary Republican? 198 The Making of Historical Oblivion 203 Conclusion: Grave’s Many Legacies 208 8 Conclusion: The Binding Ties of Anarchism211 Bibliography215 Index233

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Portrait of Grave from Le Journal, 25 February 1894 Fig. 5.1 The cover of Grave’s “Contre la Folie des Armements” (Against the madness of the arms race), by M. Luce, Publications des Temps Nouveaux, 1913 Fig. 5.2 Le Lotissement de l’espace, by F. Kupka, Les Temps Nouveaux, 24 February 1906 Fig. 5.3 Les Temps Nouveaux’s transnational print networks: ad from Algiers’ La Révolte, 31 July 1909 Fig. 5.4 Cover of Grave’s Terre Libre, by Mabel Holland-Thomas Fig. 5.5 The pamphlet “La Mano Negra” Fig. 6.1 Cover portrait of Grave by A. Delannoy in Les Hommes Du Jour (1908) Fig. 6.2 Jean Grave by Théophile Steinlen (1907) Fig. 7.1 Cover of the Publications issue commemorating Kropotkin

95 113 120 129 134 139 148 153 192

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: A Networking Anarchist

The anarchist journalist, editor, writer, theorist, campaigner and educator Jean Grave (1854–1939) was a complicated, almost paradoxical, figure, somewhat at odds with his times. A selflessly dedicated thinker and activist, in a period shaken by anarchist violence and criminality, Grave was a working-class intellectual known for his gentle manners and surly temper. He commanded one of the largest networks in the global anarchist movement at the time, yet barely ever left the 5th arrondissement attic with which he was so closely associated for most of his career. He was also a man of the written word, at a time when the anarchist movement thrived through meetings, conferences, street agitation and direct action and when charismatic orators held centre stage. Above all, he was a sedentary activist, in the very years when anarchism became intensely diasporic, as a result of labour migration and the waves of exile triggered by the relentless repression of the movement’s terrorist and revolutionary pursuits. Grave was also a well-known and respected—albeit occasionally polemic—figure within and beyond anarchist circles, who has since sunk into almost complete oblivion, a theorist whose writings were considered by many contemporaries to be as influential as those of his close friend and collaborator Peter Kropotkin,1 and who triggered an important mobilisation during his 1  See for instance John Hutton, Neo-impressionism and the Search for Solid Ground: Art, Science and Anarchism in Fin-de-siècle France (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7_1

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two trials in 1894—yet whose name nowadays is hardly remembered beyond small academic and activist circles. These defining tensions account for Grave’s unique place as a leading figure within the French and international anarchist movement in its pre-1914 heyday; they form the core of this book.

Defining Anarchist Networks This biography unpacks these tensions by examining Grave as a highly connected individual, within and beyond the milieu of French and global anarchism. The existing literature on Grave and the French anarchist movement has downplayed the importance and scope of his networks while presenting important explorations of his political thought,2 his literary and theoretical output,3 and the remarkable journalistic and cultural creation which he facilitated through his periodicals.4 The strong emphasis on his taciturn and earnest disposition—from both his contemporaries and historians—has tainted perceptions of his activism, and despite repeated acknowledgments of Grave’s centrality in the pre-1914 movement, there has been no systematic examination of his role and the influence of his printed production in global anarchism. For instance, his decade-long friendship and militant partnership with Kropotkin (which has now started to be reassessed, in particular by Iain McKay5) remains largely overlooked, when Grave was in fact one of Kropotkin’s “closest friends,”6 and as late as 1905, Kropotkin was still described as “the inspiration for Grave’s paper

1994); Félix Dubois, Le Péril anarchiste (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1894). All translations are mine unless otherwise stated. 2  Alexander Varias, Paris and the Anarchists. Aesthetes and Subversives During the Fin de Siècle (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997); Jean Maitron, Histoire du Mouvement anarchiste en France, 1880–1914 (Paris: Maspero, 1975); Louis Patsouras, The Anarchism of Jean Grave. Editor, Journalist and Militant (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2003). 3  Jean Thioulouse, “Jean Grave (1854–1939), journaliste et écrivain anarchiste” (PhD Diss., Université Paris VII, 1994). 4  Carole Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux, un hebdomadaire anarchiste au tournant du siècle (Mauléon: Editions Acratie, 1993). 5  Iain McKay, “Kropotkin, Woodcock and Les Temps Nouveaux,” Anarchist Studies 23, no.1 (2015): 62–85. 6  Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale (IFHS), Domela Nieuwenhuis to Grave, 14 February 1912. Unless otherwise stated, all references to IFHS are from Grave’s correspondence, boxes 14AS184 a and b.

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Les Temps Nouveaux.”7 Nor has the abundant correspondence information shared every other week in his periodicals prompted any in-depth exploration of their many roles for the French and international anarchist movement. This study highlights the practical and ideological underpinnings and limitations of Grave’s print networks and the wider implications for the French and international anarchist communist circles in which he occupied such a prominent place. His life and activism—insofar as both aspects can be distinguished—are therefore especially suited to a reassessment through the paradigms of print culture, networks and transnationalism, which have proved so influential in the recent historiography of the anarchist movement.8 Thus, using “a single life as an analytical window,”9 Grave’s biography highlights the intensely networked and transnational nature of pre-1914 anarchism, with an emphasis on the multifaceted mediations of print culture. This book argues that networks offer a fruitful entry point to capture the remarkable geographical scope and lifespan of Grave’s activism, allowing important insights into the organisation and functioning of French and international anarchism as a social movement and a collective experience. The term “network” is used here in a broad qualitative and metaphorical sense, to describe evolving associations of varying size, intensity, density, geographical reach and degrees of institutionalisation and to underline the fluidity and intensely social and relational nature of the various spheres in which Grave was active throughout his long militant career. As demonstrated by a host of recent studies, the concept of “network” is especially useful to capture the fluid and often transient quality of anarchist organisations.10 It is particularly apt given the anarchists’ deep wariness or indeed downright rejection of formal political authority and their emphasis on the pivotal agency of individuals and their connections, with  IFHS, Edouard Duchemin to Unknown, 4 November 1905.   Davide Turcato, “Italian Anarchism as a Transnational Movement, 1885–1915,” International Review of Social History 52, no. 3 (2007): 407–444; Nadine Willems, “Transnational anarchism, Japanese revolutionary connections, and the personal politics of exile,” The Historical Journal 61, no. 3 (September 2018): 719–741; Constance Bantman and Bert Altena (eds.), Reassessing the Transnational Turn. Scales of Analysis in Anarchist and Syndicalist Studies (Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2015). 9  Simone Lässig, “Towards a Biographical Turn? Biography in Modern Historiography— Modern Historiography in Biography,” GHI Bulletin 35, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 151. 10   Constance Bantman, “Internationalism Without an International? Cross-Channel Anarchist Networks, 1880–1914,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 84, no.4 (2006): 961–981. 7 8

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variations in shapes and complexity and—at the looser end of the organisational spectrum—the intermittent nature of such associations. Networks linked up individuals, groups, organisations, locations, periodicals and so on; they were “anarchist structures of material support [and] […] structures of morale-building and consciousness-raising,”11 pervaded with ethical and political meanings beyond their practical functions. The concept is especially relevant since Grave’s networks extended beyond anarchism. His unique appeal and status in France as an anarchist intellectual meant that he straddled and bridged different cultures and milieus. His many links with artists and writers as well as progressive circles provide insights into the political culture of the Third Republic and offer multiple paths to reclaim the place and significance of anarchism as a progressive political and counter-cultural movement. Grave was both a campaigner and the beneficiary of two important cross-partisan mobilisations in 1894, when he fell victim to the ferocious repression of the anarchist press. He was therefore a key actor in the campaigning and petitioning culture which infused the politics of the period. These campaigns played a major role in mainstreaming anarchism and defending it in times of extreme repression—a process in which Grave, himself an active campaigner, was a central but increasingly reviled figure. This campaigning culture testifies to the transnationalisation of public opinion and the long-­term creation of a republican and democratic culture in the young Third Republic, through the mobilisation of cross-partisan progressive networks. These waves of public mobilisation also highlight the ambiguous status of anarchism, as an ideology and a movement existing between criminalisation and integration. While there is an abundant literature on the literary and artistic connections of French anarchism,12 much remains unknown regarding the role of cross-partisan campaigning in promoting progressive causes, the place of anarchism in these alliances and the ambiguous reputational benefits of this participation for the movement’s image and status.13 This is

11  Geoffroy De Laforcade and Kirwin Shaffer (eds.), In Defiance of Boundaries. Anarchism in Latin American History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015), 15. 12  Aline Dardel, Les Temps nouveaux 1895–1914: un hebdomadaire anarchiste et la propagande par l’image (Paris: Les Dossiers du Musée d’Orsay, 1987); Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux. 13  Constance Bantman, “La culture de la campagne médiatique dans le mouvement anarchiste de la Belle Époque: Jean Grave et ‘les atrocités espagnoles’ (1885–1909),” Le Temps des Médias 33, no. 2 (2019): 55–70.

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another area of investigation in which the study of Grave’s networks proves enlightening. Grave’s specificity in the highly connected world of anarchism resides in the staggering scope of his connections, which spanned continents and political allegiances, as well as in the central importance of print mediation, through the three periodicals which he edited before 1914—Le Révolté (1879–1887, with Grave in charge from 1883), La Révolte (1887–1894) and Les Temps Nouveaux (1895–1914)—and the voluminous output of their associated publishing houses. Grave’s print networks partly resolve the apparent contradiction between his immobility and his near-global influence by showing how an individual who was so closely associated with one city (Paris) and even with a specific room on a given road (his attic office and home on the 5th arrondissement’s rue Mouffetard) shared and shaped ideas in France and globally. He was both an active transnationalist and a “[deeply] rooted cosmopolitan.”14 However, in the intensely mobile world of pre-1914 anarchism, where the most prominent figures of the movement went through exile or migration and anarchist transnationalism was largely enacted through personal mobility, his Parisian anchorage and print-based activism contrast sharply with prevailing narratives.15 Thus, the overview of global anarchism proposed by Klaus Weinhauer, while accurate and fully pertinent to this study, evidences the assumed association between personal mobility and transnationalism: “This global presence of anarchism and syndicalism was rooted in the dense international networks upheld by a highly mobile anarchist elite and sustained by forced migration and labour migration due to political persecution, and transnational flows of money from anarchist

14  Sidney Tarrow, “Rooted Cosmopolitans and Transnational Activists,” in The New Transnational Activism, ed. Sidney Tarrow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 35–56; Carl Levy, “The Rooted Cosmopolitan: Errico Malatesta, Syndicalism, Transnationalism and the International Labour Movement,” in Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour & Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational, ed. David Berry and Constance Bantman (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar Press, 2010), 61–79. 15  Constance Bantman, The French Anarchists in London, 1880–1914. Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013); Pietro Di Paola, The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora (1880–1917) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013); Tom Goyens, Beer and Revolution. The German Anarchist Movement in New  York City, 1880–1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014).

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communities dispersed all over the world.”16 Studying Grave therefore presents a conceptual opportunity to detach transnationalism from the assumption of personal mobility implied in many uses of the term and to analyse, map out and historicise circulations of print and epistolary material, as well as the hindrances which they encountered. While it is impossible to provide a comprehensive overview of Grave’s international networks in this book due to both time and space restrictions and, crucially, language barriers and limited access to archival material, this biography charts his key networks and their operation and purposes, such as the theoretical discussions, campaigning and daily organising which they made possible.

Grave’s Place in the Movement: The Gatekeeper of Anarchist Communism? It is most likely because of Grave’s long association with Paris and towering importance in French anarchism that his transnational connections and international influence have received little more than cursory acknowledgments, despite the prominent and multifaceted role which he and his periodicals played in many national contexts. And yet, examining these links has significant revisionist impacts for Grave and the French anarchist movement. First and foremost, this approach foregrounds the international dimensions of French anarchism, contributing to efforts to denationalise the historiography of the movement while acknowledging the limitations of such a process. Grave’s activism provides countless examples of his influence: his writings and the publications which he oversaw had a near-global reach and shaped local movements in many ways. However, the French anarchist movement was also shaped by foreign developments, debates and exchanges and was engaged in multipolar, horizontal transnational discussions and campaigns. From worldwide exchanges of printed material and money to international networks of correspondents and translators as well as tactical discussions on a transcontinental scale, Grave and his papers illustrate all these entanglements, and sometimes pioneered them, thus evidencing the multidirectional flows which were the lifeblood

16  Klaus Weinhauer, “Terrorism between Social Movements, the State and Media Societies,” in The History of Social Movements in Global Perspective: A Survey, ed. Stefan Berger and Holger Nehring (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 551–2.

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of the international anarchist movement.17 Grave’s vision and strategic thought were profoundly internationalist—the historian Alexander Varias even characterised him as an exponent of “internationalist anarchism.”18 It is therefore essential to restore the broader transnational context which was integral to Grave’s activism and outlook while interrogating the very notion of influence in a horizontal global movement, in order, at least, to highlight the tensions resulting from these dynamics. Beyond Grave’s specific case, such a revision has important implications, as stressed by Axel Körner: “[W]ith regard to knowledge historians often assume a one-­ directional transmission, which is then used to establish an intellectual or political order that assigns particular spaces to positions of either core or periphery.”19 Acknowledging and putting to the test the hegemonic, Euro- and Western-centric assumptions of unidirectional influence is especially crucial given the egalitarian claims of anarchism. Indeed, Grave himself was a white man living in an imperial metropolis, often preoccupied with the high politics of anarchism and avowedly attached to orthodoxy. Many contemporaries saw him as the living embodiment and gatekeeper of anarchist doctrine, even as the latter was being made—hence the notorious nickname of “the Pope of rue Mouffetard” bestowed upon him in the late 1880s by his fellow anarchist and on-and-off friend Charles Malato, in reference to his doctrinaire stance, stern brand of anarchism and reluctance to take part in the day-to-­ day organising and meetings through which the movement existed.20 The historian Richard Sonn has also portrayed Grave as the dour voice of anarchist orthodoxy in his 1989 study Anarchism & Cultural Politics in Fin de siècle France, aptly wondering “whether Grave ever reflected that his own permanent position of power as anarchist editor might be a possible source of hierarchical entrenchment, running counter to the ad hoc spirit 17  Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America? (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 13; Raymond Craib and Barry Maxwell (eds.), No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries: Global Anarchisms (Oakland: PM Press, 2015). 18  Varias, Paris and the Anarchists, 20. 19   Alex Körner, “Space and Asymmetric Difference in Historical Perspective: An Introduction,” in Re-Mapping Centre and Periphery Asymmetrical Encounters in European and Global Contexts, ed. Tessa Hauswedell, Axel Körner and Ulrich Tiedau (London: UCL Press, 2019), 2. 20  Jean Grave, Mémoires d’un anarchiste (1854–1920) (Paris: Éditions du Sextant, 2009), 218.

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­ ropounded in his newspaper.”21 Grave’s example is therefore connected p with broader questions about anarchism as an egalitarian social movement; as pointed out by Byrne and Van der Walt, “there is no reason to suppose that informal networks and structures are free of hierarchy,” not least due to the dominance of “a few forceful personalities,” such indeed as Grave.22 Were Grave’s periodicals the “organs” of anarchist communism and, if so, on what scale, and what did this imply? What scope was there for debate and discussion in his publications? Accusations of dogmatism are strengthened by Grave’s wariness of artistic avant-gardism and dismissal of libertarian individualist and “lifestyle” causes, including feminism. And of course he was plagued by his support for the war as a cowriter and signatory of the interventionist 1916 Manifesto of the Sixteen, which reneged on decades of anarchist internationalist antimilitarism. However, the transnational perspective adopted here qualifies such interpretations of Grave as a conservative anarchist, by insisting on his relentless and innovative organising work and his living and connected conception of anarchism, informed by a global outlook and original cultural politics.

Grave the Editor: Anarchist Print Cultures, Materiality and Community-Building Along with the risk of diffusionist assumptions, a second pitfall of narratives of circulations is to gloss over their practical conditions and structural impediments, embracing a historically inaccurate celebration of unfettered mobility. This study therefore documents the obstacles to the circulation of ideas, people and printed material encountered by anarchism, as a movement blighted by poverty, repression and changes in individual and collective allegiances. A very simple yet ubiquitous instance of such hurdles is how often medical issues deferred militant work, not least Kropotkin’s contributions to the papers: “What can I say—regarding articles, it is very damaging that you cannot send us anything, but health first,

21  Richard D.  Sonn, Anarchism & Cultural Politics in Fin de Siècle France (Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 15. 22  Sian Byrne and Lucien van der Walt, “Worlds of Western Anarchism and Syndicalism: Class Struggle, Transnationalism, Violence and Anti-imperialism, 1870s–1940s,” Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire 50, no.1 (2015): 109.

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take care of yourself.”23 Grave showed relentless dedication and inventiveness to keep his papers afloat without advertising income, and his openness regarding the production, distribution and finances of the papers allows rare insights into the functioning of the anarchist press, at a time when repression and surveillance imposed a culture of secrecy and ingenuity. The nature of print activism as labour embedded in material processes is addressed here through a focus on the material culture of Grave’s publishing and networks, in their practical or even mundane aspects. Production processes and the sensory dimensions of reading, which are important emerging areas of scholarship but not directly relevant to Grave’s editorial work, are not covered here.24 The focus on the practical determinants of print culture is relevant to the wider field of press history, where anarchist periodicals represent an important sub-genre of the radical press, with a remarkable transnational dimension. Grave’s career covers intense repression, (self-)censorship and war, while multilingualism and distance were structural challenges—hence the importance of understanding how they were overcome. Grave’s idiosyncratic leadership style was crucial: the historian David F. Mayer ascribes the papers’ exceptional longevity to Grave’s “character, stamina, courage, and faith in Kropotkin’s anarchist ideas that allowed him to overcome any professional and personal obstacles.”25 The anarchist Marc Pierrot also attributed this success to Grave’s persona, “holding up like a bollard to which one fastens a raft.”26 The papers survived through “begging,”27 as well as a host of cost-cutting and fundraising strategies, such as pushing subscriptions, tinkering with format and frequency, raffles and selling artistic works secured through Grave’s artistic friendships. Insofar as it is possible to piece back together processes of editing, circulation and reception, these are foregrounded in this study, occasionally at the expense of ideas and debates, of “contents,” resulting in a social history of anarchist ideas and practices rather than an intellectual history of the movement. These often-unheeded practicalities were integral to communication, networking, material and cultural exchanges and were a primary concern for  State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), Grave to Kropotkin, n.d.  Fiona Williamson, “The Spatial Turn of Social and Cultural History: A Review of the Current Field,” European History Quarterly 44 (2014): 703–717. 25   David F.  Mayer, “‘La Révolte’: Le supplément littéraire,” (PhD diss., Fordham University, 1996), 62. 26  Cited by Dardel, Les Temps nouveaux, 5. 27  Grave, Mémoires, 511. 23 24

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comrades, especially Grave. The enabling and limiting importance of money and material aspects was paramount and requires foregrounding. These exchanges are essential to understanding anarchist culture in this period, by extrapolating on Nicolas Delalande’s comment that, in internationalist left-wing and socialist circles, “through money, many other social and symbolic forms circulate and become established: power relations, modes of organisation and moral conceptions.”28 In addition to shedding light on the material and periodical cultures of anarchism, this inquiry explores anarchist sociability as the basis of politicisation and print culture.29 The conceptual approach to print culture adopted here is akin to the framework developed by Andrew Hoyt in his doctoral thesis on Galleanisti networks in the United States, which he refers to as “propaganda-­outward”: “Instead of examining polemics, this approach mines financial records and other more mundane data related to the daily lives of immigrant radicals and their social networks […]. [It] makes visible the vast web of social relationships that enabled the early twentieth-­ century anarchist movement to thrive despite dogged persecution.”30 However, rather than opposing form and content, the material and the ideological, the present study probes the interplay of both aspects through a relational approach in which social relationships and community-­building are conceived as political, as defined by Sara O’Shaughnessy and Emily Huddart Kennedy: “We introduce the term ‘relational activism’ to call attention to the way that relationship-building work contributes to conventional activism and constitutes activism in and of itself.”31 This approach also follows on from James Yeoman’s research into Spanish anarchist periodicals, which similarly integrates practice and ideology by positing print culture “as a proxy for the movement” and the place where ideology was shaped and put into practice.32 Extending this premise, this study regards 28  Nicolas Delalande, La Lutte et l’Entraide. L’Age des solidarités ouvrières (Paris: Seuil, L’Univers Historique, 2019), 21. 29  Stéphane Van Damme, “La sociabilité intellectuelle. Les Usages historiographiques d’une notion,” Hypothèses 1 (1998): 121–32. 30  Andrew Hoyt, “‘And They Called Them “Galleanisti’: The Rise of the Cronaca Sovversiva and the Formation of America’s Most Infamous Anarchist Faction” (1895–1912),” (PhD Diss., University of Minnesota, 2018), 1. 31  Sara O’Shaughnessy and Emily Huddart Kennedy, “Relational Activism: Reimagining Women’s Environmental Work as Cultural Change,” Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 35, no. 4 (2010): 551–572. 32  James Yeoman, “Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890–1915” (PhD diss., University of Sheffield, 2016).

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Grave’s papers and anarchist print culture as complex social spaces through which individuals and groups interacted and built anarchist ideology and identities.

Understanding “The Pope of rue Mouffetard” Lastly, this book is quite simply the portrait of a man, which explores his peerless ability to form and sustain the personal and political connections that allowed him to produce one of the longest-lived publications in the history of global anarchism—and how, conversely, when these networks collapsed, so did his influence within the movement. Much has been written about Grave’s personality, and he has left many archives and ego-­ documents, including two published autobiographies and one unrevised autobiographical manuscript. All of these portray him as a polarising figure for contemporaries and historians, a surly intellectual “living in his attic with his dream,” prone to moralising, excommunicating and dry theorising. Even a sympathetic colleague like Max Nettlau saw him as a “petit-bourgeois moralist” when it came to debates over political violence while underlining his deep sincerity and even earnestness. “He abhorred antics and lies”; a shoemaker of humble origins turned anarchist intellectual, “[h]e was a man of the people—he shared the working people’s innocence, sincerity, coarseness and also their humility.”33 Other favourable witnesses portray “a man without history,”34 steeped in the daily grind of editing his papers. Grave was held in very high esteem by many, in France and beyond, including some who had never met him or did not share his anarchist views, such as the journalist Henry Bauër: “Even though I don’t know you personally, the esteem I have for your character and intellectual bravery makes me happy to be agreeable to you and I attach a great deal of importance to your recommendations.”35 Dislikes are equally important, of course. Grave also comes across as determined and opinionated to the point of stubbornness. His memoirs are a catalogue of personal squabbles, within and outside anarchist circles: “Speaking of temperament, Robin’s was far from the best. Indeed, it was rather sharp. Later […] we fell out. Our relations stopped after we exchanged a few bittersweet 33  International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (henceforth IISG), Max Nettlau Collection, item 3633, “Ceux de l’anarchie.” 34  Les Hommes du Jour, “Jean Grave,” no. 24, 1908. 35  IFHS, Bauër to Grave, 20 June 1897.

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letters. More bitter than sweet.”36 His constant gripes, penchant for score-­ settling and lecturing about how one should think and act in politics confirm the numerous accusations of didacticism levelled at him. His extended memoir, Mémoires d’un anarchiste, acknowledged that his first memoir did not reflect favourably on him: “My wife […] remarked that I would possibly show myself to have a rather spiteful temperament.” However, rather proving the point, Grave went on to describe himself as neither bitter nor rancorous, only intolerant of “duplicity.”37 Such admissions constitute an important methodological caveat in interpreting Grave’s often-biased writings. While the attempt to understand a person and how they related to others is integral to the biographical genre, it carries added significance in the social history of politics, feeding into analyses of influence. Such psychological emphases also have clear limitations, due to the reliance on first-­ hand testimonies and subjective interpretation. There are also ethical restrictions on dissecting one individual’s life with a view to assessing whether they were pleasant and fair. In theoretical terms, however, this is an opportunity to examine the nature of political charisma and influence within the specific context of the anarchist movement, which was horizontal and egalitarian, at least in theory. Was Grave a charismatic leader? An intellectual, at a time when the concept was emerging?38 What exactly drew so many collaborators and sympathisers to this somewhat surly figure, especially considering that existing studies of anarchist charismatic leadership have highlighted eloquence and dramatics as key vectors of influence?39 Grave might in fact be regarded as an instance of less spectacular, more indirect forms of charisma, acting “upon a small minority, an initial elite, whom the leader first inspires or […] one who can inspire others and who then recruits […] a wider constituency.”40

 Grave, Mémoires, 314.  Ibid., 11. 38  Christophe Charle, Naissance des “intellectuels” 1880–1900 (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1990). 39  Emanuela Minuto, “Pietro Gori’s Anarchism: Politics and Spectacle (1895–1900),” International Review of Social History 62, no. 3 (2017): 425–450. 40  Jan Willem Stutje, “Introduction. Historiographical and Theoretical Aspects of Weber’s Concept of Charismatic Leadership,” in Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements. The Revolutionary Power of Ordinary Men and Women, ed. Jan Willem Stutje (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012), 6. 36 37

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Pitfalls and Caveats As pithily summarised by the historian Guillaume Davranche, “Les Temps Nouveaux? It was Grave’s paper, and that’s all one needs to know.”41 His life and activism were inseparable from his journalistic and editorial work, so that this biography occupies the blurred line between Grave’s own life and that of his periodicals and presses. This recurring dilemma of the biographical genre is especially acute in Grave’s case: how might one dissociate the man from his oeuvre? My approach has been to focus on the paper as a broad reflection of Grave’s editorial choices, unless there was clear evidence to the contrary. There is also an archival rationale to this dual focus, since sources are heavily tilted towards the papers rather than Grave. Moreover, this book explores both personal and print networks, as well as the interplay between both: how did personal friendships and connections inform the papers? Conversely, how did the appeal of anarchist writings broaden Grave’s networks of connections? This biography is based on a wide set of primary and secondary sources. Grave was a highly prolific man of the written word (both printed and epistolary) at a time when newspapers proliferated, in a notoriously bibliophile movement. As indicated above, sources comprise three autobiographical texts and Grave’s extensive correspondence (including with Kropotkin, held in Moscow’s State archive  of the Russian Federation). These are supplemented by Grave’s extraordinary output as both author and editor. A lot of material was destroyed by the anarchists themselves, as suggested by a small sentence in a letter from Kropotkin: “This letter from Nettlau is for you only. After reading it, destroy it.”42 Many letters sent to Grave by prominent writers and notorious terrorists such as Ravachol absconded following police raids at his office, occasionally resurfacing on the auction circuit.43 Grave’s individual surveillance file from the important and under-exploited Archives Nationales’ “Fonds de Moscou,” while less extensive than many prominent anarchists’ files, yielded important chronological details and insights into the comprehensive surveillance exerted upon him from the early 1880s. The focus on networks on a variety of scales and the reality of the papers’ global permeation meant that a selection had to be made and certain networks and areas prioritised; in 41  Guillaume Davranche, Trop jeunes pour mourir. Ouvriers et révolutionnaires face à la guerre (1909–1914) (Montreuil/Paris: L’Insomniaque/Libertalia, 2014), 37. 42  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 1897 (no further date details). 43  Grave, Mémoires, 265–6.

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many cases, this was determined by my linguistic limitations and archival availability. It was a tremendous help that all of Grave’s periodicals and many of their key partners were accessible digitally.44 There is no doubt that further research will be possible or indeed needed beyond this relatively short book, although it is also clear that this work could not have been undertaken without the large-scale digitisation of periodicals. Secondary literature was equally voluminous, comprising no fewer than two biographies of Grave, one comprehensive study of La Révolte and an extensive bibliography on French and international anarchism. In this respect too, I make no claim to exhaustivity; my main aim has been to present a new interpretative framework by focusing on Grave’s personal and print networks, their role and functioning and their material culture from a long-term perspective and to examine how these can inform our understanding of anarchist print culture, transnationalism and the importance of personal and political sociability in the movement’s culture. In making this argument, I have sought to avoid an overly systematic approach: life is chaotic, and it is not the biographer’s role to impose order and coherence, even when writing about the life of an exceptionally consistent and principled activist.45

Order of Exposition The book is organised chronologically, examining Grave’s life in the context of the wider movement. Chapter 1 follows Grave’s personal and political coming of age during the emergence of anarchism in France and internationally. Centring on Grave’s becoming “a working-class intellectual,” it argues that the anarchist movement garnered much of its appeal from its ability to foster social bonds, as illustrated by the community-­ building roles of Le Révolté. Chapter 2 charts Grave’s relocation from Geneva to Paris in the increasingly tense 1880s. The chapter foregrounds the notion of social space in activism, applied to both Le Révolté/La Révolte and Grave, examining how the papers and Grave’s editorial office in the Mouffetard area became nodes where networks of activists, sympathisers, friends and hostile observers converged, leading to accusations 44  Kenyon Zimmer, “Archiving the American Anarchist Press: Reflections on Format, Accessibility and Language,” American Periodicals 29, no. 1 (April 2019): 9–11. 45  Pierre Bourdieu, “L’Illusion biographique,” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 62–63 (1986): 69–72.

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of centralising authoritarianism. Chapter 3 centres on the conspiratorial imagination crystallised by anarchist networks in the early 1890s, in which Grave became entangled as he found himself at the centre of two high-­ profile trials. Through the repeated public campaigns defending him during these legal troubles, the chapter highlights his cross-partisan and literary networks and their reputational benefits. Chapter 4 surveys the “new times” which followed the peak of repression after 1895. While challenging the dominant depiction of these years as a time of stunted innovation, it argues that Grave’s ideological positioning and increasingly integrated activism in this period paved the way for his marginalisation. Chapter 5 examines the years leading up to the First World War and Grave’s notorious response to this seismic event, in particular his U-turn in rallying Kropotkin’s support for the war and co-drafting the pro-­ Entente Manifesto of the Sixteen. It brings a corrective to the overwhelmingly critical historiography, by charting the protracted and complex evolution whereby Grave came to such a striking ideological reversal. The final chapter, covering the post-war period until Grave’s death in December 1939, centres on the theme of (self-)memorialisation and provides a poignant example of the dissolution of networks and influence. This allows for a broader analysis of the gradual displacement and marginalisation of Grave’s brand of anarchism with the remaking and collapse of his networks, due to ideological realignments and generational change triggered by the war.

CHAPTER 2

The Making of an Anarchist (1854–1885)

This chapter charts Grave’s personal and political coming of age, interwoven with the ideological elaboration of anarchism and its expansion in France and internationally, punctuated by the first acts of “propaganda by the deed” and the increasingly harsh repression of the movement. Grave’s formative years were bound with those of the movement in which he came to play such an important role; a self-made working-class intellectual, he was many anarchists at once, and his experiences both echoed and shaped the movement’s identity and ideology. Through his intellectual training and socioeconomic background, he embodied different, almost contradictory, strands of the emerging movement: the geographic uprootedness as well as the occupational and financial instability of his childhood and adolescence subjected him to the multiple dislocations which were integral to the French anarchist experience, while his apprenticeship as a shoemaker, his bookishness and family politics connected him with the traditions of craft socialism. The religious education and traumatic military service which informed his militant outlook soon infused the movement, compounding a paternal tradition of left-wing politicisation sharpened by the experience of the Commune. Having joined the elite ranks of the movement’s most prominent theorists and journalists through the experience of deskilling and precariousness, Grave had a unique and productive dual outlook. As summarised by Carole Reynaud-Paligot, “[a]s a self-taught

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7_2

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shoemaker, wasn’t he in the best position to translate the thinking of theorists into a language which was accessible to the world he came from?”1

“My Childhood Was That of All Children of Workers” Grave stated the typicality of his background in his autobiography, in reference to his childhood recollections and rituals, like Auvergnat folk tales and grape harvest traditions.2 The statement, however, can be extrapolated to his socioeconomic, cultural and political trajectory, which was indeed characteristic of many workers-turned-anarchists. Without espousing a deterministic socioeconomic approach and playing down the elusive “spirit of revolt” intrinsic to anarchism,3 Grave’s formative years provide a quintessential illustration of the making of a Belle-Epoque anarchist, pointing in particular to the collective and profoundly social nature of anarchism and highlighting its appeal for the professionally and geographically uprooted as “a place of libertarian initiation, where an individual [could] gain a typically anarchist practical sense. It restored a sense of identity for all those who were being marginalised by evolution.”4 Anarchism, for Grave and many others, emerged against a backdrop of geographic, professional and downward social mobility, at a time of accelerated industrialisation and urbanisation in France.5 His childhood and adolescence exemplify the increasingly precarious existence of unskilled workers during the Second Industrial Revolution, resulting in forced relocation and internal migration, as traditional modes of labour and economic survival were jeopardised by mobility and the disappearance of working-class pluriactivity.6 Poverty- and unemployment-driven migration and the multifaceted “crisis of traditional labour” disrupted traditional working-class communities,7 but through its emphasis on local sociability  Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux, 15.  Grave, Mémoires, 17. 3  Auguste Hamon, Psychologie de l’anarchiste socialiste (Paris: Stock, 1895). 4  Olivier Delous, “Les Anarchistes à Paris et en banlieue 1880–1914. Représentations et sociologie” (Masters diss., Université Paris I, 1996), 157. 5  Alain Dewerpe, Le Monde du Travail en France, 1800–1950 (Paris: Cursus, 1989). 6  Gerard Noiriel, Les Ouvriers dans la société française, XIXe–XXe siècle (Paris: Seuil Histoire, 1986), 83. 7  Ibid., 95–7; Varias, Paris and the Anarchists, 208; Jean Maitron, Ravachol et les anarchistes (Paris: Gallimard, 1992 (1964)), 54–55. 1 2

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and new cultural codes, anarchism offered social and community-building opportunities. The emergence of anarchism and Grave’s own journey towards it illustrate that much of its appeal derived from the social bonds which it fostered. In Grave’s case, this process was also incremental, contrasting with the rhetoric of “conversion” which soon became a stereotype of representations of anarchism; as Grave’s friend, the journalist Séverine, later wrote, “at the time, one wasn’t born a companion—one became a companion.”8 Grave was born on 16 October 1854  in the Puy-de-Dôme town of Issoire,9 into a largely unskilled family, where combining several means of income was common: his father was a handy man, the son of a peasant who occasionally worked as a clog maker. His mother, Elisabeth Crégut, was an ironer, whose father had purportedly been a bailiff. Family finances were always a concern, leading his father to leave the young Jean, his mother and sister (another sister would be born when Grave was 14) and head to Paris to try and earn a living. The family was reunited sometime later, relocating to Paris when Grave was six and finding a temporary home in the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève (now the rue de Tournefort), in the Mouffetard area, south of the Seine, in the 13th arrondissement. Grave received basic primary education at the local religious school. By the time he was eight, the family had relocated to nearby rue Mouffetard, no less financially pressed than a few years earlier; Grave’s father was now trying out a new job as a travelling clothes salesman. This business soon failed, and the family moved to the 15th arrondissement, where they opened a shop. When this closed down too—very quickly—Jean’s father returned to his job as a rag packer: the family moved to rue de l’Ecole Polytechnique, near the Pantheon, and then on to 138 rue Mouffetard. The professional vagaries of his father seem endless; a short-lived attempt at shoemaking was quickly followed by a return to general labour, and Grave also recalled a spell as a miller.10 While Grave was still a long way from becoming an anarchist, such ill-fortunes and occupational precariousness fit into a socioeconomic interpretation of the development of anarchism in 1880s France,11 as a response of the disruption of working-class lives and  Séverine, “Un Homme,” 22 August 1896, in IISG, Nettlau collection, item 3633.   Archives Nationales (AN), Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, “Renseignements 1888–1897,” Extrait des minutes du Greffe de la Cour d’Appel, 24 February 1894. 10  Grave, Mémoires, 11–36. 11  Jean Maitron, Histoire du mouvement anarchiste en France, 1880–1914 (Paris: Maspero, 1975). 8 9

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communities due to the geographic and occupational mobilities triggered by the Second Industrial Revolution. The importance of such mobility has been highlighted by recent prosopographical studies on French anarchist groups. For instance, Olivier Delous’s sociological survey of anarchists in the Seine region between 1881 and 1887 has evidenced the overwhelming majority (90%) of individuals who had moved to Paris from provincial France, most of whom (70%) became interested in anarchism after moving.12 At 12, Jean was enrolled as an apprentice mechanic on nearby rue Daubenton, only to be pulled out after six months due to the brutality and physical duress he endured—another representative experience, characteristic of the contemporary “crisis of apprenticeship” and deterioration of the relationship between masters and apprentices, which led to soaring drop-out rates.13 He went on to work for a neighbour who was a shoemaker, subsequently moving on to another few workshops and eventually completing his training as a shoemaker. The politicisation of shoemakers—“a philosopher’s job since, being sedentary, it is propitious to reflection”14—is well known, and Grave was singled out as a noteworthy example by Hobsbawm and Scott in their seminal study on “political shoemakers,” along with fellow anarchist Victor Griffuelhes.15 However, in Grave’s case, shoemaking should not be equated with entry into the privileged world of labour aristocracy; on the contrary, the growing division of labour and limitations endured by apprentices were matters of great concern for him. Nonetheless, shoemaking provided a circuitous path to politicisation for Grave. It is easy to imagine how his experiences later found an echo in Kropotkin’s analyses: The unskilled labourers, in continuous search for labour, are falling into an unheard-of destitution. And even the best paid artisans and skilled workmen labour under the permanent menace of being thrown, in their turn, into the same conditions as the unskilled paupers, in consequence of some of the continuous and unavoidable fluctuations of industry and caprices of capital.16  Delous, “Les Anarchistes,” 122.  Noiriel, Les Ouvriers, 97–8. 14  Octave Mirbeau, “Pour Jean Grave,” Le Journal, 19 February 1894. 15  Eric J. Hobsbawm and Joan Wallach Scott, “Political Shoemakers,” Past & Present 89, no. 1 (November 1980): 86–114. 16  Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles (London: New Fellowship Press, 1887), section I. 12 13

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Grave stated that his father had left him nothing but “his spirit of revolt” and his love of reading; these, however, would be lifelong passions and pursuits. In contrast, his later conceptions of libertarian pedagogy and culture read as the inverse of his early experiences of formal education. He only received a basic primary education and his memories of school were dull or grim, fraught with bad memories of rote learning and corporal punishment.17 Grave also displayed an early anti-religious sentiment, keeping silent during prayer time and finding confession “the hardest.” He did, however, receive his first communion; his father, a freethinker, was not opposed to his son partaking in it, largely on social grounds; Grave by then already questioned religious tenets and soon stopped his religious education. Like many anarchists, Grave was largely self-taught and an avid reader, of eclectic tastes, and his awareness of social injustice was heightened through reading.18 He was, moreover, a highly proficient autodidact; the writer Octave Mirbeau later described him as “one of the clearest minds and, at the same time, among the best-equipped ones I know of,”19 while others marvelled at his writing and asked him in puzzlement (and with a hint of condescension) “how, with a rather incomplete education, since, in your letters, you make French and spelling mistakes, you were able to write alone such a marvellous book.”20 Elisée Reclus would also praise Grave as “an elite soul: despite his incomplete primary education, he has completed the studies which he wanted to follow unfailingly, and he has become a remarkable man. As for his moral value, it is superior due to the deep sincerity of his beliefs.”21 Grave’s unusual intellectual and social itinerary was summed up by his friend and great admirer Emile Darnaud: “You are neither Kropotkin, nor Bakunin, nor Reclus; you are a shoemaker, not a man of letters; you are a thinker and logician because you have led the life of a worker, and not because you have been pushed to new ideas by studying beforehand; you have only disentangled what was already in your mind, by yourself.”22 Compounding these difficulties, the late 1870–early 1871 siege of Paris by Prussian forces was a time of such extreme hardship for the family that, almost five decades later, it was instrumental in Grave’s decision to leave  Grave, Mémoires, 20–21.  Ibid., 31, 40, 60. 19  Mirbeau, “Pour Jean Grave.” 20  Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale (IFHS), Emile Darnaud to Grave, 25 February 1890. 21  Le Gaulois, 25 February 1894. 22  IFHS, Darnaud to Grave, n.d. 17 18

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France for Britain in 1914; one recollection was having to kill the family cat and that of the neighbours to feed meat to his sick father.23 Grave’s political initiation in this period occurred through the double channel of paternal politics and his distant involvement in the Commune. From the late 1860s, his father attended a local Blanquist group and a section of the International. The Franco-Prussian war and the Commune soon started— a key turning point for socialism, echoing the decentralised and federative communal aspirations of the emerging anarchist movement, its egalitarianism, antimilitarism and anti-religiousness. During the siege, the 15-year-­ old Grave read the radical press and attended daily meetings on the Place du Panthéon with his father, “with unparalleled fervour.”24 Reflecting back on meeting discussions, he was retrospectively struck by the fact that those in attendance never considered initiating any attack, for instance organising to march on Versailles, a somewhat ironic critique of the Commune’s political inertia, given his own preference for written propaganda: “The Commune held forth, legislated, issued decrees, but did not achieve any useful work, nor changed anything in the economic order.”25 The Commune eventually strengthened his anti-authoritarianism and hatred of militarism; he felt deeply betrayed by “false friends of the people,” such as Louis Blanc and Jean Tolain. Such grievances, while not exclusively anarchist, echoed anarchist readings of the period.26 Just after the Commune, with Jean now working, the family had more money and moved to the avenue des Gobelins.27 New responsibilities and difficulties beset him as illness struck the family and forced him to care for his relatives; he lost his mother and sister to consumption in close succession in 1874. Equally traumatic and formative was his short stint in the marine infantry, where he spent just one year rather than five, being released early in 1876 after his father’s death. The experience inspired him with a lifelong revulsion for the military, which reinforced his experience during the Commune.28 Grave’s reflection on this ordeal would resonate with an entire generation of anarchists; the fictionalisation of his time in the military in La Grande Famille (1896) and skewering of military power  Grave, Mémoires, 73.  Séverine, “Un homme.” 25  Grave, Mémoires, 89. 26  Joël Delhom, “Des anarchistes et de la Commune de Paris,” accessed 1st July 2020, http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/pariscommune/anarsetcommune.html. 27  Grave, Mémoires, 98. 28  Ibid., 114. 23 24

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as a buttress of capitalist oppression in La Société Mourante (1893) became seminal anarchist texts on antimilitarism alongside classics such as Lucien Descaves’s Les Sous-Offs (1889) and Georges Darien’s Biribi (1890).

“Le Parti des Révoltés”: Grave and the Early 1880s Paris Anarchist Milieu Grave’s road to anarchism was emblematic of the post-Commune generation of anarchists in France, as he evolved into the characteristic figure of the “militant journalist,”29 as well as the more atypical one of the working-­ class intellectual. In the period of ideological fluidity and social revival which followed the intense repression of the 1870s, insurrectional, revolutionary and parliamentary socialist currents coexisted, and it was still a few years before Grave turned his back on parliamentarianism and organised socialism. This transition coincided with the emergence of the French anarchist movement, and his memoir provides a rare testimony of the nascent anarchist milieu in the late 1870s and early 1880s, at a time of ideological and organisational buoyancy on the left. The memoir recounts personal landmarks such as his rejection of suffrage and parliamentary tactics and how he started subscribing to the radical press and attending meetings. This political coming of age illustrates that becoming an anarchist was a social process, honed by encounters, discussions, club and meeting attendance, and reading and working for socialist periodicals. For the young Grave, this political socialisation occurred through two main channels: taking part in groups and “cercles” as well as journalism. In the late 1870s, in socialist meetings, Grave met the former Communard Minville and the anarchist Pierre Jeallot, a former Broussist (i.e. reformist socialist) and member of the anti-authoritarian section of the First International, the Jura Federation. In 1879, the three men set up le Groupe d’études sociales des 5e et 13e arrondissements, with Grave as its secretary. The Group was based at 140 rue Mouffetard, Jeallot’s address at the time,30 and met at a local wine shop in the Latin Quarter’s rue Pascal. Reflecting the neighbourhood’s long-established specialism in the leather industry around the Bièvre river, tanners, curriers and tawers made

 Christophe Charle, Le Siècle de la presse (1830–1939) (Paris: Seuil, 2004), 147.   Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris (APP), BA1505, report dated 15 December 1880. 29 30

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up most of the Group’s membership.31 International activists from the Jura Federation Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta and Varlaam Cherkesov are also known to have visited the Group.32 In 1880, we find Grave and his partners writing for the paper of the Marxist Parti Ouvrier Français, L’Egalité, having also joined the party and the paper’s editorial board.33 The early 1880s were a time of organisation and institutionalisation for the French labour and socialist movement, and Grave took part in the discussions which differentiated socialist movements and parties. He attended the July 1880 Congrès Ouvrier du Centre, which saw a final break between the champions of parliamentary action and those supporting revolutionary means and is therefore considered “the birth of the anarchist movement” in France.34 Grave, uncharacteristically, gave a vigorous speech against involvement in electoral struggles and took sides for what soon came to be known as propaganda by the deed, arguing that “all the money spent in appointing deputies would be more wisely used to buy dynamite to blow them up”—a rare but very much of-the-time instance of dabbling with the rhetoric of explosives which was beginning to permeate anarchist circles.35 From then on, Grave “followed his path”36; he started contributing reports from his Cercle and making financial donations to anarchist periodicals Le Droit Social and L’Etendard, both of which were based in Lyon, the centre of the budding movement at the time. He was also listed as a reseller for these papers in Paris, with an address on the avenue des Gobelins.37 This soon led to his being identified by the authorities as “suspect and dangerous,” and he was under increasingly close surveillance from then on.38 He was already a champion of coordinating and organising anarchist groups: writing on behalf of the Cercle des 5e et 13e 31  Thomas Le Roux, “Une rivière industrielle avant l’industrialisation: la Bièvre et le fardeau de la prédestination, 1670–1830,” Géocarrefour 85, no. 3 (2010): 193–207. 32  Grave, Mémoires, 129. 33   Carole Reynaud-Paligot, “Portrait et itinéraire de Jean Grave,” Gavroche—Revue d’histoire populaire, nos. 63–4 (1992): 13. 34  Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux, 12. 35  Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Socialism 1872–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 140. 36  Séverine, “Un Homme.” 37  Le Droit social, 18 June 1882, 5 March 1882; L’Etendard révolutionnaire, 24 September 1882. 38   AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, Folder “Renseignements 1881–1887,” undated report.

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arrondissements in 1881, he aimed to “start an active correspondence […], because we think that in order to give a stronger impulsion to propaganda, anarchists should look for one another, so that by exchanging ideas, we may succeed in directing our efforts towards the same goal.”39 Nonetheless, such association should be organic, not arbitrary, hierarchical and rigid: against socialist discipline, he advocated “the free initiative of individuals moved by the feeling of solidarity which comes from shared agreement.” This was an early programme of spontaneous organisation, rebellion and its diffusion, key principles of Grave’s anarchism: “[A]s opponents of centralisation, we wanted to find a way of connecting groups between themselves, without any exclusive directing organ, but where every group, on the contrary, could keep its own activity.”40 The creation of a monthly Bulletin des groupes anarchistes was intended by Grave to provide this liaison—a clear forerunner of his future papers’ strategy of building and organising the movement. A single issue appeared in November 1881, with a good coverage across France, but further publication was precluded by financial issues and repression.41 Writing in Le Droit Social in June 1882,42 Grave regretted the delay in publishing the expected Bulletin due to a lack of funds and the departure of some of the comrades for work reasons. It was around then that Grave made contact with the Geneva-based Le Révolté, the main forum for the incipient theoretical elaboration of anarchist communism. This periodical, launched in February 1879, was the outcome of a long process originating in the 1871 Commune and the activities and ideas of the anti-authoritarian Jura Federation in Switzerland and internationally. In Geneva, seeing the need for a revolutionary publication to replace Paul Brousse’s Avant-Garde, Peter Kropotkin and fellow French-speaking exiles François Dumartheray, George Herzig and Elisée Reclus launched the fortnightly Le Révolté in 1879. Kropotkin described it as “moderate in tone, but revolutionary in substance […] [written] in such a style that complicated historical and economical questions should be comprehensible to every intelligent worker.”43 Its popularity proved  APP BA 1505, copy of a letter dated February 1881, erroneously signed J. Gravey.  Jean Grave, Le Mouvement Libertaire sous la IIIe République (Paris: Les Œuvres Représentatives, 1930), 6. 41  Grave, Mémoires, 128. 42  Le Droit Social, 18 June 1882. 43  Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (London: Swab Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd., 1906), 389–90. 39 40

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them right: the initial run of 2000 copies sold out quickly, as did “the scores of thousands” of cheap pamphlets also “reproduced in every other country in translations” put out by the same Imprimerie Jurassienne, owned by the editors. The initial editorial team included Paul Robin (who chose the name), Kropotkin (who wrote it almost single-handedly), Adhémar Schwitzguebel (who was only persuaded to write an article for the first issue) and Elisée Reclus, whose support was mainly financial. Dumartheray and Herzig helped with the production but did not write.44 One of the longest-running and most prolific publishing undertakings in the history of the international anarchist movement, pivotal to the elaboration and diffusion of anarchist communism, had been launched. Marie Fleming has summarised very aptly the style, significance and purpose of the paper: “Late nineteenth-century European anarchist intellectuals deliberately fostered an identification of themselves as ‘le parti des révoltés’, the party of the rebels. Their organ Le Révolté first appeared in Switzerland and it symbolized the mood of the anarchists as they worked out more fully the implications of the notion of revolt.”45 Le Révolté was now the leading revolutionary newspaper in French, which opened up possibilities for dissemination wherever French-speaking groups existed. Equally noteworthy is the fact that the paper was created by two leading geographers with experiences of travel and exile, at the heart of the First International, all of which infused it with an integral global outlook. Grave was also evolving into a theorist. In 1882, his text La Société au lendemain de la Révolution (Society on the Morrow of Revolution) was serialised anonymously in Louis Dejoux’s Lyon anarchist paper, Le Droit Social46; it was published as a book in 1882 and again in 1889, under the pen name Jehan Le Vagre.47 He also wrote Organisation de la propagande révolutionnaire, published by the Groupe des 5e et 13e arrondissements in 1883 under the same pen name.48 The essay presented Grave’s arguments for spontaneous organisation and individual initiative against party organisation; it sketched out plans for a post-revolutionary society, with the caveat that such a blueprint could not be designed until the revolution had  Cahm, Kropotkin, 118.  Marie Fleming, “Propaganda by the Deed: Terrorism and Anarchist Theory in the Late Nineteenth-century Europe,” in Terrorism in Europe (RLE: Terrorism & Insurgency), ed. Yonah Alexander and Kenneth A. Myers (Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2010), 14. 46  Le Droit Social, 9 April 1882 onwards. 47  Le Révolté, 11 May 1884. 48  Le Révolté, 18 March 1884; L’Affamé (Marseille), 13 July 1884. 44 45

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happened. His anarchist outlook was taking shape: flexible organisation was central, with individuals grouping up for one or more specific tasks, forming a division of labour across society. Print was to play a crucial role in connecting groups. Emboldened by his first publication, Grave sent an article to Le Révolté, which published it. He then started contributing notes to the paper and acting as the Paris reseller for “hundreds” of copies of the paper and associated pamphlets, including his own, which were reprinted in Geneva in 1883.49 This brought him into contact with Kropotkin; they met in person for the first time when Kropotkin came to Paris with his wife Sophie and called on him.50 This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship and political partnership, which on close inspection appears to be more reciprocal than suggested by recurring depictions of Grave as Kropotkin’s “disciple.”51 These years also saw a brief dalliance with terrorist rhetoric, if not deeds, which was very much in the air. Theories of revolutionary terrorism had been formulated by Russian revolutionaries from the late 1860s onwards, and even earlier by the Neapolitan Carlo Pisacane, who rejected “propaganda by the idea” in favour of “the material revolution.” After a first failed attempt against Czar Alexander II in 1879, the Nihilist group Narodnaya Volya killed him in March 1881. Heads of state in Germany, Spain, Italy and other countries also faced attacks in these years.52 The assassination, as well as the death of St Petersburg Governor General Trepov at the hand of Vera Zasulich, exerted great influence on Western anarchists, among whom ideas of political violence were already gaining ground: “All of us, more or less—more rather than less—dreamt of bombs, terrorist attacks, ‘resounding’ gestures which could undermine bourgeois society,” Grave later reminisced.53 This expressed a growing sense of frustration with purely verbal propaganda and a desire to hasten the revolution. In July 1881, the International Revolutionary Socialist Congress in  AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, reports dated 31 May and 6 June 1883.  Grave, Le Mouvement, 18; George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, The Anarchist Prince: A Biographical Study of Peter Kropotkin (London: T.V.  Boardman & Co., Ltd., 1950), 183. The year when this happened is unclear across all sources. 51  Guillaume Davranche, “Pelloutier, Pouget, Hamon, Lazare et le retour de l’anarchisme au socialisme,” Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique 110 (2009), 4. 52  Constance Bantman, “The Era of Propaganda by the Deed,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, ed. Carl Levy and Matthew S.  Adams (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 372–3. 53  Grave, Mémoires, 139. 49 50

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London (which Grave did not attend, contrary to police reports’ claims54), anarchist in all but name, officially adopted the new motto of “propaganda by the deed,” a revolutionary doctrine which advocated the use of any possible means to hasten the revolution. The doctrine had been in discussion in anarchist circles in Switzerland from the late 1870s and was gradually reinterpreted as an endorsement of terrorism. In December 1880, Cafiero defined it as a set of anti-legalistic tactics in Le Révolté: “Permanent revolt by the spoken and written word, the sword, dynamite or even sometimes the voting paper […]. Everything is good for us which is not legality.” The London Congress enshrined the terrorist interpretation and set off the era of propaganda by the deed. It also marked an important moment in the self-definition and coordination of the international movement. The Anarchist International called for by the champions of anarchist organisation was briefly recreated but soon fizzled out; the public’s and authorities’ fears of a putative global anarchist conspiracy, however, very much endured. They were also stoked by claims that Le Révolté as well as Johann Most’s London-based, German-language Freiheit had been instituted by the congress as “the organ of the International”55; this shows the central place occupied by periodicals in the conspiratorial imagination surrounding anarchism. A wave of repression soon followed in France and internationally: within months, Kropotkin was expelled from Switzerland, initiating a period of wanderings between France (Thonon) and London, before his arrest in Lyon. January 1883 saw the “Trial of the 66” in Lyon, an attempt to decapitate the movement at a time of labour agitation and bomb explosions in the area. As proof of the growing momentum of the movement and his standing within it, Grave was arrested and held for 36 hours in the wave of arrests which took place at the time of the trial. In 1882–1883, Grave, residing on the avenue des Gobelins, in the 13th arrondissement, is mentioned in police reports with veteran republican militant Baillet and one Kinkermann, as forming part of an “emerging anarchist group” on the rue Pascal, which then solidifies into the “Groupe d’études sociales du Faubourg St Pascal” (formerly known as “Le Groupe du Panthéon”). Grave had set up the group and was its secretary.56 Its  AN F7 12504, report “L’Organisation anarchiste,” n.d.  AN F7 12504, “Les menées anarchistes,” 25 February 1886. 56  APP BA 1505, report dated 17 November 1882, “Extrait d’un rapport des principaux groupes et membres de groupes anarchistes de Paris”; report “Groupe anarchiste du Faubourg St Marceau,” n.d. 54 55

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activities focused on debate, discussion and publishing, including structured discussions on “Evolution et revolution.”57 Grave published an address to readers in Lyon’s Le Droit Social on behalf of the group, praising the paper’s support for workers’ solidarity in the fight for the revolution.58 The group met every Wednesday on rue Pascal and rue Gobelins; a police report (probably from 1882) mentions 13 people in attendance, including 3 Russians.59 One of the participants called for the abolition of property, arguing that the origin of property was “theft,” also advocating the “suppression of administrations, the army, gendarmes and snitches” and discussing post-revolutionary society—all of which was in a clear anarchist vein.60 By December 1882, about 20 people attended the weekly meetings, discussing and dismissing the possibility of revolutionaries running for elections.61 Networking and creating links were early concerns for Grave and many local groups: “What we did first was make contact with the groups whose addresses we could get, in Paris as well as in the rest of France.”62 This is confirmed by police reports describing the early days of the movement locally, as in Roanne, for instance, where a few “determined men” formed a group in the early 1880s and established links with anarchists from Paris as well as other cities in France and abroad in order to get hold of revolutionary papers and books published clandestinely. Group attendees would gather to read and discuss the papers and revolutionary writings and then distributed them among workers, quickly attracting new recruits.63 Despite its apparent theoretical focus, the Group was not immune from brushes with terrorism: police reports (with the usual caveats of probable exaggeration) claimed that members were “studying all violent means […] to achieve the revolution, and their task, during a period of rioting, will be to blow up the sewers by cutting gas pipes and breaking telegraph wires.”64 By the time Grave took up Elisée Reclus’s invitation to move to Geneva and take on editing Le Révolté, the Group’s audience extended to “about 120 people, most of them  APP BA 1505, Flyer “Groupe du Faubourg Marceau.”  Le Droit Social, 12 February 1882. 59  APP BA 1505, undated report. 60  APP BA 1505, report “Groupe d’études sociales du Faubourg Marceau,” n.d. 61  APP BA 1505, report dated 22 December 1882. Folder “Groupe anarchiste d’Etudes Sociales du Fg Marceau.” 62  Grave, Mémoires, 127. 63  AN F7 12,504, report from Roanne dated 14 December 1893. 64  APP BA1505, “Groupe anarchiste du Faubg St Marceau,” n.d. 57 58

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workers,”65 although most of the time there were fewer than 20 attendees. Grave’s departure signalled a downturn, as noted in a late 1883 police report: “This group had not met since Grave’s departure for Geneva.”66 The Group dissolved in September 1884 following some arrests. It was Reclus who, during a visit to Paris, offered Grave the editorship of Le Révolté, his name having been suggested by Sophie Kropotkin.67 Grave was at the helm of the paper by the end of 1883; two decades later, upon Reclus’s death, he praised him as the friend who “pulled me out of obscurity and offered me the chance to look after Le Révolté, which already had a history.”68 When Grave took over, he had learnt typesetting and quit shoemaking. He initially took up the role for six months only, because he was about to get married and did not want to settle permanently in Geneva. However, when his future wife joined him in Geneva, the move and association with the paper became permanent.69 As suggested by his first experiences as an activist, Grave was a man of the printed word from the early stages of his political career, in a movement largely structured and identified by the written word. Holding written material labelled as anarchist—periodicals, pamphlets but also private correspondence—was a prime way of identifying anarchists and defining oneself as such. As pointed out by Yeoman, “to engage in print—to write, edit, print, receive, distribute, read, hear and respond to periodicals—was to engage in the movement.”70 This was a recurring theme in the persecution of anarchists in the early 1880s, just as the movement emerged publicly and faced repression, and Grave’s letters were seized and used as evidence against other companions at the 1883 Lyon trial, along with large quantities of material which he had kept in Paris for the Révolté.71 He also recalled that the infiltrated agent Bordes later tried to obtain the list of subscribers to Le Révolté from him.72 Even though Grave’s activism started in local groups and meetings, he was obviously not an orator. He wrote at length about his paralysing shyness, stutter and tendency to blush “like a virgin” when speaking in  APP BA 1505, report dated 3 February 1883.  APP BA 1505, report dated 21 December 1883. 67  Woodock and Avakumovic, The Anarchist Prince, 193. 68  Temps Nouveaux, 15 July 1905. 69  Grave, Mouvement, 167–77. 70  Yeoman, “Print Culture,” 11. 71  Grave, Mémoires, 167. 72  Ibid., 175. 65 66

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public—all owing to his father’s constant mocking.73 However, his retrospective comments on this matter were nuanced, and he regretted not persevering in his attempt: “[I]t was our major flaw that we did not have anyone here who could speak in public for the paper. I regret that I didn’t, early on, try to speak in public. I don’t think that I would have become an orator—but half-reading, half-rehearsing, with practice, I could have managed.”74 He blamed the lack of time and nothing else for this withdrawal from gatherings, acknowledging that it would have made a great difference for the paper. This was not an idle discussion; as Grave points out, his reluctance towards public speaking had a negative impact on the reception of his activism and also set him apart in the wider context of the professionalisation of politics and the mass diffusion of socialist ideas, beyond anarchist circles. For instance, Jean-Numa Ducange’s biography of Marxist leader Jules Guesde has stressed how central to his appeal his prophetic oratorical style was.75 In contrast, Grave’s marked preference for writing and his apparent dislike for public speaking would indeed later be perceived across the movement as an unwelcome sign of elitism and aloofness from groups and meetings, the actual lifeblood of the movement. In the mid-1880s, however, Grave was still frequently reported as attending and speaking in meetings, increasingly often to promote the publications with which he was associated—and attracting ever-growing police attention on these grounds.76 In Geneva, Grave embraced writing and editing. Charles Malato later described him as “frightfully logical, tenacious like a rock […]. [A] dogged student, chiefly of abstract things, he was clearly made to become the editor of Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus’s paper.”77 Remarkably, however, despite his lifelong devotion to the task, Grave never really described himself as a professional writer, editor or journalist. This can be contrasted with Emile Pouget’s declaration in the first issue of another iconic and broadly contemporaneous publication of French anarchism, Le Père Peinard: “It sounds like a right laugh, but I have gone and become a journalist!”78 This points to differences in individual temperament and journalistic style, underlining Grave’s bashfulness in this respect, or  Ibid., 33–34.  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 27 August (no year). 75  Jean-Numa Ducange, Jules Guesde. L’anti-Jaurès? (Paris: Armand Colin, 2017). 76  AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, report dated 26 August 1884. 77  Charles Malato, De la Commune à l’Anarchie (Paris: Stock, 1894), 265. 78  Le Père Peinard, 24 April 1889. 73 74

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perhaps the hallmark of his working-class origins: as Yeoman has pointed out, “anarchist publishing groups generally saw themselves as ‘workers,’ rather than journalists or intellectuals.”79 Several editorial and militant strategies which later became characteristic of Grave’s approach to publishing and the wider anarchist movement’s practices were already in place when he started editing Le Révolté. The paper was dedicated to anarchist activism, with a proactive diffusion and expansion strategy through network-building. The 6 September 1879 lead article set out the editors’ aim of doubling their readers’ figures to fund a move from bi-monthly to weekly publication and enlisted existing readers to support the effort by sending two copies of the journal to each subscriber for them to share on. As the paper evolved, its diffusion strategies were diversified, always relying on the readers’ active support. Thus, at the end of 1884, a brief address to “nos amis de France” urged them “to do their utmost to find new distributors, especially in the localities where our organ has not penetrated deeply.”80 The following issue extended the call to “all places where French is spoken” and reach “the masses who, so far, hardly know us,” by finding sellers attracting “all sorts of buyers.”81 A new range of print-based networking and diffusion strategies were implemented: reselling old issues of Le Révolté, selling pamphlets, advertising other papers.82 The principle of reciprocity of advertisement was a notable feature of the young anarchist press, which was practical and dissemination-­ focused and also served to acknowledge and delineate a political community through mutual naming and recognition. There were tangible results, with a rapid print run increase from 1500 to 3000 for each issue.83

 Yeoman, “Print Culture,” 30.  Le Révolté, 7 December 1884. 81  Le Révolté, 21 December 1884. 82  Le Révolté, 25 May 1884: reselling L’Alarme (Lyon) and L’Affamé (Marseille). In return, the latter advertised Le Révolté and its subscription service (L’Affamé, 14 June 1884). L’Affamé appeared in multiple languages and had strong national and international networks. 83  Grave, Mémoires, 173. 79 80

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Le Révolté and Anarchist Communities: Print Transnationalism, Ideological Differentiation and Police Repression Grave’s Geneva stint coincided with a period of intense doctrinal development and dissemination for anarchist communism, and Le Révolté was an important site in the multifaceted emergence and self-definition of anarchism, in the French-speaking world and internationally. In the exilic space of Geneva, anarchist identity was built through the experience of repression as well as press-mediated debates, discussions and participation. The paper was an influential voice in the theoretical construction and organisation of anarchism. Grave had already made a significant theoretical contribution through his Parisian pamphlets as Jehan Le Vagre. In 1885, he published La Révolution et l’autonomie selon la science, reprinted from an 1882 Révolté article.84 On 16 March 1884, the unsigned lead article “Autorité et organisation” defined libertarian organisation as having “no laws, no statutes, no rules which individuals are forced to abide by […]. [T]he individuals are not attached to it by force, they retain their freedom and autonomy and can give up on this organisation when it seeks to replace their autonomy.”85 In February 1885, the article series “L’enfant dans la société nouvelle” (Children in the new society) ushered in the important theme of education in libertarian society. In September– October 1884, the article “Aux jeunes gens de la classe 1884” signed by “un réfractaire” (a draft-dodger) set out antimilitarist ideas, while the October issue advertised George Deherme’s Revue anti-patriotique et révolutionnaire, reflecting the growing prominence of antinationalism in its many guises within anarchism. The November issue contained a long extract from an antimilitarist pamphlet. In tone and purpose, Grave continued Kropotkin’s initial brief for Le Révolté as a revolutionary paper, striking a hopeful note rather than being “mere annals of complaint,” plain in language, watching “those symptoms which everywhere announce the coming of a new era,” and allowing readers to think for themselves.86 The paper had a sprinkling of humour and conversationality, amidst otherwise dry, theoretical and occasionally statistics-­heavy contents, which reflected its founders’ scientific ambitions.  Jehan Le Vagre, La Révolution et l’autonomie selon la science (Paris: Imp. Bataille, 1885).  Le Révolté, 16 March 1884, 11 May 1884. 86  Kropotkin, Memoirs, 390–91. 84 85

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One notable addition to Kropotkin’s initial statement of intention was the role of the paper as a forum and communication space for anarchists, including internationally; it may be hypothesised that this dimension was developed by Grave, in a period of rapid growth for the movement. The focus on collecting and sharing information, a core role of the nascent anarchist press, was encapsulated in the following address “to our friends”: “Le Révolté being intent on keeping its readers informed of everything to do with the social question, we are calling upon all our friends to let us know of all facts regarding propaganda taking place in their area.”87 Police surveillance and censorship were major constraints but also solidified the founding opposition between “them and us,” oppressor and oppressed, consolidating anarchist identities around such notions as “le parti des révoltés” (the party of rebels) and the shared sense of being outcasts forming a counter-community against the common enemies of political authority and capital. Surveillance was rife, as commented upon in the paper in September 1883, around the time Grave took over: Since the Lyon trial and the more recent Paris trial, we have been infested with swarms of policemen from all countries, and especially from France. The French government is doing things properly, keeping half a dozen rascals in Geneva, tasked specifically with anarchist surveillance, and then alongside this squad of permanent informers, there are those who, in passing, collect information, study individuals, observe them in order to infer deductions to be added to the little files opened in the back rooms.88

Grave and his collaborators managed to keep distributing the paper through elaborate smuggling tactics. When the paper was “severely prohibited” in France,89 the anarchist and internationalist Jacques Gross found someone who could help smuggle it, something which the paper’s founders had failed to do due to the risks involved, contenting themselves instead with sending the paper to France in sealed envelopes.90 Gross, whom Grave described as “excessively useful for propaganda,” has since been acknowledged as “one of the most successful distributors and

 Le Révolté, 11 May 1884.  Le Révolté, 15 September 1883. 89  Le Révolté, 20 January 1884. 90  Kropotkin, Memoirs, 395. 87 88

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smugglers of forbidden socialist and anarchist publications.”91 Given the costs involved, however, Grave eventually found an alternative route via Roubaix with local comrades. The January 1884 issue announced that [s]everal French comrades have asked us if, despite the ban, they can send us new subscriptions […], and whether these will be served. Our friends can send us all the subscriptions that they can secure for us, they will be served; incidentally, this is the best way to help us keep up the fight against authority. We have increased our print run to meet claims which may arise and face the “seizures” that the government may carry out at the border passage.92

The following issues reveal the increased repression faced by the paper and the wide range of tactics counteracting it. In early 1884, a rousing unsigned editorial asserted the paper’s determination to complete its mission. Grave wrote a curt letter to the French Ministre de L’Intérieur (Home Secretary) to protest against the seizure and withholding of printed material in France as well as the arrest of a comrade in the process; the letter was also printed in Lyon’s L’Hydre anarchiste.93 Le Révolté recounted the endless difficulties of getting the paper into France, with intricate details about the practicalities of diffusion. Although the ban on the paper was supposed to have been lifted, part of a recent bundle of publications sent across the border had been confiscated when the rest had not, suggesting that the ban was still in operation: “The comrade who had offered to bring Le Révolté into France was arrested just as he was crossing the border. An argument erupted between him and the border guards; our friend managed to shake them off and get back into Belgium. The furious border guards then shot at him but without reaching him.”94 The following issue announced the lifting of the ban and urged readers to find distributors in France. A few weeks later, Grave noted that the papers sent to France were still likely to be intercepted by postal services or border guards (which, as evidenced by surveillance files, was indeed the case) and asked readers to return a slip to the paper acknowledging receipt. These vagaries continued for months, and Grave’s tone was defiantly 91  Grave, Mémoires, 174; ISSG, “Jacques Gross,” accessed 6 November 2020, https:// search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/ARCH00500. 92  Le Révolté, 3 February 1884. 93  AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, letter from Grave to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, n.d. (1884); L’Hydre anarchiste, 9 March 1884. 94  Le Révolté, 9 November 1884.

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sarcastic. This was part of the paper’s rhetoric of rebellion, which was central to its identity and, in the face of repression, a powerful driver for the paper’s growth.

Transnational Connections Indeed, repression certainly did not stop the paper from flourishing and expanding transnationally. The early-1880s’ anarchist movement was international in its militant personnel and geographical reach, and internationalist in its ideals and strategies. Le Révolté’s internationalist and egalitarian consciousness, however, did not extend consistently to anticolonialism and anti-imperialism; as observed by Jean-Numa Ducange in reference to the contemporary Guesdist movement, anticolonialism largely remained a blind spot for the French far left at that point. Grave recalled his early interest in the question of national emancipation, at a time when the theme was very much in discussion; at the age of 12, he had even started writing a drama about the emancipation of Poland.95 Such concerns were shared by many of his contemporaries; as Ferretti stresses, [n]ineteenth century European anarchism had its roots in the republican movements for social liberation which animated the revolts of 1848–49, and its militants were often acquainted with other activists struggling for national liberation in Eastern and Southern Europe: early anarchists generally supported these movements, hoping that national liberation could hasten social revolution on an international scale.96

The anarchist geographers Reclus and Kropotkin displayed early anticolonial concerns.97 Grave’s focus, however, was overwhelmingly on economic emancipation, with a very limited understanding of the inherent value of national liberation: “The master is still the master, whatever his nationality.”98 These ideas were inscribed in the paper: in a telling testimony of the  Grave, Mémoires, 31.  Federico Ferretti, “Revolutions and their places: the anarchist geographers and the problem of nationalities in the Age of Empire (1875–1914),” in Historical Geographies of anarchism – Early critical geographers and present-day scientific challenges, ed. Federico Ferretti, Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre, Anthony Ince and Francisco Toro (London: Routledge, 2017), 2. 97  Federico Ferretti, “Political Geographies, ‘unfaithful’ translations and anticolonialism: Ireland in Elisée Reclus’s geography and biography,” Political Geography 59 (2017): 11–23. 98  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, 14AS17, Jean Grave, “Autres souvenirs d’un révolté,” 133 bis. 95 96

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perceived primacy of class and even party politics over national sovereignty, the article “Lettre d’exil” opened with the remark that “the war continues. What we are talking about is not the war in Tonkin [between France and China, over control of the Tonkin region, hence a colonial battleground], but the war between socialists.”99 This was a lasting trend: still in 1888, Grave’s new venture, La Révolte, described Italian expeditions in Africa as “the cause of double misery and oppression for the Italian proletariat.” The impact of such expeditions on colonised rather than colonising populations seems to have been a secondary consideration.100 Le Révolté was transnational in its modes of operation and theoretical development. It was part of extensive French and international networks from 1883 to 1884. Its ties with France were so strong that it read like a French paper even before its relocation to Paris, in 1885; as Kropotkin reminisced, “France was always the chief object of our aims.”101 This bond, which rested on France’s revolutionary legacy, recent history and dynamic anarchist movement, especially across the border in Lyon, was ideological and linguistic and based on local personal networks. For instance, Paris’s Le Drapeau rouge advertised Le Révolté, sold pamphlets by Grave and Kropotkin and reprinted texts previously published in Le Révolté.102 Le Révolté was peerless in connecting local groups, fundraising and, in doing so, showcasing the international movement, providing a medium through which the movement made itself visible to its members and the outside world, with refraction and echo thanks to the networks into which papers were integrated. The “Mouvement Social” section reported on international labour and political news. The paper’s emerging readership and support network included donors from “Port Elisabeth [sic], Africa,” Montevideo,103 Cincinnati,104 Newark,105 London,106 Freiburg,107 Romania,108 Amsterdam,109 and multiple locations all over  Le Révolté, 1st February 1885.  La Révolte, 4 February 1888. 101  Kropotkin, Memoirs, 395. 102  Le Drapeau rouge, 24 May 1885. 103  Le Révolté, 16 March 1884. 104  Le Révolté, 13 April 1884, 27 April 1884. 105  Le Révolté, 5 January 1884. 106  Le Révolté, 17 February 1884, September and October 1884. 107  Le Révolté, 13 April 1884, 25 May 1884, 1st February 1885. 108  Le Révolté, 27 April 1884, 25 May 1884. 109  Le Révolté, 12 October 1884. 99

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France. These correspondences performed many functions: they advertised new groups and publications, often with contact information, answered personal questions, documented financial donations, relayed news from local movements and so on. These exchanges might be occasional or more sustained, for instance when texts were exchanged for reprinting. Le Révolté was in regular contact with Spain’s La Revista Social, which had become an anarchist organ in 1881, and had close links with Florence’s La Questione Sociale (1883–1884).110 Its South Africa contact, “H.G.,” was most likely Henry Glasse, an India-born Englishman who had moved to Port Elizabeth in the 1880s, corresponded with London’s Freedom, translated Kropotkin’s writings and distributed European anarchist publications.111 Glasse was still working with Grave three decades later. This example illustrates the personal circulations and print exchanges which underpinned the international development of anarchist communism. These correspondences show a community emerging, communicating and publicising itself in the face of repression. International networking accelerated in 1884. The June 1884 “Petite Correspondance” section, where individuals and groups exchanged messages, included “J.H.” in Necedah (Wisconsin, US) and “E.S. in Jersey City. Thank you for the addresses. We will write straightaway.” Circulations became more complex and interlocked: a message to a Milan-based group referred them to La Questione Sociale to insert a note from two comrades, and to a group in Bologna, about printing material.112 A new contact appeared in Focchani [Focsani], Romania, about a pamphlet reprint.113 Connecting people, groups and publications was the key focus: more numerous and complex links were created, and the paper often was a mediator putting groups and publications in touch. Most of its contents were devoted to the transnational discussion and elaboration of anarchist ideas, a trend consolidated throughout the next two decades. The numerous and occasionally fractious facets of this process of ideological differentiation are strikingly illustrated by the  Le Révolté, 3 February 1884.  Le Révolté, 27 October 1883, 8 December 1883; Lucien van der Walt, “South African Socialism,” in Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940. The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution, ed. Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2010), 46–47. 112  Le Révolté, 8 June 1884. 113  Le Révolté, 22 June 1884. 110 111

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drawn-­out quarrel with Benjamin Tucker’s Boston-based Liberty, one of the key exponents of individualist anarchism at the time. Kropotkin and Le Révolté were frequently mentioned in Liberty from 1881, as a leading European anarchist publication,114 and Tucker’s paper was one of the main channels whereby Kropotkin’s ideas came to exert “an increasing influence on American anarchists.”115 An 1884 article from Liberty tells how Le Révolté had started circulating in the United States, but also indicates the resulting ideological implications and possible tensions: “Some time ago one of Liberty’s friends in Jersey City wrote to me asking for the addresses of men in various parts of the country whom I thought would be willing to canvass for subscriptions to ‘Le Révolté,’ the French anarchistic journal published in Geneva, and suggesting that I keep the addresses and terms of ‘Le Révolté’ standing in Liberty’s advertising columns.”116 Tucker circulated these addresses and also noted that “Liberty was the first paper to introduce the name ‘Le Révolté’ to the English-speaking people of America and had done all it could to commend it to them by ardent praise and long and continual quotations from its columns.” The translator was most likely “E.S. in New Jersey,” who corresponded with Le Révolté and has been tentatively identified as Emma Schumm.117 Tucker remarked that Le Révolté, in return, ought to be a little more observant of the principle of reciprocity and courtesy and that he would no longer advertise Le Révolté until they did the same for Liberty. Le Révolté retorted that they would not advertise Liberty because “its ideas more nearly resembling those of bourgeois society than our own, we cannot recommend it as Anarchistic.”118 This seemingly anecdotal squabble over the practice of mutual advertisement gave way to a debate which emphasised the increasingly marked delineation between individualist and communist anarchism. Liberty argued that Le Révolté had “no claim to be ranked as an Anarchistic journal, for it squarely denies individual liberty […]. I charge ‘Le Révolté’ with violating the Anarchistic principle of freedom of production and exchange.”119 The debate also hinged on Liberty’s defence of free banking. Nonetheless, solidarity against a common enemy still prevailed, as  “About Progressive People,” Liberty, 6 August 1881.  Paul Avrich, “Kropotkin in America,” International Review of Social History 25, no. 1 (April 1980): 3–4. 116  Liberty, 26 July 1884. 117  Thank you to Tom Goyens for helping with identification. 118  Liberty, 26 July 1884, “Which is the Heretic?” 119  Liberty, 3 January 1885. 114 115

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evidenced by Liberty’s vigorous post-scriptum condemning a police raid on the office of Le Révolté: “This shameful offence against a free press […] commands, of course, my most earnest condemnation and regret.”120 Tucker eventually stopped his advertising boycott and returned to providing extensive information for potential subscribers to Le Révolté, commenting that “disagreeing with it in some things as I do, I nevertheless sympathize much more than I differ, and cheerfully acknowledge that, in loftiness of tone, energy of propagandism, and ability of discussion, it stands heads and shoulders above any other French socialistic journal that I know.”121 These polarising discussions were echoed in other publications, evidencing the centrality of both papers within the international movement: in August 1883, Liberty printed a complete letter from the anarchist Marie Le Compte praising Liberty’s position from Bern, musing that due to Kropotkin’s imprisonment and Reclus being otherwise engaged, Le Révolté had seemingly gone rogue ideologically as “different shades of thought have taken a fling in its columns.”122 A later issue reprinted an extract from the Philadelphia-based, German-language Die Zukunft about the controversy, which tried to reconcile the two papers by emphasising that they both wanted the Social Revolution.123 Notes and communications inserted in the paper created a further echo chamber, with Liberty acting as a relay for French-language colonies in the United States: E.  Peron, of the Icaria community in Corning, Iowa, wrote as follows: “The careful perusal of ‘Le Révolté’, ‘Le Drapeau Noir’, ‘L’Emeute’ and ‘Liberty’ has greatly modified our views on the rôle [sic] of the individual in society,” resulting in a shift from Cabetism to anarchism.124 This was a clear statement of the ideological influence of periodicals, probably more so than essays or pamphlets, including transnationally. By February 1885, the discussion had soured again. Le Révolté thanked Liberty “for all the criticisms it may see fit to make upon us, and we will undertake, should occasion offer, to cordially return the same.”125 What was now unfolding was a process of ideological self-definition and mutual  Liberty, 28 February 1885, “At last an answer.”  Liberty, 26 July 1884. 122  Liberty, 25 August 1883. 123  Die Zukunft, cited in Liberty, 6 September 1884. 124  Liberty, 31 May 1884, “On picket duty.” 125  Liberty, 28 February 1885, “At last an answer” (translated from Le Révolté); Le Révolté, 1st February 1885. 120 121

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excommunication, which pointed to an increasingly structured and clearly defined movement; the difference was primarily ideological but was expressed in the seemingly benign practice of newspaper exchange. This was an important feature of anarchist print culture since, as James Yeoman points out, “print was the means by which anarchist ideas and practice came together […]. The symbolic and material site where numerous, dynamic elements of anarchism converged.”126 The fusion of ideology with journalistic practice played out on many different levels: the paper was a militant space whose layout and contents reflected values and networks, down to bibliographical notes advertising other papers and referencing theoretical works, thereby sketching out an emerging anarchist canon. Except for a barb at La Révolte’s lack of consistency in its discussions of propaganda by the deed in an 1888 issue,127 the paper was rarely mentioned in Liberty after 1885. Interestingly, throughout this period of intense exchange, Grave was never mentioned in person and Le Révolté continued to be seen as Kropotkin’s and Reclus’s project. In the United States, Le Révolté was also instrumental in the emergence of the “Franco-American revolutionary movement,”128 through the figure of Louis Goaziou, a Belgian-born activist who had moved to Pennsylvania in the 1880s, finding employment and becoming politicised in the state’s anthracite-mining industry. Goaziou, initially a trade union activist, became interested in anarchist ideas by reading one of the copies of Le Révolté which “circulated within the French-speaking community” of Pennsylvania: newspaper reading was often the first step towards becoming an anarchist, dispensing the “doctrinal training” of militants.129 Goaziou and his circles made a profound impact on the French-language anarchist movement in the United States, which, through his continued centrality, blended anarchism, cooperativism and trade unionism in an original way while retaining links with the French anarchists and several periodicals (including Le Révolté’s later incarnations).130 Le Révolté’s  Yeoman, “Print Culture,” 1–10.  Liberty, 18 August 1888. 128  Michel Cordillot, La Sociale en Amérique, dictionnaire biographique du mouvement social francophone aux Etats-Unis, 1848–1922 (Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, 2002), 210. 129  Ibid., 210–11. 130   Constance Bantman, “A transnational radical print culture: anarchist periodicals between London, Paris and the US before 1914,” in The Immigration and Exile ForeignLanguage Press in Modern Britain and the US, ed. Bénédicte Deschamps and Stéphanie Prévost (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming). 126 127

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influence also appeared in the general alignment with Grave and Kropotkin’s anarchist communism, in cutting-and-pasting of French texts in the US papers and in the generous financial support from some of these communities for Le Révolté and its successors—although they stopped sending money to La Révolte as soon as they started producing their own paper.131 The historian of Francophone anarchism in the United States, Ronald Creagh, mentions the “impressive readership” of Grave and Emile Pouget’s Père Peinard in these circles and the “powerful links” created by periodicals—but also the importance of US social structures in the emergence of a French-speaking anarchist and socialist movement among Pennsylvania miners, which nonetheless remained pervaded by an emphasis on “theoretical expression.”132 This points to the important ideological thrust arising from print circulations, but also to their limitations and dependence on local contexts and populations. Exchanges with international groups and periodicals fulfilled diverse purposes. They were financial: by the end of 1884, Le Révolté received donations from all over the world for its propaganda: Allentown, Pennsylvania and Cape Town,133 Noxon (Montana, US),134 Australia135—a remarkably international fundraising base. Anarchist literature was exchanged: “E. W., Australia. We have sent you the pamphlets you asked for. We are missing: Esprit de Révolte, Mémoire de la Fédération Jurassienne, Théologie de Bakounine by Mazzini. We have written to Spain to request the pamphlets you are asking for.”136 The “Mouvement social” section contained regular international updates, for instance from Austro-Hungary throughout 1884. More unusually, transnational notes also served to coordinate self-protection against spy infiltration—for instance in a warning to Italian readers in December 1884, informing them of fake letters from prominent socialists being often sent to Le Révolté and asking them 131  Michel Cordillot, Révolutionnaires du Nouveau Monde. Une brève histoire du mouvement socialiste francophone aux Etats-Unis (1885–1922) (Montréal: Lux, coll. “Mémoire des Amériques,” 2010), 30–44. 132  Ronald Creagh, “Socialism in America: The French-Speaking Coal-Miners in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in The Shadow of the Statue of Liberty: Immigrants, Workers, and Citizens in The American Republic, 1880–1920, ed. Marianne Debouzy (Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 145. 133  Le Révolté, 9 November 1884. 134  Le Révolté, 23 November 1884. 135  Le Révolté, 7 December 1884. 136  Ibid.

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to try and identify the forger.137 A few weeks later, the paper shared the terse news from Italian groups that “Sir Pouzone, having been identified as a snitch, has been executed as such.”138 All the sections pertaining to the sale, publicity and exchange of anarchist literature were key strategic spaces. Their increasingly eclectic and multilingual contents heralded La Révolte’s literary supplement, launched in the mid-1880s, and highlight a clear dynamic of expansion and internationalisation. There were reviews of English-, Spanish- and Italian-­ language publications. The paper was distributed in Paris (Courchinous, 67 rue Mouffetard; at the offices of the papers Terre et Liberté, Les Insurgés, La Revue Anti-Patriote), Lyon (two locations) and Toulon.139 Within a month, reflecting the paper’s drive to find new outlets, a dozen sellers are listed in the paper, in Paris, Lyon, Lille, Marseille, Toulon, Montluçon and Troyes. These include individual distributors as well as the offices of a couple of anarchist periodicals in Paris.140 At the start of 1885, the paper shared addresses of resellers in Lisbon, London (two sellers), Brussels (two sellers), Verviers, Chicago (a certain Hirschberger), La Chaux de Fonds, Freiburg,141 Barcelonne [sic], Amsterdam, Buenos Ayre [sic] (V.  Mariani), Montevideo (P.  Bernard).142 The overview of 1884 had a remarkable international coverage, based on first-hand information from England, Russia, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the United States, reporting on repression, the progress of strikes and anarchist publications143; subsequent issues also included Sweden.144

Leaving Geneva At the end of 1884, a group of German anarchists attempted to blow up the federal courthouse in Bern, triggering a wave of police repression in Switzerland which saw all subversive papers closed down and home raids in all major cities. In Geneva, access to the Révolté printing press was temporarily banned; it was then reopened as “a trap” to seize correspondences  Le Révolté, 21 December 1884.  Le Révolté, 15 February 1885. 139  Le Révolté, 23 November 1884. 140  Le Révolté, 21 December 1884. 141  Le Révolté, 4 February 1885. 142  Le Révolté, 15 February 1885. 143  Le Révolté, 4 January 1885. 144  Le Révolté, 14 March 1885. 137 138

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between comrades, prompting Grave to close it down.145 Grave was expelled, and in March 1885, he and his wife went back to Paris, where his arrival had been anxiously expected by the police for some time.146 French authorities would later identify the 40 or so expulsions of German and Austrian comrades from Switzerland in this period, and their relocation to France, London and “America,” as an important moment in the formation of the radical anarchist diaspora.147 French press laws had been relaxed between 1878 and 1881, paving the way for an expanded role in politics and making France an exceptionally liberal press regime compared to other European countries, since only a very small number of carefully defined press offences now remained.148 The first issue of the Paris-based Révolté kept referring to changes in the paper’s editorial team, although of course Grave remained the most important agent of continuity. Emile Méreaux was listed as the manager. The paper explicitly positioned itself in the landscape of the French anarchist press, as a publication focused on theoretical propaganda, showing rebels “what the aim of revolt is, and what it must lead to,” as opposed to “fighting publications” such as Le Droit Social and most French anarchist papers.149 In October 1885, Grave’s wife, aged just 22, died in childbirth. Next to nothing is known of her; Grave was characteristically terse on this private event in his memoir.150 Her death marks the beginning of the letters from Kropotkin to Grave held at the Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale, although their friendship and correspondence clearly predated this, without any documentary evidence of it having seemingly survived: “To lose everything at once: your wife, your beloved, your friend, your fighting comrade—this is too much pain,” Kropotkin empathised.151 Over the years, this friendship evolved, still documented in this correspondence. The first letter in which the more familiar “tu” form is used dates from 1901.152 By 1902, Kropotkin was markedly more affectionate, signing off  Le Révolté, 12 April 1885.  AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, report dated 13 November 1884, from the Railway Surveillance division of the French Home Office. 147  AN F7 12504, report “L’organisation anarchiste,” n.d. 148  Charle, Siècle de la presse, 133–136. 149  Le Révolté, 12 April 1885. 150  Jean Maitron, Guillaume Davranche, “Jean Grave,” in Dictionnaire des anarchistes, accessed 2 July 2020, https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article157369; Grave, Mémoires, 179. 151  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 7 November 1885. 152  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 17 November 1901. 145 146

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letters with “ton Pierre” (your Pierre), addressing Grave as “bien-aimé Jean” (dearest Jean).153 By 1909, he always used the phrase “Fortes embrassades” (strong embrace). Both men rarely saw each other but were in very regular correspondence, always with much affection.154

Conclusion Part of the appeal of anarchism as an ideology and a movement was its creation of new working-class identities and solidarities, which bridged the nineteenth century’s cultures of protest and the industrial “new worker” of the Belle Epoque. At a time of increased geographical, professional and symbolical marginality for the working classes, anarchism offered a chance of visibility, of finding an individual and collective voice and countering exclusion. Grave’s influence in the movement must also be understood from this perspective: his highly articulate and ambitious brand of anarchism restored agency and a sense of affiliation to alienated individuals and groups, providing a paradoxical form of collective integration through its highly articulate ethos of rebellion and dissidence. Recent scholarship has stressed the importance of “informal networks and personal friendships in the circulation of ideas and the fabric of political and cultural life” of anarchism,155 and the reverse is also true: through a lively local meeting culture and print-mediated contacts and discussions, the movement fulfilled a need for new working-class identities and social interactions in the urban and industrial landscapes which were emerging from the Second Industrial Revolution. Grave’s own trajectory illustrated and increasingly came to shape these dynamics: he was soon to play a major role in articulating these collective grievances and aspirations, in putting forward alternative visions and bearing the brunt of the repressive backlash against anarchism.

 IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 27 January 1902.  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 26 April 1909. 155  Ferretti, Federico, “Publishing Anarchism. Pyotr Kropotkin and British Print Cultures, 1876–1917,” Journal of Historical Geography 57 (2017): 20. 153 154

CHAPTER 3

A Sedentary Transnationalist (1885–1892)

This chapter follows the ideological and political development of anarchist communism in the 1880s, its expansion in France and internationally and the impact of propaganda by the deed—all of which combined to inaugurate a decade of all-out anti-anarchist repression.1 Having relocated to Paris in 1885 and relaunched his paper there, Grave was a central actor in all these developments, causing him constant legal troubles. His centrality within the movement also clashed increasingly with the egalitarian and undogmatic ethos of anarchism, exposing him to criticism from across the movement. The expansion of anarchism as a multiscalar web connecting individuals, groups and publications and Grave’s rising status within it are probed here by emphasising the spatiality of politics, both physical and in print culture. As Tom Goyens has stressed in reference to German anarchists in New York, “urban anarchists produced a spatial community that they conceived as the embodiment of anarchist ideals […]. They not only ascribed an anarchist function to such places, but also inscribed their philosophy in it.”2 This prefigurative interpretation of anarchist spaces, whereby individuals and groups expressed their political ideas through 1  Richard Bach Jensen, The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism. An International History, 1878–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 2  Tom Goyens, “Social Space and practice of anarchist history,” Rethinking History: the Journal of Theory and Practice 13, no. 4 (2009): 451.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7_3

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their practices, is applied to both Grave and his papers: firstly, the Parisian map of anarchism in which his activism was anchored and the micro-space of his attic/office, which was key to his activities and representations of him. Secondly, as the paper gained prominence, it continued to function as a counter-cultural, alternative and oppositional space connecting communities on multiple scales, from the local to the global. The interplay between these spaces, between Grave’s Parisian rootedness and his publications’ deeply international contents and orientation, as well as their diffusion in France, Europe and across the Atlantic, is a key focus, as it established Grave as a sedentary activist with a global mindset and set of contacts.

The “Attic Philosopher”3: 140 Rue Mouffetard and Militant Sociability After years of moving around in France and Switzerland, Grave eventually returned to the Mouffetard area, where he remained for the next two decades. His activities required great caution in finding a place to live: he initially moved into a tiny alleyway, rue Pellée, just off the rue Saint Sabin, in the 11th arrondissement, a neighbourhood with a long history of working-­class activism and a prominent site of the Paris Commune. This was the administrative address of the first Parisian issue of Le Révolté, published in April 1885. However, Grave found the location too open and became suspicious after his letter box was forced, prompting him to return to the rue Mouffetard within two weeks.4 The first four issues of the new, Paris-based series of Le Révolté were printed in a small printing house on the rue des Patriarches, in the 5th arrondissement, which soon went bankrupt.5 This was followed by further setbacks with printers, which did not prevent the paper from reaching a print run of 5000 and then 8000 by early February—good figures but always below Grave’s hopes.6 Grave’s association with the Mouffetard neighbourhood and the attic where he lived and produced the paper soon gained notoriety as a key space for the movement. The resulting clutter forced him to rent out a 3   Alvan Francis Sanborn, Paris and  the  Social Revolution (Boston: Small Maynard and Company, 1905), 64. 4  Grave, Mémoires, 178–80. 5  Ibid., 188–89. 6  Ibid., 190–91.

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room on nearby rue Monge,7 and in 1902, he relocated to 4 rue Broca, still in the 5th arrondissement. However, his connection with the rue Mouffetard attic office/home, its interplay with his activism and recurrence in representations of anarchism are striking. It is also clear that this strong local emphasis has been instrumental in obscuring the scope of Grave’s international activism. This tension is partly resolved by Raymond Craib’s concept of “sedentary anarchism,” which underlines the importance of “place” in anarchism and the fact that even (or indeed especially) for internationalist activists the experience of living in one place “was crucial to the organizational successes they experienced and to the persecution they suffered.”8 The concept of “rooted cosmopolitan,” initially developed by social movement theorist Sidney Tarrow and transposed to anarchism by Carl Levy and others, conveys the same duality,9 although the term “cosmopolitan” does not quite fit a non-traveller like Grave. These concepts are part of a body of recent scholarship challenging the simplistic opposition between the local and the global as levels of activism and emotional attachment, stressing that “forms of situated belonging are not incompatible with internationalism and cosmopolitanism.”10 They are also useful in overcoming the duality between print mobility and personal immobility, which is highly relevant to Grave. By the mid-1880s, Paris had overtaken Lyon as the “nerve center” of French anarchism,11 and it was one of the capitals of the rapidly expanding global movement. In the geography of Parisian anarchism, Mouffetard seemed somewhat marginal in comparison to the thriving bohemian anarchist neighbourhoods of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter.12 It had a mixed social composition, “an artisanal character, but workers, students, and Bohemians flourished throughout the quarter in abundance.”13 As late

 Ibid., 271.  Raymond Craib, “Sedentary Anarchists,” in Reassessing the Transnational Turn, 139. 9  See Carl Levy, “Anarchism and Cosmopolitanism,” Journal of Political Ideologies 16, no. 3 (2011): 265–278. 10  Ferretti, “Revolutions and their places,” 16. 11  Sonn, Anarchism, 49. 12  Ibid.; “Paris en 1900,” Atlas Historique de Paris, accessed 2 July 2020, https://parisatlas-historique.fr/63.html. 13  Varias, Paris and the Anarchists, 24. 7 8

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as 1906, it was still regarded as insalubrious, with pockets of tuberculosis.14 According to both contemporaries and historians, the proximity with the University quarter suited Grave and matched his high-­brow brand of anarchism. The American journalist Alvan Sanborn judged it “peculiarly significant […] that the office of this anarchist organ (whose mission is to be, like the university settlement, a picket of civilisation carrying light into dark places) [was] located on the line where the university and the industrial districts overlap[ped] each other.”15 Fusing private and semi-public space, the personal and the political, the Mouffetard attic was home to both Grave and the paper, as well as a meeting point for anarchists and sympathisers. That said, as pointed out by Julien Lucchini, the room was so tiny that it could not accommodate more than three or four people at a time, so that “the propaganda there was de facto that of a small group”16— one of the ways in which physical space shaped political sociability. The attic became legendary among anarchists and in the abundant popular literature on anarchism produced in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when the “black peril” fed a lurid popular imagination and became an object of curiosity for those eagerly documenting anarchist mores and, more often than not, distorting and castigating them. The romance surrounding the attic and its intellectual effervescence made it a metonym for the wider movement, which lent itself to both idealisation and demonisation. Favourable depictions showed 140 rue Mouffetard as an important place in the Parisian geography of anarchism and the movement’s predominantly informal sociability, insisting on the anarchist principle of openness, with Grave as a quietly genial figure in charge: “A simple and humble worker, he welcomed anyone—student, master or initiated ‘companions’. It was a chapel of schismatics, open to all drafts.”17 For Sanborn, there was “no more picturesque corner in Paris” than Grave’s impoverished lodging, “in the top of an aged and mellow six-story building”; there was “no more intimate and engaging business interior than the paper, book- and brochure-bestrewn […] slanting-walled loft.”18 A 1939 obituary of Grave still contained the same obligatory evocation: “I was  Julien Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux et ‘l’idée’ libertaire: La propagande anarchiste d’un hebdomadaire de la Belle Epoque (1895–1914)” (Master’s Diss., Université Paris I, 2012), 121. 15  Sanborn, Paris and the Social Revolution, 165. 16  Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 33. 17  Le Temps, 14 December 1939, Jean Lefranc, “En marge.” 18  Sanborn, Paris and the Social Revolution, 64. 14

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barely twenty when I saw the Auvergnat nihilist in the attic which he used as a print shop [...]. He wore the black overall of ‘typos’ [typographers] […]. A humble and simple workman, he welcomed everyone, students as well as masters and ‘companions’ in the know.”19 For the Communard writer Lucien Descaves, Grave was “a good père Pénard [sic], without any set occupation, who fetches his milk in the morning and goes to the market. The Mouffetard market was on his doorstep.”20 Nonetheless, depictions dwelling on the morally charged notions of dirt, dinginess, darkness and poverty far outweighed such sympathetic portrayals. One of the most detailed descriptions occurs in the 1893 memoir of the Symbolist poet and erstwhile anarchist sympathiser turned Catholic reactionary Adolphe Retté, a point-by-point inverted image of Sanborn’s warm evocation: A tall house, with a smoke-stained, cracked and sinister front. A dark staircase, whose worm-eaten steps lead up to an attic where La Révolte is written […]. This is where Jean Grave lives […]. At the end of the attic, under the lowered angle of the roof, an iron bed with a messy blanket. Near the narrow window, a large white wooden table on trestles, littered with papers. Three or four straw chairs. On the wall, a caricature of President Carnot as a street crier selling La Révolte. Another showing the effigy of Rothschild hanging from the gallows. For, as Valois says, among the anarchists, there was clear antisemitism.21

For the historian Richard Sonn, the caricature of Rothschild illustrated “the class antagonism transferred to racial-religious grounds.”22 Interestingly, however, Sanborn’s later depiction did not mention Rothschild, referring instead to “the flower-and-print decorated” attic.23 Given the time separating both descriptions, these are not mutually exclusive—but it is equally plausible that both authors allowed themselves a degree of creative licence which reflected their respective stances on the movement.

 Lefranc, “En marge.”  Lucien Descaves, Souvenirs d’un ours (Paris: Éditions de Paris, 1946), 122. 21  Adolphe Retté, La Maison en ordre: comment un révolutionnaire devint royaliste (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1923), 174–5. 22  Sonn, Anarchism, 46. 23  Sanborn, Paris and the Social Revolution, 64. 19 20

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Retté’s grim portrayal is echoed by other descriptions of the “filthy lodgings on the rue Mouffetard, lit by a single stingy dormer. The counter-­ desks were covered by papers, pamphlets, books, letters, etchings. Only policemen occasionally tidied these up during their searches.”24 Such accounts were instrumental in making the room an occasional site for the anarchist-themed dark tourism which flourished at the time; the anarchist principle of openness also entailed the risk of unwelcome infiltration. Grave’s memoirs thus abound with mentions of visitors, known and reliable to various degrees, coming to see him, along the lines of “[X] often came to the office, pretending to be an anarchist.”25 In 1901, an amused Grave reported in Les Temps Nouveaux that an American paper had printed a made-up story about some visitors who had been turned away from his lodging at gunpoint.26 Grave himself was an integral part of this anarchist folklore, conjuring up similar moral subtexts. Retté depicted him as scribbling an article on anarchism “with rigour and the most naive pedantry,” but conceded that Grave was “scrupulously honest and would not kill a mosquito, even if it had stung him 10 times in a row.”27 Physically, Grave was “a short, squat man, whose belly indulged into a paunch. His round head was greying. A brush-cut moustache crossed his face under bushy eyebrows.”28 The criminal journalist Albert Bataille’s depiction was similarly unflattering, although not quite abiding by the rules and stereotypes which punctuated most portrayals of anarchism in the 1890s. These were often informed by the Italian criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso’s influential theories of anarchism as a congenital affliction, entailing stereotypical physical characteristics.29 Instead, Grave featured in Lombroso’s essays alongside important theorists such as Bakunin, Malatesta and Kropotkin and was one of the writers who critiqued Lombroso, showing excellent knowledge of his ideas—a role reversal which is emblematic of Grave’s distinctive position within the movement and in intellectual circles.30 Overall, Grave  Nettlau Collection, item 3633, Anon., “Ceux de l’anarchie.”  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, 14AS17, Grave, “Autres souvenirs,” 146. 26  Temps Nouveaux, 20 July 1901. 27  Retté, La Maison en ordre, 176. 28  Ibid., 174. 29   Cesare Lombroso, “La physiognomie des anarchistes,” Nouvelle Revue, 15 May 1891, 225–30. 30  Patricia Bass, “Cesare Lombroso and the Anarchists,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 13, no. 1 (2019), 27. 24 25

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was partly spared by the lurid imagination which resulted in negative stereotyping of anarchists in this period: even the journalist Félix Dubois, the author of a sensationalist study on “the anarchist peril” in 1894, stated that “[Grave’s] gift of conciliating sympathy is considerable, and it is hard while in his presence to admit that he can have anything in common with such vulgar criminals as Ravachol or Pini, whose exploits he professes to approve.”31 Such differences in the public discourse on anarchists were important in shaping perceptions within the movement and beyond its ranks. Counterintuitive political crossovers also occurred, such as Dubois’s interesting, sympathetic description of the attic and Grave in the conservative daily Le Figaro in 1894, as “the populariser and practical man of the party. No empty phraseology in his style. He conveys in crystal-clear words the complicated theories and dreams [of Kropotkin and Reclus].” Grave had a “tranquil and caressing voice” and made a very positive impression.32 Irrespective of the ideological implications of these evocations, one constant feature was that Grave and the attic were largely inseparable in representations of the movement, with an occasional mention of Grave’s unnamed “assistant” being there too.33 His affability and gentleness were also repeatedly stressed. A closer look at his social interactions and the spaces in which they developed qualifies his general portrayal as an aloof intellectual and Varias’s claim that “[Grave’s] position within the Latin Quarter’s collegiate setting also brought him in intellectual isolation from libertarians organizing elsewhere.”34 First, as noted in recent scholarship,35 the neighbourhood was a very important level of anarchist organisation and sociability, which offered many opportunities to Grave. As pointed out by Julien Lucchini in reference to the 1890s, his neighbours included the Étudiants Socialistes Révolutionnaires Internationalistes (ESRI), an anarchist student group, at 89 rue Mouffetard. It is likely that physical proximity was a key factor in the participation of several ESRI members in Grave’s papers, such as Marc Pierrot, Léon Rémy, Maria Goldsmith and Georges Willaume.36 It also  Dubois, Le Péril anarchiste, 113.  Le Figaro, 13 January 1894. 33  Sanborn, Paris and the Social Revolution, 64. 34  Varias, Paris and the Anarchists, 21. 35  Ole Birk Laursen, “Spaces of Indian Anticolonialism,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, forthcoming; Laura Forster, “The Paris Commune in London and the Spatial History of Ideas, 1871–1900,” The Historical Journal 62, no. 4 (2019): 1–24. 36  Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 121–122. 31 32

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appears more fruitful to think of militant spaces as being complementary, with their distinctive sociability and repertoires. As summarised by Jürgen Schmidt with regard to the German labour movement, “[i]n the public sphere of media and written texts, workers and journeymen gathered knowledge and information about political concepts, ideas and institutions, whereas in the other public sphere of associations and public meetings, they learnt to communicate, argue and persuade in face-to-face situations.”37 This observation can be transferred to anarchism, highlighting the diversity and specialisation of militant spaces within the movement and the fluidity and circulations linking them. Thus, print culture and the production of the paper also included editorial decisions and debate, which meant that the attic provided a space for intellectual exchange and discussion rather than seclusion. Conversely, as Grave gradually withdrew from meetings, having found in journalism a more congenial mode of activism, anarchist gatherings provided opportunities for the dissemination of the paper, either through reading articles aloud or by selling anarchist literature such as La Révolte38; spaces were interrelated, and activists were aware of and exploited these synergies. Thus, despite Grave’s absence from anarchist meetings, the paper reported on them and served as an echo chamber for these activities—for instance, with a detailed account of a meeting in support of the Chicago anarchists, where addresses from all over Italy were read and internationalist statements proclaimed.39 La Révolte advertised meetings taking place all over France and internationally, often mentioning the circulation of anarchist texts too. Thus, in late 1887, a correspondence from Spain announced that “La Sociedad al día siguiente de la Revolución [Grave’s own Society on the Morrow of Revolution] was available everywhere.”40 The anarchist press was read in public meetings, as indicated by a spy reporting that, at a meeting of 5th arrondissement anarchists in 1890, “Martinet read […] out an article from the paper La Révolte, showing the tortures inflicted upon the men punished in the disciplinary companies of the French army”41—a rare documented example of the well-known practice of public reading, which was essential in extending the audience of the radical and 37  Jürgen Schmidt, “The German labour movement, 1830s–1840s: early efforts at political transnationalism,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46, no. 6 (2020): 1026. 38  APP BA 1505, report dated 20 August 1889. 39  La Révolte, 22 October 1887. 40  La Révolte, 3 December 1887. 41  APP BA 1505, “Groupe anarchiste d’études sociales du Fg Marceau,” report dated 27 March 1890.

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labour press far beyond print runs and sales figures.42 Nonetheless, such was Grave’s aversion to meetings and his belief in written propaganda that even Kropotkin gently chastised him: “We must propagate ideas, very well. But in order to propagate them, meetings […] give you a way to do so just as much as—and more than—the paper and pamphlets.”43 Clearly, the importance, complementarity and possible hierarchy of sites of activism were not lost on the anarchist prince. For Grave, the office of La Révolte was part of an alternative militant map, which, while not immune to snitches and crooks, was characteristic of and central to the more elitist sociability of theorists and journalists. The depiction of his interactions with Elisée Reclus illustrates it: “I would see him when, stopping briefly in Paris, he visited the office or the printing shop […]. We would have lunch in a local restaurant, exchanging our views, and then he would leave, taking with him some submission to go over, some volume—verse, mainly—to review.”44 From the 1890s onwards, the office of Grave’s publisher Stock was another venue where he would come across comrades and make new connections,45 as were the houses of friends and acquaintances. Grave’s memoirs mention numerous trips in and outside Paris and further afield as integral aspects of activism and the social life underpinning it, be it a stopover in London to meet with the exile and Révolte correspondent Lucien Guérineau or an unsolicited visit to the writer Octave Mirbeau in Normandy to collect a long-delayed text.46 In the next decade, the letters sent by artists to Grave often allude to meetings, for business purposes or just “to shake hands.”47 Even the street allowed for chance encounters and discussions.48 All these anecdotes build up to a sense of considerable mobility and interaction in and around Paris, somewhat outside the main circuits of anarchist sociability, since semi-public spaces such as meeting halls were replaced with largely private spaces. This local mobility explains why the concept of “immobile 42  Fabrice Bensimon and François Jarrige, “Lire les socialistes et les radicaux dans l’atelier. Esquisses sur les pratiques ouvrières de lecture collective (France et Grande-Bretagne, 1780–1860),” in Bibliothèques en utopie. Les socialistes et la lecture au XIXe siècle, ed. Nathalie Brémand (Villeurbane: Presses de l’ENSSIB, 2020): 93–115. 43  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, n.d. (1893–94). 44  Grave, Le Mouvement, 62–3. 45  Grave, Mémoires, 211–12. 46  Ibid., 225. 47  IFHS, Steinlen to Grave, 4 July 1912. 48  Grave, Mémoires, 335, 337.

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t­ransnationalist” used to describe Grave in an earlier version of this book was considered inaccurate for the present study.49 Indeed, within an overall framework of sedentariness and local belonging, Grave operated in alternative but active militant spaces and networks, contrasting with the long-distance, permanent or frequent mobilities of exile and labour migration characterising many of his contemporaries. The most important space was the one which Grave himself oversaw: his papers.

La Révolte, a Journal of Anarchist Communism “Le Révolté, prince Kropotkin’s paper, has suddenly ceased publication. A new journal, La Révolte, succeeds it,” Liberty announced on 8 October 1887, a few weeks after the first issue of La Révolte. Organe Anarchiste-­ Communiste appeared, on 17 September 1887.50 The paper was to be published every Saturday, at a cost of five centimes, and wholesale purchase was available at 17 rue du Croissant, in the right bank’s 2nd arrondissement. The paper’s address was, of course, 140 rue Mouffetard; Grave, “le Gérant” (manager), actually combined the roles of “director, administrator, chief editor and general manager.”51 It was printed on the right bank, 17 rue de l’Echiquier, in the 10th arrondissement. Just above the very first front-page article, a small address “A nos amis” (To our friends) enlisted the readers’ support in publicising the paper, asking them to share the posters advertising it and cover the 12-centime stamp themselves when possible.52 The following editorial, “Notre but” (Our goal), set out the paper’s anarchist communist principles. Rebellion (“la révolte”) was the only path to “an equal society” and the paper’s mission was to expose “the falsehood of institutions, the State, the Motherland, Property and Family.” The publication reflected both Grave’s own views on organisation, revolutionary aims and violence and “the general consensus that had emerged among most of the anarchist communists on a number of issues,” taking stock of “the degree to which the theory of anarchist communism had been developed since its first articulation in the late 1870s by members of the 49  Constance Bantman, “Jean Grave and French Anarchism: A Relational Approach (1870s–1914),” International Review of Social History 62, no. 3 (2017): 451–477. 50  Liberty, 8 October 1887. 51  Descaves, Souvenirs, 122. 52  La Révolte, 17 September 1887.

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anti-authoritarian International.”53 Central to these various aspects was the dismissal of “all the old system of authoritarian groupings, centralisation, federation with a directing council” in favour of spontaneous groups to carry out “well-defined acts of propaganda.” These associations should evolve as required by propaganda, so that no personal authority would ever materialise, having instead “a free movement of relations which maintains the vitality of groupings interconnected by the solidarity of shared aspirations, by a mutual exchange of services.”54 This voluntary cooperation prefigured the future society of anarchist communism; it was and remained the central tenet of Grave’s anarchism. In line with the paper’s broad thematic scope, this first issue also contained an article on land nationalisation by the then-influential theorist Henry George, in whose ideas Kropotkin was greatly interested.55 The next few issues continued to discuss land nationalisation and George’s ideas in detail, borrowing and translating from Freedom, the paper which Kropotkin had co-founded in London in 1886.56 La Révolte had, and kept, a close connection with Freedom and was described as its “Parisian brother-in-arms.”57 In the second issue of Freedom (November 1886), Le Révolté was one of only three (out of nineteen) papers not written in English advertised in Freedom, alongside La Lutte Sociale and Freiheit.58 Freedom also serialised the English translation of Grave’s 1889 Society on the Morrow of Revolution in the early 1890s.59 The years 1887–1889 saw an especially close collaboration, as La Révolte translated and reprinted Kropotkin’s articles from Freedom about the wave of strikes in Britain which he saw as a powerful instance of mutual aid and which were a stepping stone for the development of syndicalist ideas.60 La Révolte, like its predecessor, showcased Kropotkin’s political and scientific thought, discussing social Darwinism, Spencerism, utilitarianism, 53  Robert Graham, “Jean Grave: Anarchy, Authority, and Organization (1889),” accessed 2 July 2020, https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/2019/03/29/jean-grave-anarchyauthority-and-organization-1889/. 54  La Révolte, 17 September 1887. 55  Avrich, “Kropotkin in America,” 2. 56  See for instance La Révolte, 22 October 1887. 57  Freedom, January 1887. 58  Freedom, November 1886. 59  Freedom, July 1893. 60   Constance Bantman, “From Trade Unionism to Syndicalisme Révolutionnaire to Syndicalism: The British Origins of French Syndicalism,” in New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational, 126–40.

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cooperativism, Fabianism, and all major contemporary political and intellectual developments, functioning as an important forum for theoretical discussion and an essential publication outlet for Kropotkin’s ideas, as recently examined by Iain  McKay.61 While it is occasionally difficult to distinguish clearly between Grave’s and Kropotkin’s positions in the paper, their correspondence provides ample evidence of their extensive cooperation, constant discussion and occasional disagreements, for instance regarding organisation.62 Also in this inaugural issue, Jean Richepin’s poem “Variétés” was a further hint of the cultural dimension of Grave’s anarchism. In 1883, Grave had introduced a brief literary column into Le Révolté, and then poems, book reviews, extracts from novels and other works. The intention was pedagogical and militant, reflecting his and Kropotkin’s belief that “the proletariat had to be awakened to their role in society,” and literature was key to this.63 It was Grave again who, in 1887, suggested adding a “Supplément Littéraire” to a reluctant Kropotkin and Reclus, who thought they might run out of material to publish.64 The idea was broached in early issues of La Révolte and the first supplement appeared with issue 10 on 19 November 1887; the initiative was to last 27 years, as long as the paper itself. The first supplement presented a long rationale for its existence: “Showing workers that the ideas which we seek to promote were not born yesterday […]. Showing the winners of the day […] that they are the beneficiaries of yesterday’s revolutions.” Sharing historical, scientific and literary knowledge was another aim. Genre-, language- and ideology-crossing was the norm: Grave chose extracts by “the most famous and highly-rated writers of the bourgeois world” as well as contemporary writers.65 The initiative was remarkable in its ambition and scope and also in its wide-­ ranging, prestigious list of subscribers, which comprised writers, intellectuals and visual artists Jean Ajalbert, Anatole France, J.K.  Huysmans, Octave Mirbeau, Stéphane Mallarmé, Leconte de Lisle, Paul Adam, Alphonse Daudet, Pierre Loti, Frantz Jourdain, Maximilien Luce and Paul Signac.66 The contents of the first supplement reflected Grave’s agenda,  McKay, “Kropotkin, Woodcock and Les Temps Nouveaux.”  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, n.d. (1893–94?). 63  Mayer, “La Révolte,” 73. 64  Grave, Mémoires, 204. 65  La Révolte, Supplément Littéraire, 19 November 1887. 66  Cited by Dardel, Les Temps nouveaux, 8. 61 62

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spanning genres, nationalities and themes and setting the tone for an innovative and eclectic experiment in working-class education. While Grave’s artistic vision for anarchism was unique in its scope and duration, it tapped into a wider editorial, creative and ideological context. A two-issue paper, Le Glâneur anarchiste, had pioneered publishing a collection of literary extracts promoting anarchism in 1885.67 In the commercial press, “many newspapers had their own literary supplements that published reviews, essays, interviews and excerpts.”68 The political and social role of artists as well as its interplay with artistic creation was a topical discussion, encapsulated in the concept of “Art Social.” In 1889, the libertarian journalist and art critic Adolphe Tabarant set up the Club de l’art social, frequented by writers, artists and activists, with the aim of promoting popular art. Its weekly meetings in Montmartre were attended by Grave, Emile Pouget, Louise Michel, writers with anarchist leanings such as Léon Cladel, Ajalbert, Descaves, and the artists Camille Pissarro and Auguste Rodin. The review L’Art Social set out a clear programme of social and philosophical emancipation through art: “Socialism is the future. […] Socialism will embody in itself all manifestations of the human mind—, including art.”69 It advertised La Révolte, the only anarchist paper amidst a selection of artistic libertarian reviews such as L’En Dehors. The Club died down by the end of 1890, and in 1891 Gabriel de La Salle launched a new publication with the same name, which lasted until February 1894 and briefly reappeared in 1896.70 Nonetheless, the zeitgeist which drew political and cultural avant-gardes to the anarchist movement remained, finding expression in the pages of La Révolte and a host of avant-garde publications.71 The literary supplement was more clearly didactic than the main paper. It was far less participatory and dialogic, since it did not contain  Grave, Mémoires, 204.  Marieke Dubbelboer, “‘Il faut vivre’: Writers, Journalists and Income, 1890–1914,” Dix-Neuf, 21, no. 4 (2017): 353. 69  L’Art social, December 1891. 70  Catherine Méneux, “Introduction,” in L’Art social de la Révolution à la Grande Guerre: Anthologie de textes sources, ed. Neil McWilliam, et  al. (Paris: Publications de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art, 2014), accessed 2 July 2020, https://books.openedition.org/ inha/5575. 71  Jacqueline Pluet-Despatin, Michel Leymarie et Jean-Yves Mollier (eds.), La Belle époque des revues (1880–1914) (Paris: Éditions de l’Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine, 2002). 67 68

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communication for and from readers; its small editorial correspondence was included in the main paper. Like La Révolte, however, the supplement supported, existed through and was limited by Grave’s networks and his proactive editorial strategy. It also earned Grave new collaborators, such as the writer Octave Mirbeau, who was impressed with the supplement and its popularisation of anarchist theories in a literary form and went on to be a regular contributor, subscriber and long-term supporter of Grave.72 Grave held a high-brow view of the literature which he wanted to publish and was opposed to a plebeian style which he thought played to stereotypes about workers being unintelligent. This approach led him to turn down some contributions, which partly explains why the supplement has been interpreted as conservative and averse to the thriving avant-garde of the period, or even “reactionary,”73 in contrast to Emile Pouget’s Père Peinard in particular. However, its editorial strategy was innovative and ambitious, not least in its premise that “the average worker […] was no longer excluded from reading literature.”74 The supplement made La Révolte the most consistent and long-lasting French publication in fostering an eclectic international artistic and literary anarchist canon, setting out a highly ambitious pedagogical remit for anarchism, which redefined the movement and broadened its appeal in France and globally. In doing so, despite Grave’s rejection of avant-gardism, it transformed the movement and its cultural politics and established Grave as “the anarchist party’s main man of letters.”75

The Financial Life of a Radical Newspaper Grave’s return to Paris and the launch of La Révolte inaugurated a style of financial management which, while rooted in the traditions of socialist journalism, was novel in its scale and sustained use. The first aspect was, of course, financial hardship and the stopgaps constantly applied to counter it. The paper was bi-monthly when it was relocated to Paris and became weekly from 15 May 1886. It quickly ran into financial difficulty again; Grave and his wife lived in poverty, and she pawned her jewellery to cover 72  Reginald Carr, Anarchism in France: the case of Octave Mirbeau (Manchester: MUP, 1977), 41–2. 73  Caroline Granier, “Nous sommes des briseurs de formules: les écrivains anarchistes en France à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle” (PhD diss., Université Paris VIII, 2003), 28. 74  Mayer, “‘La Révolte’,” 81. 75  Le Gaulois, 13 August 1894.

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production costs until the paper started selling.76 Tellingly, it was the search for funds which resulted in the paper’s name change, in 1887, from Le Révolté to La Révolte, after an illegal raffle forced Grave to use a legal loophole and rename it to avoid prosecution. A salient feature of Grave’s editorial approach was his transparency in the financial management of the paper and emphasis on solidarity and reader participation. The sixth issue of La Révolte, in October 1887, announced that the paper “needed to raise funds urgently”; all readers were asked to pay their subscription fees and circulate the lists sent to them.77 Further details were provided on the back page. This candid discussion of the paper’s finances remained characteristic of Grave’s editorship; similar first-page addresses appeared in every issue until early 1888, when the paper’s finances improved. Further calls for all resellers to settle or make their payments early were issued, with the terse headlines “Urgency” or “Extreme urgency.”78 Detailed accounts appeared in every issue. As the historian Nicolas Delalande points out, publishing financial inventories was “a form of accounting” in the absence of proper accounting books,79 and Grave was operating in a long tradition of socialist journalism in sharing this information. It was also a common feature of the international anarchist press, which Grave applied with remarkable consistency and international appeal. Involving readers’ communities in the management of the paper implied that its survival was a shared responsibility and had a strong participatory, political and ethical dimension; this points to Grave’s pragmatic management of the paper but also to the moral economy underpinning newspaper finances. As summarised by Delalande, in the realm of international labour solidarities, “money is indissolubly an economic stake, a social bond and a moral question.”80 It also situated La Révolte’s funding model at the intersection of “individual dedication, militant charity and intellectual patronage.”81 The paper’s chronic financial precariousness was typical of radical publications, whose importance was declining due to competition from wealthy mass dailies and which relied heavily on patronage (on the right) and “devoted militant networks” (on the left and far left). These  Grave, Mémoires, 189.  La Révolte, 22 October 1887. 78  La Révolte, 19 November 1887, 3 December 1887. 79  Delalande, La Lutte et l’entraide, 57. 80  Ibid., 19. 81  Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 63. 76 77

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publications were sites of journalistic innovation at a time of mainstreaming, but “from an economic perspective, they were relics of a bygone era.”82

Complex Circulations and Transnational Networks The period starting with the relocation and name change was one of expansion, in sync with the growth of the anarchist movement, a process which La Révolte supported on different scales. It was at the centre of many distribution, exchange and solidarity print networks and mediated communication between locales within and across national borders. Its readership was very international, as attested by circulation figures: by 1894, out of 1057 subscribers, 767 were in France, 21 in Algeria, and 266 abroad, with a strong concentration in anarchist hotspots (Italy, Switzerland, United States, Spain, England, Belgium) but also a wider international reach.83 The trial and execution of the “Chicago anarchists” in November 1887 marked a turning point in the movement’s history, which consolidated its internationalist identity and functioning. “Chicago” was pivotal in fostering a sense of collective identity through the experience of protest, injustice and martyrdom, extending the legacy of the Commune in anarchist symbology and contributing to a shared history which was central to the movement’s identity.84 The protests and indignation triggered by the Chicago executions accelerated and amplified transnational coordination within the movement, and La Révolte was part of this process. After its first lead article on Chicago, “Will we let them kill?” on 8 October 1887, as well as two full pages and a meeting announcement the following week, issues 10 and 11, published after the executions, were almost entirely international in their focus. A letter by Adolph Fischer, one of the victims, was translated and reprinted from New York’s Freiheit.85 The Chicago mobilisations and executions were a landmark moment in the transnational construction and expression of anarchist culture and identity, appealing to the actions and emotions of readers and creating “a community of feeling—a network of sympathetic readers united by  Charle, Siècle de la presse, 161–2.  For detailed diffusion and subscription figures, see Maitron, Histoire, 137. 84  Elun, Gabriel. “Performing Persecution: Witnessing and Martyrdom in the Anarchist Tradition,” Radical History Review 98 (2007): 34–62. 85  La Révolte, 26 November 1887. 82 83

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emotion.”86 At a time when the movement was growing and taking stock of itself, the paper was a key echo chamber participating in this identity construction, a process apparent even in a short factual report from Argentina expressing solidarity in the face of a common enemy: “Buenos Aires. The meeting of ‘socialists, anarchists and revolutionaries’ […] was attended by 350 people. Our comrades stood in solidarity with our valiant Chicago comrades and pledged to persevere energetically like them until death, in the struggle against the bourgeoisie.”87 The Chicago events immediately became a cornerstone of anarchist counter-commemorations; year after year, participation was “a social ritual founding and legitimating the feeling of belonging to a community.”88 The anarchist press’s reports and analyses of these events signified participation in this founding ritual, connecting international communities through reading. Internationalism was integral to Grave’s anarchism and pervaded all aspects of the paper. The historian Carole Reynaud-Paligot, in the wake of Jean Maitron and Alain Droguet’s influential article, has identified three key roles of leading French anarchist papers: the construction of anarchist ideology, arguing for revolutionary change through education and serving as an organisation in the absence of a party.89 While all three authors initially considered these roles within a national framework, a transnational re-reading proves equally valid. Recent scholarship on anarchist print culture, in particular the work of James Yeoman and Andrew Hoyt, has highlighted print-mediated processes of community- and identity-building and practical organisation and exchange. Anarchist papers functioned as spaces of sociability, and La Révolte was no exception. It fulfilled many of the roles of physical spaces of sociability (the club, meeting, workplace, bar à vin, street, theatre, school, etc.) where anarchists came into contact on a local basis: it supported political and cultural education, the exchange of information about politics and the movement,90 debate, practical organisation including financial matters, and entertainment. La Révolte 86  Ann M.  Hale, “W.T.  Stead and Participatory reader Networks,” Victorian Periodicals Review 48, no. 1 (2015): 18–19. 87  La Révolte, 19. 88  Hélène Finet, “Hétérodoxie anarchiste en Argentine: analyse d’une déviance contredémocratique,” Nuevo Mundo/Mundos Nuevos (2009): 1–15. 89  Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux, 6; Alain Droguet and Jean Maitron, “La presse anarchiste française de ses origines à nos jours,” Le Mouvement social no. 83 (1973): 9–22. 90  Ángel Herrerín, “Anarchist Sociability in Spain. In Times of Violence and Clandestinity,” Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 38, no. 1 (2013): 155–74.

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illustrates the numerous and complex aspects of the ideological, practical, ethical and affective process of community-building, on a variety of scales, from the very local to the global. It operated as a transnational social space for anarchists, understood as “a more abstract zone where social relations, synthesised in ideas, discussions and the formation of a public sphere through printed media could, in turn, easily surmount borders and geographical places.”91 The paper mediated significant flows of money, printed material and information. In addition to the extensive and traditional survey of international labour news in the “Mouvement Social” section (covering various locations in France, Spain, Ireland, England), the first issue of La Révolte, still clearly inscribed in the networks of its predecessor, facilitated a wide range of transactions, in particular fundraising, the sale and purchase of publications, and information-sharing about local organisation. The “Petites Correspondances” section had inherited its predecessor’s widespread coverage of France (especially the North: Roubaix, Lille, Wattrelos, Calais, Amiens) and beyond, with a message to Freiheit (in French), as well as the town of Rivarolo, near Turin. The second issue reflected a wider network, with notes to correspondents in New York, Bern, Pietro[a?] Perzia (Sicily?), Buenos Aires, Ougrée (Belgium). Contents were also more internationalist,92 with an extended report on the recent 3000-strong antimilitarist “meeting des anti-patriotes” in Paris, which proclaimed international worker solidarity against the “spectre” of foreign workers stealing French jobs. Reports from Belgium were featured alongside an extended welcome from the Roubaix group to a newly formed revolutionary grouping in Ghent, Belgium, with a five-franc donation for its new paper Opstand; in this instance, La Révolte connected organisations located less than 50  kilometres apart, in different countries and using different languages. It also included communications between individual groups, activists and anarchist publishing houses: “Imprimerie Jurassienne. Send a copy of the VI Congress and one of the History of the International to Fauché, 12, rue Nicaise in Reims.”93 Such instances of triangulation were common: “R. in Oran [Algeria]. Have you received the 4 manifestos ‘A propos des ouvriers étrangers’ [On foreign workers]? Please reply to the sender from La Chapelle d’Armentières  Schmidt, “German labour movement,” 1026.  La Révolte, 21 September 1887. 93  La Révolte, 19 November 1887. 91 92

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[border town between France and Belgium].”94 In the same issue, it published communications between two Algerian comrades trying to secure a publication from metropolitan France: “JF in Gouraya [Algeria] […]. Regarding ‘L’Action,’ from Nîmes, we do not have it, ask comr. Raymond, 6 rue Lahemar in Algiers; he may be able to get it for you.” Transcontinental mediation also appears in another early issue: “Montevideo. Companions from the city ask all Italian-speaking comrades to send them 3 or 4 copies of each paper as well as a few pamphlets. They will send the payment through La Révolte, or any other way that is suggested. Write to comp. Pedro Bernard, calle Arapey, 78, Montevideo (Uruguay).” This note went on to stress the continued importance of mutual support and key contacts in the diffusion of papers and propaganda in general, naming individuals through whom La Révolte could be purchased.95 The following issue acknowledged receipt of 150 francs from the Montevideo comrades (22 individual donations, plus sale of printed material),96 showing that long-­ distance contacts could be very occasional but nonetheless intensive and rather lucrative. These intricate multidirectional flows complicate any straightforward diffusionist narrative: while La Révolte was certainly a key “node” in the movement, it also facilitated many local and horizontal circulations, without a clear sense of hierarchy being implied. Notices addressed to non-­ Parisian or even non-French groups populated the section “Convocations,” advertising local meetings with practical details for potential attendees. The paper featured a great deal of information from provincial areas and less prominent cities, for instance Northampton and Birmingham in the United Kingdom.97 Such contacts, on the margins of the leading anarchist hubs, broadened the translocal dynamics created by the importance of these hubs/nodes of exchange and show how the paper contributed to a wide circulation of anarchist propaganda and material. It may be the case that La Révolte compensated for the absence of local anarchist publications. Moreover, advertising militant gatherings in this famous paper added impact by reaching the wider anarchist community. However, the paper’s centrality in these interlocking networks also reinforces the sense of an opposition between a centre (Paris and the paper) and peripheries,  La Révolte, 15 October 1887.  La Révolte, 21st January 1888. 96  La Révolte, 28 January 1888. 97  La Révolte, 10 December 1887. 94 95

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not least when La Révolte was used abroad and outside Paris for local organisation. The paper also facilitated complex financial flows. The collection of funds for propaganda and charitable purposes was an important activity, in the form of “souscription pour la propagande révolutionnaire” as well as collections in support of anarchist prisoners’ families. These were especially international in their make-up, which was rare for anarchist publications, whose fundraising was primarily local or national.98 As Delalande remarks, “the regular publication of subscription lists in the press made it possible to trace the amounts which had been pledged or paid. Their publication represented both a commitment and the manifestation of a public voice.”99 A collection running in October 1887 illustrates this internationalisation, with at least two out of six contributors based outside metropolitan France: Van S. from Sliedrecht (Netherlands) and “R.” in Algiers, who, having provided 20 francs towards the publication of the literary supplement, was by far the most generous contributor. The following issue mentioned five francs raised by “JF” by “selling old stamps” in Gouraya (Algeria).100 Similarly, for the prisoners’ collection, the only donation came from an Italian group, in support of the colourful Parisand London-based Italian individualist anarchist Luigi Parmeggiani. Such fundraising efforts, both individual and collective, exceeded the papers, through raffles and collections taking place after meetings and funerals.101 The “Détenus” (Detainees) section expanded in sync with anti-anarchist repression in France and internationally: in October 1887, when donations were collected for Emile Méreaux, Le Révolté’s manager who had been arrested during a Chicago protest meeting, dozens of subscriptions were received. So integral were these collective, cross-border networks of financial support that they were later fictionalised by Grave in his novel Malfaiteurs, in which the editor of L’Affranchi (the fictional counterpart of La Révolte) plans a pamphlet: “I have just received 100 francs from Buenos Aires, and the same amount from Brazil, which will cover paper costs.”102

 Bantman, “A transnational radical print culture,” forthcoming.  Delalande, La Lutte et l’Entraide, 94. 100  La Révolte, 8 October 1887. 101  La Révolte, 26 November 1887. 102  Grave, Malfaiteurs (s. l.: Elibron Classics, 2006 (1894)), 117. 98 99

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The extent and international composition of the correspondence section were equally striking: the October 1887 issue contained notes from two French comrades based in Altoona, Pennsylvania, regarding their subscription to a couple of French papers and one note to “RG, Santa Clara, Cuba” regarding the practicalities of his subscription. Individual subscribers in The Hague, Brussels and Zurich were also mentioned. In 1887–1888, there were almost weekly announcements of new groups and publications, such as The Alarm and Le Réveil des Masses (Philadelphia), and many individuals sent their correspondence details, from France and abroad.103 Labour organisations were also part of the paper’s transnational networks: “[T]he Federal Commission of the Spanish Workers Federation asks all groups, workers organisations, papers, individuals wishing to make contact with them to write.”104 The paper also worked with French trade unions, even relaying occasional calls to organise and campaign for the eight-hour workday.105 Sharing the addresses of newly launched foreign organisations and publications was a common strategy, which was a practical and symbolical way for these institutions or individuals to proclaim their anarchism. The paper also functioned as a bookshop, including transnationally, by selling anarchist literature, again with complex mediations: “La Biblioteca Anarquica Comunista from Barcelona has just published its first pamphlet: La Sociedad al día siguiente de la Revolución” (another translation of Grave’s Society on the Morrow of Revolution). Prices and a contact were provided.106 In November 1887, two brochures in English were sold to collect funds for the Chicago victims. From 29 October 1887, the paper featured a regular section detailing the reading material for sale at its office; publications by individuals closely associated with La Révolte, not least Grave, featured prominently. Resellers extended the paper’s networks, in particular the dozens of local groups which sold the paper in France and abroad and were mentioned in the paper week after week. Anarchist imagery was also sold, with a clear demand for it: “D. in Bourges—out of Chicago portraits. Sending some of Jahn’s trial instead.”107  La Révolte, 14 and 28 January 1888.  La Révolte, 28 January 1888. 105  La Révolte, 15 October 1887. 106  La Révolte, 22 October 1887. 107  La Révolte, 14 January 1888. 103 104

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The organising function of the press was noted by outside observers, such as Le Figaro, which described it as “the great link between groups, and also comrades. This is where one can very easily take stock of its organisation.”108 Considered from the perspective of public opinion and authorities, this organising role was conducive to conspiratorial interpretations and presented the authorities with an opportunity to gather information and crack down on the movement. It was indeed clear that police agents read the anarchist press, in particular La Révolte and Le Père Peinard, to identify individual anarchists and their networks.109

A “Monitor of Anarchy”? All these contacts bestowed great influence within the movement, for La Révolte and Grave himself. In addition to the sheer geographical reach of the paper, his influence can be gauged by his intellectual stature, in France and internationally. Thus, the ex-military man, lawyer and anarchist sympathiser Emile Darnaud called himself Grave’s disciple and the “populariser” of his ideas and described La Révolte as “the head and the heart of anarchist communism.”110 This was problematic on several counts. As remarked by James Yeoman, Anarchist print culture had a hierarchy […]. Yet this elite position was also fragile. The anti-hierarchical premise of anarchism ensured that no single voice could legitimately claim to be the undisputed mouthpiece of the movement. Disputes regularly erupted within and between publishing groups, leading to splits and the creation of rival papers. Even the most prominent individuals in the movement could be ostracised and lose their links to the wider movement.111

Grave’s trajectory illustrates the tense dynamics of influence and centrality in anarchist politics. By the late 1880s, the paper’s prominence, coupled with Grave’s sternness and emphasis on doctrinal rectitude, jarred with the movement’s egalitarian ethos, eliciting sarcasms or accusations from across the movement and beyond. The paper was a relatively open discursive

 Le Figaro, supplément littéraire, 13 January 1894.  AN F712504, “L’Organisation anarchiste.” 110  IFHS, Darnaud to Grave, 2 March 1890. 111  Yeoman, “Print Culture,” 37. 108 109

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space for theoretical and strategic discussions. This was not specific to La Révolte, as Yeoman has stressed: Rather than the singular voice of a pamphlet or book, periodicals were the product of numerous editors, authors, correspondents and readers, engaged in a constant dialogue with one another. Periodicals were sites of discussion and dispute, and their content was constantly modified and updated, giving them a sense of development which was lacking in other forms of print. They were thus more representative of how the movement constructed and interpreted—rather than simply transmitted—theory in relation to practice, and vice versa.112

Nonetheless, this dialogical aspect received little positive attention, perhaps due to the paper’s solemnity and austere layout and its identification with Grave rather than multiple voices. Grave’s withdrawal from meetings was another grievance: “We were too aloof from the comrades,”113 as he later admitted. The nationalistic paper La Cocarde described La Révolte as “a monitor of anarchy […], a doctrinal organ, written by individuals who know.”114 Félix Dubois praised La Révolte for “avoiding the scurrility in which its companions indulge with scarcely an exception, it is sober and dignified in tone”; such praise, from a conservative observer of anarchism, was most certainly unwanted.115 Dubois regarded the paper as “inviting, smart, and I would even say opulent-looking, if the epithet didn’t jar for an anarchist paper.”116 The paper’s tone compared unfavourably with Pouget’s Père Peinard (1889 onwards), a plebeian and action-oriented paper addressed to “a category of readers which might have been put off by the subtle philosophy of La Révolte.”117 Despite his praise for Grave, the libertarian Charles Malato called La Révolte “a small phalanx […]. [I]n the anarchist grouping, the immaculate core, silent and, it must be said, both inflexible with respect to theory and sleepy when it comes to action.”118

 Ibid., 26.  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, 14AS17, Grave, “Autres souvenirs,” 127. 114  La Cocarde, 30 mai 1888, “L’Anarchie à Paris.” 115  Dubois, Anarchist Peril, 108. 116  Le Figaro, 13 January 1894. 117  Malato, De la Commune à l’anarchie, 267. 118  Ibid., 265. 112 113

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The late 1880s and early 1890s were marked by bitter quarrels with the “anti-organisationalists” which quickly evolved from doctrinal disagreements into ad hominem attacks, with Grave as a prime target. He increasingly came under attack as a “big wig,” one of the “anarcho-moralists,” “anarchist cowards,” “little popes,” “doctrinaires” and “prelates” of the movement, castigated for his lack of revolutionism.119 The movement, its sociology and its public profile were undergoing a rapid process of growth and (self-)definition, and Grave later confessed that upon returning to Paris in 1885, he had been horrified at the incipient “cesspit” which the movement was threatening to become with the mass infiltration of robbers, procurers and counterfeiters.120 These dissensions also arose from important strategic debates over modes of action (individual or collective; immediate or longer term revolutionary aims) and the all-important question of legality and violence in revolutionary politics. The tense political climate of the late 1880s and early 1890s stoked revolutionary impatience, through the authoritarian Boulangist crisis, the growing disillusionment with the bourgeois Third Republic, the governmental corruption exposed by the 1892–1893 Panama bribery scandal and the intense repression of the labour and anarchist movement in France and internationally, all of which spurred calls for immediate revolutionary action over longer term propaganda work. Le Révolté set out to fight the anti-organisationalists and champions of propaganda by the deed in its pages, leading some groups to resolve to “beat up” Grave or even place their first bomb at the office of Le Révolté.121 Another informant reported that Périn complained of the anarchists’ inaction which according to him is down to the paper La Révolte, which has always fought propaganda through violent means. In order to counterbalance this influence, he has announced the publication of a new organ, L’International, whose aim it is to divulgate processes of fabrication of explosive substances among the mass of exploited workers.122

Just a few weeks later, a crowd of about 100 voted “an official reprimand to Grave […] for hindering the propaganda of the paper L’International.”123  AN F7 12518, Manifesto “À bas les bourriques,” [1895]; L’International, June 1890.  Grave, Mémoires, 181. 121  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, 14AS17, Grave, “Autres souvenirs,” 41. 122  APP BA 1506, report dated 9 June 1890. 123  Ibid., report dated 12 July 1890. 119 120

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The conflict with individualist anarchists also played out internationally, not least through a new wave of squabbles and doctrinal disputes with Liberty over which papers should be recommended or not.124 These jibes revealed an increasingly embattled opposition between individualist and communist anarchism; Tucker never missed an opportunity to take a swipe at La Révolte and communist anarchists: On the Continent there are several Communist Anarchist papers: “La Révolte” and “L‘Attaque” in France; and “La Revolución Social” and “El Productor” in Spain. They are all revolutionary, that is to say, they expect a general breakdown of social institutions one of these days (date not yet fixed), after which people will take to living on entirely different principles from those which guide them today. How the new society is to establish itself on its new basis without government to punish those who object to it is, indeed, difficult to say.125

In France, the individualist anarchist Georges Deherme, in L’Autonomie Individuelle, described Le Révolté as the epitome of anarchist communism, until trouble began in September–October 1887, in response to an article from La Révolte.126 A lead article called “Bas les Masques” (Drop the act) attacked “Monsieur le compagnon Grave” and those of his ilk, who endeavoured “to create a sect where they would be pontiffs” and “ha[d] nothing anarchist and revolutionary about them, except for the label stuck to their paper banner.” Nonetheless, L’Autonomie individuelle continued to advertise La Révolte, confirming Julien Lucchini’s argument that despite brutal arguments an underlying sense of anarchist unity continued to prevail127—in this period at least. The fallout had its most acrimonious ramifications in Italy and Britain. The London group L’Initiative Individuelle, an outpost of the French and Italian anarchist movements where anti-organisationalist ideas held considerable sway,128 was especially inflammatory in its attacks on Grave. These unfolded in its papers, the above-mentioned L’International and La Tribune Libre, as well as in a couple of eloquently titled scathing placards printed in London, “A bas les bourriques!” (Down with donkeys)  Liberty, 3 December 1887.  Liberty, 16 August 1890. 126  L’Autonomie individuelle, May 1887, “Communistes et individualistes.” 127  Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 11. 128  Bantman, French Anarchists in London, 70–76. 124 125

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and “Aux pitres et aux pleutres de l’anarchie religieuse” (To the jesters and cowards of religious anarchy).129 The conflict hinged on doctrinal questions, aims and methods, as well as personalities and the very nature of the anarchist movement. Without downplaying these doctrinal and strategic implications, there is no doubt that it reflected Grave’s somewhat intolerant disposition: “[He was] a cutting critic. He insisted on the distinction between friends and enemies. His enemies—by far the most numerous— were found even within the anarchist movement. He went out of his way to seek them out, accusing one or the other […] of not being enough of a libertarian or, worse, of being under police orders.”130 The argument with French and Italian individualists and anti-­ organisationalists overlapped with the question of political violence and terrorism. The “Duval” case was a watershed moment in the debate over legality, which also clarified Grave’s position on the highly divisive matter of revolutionary violence. At the end of 1886, Clément Duval, a prominent member of the anarchist grouping La Panthère des Batignolles, in northwest Paris, had ransacked the mansion of Mme Madeleine Lemaire, in nearby affluent rue de Monceau. Having been caught, Duval claimed to have acted in the name of propaganda, including in the pages of Le Révolté, where he defended the practice of “estampage” (a form of politically motivated theft); he also delivered a memorable anarchist profession of faith, received with great enthusiasm in anarchist circles, defending the anarchist doctrine of “reprise individuelle” (individual appropriation, that is to say theft as a way of taking back the goods of which victims of the social order had been robbed). He received a death sentence, subsequently commuted to penal servitude. Grave, in an early example of his general disapproval of anarchist criminals, had initially criticised Duval and the notorious anarchist illegalist Vittorio Pini but eventually spoke out in their defence after coming under fierce criticism from comrades.131 Nonetheless, the paper reflected the divergent views of its inner circle and published Paul Reclus’s statement that “in our current society, robbery and work are not essentially different […]. As producers, we seek to gain as much as we can from our work, as consumers, we pay as little as possible, and from all these

 AN F7 12518.  Thierry Maricourt, Histoire de la littérature libertaire en France (Paris: Albin Michel, 1990), 138–39. 131  Le Révolté, 5 February 1887. 129 130

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transactions, it ensues that every day of our lives, we are robbed and we rob.”132 However, despite this relative pluralism over anarchist terrorism, La Révolte has been remembered for its repeated rebuttals of the effectiveness of propaganda by the deed, which Grave saw as “causing more damage than benefits to anarchist evolution.”133 Early on, he had warned that “it would be illusory and utopian to believe that such deeds could become the object of a reasoned, active and sustained propaganda.”134 Kropotkin was also clear that “[r]evolution does not occur through heroic gestures, the Revolution is above all a popular movement.”135 Given these long and fraught debates, the police’s constant suspicion of Grave as a potential terrorist is especially perplexing; in 1887, he was frequently mentioned in connection with London’s most violent groups, as a distributor in France of the bombmaking guide L’Indicateur anarchiste, and even in the early 1890s, some reports portrayed him as having been an outspoken champion of propaganda by the deed.136 The historian of French individualist anarchism Gaetano Manfredonia sees Grave as leading an important “theoretical clarification” from 1885 onwards, against extreme violent rhetoric and in favour of organisation.137 As a slightly ironic and revealing postscript to the discussion of Grave’s consistent disapproval of propaganda by the deed and illegalism, it is worth noting that this hostility was occasionally superseded by his commitment to journalism. Thus, while acknowledging that this was ethically dubious given his views on anarchist robbers and illegalism, he agreed to use a stolen printing press for the paper, based on the principle that “sometimes the end justifies the means […]. [I] only saw in this the opportunities for propaganda which this brought to us, and turning it down would not have changed anything since the deed was done.”138

 La Révolte, 21 November 1891; Maitron, Ravachol et les anarchistes, 22–24.  La Révolte, 16 April 1892. 134  Le Révolté, 4 septembre 1886. 135  Kropotkin, La Révolte, 18 March 1891. 136  AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, reports dated 7 May 1887 and 14 March 1892. 137  Gaetano Manfredonia, “L’individualisme anarchiste en France, 1880–1914,” (PhD diss., IEP de Paris, 1984). 138  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, 14AS17, Grave, “Autres souvenirs,” 122. 132 133

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Grave, Women and Feminism One area where Grave’s conservatism must be emphasised, even at the risk of appearing to yield to retrospective interpretations, is the glaring absence of women and discussions of anything approaching feminist issues in the paper and among its collaborators. Grave’s networks were very masculine from the beginning, and documented contacts with women activists are so scant that they can almost be individually inventoried. His correspondence includes rare, undated letters from one Antoinette Darsac, a subscriber to the paper, who also sent him some short stories which do not seem to have made their way into the paper.139 He also corresponded with the writer Sabine Dehasale and, on a few occasions, with the pioneer explorer and long-term anarchist Alexandra David (later David-Néel), in the early 1890s when she was active in anarchist circles and knew Grave personally and, later, when she made contact again in November 1907, from Tunisia.140 Grave’s silence was a reflection of the wider movement: as observed by Jean Maitron, in France, women were “more or less absent from militant ranks before the First World War.”141 Olivier Delous’s sociological survey of Greater Paris anarchist circles concluded that they were “exclusively male,” counting only 37 women between 1880 and 1914.142 A related issue is the adequation—or lack thereof—of theory and practice: as pointed out by De  Laforcade and Shaffer, “while anarchists opposed racism and sexism, many often brought racialized and patriarchal attitudes to their projects and cultural productions.”143 Along the same lines, Sharif Gemie has contrasted Grave’s complete dedication to revolutionary politics and, on the other hand, his relegation of domestic and romantic commitments, portraying him as a sort of post-Proudhonian in his views on feminism.144 Carole Reynaud-Paligot, in contrast, looks on Grave (and the paper) more favourably in this respect. His archives add another dimension to this narrative, betraying a romantic sensibility rarely expressed elsewhere. Some of Grave’s fiction  IFHS, Darsac to Grave, n.d.  IFHS, Dehasale to Grave, n.d.; David to Grave, 3 November 1907. 141  Maitron, “Un anar, qu’est-ce que c’est?,” Le Mouvement Social, no. 83 (April–June 1973), 44. 142  Delous, “Les anarchistes à Paris et en banlieue,” 107. 143  De Laforcade and Shaffer, In Defiance of Boundaries, 13. 144  Sharif Gemie, “Anarchism and feminism: a historical survey,” Women’s History Review 5, no. 3 (1996): 426. 139 140

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from this period is enlightening as to his views on women. This is especially clear in his roman à clé Malfaiteurs whose hero, Pierre (Grave’s alter ego), initiates his beloved Solange into politics, leading her to exclaim gratefully: “You have been a real professor to me. It is thanks to you that I am not the ignorant silly goose that women are turned into.”145 This suggests Grave’s own yearning for a role as a militant mentor, underpinned by a critique of conservative education for women—albeit a deeply patronising one. Similar conclusions emerge from his short story (n.d.) “Au lieu de suicide” (Instead of killing oneself),146 featuring young lovers Marthe and Gaston. Marthe is distraught because of her family’s plans to marry her off, giving the story slight feminist undertones, although ultimately it is about class, as her family want her to marry the wealthy Lardinois rather than Gaston, a worker. The absolute primacy of class and the economic struggle over gender and other forms of emancipation was characteristic of anarchist communism in this period. Grave indulges in a rather melodramatic handling of the star-crossed lovers theme, as the two young protagonists contemplate joint suicide, rehearsing some unsavoury clichés about women being irrational and impulsive, as illustrated by Gaston’s chastising of Marthe: “Now this reasoning is typical of small crazy minds like yours, running from one extreme to another, without thinking. Just because I am not immediately going further than your suicide pact, without any thinking, you are now imagining that I do not love you. […] My dear friend, I have told you and repeat it to you, it is absurd to kill oneself.”147 The final sentences suggest an author both at odds with the coldness attributed to him and abiding by the tropes of popular literature: “My Gaston, she said, cuddling up against him […]. I am certain that you love me. I trust you, take me and, surrendering to the caresses of her lover who, mad with joy, held her in his arms, she closed her eyes, to revel in the intense picture of happiness conjured up by the words of her lover, and which unfolded in her imagination.”148 Lastly, the story “La loi protectrice des faibles” (The protective law of the weak) opens with the portrayal of beautiful but vain and shallow Berthe Rousselet (“a twenty-year-old girl, tall, slim, dark-haired, with wide brown eyes and well-arched eyebrows, eyelashes like a velvet curtain,  Grave, Malfaiteurs, 64.  IFHS, Delesalle Archive, 14AS158. 147  Ibid., n.p. 148  Ibid., n.p. 145 146

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scintillating eyes, she had but one fault: knowing she was thus”). The plot revolves around the rivalry between Bernier, a clerk, and Tourneur, a manual worker, the former being predictably a morally corrupt and violent drunkard; it ends with Bernier’s triumph over Tourneur’s violence and Berthe’s vanity. Less conventionally, however, the story demonstrates how dangerous marriage can be for women.149 Nonetheless, as pointed out by Camille Mayer, Grave’s subsequent fiction still shows that he “did not seem to advocate fighting the patriarchy, only capitalism.”150 Despite rare glints of progressive thinking, Grave was still far from his later political and creative partnership with his second wife, Mabel Holland Thomas, which resolved the tension between politics and romantic involvement. The understated dedication of his 1908 book Terre Libre, which she illustrated, is also a far cry from his earlier literary forays: “To my friend M.H.T, This book which we both conceived, by talking about it.”151

Conclusion: The Brink of Revolution By the late 1880s, the increasingly acute internal dissensions within the anarchist movement over the means and aims of revolutionary action still paled in comparison to the crises shaking the French Republic, which anarchists responded to with increasing virulence. The attempted Boulangist coup and the Panama corruption scandal which anarchists denounced ceaselessly also resonated internationally, including in the pages of anarchist periodicals. The wave of anarchist-inspired terrorist attacks which swept over France and many other countries from the late 1880s onwards expressed revolutionary impatience, in a Republic which had betrayed its egalitarian promises, giving sudden worldwide impact to hitherto internal debates over political violence and bringing the now-­ famous Grave centre stage.

 IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, 14AS158.  Camille Mayer, “Théâtre et anarchisme: à la recherche d’un théâtre anarchisant. Regards historique, dramaturgique et esthéticopolitique” (Master’s Diss., Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 2016), 104. 151  Jean Grave, Terre Libre (Les Pionniers) (Paris: Librairie des Temps Nouveaux, 1908), 1. 149 150

CHAPTER 4

A Philosopher Among Criminals: Grave and The Era of Propaganda by the Deed (1892–1894)

In France and internationally, the early to mid-1890s were shaken by the tidal wave of anarchist-inspired terrorist attacks: after scattered incidents in the late 1880s, the “terrorist epidemic” surged in the early 1890s, setting in motion a spiral of attacks, legal reprisals and acts of revenge, heightened by media frenzy and public alarm. The attentats taking place in France were among the most notorious, with Ravachol’s dynamite attacks in March 1892, the November 1892 bomb at the Bons Enfants police station, Auguste Vaillant’s December 1893 bomb at the Chambre des Députés and Emile Henry’s bomb at the Café Terminus in February 1894, to quote just a few. Heads of state were often targeted and sometimes killed in this “decade of regicide”:1 France’s own President Sadi Carnot died at the hands of Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio in 1894. The French authorities’ response reflected the sense of panic at the events: the Wicked Laws (Lois Scélérates) passed in haste between December 1893 and July 1894 established all-out repression against the anarchists and their press.2 This meant that the 1890s were one of only two episodes before 1940 during which France’s relatively liberal press  Jensen, Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism, 31.  Émile Pouget and Francis de Pressensé, Les Lois scélérates de 1893–94 (Paris: Les Éditions de la Revue Blanche, 1899), 3–4. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7_4

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laws were amended. The first law, voted immediately after Vaillant’s attack in December 1893, ramped up the repressive dispositions of the 1881 press laws, incorporating the notion of “indirect provocation to crime.” The laws’ exceptional harshness stemmed partly from their retrospective validity and sheer scope, which contravened the penal principles of presumption of innocence and proportional sentencing. At a time of heightened social unrest and socialist activity, the laws were widely perceived to arise from “timely political exploitation” aiming to tarnish and suppress all worker and socialist protests by conflating them with anarchist terrorism.3 Even before then, police harassment had become a daily reality for most anarchists and especially for Grave, who spent the first half of the decade embroiled in legal battles or in prison. His legal troubles climaxed in August 1894 when, almost incongruously, he found himself among the 30 anarchists indicted in the eponymous Trial of the Thirty (Procès des Trente), the peak of anti-anarchist repression in France. The trial was a watershed moment for Grave and La Révolte, which had ceased publication after the 10 March 1894 issue. The paper’s defiant final address to its readers resonated as far as Argentina: “And now, comrades, we do not say farewell, but goodbye, see you soon and long live Anarchy!,” with a postscript hinting at the surveillance imposed on the paper: “We ask all our friends to stop writing to ‘La Révolte.’”4 Just a few months later, on 28 July 1894, the third Wicked Law simply banned anarchist propaganda and closed down several papers. As pointed out by Anne-Sophie Chambost, this episode highlights the anarchists’ as well as the Republic’s ambiguities: “When it came to robberies and terrorist attacks, the anarchist movement was caught between legitimacy and legality, at the risk of betraying its own principles, while the excesses of anti-anarchist legislation seemed to betray republican principles.”5 Grave’s trajectory and public image throughout this period illustrate these tensions and their partial resolution. The accusations of criminal conspiracy levelled at him acknowledged his status within the movement, while betraying a fundamental lack of understanding of the movement’s functioning and Grave’s actual position within it. The ultimate irony was that the trial restored his reputation and in fact elevated 3  Anne-Sophie Chambost, “‘Nous ferons de notre pire…’. Anarchie, illégalisme … et lois scélérates,” Droit et cultures 74, no. 2 (2017): para. 17. 4  La Liberté (Buenos Aires), 15 April 1894. 5  Chambost, “‘Nous ferons de notre pire…’,” 65.

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him to the status of an intellectual, just as the concept was emerging. The “elegant, exquisitely formed and frequently powerful” plea of his lawyer,6 Emile de Saint-Auban, resulted in acquittal, while the wide-ranging support expressed for Grave highlighted the scope of his networks and attracted publicity and sympathy from unexpected quarters. The trial illustrates the reputational impact of these networks, which went far beyond anarchist circles and were illustrative of the complex status and resilience of the anarchist movement in this period. The support for Grave voiced by high-profile writers and intellectuals make this a landmark episode akin to the Dreyfus Affair and, later, the “Spanish atrocities” mobilisations, a time of cross-party solidarity for the defence of progressive values and civil liberties, albeit on a much smaller scale. The historian Christophe Charle has highlighted the manifold importance of the Grave trial, which initiated a direct confrontation between political power and the most radical fringes among the intellectuals, resulting in a wider public debate regarding the social role of this emerging category of the “intellectual.”7 These themes form the core of this chapter, which examines Grave’s and La Révolte’s ever-growing influence in the fraught context of the early 1890s and focuses on networks and their reputational impact. It recounts five years of legal troubles and internal debates which reveal tensions over the perceived status and meaning of anarchism, spanning the wide spectrum from criminal doctrine to legitimate political philosophy. Grave’s turbulent years illustrate that, beyond the fear of propaganda by the deed, anarchist philosophy was also perceived as incredibly transgressive and dangerous. The Trial of the Thirty, with its amalgamation of common law offenses and political crimes, its blunt equation of anarchism with illegalism, of “propaganda by the book […] with propaganda by the deed,”8 epitomised the treatment of anarchism throughout the decade and the long-term trend towards a criminalisation of political radicalism.9 As a leading exponent of anarchist philosophy, Grave naturally found himself in the eye of this legal and public storm.

 Le Figaro, 10 August 1894.  Charle, Naissance, 126–7. 8  Thierry Roger, “La dialectique du livre et de la bombe à l’époque des Lois scélérates. Autour du procès Jean Grave,” in Censure et critique, ed. Laurence Macé, Claudien Poulouin and Yvan Leclerc (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015), 425. 9  Bantman, “The Era of Propaganda by the Deed,” 371–87. 6 7

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Legal Troubles, Act I. Propaganda by the Word and Its Perils: Pélagie Prison and the Conflict with the SGDL In May 1891, La Révolte published an unsigned front-page article, “Viande à Mitraille” (Cannon Fodder), on the army’s brutal repression of a demonstration for the eight-hour workday in Fourmies, in Northern France.10 Within just a few weeks, the article earned Grave a six-month sentence and a 100-franc fine on the count of incitement of the armed forces to rebellion.11 The paper soon announced a temporary change of administrator and a forthcoming trial in the Assises criminal court: “The army assassinates, and we are the ones being sentenced […]. Needless to say, since we don’t recognise the law, we do not intend to defend ourselves. All their arrests will not stop all the bullets from Fourmies, through the bodies of the massacred workers, from hitting bourgeois exploitation.”12 The sentence was served at Sainte-Pélagie prison, in the Mouffetard area; Charles Malato was also held there, and it turned out to be a surprisingly congenial space for Grave. The two men, who had not seen each other since the quarrel which had earned Grave his infamous nickname, made peace “very willingly on both sides.”13 The Marxist Paul Lafargue was also held in Pélagie, prompting Grave to comment that “as a man he was charming. He taught me to play chess. But, as far as politics was concerned, he was as much of a Jesuit as his father-in-law Karl Marx.” Prison functioned as a relatively free space for a political prisoner like Grave, who continued to manage the paper and answer letters “perfectly” thanks to daily visits from Mme Benoît, his first wife’s sister-in-law, while Paul Reclus and another companion handled other matters.14 Pélagie prisoners were usually serving short criminal sentences.15 This setting proved oddly propitious to discussion and thinking; Grave used the time to compile his earlier writings into La Société mourante et l’Anarchie, then moving on to La Grande Famille—two landmark books which, in due course, would bring in further legal troubles. Political detainees jailed for press offences,  La Révolte, 16 May 1891.  Grave, Mouvement, 75. 12  La Révolte, 6 June 1891. 13  Malato, De la Commune à l’anarchie, 265. 14  Grave, Mémoires, 218. 15  Géo Bonneron, Les Prisons de Paris : notre régime pénitentiaire (Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1898), 246. 10 11

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like Grave, were held at the Pavillon des Princes or the Quartier des Politiques; they were only locked up from 9 pm to 6 am and were free to circulate, visit one another, receiving their meals from a local restaurant; they were also allowed visits from pre-registered friends and families. They could receive papers, books, pamphlets, thus enjoying “as much freedom as can be had within the confines of a prison.”16 Thus, a letter from the anarchist sociologist Auguste Hamon to Grave casually mentions that “I am off travelling for a month; it will be with pleasure that, if possible, I will come and see you at Pélagie upon my return.”17 Grave recalled many visits from anarchists and others in Pélagie, including the far-right journalist and polemicist Maurice Barrès.18 While in prison, where he remained until December 1891, Grave waited for the court case with the Société des Gens de Lettres (SGDL).19 His half-decade of legal troubles had indeed begun with recurring conflicts with the writers’ association over the unlawful publication of material in the literary supplement. The Société was eager to prevent unauthorised and unpaid reprints, because journalism increasingly provided a much-­ needed income for literary writers, including many of Grave’s collaborators and those he reprinted in the supplement.20 Grave faced compensation claims from several authors whose writings had been reprinted without permission and who found themselves “co-opted into […] involuntary propaganda.”21 Grave had received compensation claims from Edouard Montagne, the secretary of the SGDL, since 1890, and had made a small payment, while arguing the case for free publication.22 In Pélagie, Mme Benoît brought him a summons on behalf of several SGDL members, including Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant and Georges Courteline, with a court appearance date and a claim approaching 500 francs. Grave turned to Mirbeau to “bring the issue to the general press”;23 Mirbeau obliged with an article in L’Echo de Paris praising La Révolte’s quality and  Ibid., 248.  IFHS, Hamon to Grave, 17 August 1891. 18  Grave, Mémoires, 221–2. 19  BNF, Grave to Nadar, 12 November 1891, item 4218. The following development is based on Grave, Mémoires, 228–50. 20  Dubbelboer, “‘Il faut vivre’,” 342–60. 21  Carr, Anarchism in France, 27. 22  Mayer, “La Révolte,” 124. 23  Grave to Mirbeau, cited by Carr, Anarchism in France, 43; L’Echo de Paris, 3 August 1891, “A propos de la SGDL.” 16 17

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castigating the SGDL’s mercantile mindset. He also criticised Zola for “presiding in earnest and without being repulsed, over its petty commercial tricks and, as the supreme boss, selling […] the literature of literary figures, just like groceries.”24 This echoed Grave’s comment that he “did not mind spending a few months in prison” for “exposing this association of backwards scribblers who regard literature as a grocery shop.” Mirbeau was especially critical of the fact that authors lost ownership of their work and could no longer allow it to be reproduced for free once they joined the Société. The scathing piece triggered “a fine agitation” across the prominent newspapers La Bataille, Le Gaulois, Gil Blas and L’Eclair—a first successful press campaign for Grave in this fraught period.25 The well-­ respected novelist Jean Ajalbert, who was also a lawyer and had been briefly involved in Auguste Vaillant’s legal defence after his attack on the Chambre des Députés, took on Grave’s defence and deferred the case until, eventually, it fizzled out without a trial, having aroused great collective interest and negative publicity for the SGDL. Grave asked for permission again from the authors involved in the case, all of whom refused, including Courteline (“I agree that the Société’s rules, in taking away from us free disposal of our writings, are somewhat leonine, but what do you want me to do about it?”26) and Hector France. Grave by then had already published material in La Révolte, leading a supportive France to ask him: “What can I do to get you out of trouble? I will attempt it with all my heart.”27 He also sent Grave a letter of support attempting to plead with the Société for a less literal application of their policy, by arguing that La Révolte was not a commercial publication but a small-scale endeavour and that Grave was “a fellow man of letters.” Eventually, several authors withdrew their complaints and Grave secured permission from Richepin, Mirbeau and Aurélien Scholl.28 As pointed out by David  F.  Mayer, “the argument revolved around who had control over an author’s creation,” infusing the contention with a left-wing, political meaning—with a bitter irony in the case of Maupassant, Zola and France, whose writings espoused social causes and who were adamant on non-inclusion in the supplement.29 Maupassant’s letter to  Octave Mirbeau, Combats littéraires (Lausanne : L’Age d’Homme, 2006), 346.  Grave, Mémoires, 234; Gil Blas, 17 August 1891. 26  Cited by Grave, Mémoires, 235. 27  IFHS, France to Grave, 8 December 1890, 13 December 1890. 28  Mayer, “La Révolte,” 129. 29  Ibid., 130. 24 25

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Grave pinpoints some of the economically motivated tensions at work: “The right which you are requesting from me is quite simply to steal from my work, and I can see that you are completely ignorant as to what literary property means nowadays.”30 The substance of Grave’s own criticism towards the SGDL was hardly surprising, combining attacks on intellectual property and conservatism: “[The Société] has always protested against independent minds […] and has contributed to turning literature into mere mercantilism.”31 Even before the feud started, the authorisation letters sent to Grave occasionally included professions of faith from across a wide ideological spectrum, revealing some cross-partisan and occasionally counterintuitive support and shedding light on the debate over the political and economic status of literature. The poet Jean Richepin, not an anarchist himself, only requested the full collection of La Révolte as compensation, on the basis that “I will always remain, and by far, indebted to you, since you spread me among the most lively audience, the only one where sown ideas flourish into acts.”32 Grave received a noteworthy letter from Edouard Drumont, the far-right founder of the Ligue Antisémite: “I write books with the sole purpose of spreading ideas. Therefore, I am very happy to allow you to reproduce without any payment the extracts from Secret de Fourmies which you think may be of interest to your readers.”33 The naturalist writer and colonial administrator Paul Bonnetain, writing to Grave on headed notepaper from the conservative Figaro, was very dismissive of the Société and allowed Grave to print his material: “I do not share your ideas, you know it, but this is not about literary factions nor about socialist or political factions etc.”34 Bonnetain also wrote in Gil Blas to defend La Révolte. Paul Gibier, a physician and bacteriologist from the New York Pasteur Institute, allowed Grave to reproduce extracts from his book even though he disagreed with him, especially on his alleged advocacy of violence.35 In contrast, having been approached by Grave, the journalist Emile Bergerat replied that he was putting him “in a most awkward position” since he was a member of the Société, which he likened to a trade union—an association “like the workers’ own.”36 He attempted  Cited by Grave, Mémoires, 238.  BNF, Grave to Nadar, n.d., item 4220. 32  Grave, Mémoires, 206–7. 33  IFHS, Drumont to Grave, 2 March 1892. 34  Cited in Grave, Mémoires, 240–1. 35  IFHS, Gibier to Grave, 5 June 1891. 36  IFHS, Bergerat to Grave, 4 September 1891. 30 31

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to resolve the conflict by offering to cover the cost involved, because he felt most “honoured” that one of his articles would appear worthy of publication in La Révolte. This dispute showed growing dissatisfaction with the socioeconomic status of artists in contemporary society, as well as clashing conceptions of artistic practices. In an increasingly profit-driven literary market, the many small avant-garde reviews associated with the anarchist movement offered a site of creative freedom for writers who were reluctant to embrace “the commercialism, publicity and best-seller culture of the Belle Epoque.”37 Carole Reynaud-Paligot argues that the literary anarchism of sympathisers (and Grave supporters) Retté, Laurent Tailhade and Paul Adam was “superficial and short-lived” as well as “purely literary”; literary symbolism was heavily “narcissistic,” “formalistic” and focused on the liberation of language, advocating a change in “poetic vision” rather than “world vision.”38 For Retté, anarchism liberated literature from the rules constraining inspiration and allowed artists to give free rein to their inspiration.39 Grave himself, with customary directness, later dismissed the temporary interest of “a few bourgeois and scribblers” as “fodder for elegant sentences and a justification for their intellectual aristocratism.”40 This short-lived anarchist dalliance inspired a fine satire in Zola’s novel Paris and some memorable bon mots, not least Tailhade’s much-cited aesthetic celebration of terrorism: “Who cares about the victim if the gesture is beautiful?” Literary anarchism was nonetheless the expression of profound counter-­ cultural currents in French society, with a legacy of artistic politicisation which was reactivated during the Trial of the Thirty and the Dreyfus Affair. Reynaud-Paligot sees a deeper level of engagement among the travelling companions Bernard Lazare, Descaves, Quillard, Ajalbert, Séverine, Jourdain, the editor P.V. Stock, the photographer and caricaturist Félix Nadar. André-Ferdinand Herold, for example, kept an occasional correspondence with Grave and contributed to his papers into the First World War; he also belonged to the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, the human rights organisation founded in 1898 with which Grave repeatedly collaborated in campaigning. It is also possible to expand on this argument by  Dubbelboer, “‘Il faut vivre’,” 357.  Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux, 33. 39  Retté, Au pays du lys noir, 3. 40  Jean Grave, Reformes, révolution (Paris: Stock, 1910), 9. 37 38

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connecting literary anarchism and the champions of Art Social with the “intellectual proletariat” of students, unemployed journalists and young writers emerging in the 1890s, of which Grave was part and which laid the foundations for the workers’ education movement at the end of the decade.41 Christophe Charle has also stressed that “the new model of the militant intellectual near the extremes was intimately bound up with the literary avant-garde that served as its breeding ground.”42 These social dynamics contributed to a wider context of avant-garde politicisation in which the SGDL and the figure of Grave acted as catalysts. As pointed out by Charle and, more recently, Justin Moisan, Grave’s legal troubles in the 1890s thus functioned as a “dress rehearsal” for the Dreyfus Affair and the emergence of the figure of the intellectual.43 Throughout the legal problems in the 1890s, these militant friendships brought striking reputational benefits through their support for Grave. The contention with the SGDL illustrates the functioning of literary networks as studied by sociologist Gisèle Sapiro: “The literary world […] is structured into micro-milieux (around a review, for instance) and in networks of informal relations, which often take on a personalised form, as with elective affinities.”44 Grave’s loose partnership with the anarchist journalist, literary critic and writer Bernard Lazare, co-founder of the symbolist journal Les Entretiens politiques et littéraires, from August 1891 until their falling out around 1897, illustrates the numerous levels at which these militant and artistic links played out. Lazare, like Grave, was “an anarchist network node,”45 and in addition to facilitating each other’s literary publications, both men exchanged contacts and information, including internationally.46 Long-term collaborators such as Lazare, Mirbeau and Nadar supported Grave’s papers financially, through their contributions, such as Mirbeau’s pamphlet “La Grève des électeurs” and 41  Lucien Mercier, Les Universités populaires: 1899–1914. Education populaire et mouvement ouvrier au début du siècle (Paris: les Editions Ouvrières, 1986), 32. 42  Charle, Siècle de la presse, 107. 43  Charle, Naissance, 106–7; Justin Moisan, “Quand l’édition devient terroriste. Solidarité intellectuelle chez Jean Grave et Octave Mirbeau à la fin du XIXe siècle en France,” in Mémoires du livre/Studies in Book Culture, 3:1 (2011): n.p. 44  Gisèle Sapiro, “Réseaux, Institution(s) et Champ,” in Les Réseaux Littéraires, ed. Daphné de Marneffe and Benoît Denis (Brussels: Le Cri, 2006), 45. 45  Jean-Marc Izrine and Guillaume Davranche, “Bernard Lazare,” Dictionnaire des anarchistes, accessed 9 July 2020, https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article154617. 46  Philippe Oriol (ed.), Bernard Lazare, Lettres à Jean Grave (Paris: Au Fourneau, 1994).

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his preface to Grave’s La Société mourante. They also organised newspaper exchanges and brought new contributors and subscribers, sometimes after considerable efforts: “In the end, I have won you two new subscribers for La Révolte. And that’s quite something in Pont de l’Arche, the most backwards and conventional country that I know of.”47 They provided information and contacts—for instance when Mirbeau interceded with the editor Stock on Grave’s behalf. Nadar was another source of support, offering friendship during imprisonment.48 His sustained correspondence with Grave discussed the court case with the SGDL, editorial matters for the supplement,49 and disseminating and subscribing to La Révolte,50 and he offered material for publication.51 Personal esteem for Grave could be a decisive factor, and he proved skilled at drumming up support for the cause beyond strictly anarchist circles. Mirbeau’s and Nadar’s unflagging support throughout this period is especially characteristic of the ways in which friendship blossomed out of political affinities and was consolidated through the shared vagaries of activism—sometimes through epistolary contact only. Thus, Mirbeau sided publicly with Grave in 1891 and again in 1894, despite having never met him in person. When questioned in court about Grave’s reputation among writers in 1894, he replied: “There are many mondes des lettres [literary milieux], from the Academy to the [bohemian cabaret] Chat Noir; but in brief, among writers in general, he is regarded as a very serious person.”52 The Commune veteran and writer Lucien Descaves met Grave in the early 1890s and immediately took to him; they became better acquainted when Descaves helped resolve the dispute with the SGDL. Descaves gave a vivid portrayal of both Grave and the editor and writer Zo d’Axa in his memoir: “Seeing them both rushing around, on the edge, without any political sectarianism, profiteering or plotting, had immediately endeared them to me.”53 Descaves had also faced legal troubles with the publication of his antimilitarist novel Les Sous-­ Offs in 1889, leading to protests by writers defending his “freedom to write”; with the notable exception of Emile Zola, the personnel,  IFHS, Mirbeau to Grave, 10 September 1891.  BNF, Correspondance et papiers de Félix et Paul Nadar, NAF 24990–25006, item 4216, n.d. 49  Ibid., item 4215, n.d. 50  Ibid., items 4214 and 4238, n.d. 51  Ibid., Grave to Nadar, item 4219, n.d. 52  Le Gaulois, 25 February 1894. 53  Descaves, Souvenirs, 121–2. 47 48

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terminology and philosophy underpinning these protests partly overlapped with Grave’s case. They were part of a wave of cross-partisan protests over censorship and repression, which testified to increased politicisation of literary figures and their challenge to the repressive Republic, building up to the arguments and broad coalitions fully deployed a few years later during the Dreyfus Affair.54 “At 5am yesterday morning, the police raided the office of La Révolte… Correspondences and remittances were seized, and letters were intercepted at the concierge’s lodge. M. Grave, the manager, was arrested for not paying a fine to which he was sentenced a year ago following trial.”55 After Grave’s release from Pélagie, such police raids became a recurring event,56 in a breath-taking spiral of anarchist radicalisation and repression which affected the entire movement; by late April 1892, in what he identified as a roundup ahead of May Day protests, Grave was back in Pélagie for failing to pay the fine from the “Viande à Mitraille” sentence. His extended detention in the disgusting conditions of the Depot was once more relayed in the press by Mirbeau;57 this time, Grave was held with debtors, but released within 20 days.58

Grave, La Révolte and the Conspiratorial Imagination Grave’s closing statement at the August 1894 Trial of the Thirty—a rare instance of public speaking, as he acknowledged—focused on the irony of his being accused of conspiracy when his last article rejected the very idea of an entente and he had repeatedly been called “a moderate, a Jesuit, a pawn” for his critique of political assassination and robbery.59 Finding Grave at the centre of narratives of anarchist conspiracies was certainly ironic given his reluctance towards both violent action and the formation of structured groups. Nonetheless, however misguided these accusations were, they testified to his centrality within the movement and to the fact that he embodied the very real danger of the anarchist word. Despite his  Charle, Naissance, 111–2.  Le Constitutionnel, 24 April 1892. 56  Grave, Mémoires, 253–6. 57  L’Echo de Paris, 3 May 1892. 58  Grave, Mémoires, 259–64. 59  Le Gaulois, 13 August 1894. 54 55

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high-brow brand of anarchism, he wielded the power of print, which was regarded as perhaps equally threatening.60 The most keenly felt threat of the period was, of course, terrorism and the anarchist response to it. La Révolte repeatedly reasserted the primacy of collective action, without fully discounting individual gestures and their potential impact. Grave’s positions on terrorism remained largely unchanged throughout the wave of terrorist attacks, with a focus on triggering the revolution through collective action and arguing that terror undertaken by isolated individuals would only lead to police suppression.61 The paper challenged the division between anarchist theorists and terrorists, in favour of a third category: “active party members,” involved in the movement’s daily life and with the masses, using these bonds to spread ideas among the people.62 Articles also regretted that the individual forces deployed in terrorist attacks were not harnessed to a collective cause, when they might have become “the forerunning signs of the revolution.” Overall, the terrorist interpretation of propaganda by the deed was doomed to failure: “Society cannot be turned upside down through the efforts of a few men. Only the masses can overthrow the horrible regime we live under. Individual acts can ignite thinking, daring and prepare collective rebellion—but only collective rebellion can work.”63 However, this editorial line barely concealed wide disagreements within the Révolte team. Within the first circle of the paper, Grave’s most profound and lasting disagreement was with Elisée Reclus, in particular over political violence and robbery. Grave judged Reclus’s argument that any form of property was theft far-fetched and sentimental: “‘His goodness and his tolerance!’ I must say, sometimes got on my nerves,” he later remembered.64 Condoning theft only added to the list of anti-anarchist prejudices which the movement had to fight, he added. Retté recalled a lunch with both men, where Grave sought and secured Reclus’s approval of his views on illegalism, along the lines of “men are good but institutions are bad”—all of which Retté, now fiercely anti-revolutionary and critical of Enlightenment values, derided as “a basic residue of Rousseau’s paradoxes, lightly seasoned with Proudhon-sauce.”65 Grave’s essay Moribund  Roger, “La dialectique du livre et de la bombe,” 414.  Varias, Paris and the Anarchists, 87. 62  La Révolte, 16 April 1892. 63  La Révolte, 23 April 1892. 64  Grave, Mouvement, 61. 65  Retté, Maison en ordre, 180. 60 61

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Society and Anarchy, his response to the highly popular theories of Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, deployed a similar argument, challenging the scientific validity of Lombroso’s claims while agreeing that criminality originates in societal conditions.66 Irrespective of his nuanced position on propaganda by the deed, Grave was commonly portrayed as a key organiser. There was indeed a fine line between being a node in the movement’s organisation  and  a “leader,” between having a central role and a centralising one, with undertones of conspiratorial activity. It is therefore unsurprising to find police reports alleging that Grave belonged to “a group tasked with centralising information pertaining to the anarchist movement across Europe […] proposing to print or write a bulletin to be sent once or twice a month to the leading anarchists of all countries. The distinguished anarchists belonging to this information group are Jean Grave, Gégout, Pouget and Malato.”67 It is also clear that Révolte circles were not immune from the multifaceted permeation of anarchist circles by criminals of all shades. In September 1891, an anonymous police report claimed that counterfeiters colluded with several high-profile anarchists, such as Pouget and Paul Reclus, with the proceeds of their activities being used temporarily to cover the printing costs of La Révolte and Le Père Peinard: “Indeed, since these counterfeiters were arrested, both papers have ceased to appear, or almost so.”68 While this specific instance might have been fanciful, the infiltration of anarchist circles by petty criminals is attested in many sources and documented throughout Grave’s memoirs and correspondence. The paper crystallised the same conspiratorial fears. Police informers painstakingly inventoried anarchists who read it and formed links between local groups, in Paris and abroad (especially in Geneva and London),69 while conceding that the readership and influence of the anarchist press were beyond their control: “It is not only among the 178 anarchists listed and watched over as such that the readers of ‘Le Père Peinard’, ‘La Révolte’ and other anarchist publications can be found: many individuals.”70 One police report also identified local “leaders” before claiming that “these four are linked  Bass, “Cesare Lombroso,” 34.  AN F7 12504, reports dated 10 March 1892 (Bellegarde) and 16 March 1892 (no. 2). 68  APP BA 1503, Anon., report dated 17 September 1891. 69  AN F7 12504, report from Bordeaux dated 15 November 1893; from Lons Le Saunier dated 21 December 1893, from Amiens dated 19 December 1893, from Marseille dated 31 December 1893. 70  AN F7 12504, report from Lyon dated 15 December 1893. 66 67

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to Grave, 140 Mouffetard in Paris, Reclus’s right-hand man.”71 Reporting on a wave of house searches around Limoges, in January 1894, the local police counted that 11 out of 19 of them held copies of La Révolte and had also found extensive correspondence with Grave.72 One disposition of the Wicked Laws was that holding anarchist literature was evidence of collusion with terrorism; the perceived power of the anarchist printed word naturally made Grave a key suspect for the authorities. The corollary of these suspicions was of course constant surveillance: “Having never wondered whether I was under surveillance, I had never asked my concierge about it, but having moved I bumped into her one day and she told me that the same snitch was always at her place but she had never dared tell me. After I left, having asked where I had gone, she had refused to tell him and he had left in a fury.”73 He also recalled the intensive spying of Méreaux and Benoît, who took over editing the paper in his absence. Police archives paint a similar picture of comprehensive surveillance: using a “very complete” list of Paris and its suburbs, every morning, and sometimes two or three times a day, agents [would] come by the homes of individuals, stay at the places where they go for their meals or leisure, recognise them as they come out of workshops […]. In brief, agents stop at nothing to imply or even openly show workers that the police are watching them […]. The police watch over […] all anarchist meeting places, their secret confabulations, their junction points, cabarets etc. Needless to say, we also have secret affiliates among them.74

The general press relayed allegations that Grave was at the centre of “an arrangement to prepare and facilitate acts known as propaganda by the deed,”75 and was “one of the most formidable organisers of the anarchist party.”76 Others deployed the same narrative through more eye-catching anecdotes, for instance the conspiratorial trope of secret funding: Le Gaulois claimed that one “Henri Gauche [i.e. René Chaughi, a regular collaborator of Grave from the late 1890s onwards], the banker of 71  AN F7 12504, Ministère de l’Intérieur, 22 January 1894, “Le parti anarchiste à St-Etienne.” 72  AN F7 12504, Préfet de Haute-Vienne (Limoges), 5 January 1894. 73  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, Grave, “Autres souvenirs,” 103. 74  AN F7 12504, letter dated 23 April 1894. 75  Gil Blas, 8 August 1894. 76  Le Gaulois, 19 July 1894.

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anarchy,” from an affluent family, was planning to leave Grave 300,000 francs towards anarchist propaganda.77 The Figaro’s legal affairs specialist, Albert Bataille, depicted Grave as the mastermind—if not the actual engineer—of anarchist organisation: “[Sébastien Faure] was so to speak the travelling salesman of anarchist doctrines outside Paris, determining the creation of a study group formed under the inspiration of Jean Grave, and actively serving as an intermediary between various groups.”78 He also claimed that Grave “exalted” all acts of illegalism and propaganda by the deed. “It is in the creation of small isolated groups that criminal organisation manifests itself: the plan designed by Jean Grave has been realised!”79 In his address to the tribunal in 1894, Grave categorically denied such involvement: “I stand accused of having associated, affiliated, of having imagined who knows what anarchist conspiracy. More than twenty articles, all written by me, answer that if I have had any influence, I have used it to fight any idea of association.”80 Nonetheless, so potent was this depiction of Grave as chief conspirator that it made its way into the foreign press, even after the peak of the anarchist scare. Upon Grave’s 1895 release from prison, the Birmingham Daily Post commented: “There is much mischief in Jean Grave still. His eye is full of fire […]. He has suffered his hair and beard to grow to unusual length during his captivity, and presented the appearance of an ancient Roman […]. So we know what to expect from Jean Grave and his proselytes […]. We are forewarned; let us be forearmed.”81 Grave’s portrayal as a dangerous anarchist leader, whilst erroneous in its formulation, was not fundamentally wrong. Contemporaries, and especially his successive lawyers, endeavoured to downplay his organising role and portray him as an intellectual. However, his conceptions of anarchist organisation were remarkably consistent and consistently applied.82 Organising anarchism on multiple scales, especially through print communication and exchange, was a key tactic and firm pursuit. Only at the very end of the period of propaganda by the deed did the paper’s  Le Gaulois, 25 May 1894.  Albert Bataille, Causes criminelles et mondaines de 1894 (Paris: E. Dentu, 1895), 150. 79  Ibid., 189. 80  Ibid., 201. 81  Birmingham Daily Post, 8 February 1895. 82  Jean Grave, Society on the Morrow of Revolution (Paris: Hachette Livre, 2017 (1889)). Trans. Shawn Wilbur, accessed 24 July 2020, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-beginnings/jean-grave-society-on-the-morrow-of-the-revolution-1889/. 77 78

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networking endeavours flag, as a result of partly self-imposed censorship. Until then, it continued to support the manifold networking documented earlier, with a heightened emphasis of coordination. Grave prided himself on using the paper as a liaison tool. In a letter to Kropotkin in October 1893, he pointed to the progress of organisation as reflected in La Révolte: “You will have seen the fourth page of La Révolte and the number of invitations it contained, this week there are two further calls to set up groups which want to do serious work. Moreover, next week we will be starting a brochure to be distributed for free. We hope to continue.”83 More generally, La Révolte continued to hold a central place in European anarchism at the time, in terms of its integration in print networks and ideological ascendancy. One striking illustration was its omnipresence in the newly launched Portuguese paper A Propaganda in February 1894. The paper advertised and sold La Révolte and its supplement, alongside many others. This first issue also reprinted a small paragraph from La Révolte about China. The following issue featured a lead article by “João Grave” against political palliatives, criticising “salon anarchism” and restating anarchist pacificism while expressing an understanding for recent acts of violence and hoping that these might lead to other forms of mobilisation.84 The same issue announced the suspension of La Révolte and contained a reprint from the paper about French anarchist Martial Bourdin’s recent death in London’s Greenwich bomb detonation. It also reported on Grave’s latest prison sentence. Such omnipresence might have justified police suspicions that Grave and his paper were the nerve centre of European anarchism, even if the reality of such organising was more prosaic and complex than imagined.

Legal Troubles, Act II. Moribund Society and the Trial of the Thirty La Société mourante et l’anarchie was published in 1893, with a long-­ awaited preface by Octave Mirbeau. The English-language press referred to it as “The Death throes of society,”85 until it was translated and published in the United States by Voltairine de Cleyre in 1899, with the title Moribund Society. The essay embraced a positive, humanistic stance in its  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 4 October 1893.  A Propaganda, 3 March 1894. 85  See for instance Birmingham Daily Post, 8 February 1895. 83 84

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denunciation of all authorities, which contrasted with the stereotypical image of destruction tarring anarchism in this period. It was in part a refutation of individualism: “As there exists more than a billion individuals on the earth, with equal rights if not with equal needs, it follows that all these rights must be satisfied without encroaching on one another; otherwise there would be oppression.”86 The book also denounced the militarism, financial exploitation and racist assumptions of colonisation, with a reference to Grave’s own experience in naval service: “Go to, go to, philanthropists of commerce, civilizers by the sword! Forbear your tirades on the benefits of civilization!”87 Kropotkin, having read and greatly enjoyed the book, had prophesised to Grave that “it will be good propaganda. Your directness, your clarity, will attract quite a lot of people.”88 Proving him right, Moribund Society quickly entered the international anarchist canon. It also attracted, once more, much unwanted attention: on 6 January 1894, within weeks of Vaillant’s bomb in the Chambre des Députés, Grave was arrested as part of a wave of arrests, on the count of belonging to a criminal conspiracy and, in connection with the second edition of Moribund Society, for attempting to wilfully arouse the public to rebellion. After a very brief spell at the Conciergerie, he was incarcerated at Mazas prison in Paris’s 12th arrondissement. On 24 February, he was sentenced to two years in prison, out of a possible five-year term.89 He remained in Mazas but was now held under the common-law regime rather than as a political detainee, in very harsh conditions.90 His lawyer, Emile de Saint-­ Auban, had been recommended by Ajalbert, who could not take on Grave’s defence himself. On 10 March 1894, after ten issues without Grave, La Révolte ceased publication. Méreaux, who had taken over the paper’s management in his absence, was also arrested. The final issue explained that the decision had been made because the paper was used as “a mousetrap” by the police and had therefore become damaging to propaganda; it was to be replaced by pamphlets until a new publication was launched. By then, due to multiple arrests among its staff and the police seizing letters, the correspondence section had become quite paltry; the “Mouvement social” section had dwindled to an inventory of terrorist 86  Jean Grave, Moribund Society and Anarchism, trans. Voltairine de Cleyre (San Francisco: A. Isaak, 1899), 9–10. 87  Ibid., 101. 88  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, n.d. (1893). 89  Le Petit Journal, 25 February 1894; Le Journal, 25 February 1894. 90  Marc Stéphane, Pour Jean Grave (Paris: Vautier, 1894).

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attacks and subsequent arrests in France and most corresponding countries.91 Encore un anarchiste à la cour d’Assises de la Seine (Another anarchist in court),92 the mass popular daily Le Petit Journal reported in February 1894. But it was not just any anarchist: it was Grave. This first major trial for Grave was also a new heyday of the crime of “délit d’opinion,” that is to say the criminalisation of political opinion. The moral panic elicited by theoretical propaganda, even more than by actual propaganda by the deed, is encapsulated in the introduction of Le Figaro’s special issue on “Le péril anarchiste”: “Next to propaganda by the deed, which is still rare, there is theoretical propaganda, which is multifaceted, and, in our view, is far more dangerous. Propaganda through images, propaganda in writing—readers will be able to see all the hatreds, all the blasphemies spread in the name of bettering mankind” (Fig. 4.1).93 Grave stood accused of “incitement to theft, indiscipline and murder” and “apology of crime,” based on inflammatory extracts from Moribund Society. The public prosecutor was the “highly talented” Bulot,94 one of the targets of Ravachol’s bombs, whom Grave was to face again a few months later. Mirbeau, Reclus, Adam and Lazare were called as witnesses for Grave and praised him unreservedly. Reclus declared his “great affection” for his collaborator; Mirbeau, who had still not met him in person at that point, declared himself enthralled by the “elevation of ideas” which Grave conveyed and regarded him as “an apostle, a very superior logician.” The poet Paul Adam made a terse but equally supportive statement, before Lazare’s conclusion: “His loyalty and probity are irreproachable. He is a very talented writer. His book is one of the most beautiful I know.”95 Grave reused the declaration from his first trial: “I take responsibility for what I have written. I do not recognise to anyone the right to prevent me from saying or writing what I think. You are the strongest, so do as you please. Still, I will be right.”96 Starting from the premise that “[t]he accused, today, is not a dagger, a gun, a bomb. The accused, today, is a book,” Saint-Auban based his  La Revolte, 24 February, 4 March and 10 March 1894.  Le Petit Journal, 25 February 1894. 93  Le Figaro, Supplément littéraire, 13 January 1894. 94  Le Journal, 25 February 1894. 95  Emile de Saint-Auban, L’Histoire sociale au Palais de Justice: Plaidoyers Philosophiques (Paris: A. Pedone, 1895), 201–4. 96  Grave, Mémoires, 278. 91 92

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Fig. 4.1  Portrait of Grave from Le Journal, 25 February 1894

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much-applauded two-hour plea on the argument that it was not possible to condemn an idea. Following the strategy of “depoliticising for the benefit of science,” Saint-Auban argued that Moribund Society was a scientific rather than a political work;97 he emphasised his own disagreement with Grave but criticised the laws’ retrospective application and foregrounded the right to critique contemporary society, upholding Grave’s work as “social medicine.” In early March, Grave was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 1000 francs. Support for him was expressed internationally; the French-language anarchist communist paper La Liberté (Buenos Aires) was indignant at the sentence, given the delay since the publication of Moribund Society, Grave’s “gentle and friendly” disposition and the fact that he had the sympathies of “all the literary and scientific world.”98 In France, those sympathetic to Grave’s cause denounced the crackdown on public liberties in the name of fighting anarchism.99 And so Grave was back in prison, this time in much harsher conditions. Saint-Auban came to see him and his visit was reported by Drumont in the far-right La Libre Parole, making much of Grave’s plight: “The poor man, dressed in the brown gown of common-law prisoners, without undergarments, wearing clogs, had bloody and blistered hands because, all day, he has to peel Corozo nuts.”100 The article was widely relayed in the press and the writer and socialist MP Clovis Hugues complained to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, securing quick improvements for Grave.101 The sentence was a defining moment for Grave, which sealed his status as an intellectual, just as the concept was taking shape. This evolution mainly unfolded in the press, through the campaign in his favour. Christophe Charle has analysed these protests as a forerunner of the Dreyfus affair, which saw literary avant-gardes try out a new mode of political intervention by collectively signing public letters to defend a cause, resulting in the emergence of the new model of the intellectual, a politically radical figure closely connected with literary avant-gardes. This definition applied to both Grave’s champions and Grave himself. Thus, on 4 March 1894, the socialist daily La Petite République published “A protest” against Grave’s “scandalous” sentence, signed by 127 literary figures,  Roger, “La dialectique du livre et de la bombe,” 420.  La Liberté (Buenos Aires), 24 March 1894. 99  Charle, Naissance, 129. 100  La Libre Parole, 8 March 1894. 101  La Libre Parole, 7 March 1894; Grave, Mémoires, 281–2. 97 98

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appealing to “all men professing the cult of freedom of thought,” irrespective of any political consideration.102 Charle identifies the signatories’ participation as being based primarily on “transversal solidarities […], friendship bonds, aesthetic affinities, sociability based on print, age groups, political opinions.”103 Alongside close collaborators and friends like Reclus, Lazare, Descaves and Mirbeau, the letter was signed by many figures directly associated with La Révolte or small Symbolist reviews with anarchist leanings, such as Charles Châtel, Richepin, Gustave Geoffroy, Gustave Kahn, Laurent Tailhade and Augustin Hamon. A few names stand out: the two female signatories Rachilde and Marie Huot, the far-­ right writer Barrès and the painters Paul Signac (soon to become a friend and supporter of Grave) and Paul Gauguin. This was not a high-profile intervention and the protest lacked “collective symbolical capital”: the signatories were not prominent and did not have undisputed intellectual authority.104 One glaring absence was Emile Zola, who had refused to sign and disagreed with the premise of non-partisanship on which the letter and Grave’s defence were based, arguing instead that Grave was an agitator facing the consequences of the risks he had taken: “Grave’s volume is a work of propaganda. He acted as a soldier fighting for a cause, he lost, he is paying the consequences of his defeat.”105 Zola also noted that except for Richepin and Mirbeau, Grave’s supporters were “so to speak on the margins.”106 The same argument was underlined in a mocking piece on the protest in Le Gaulois, which distinguished just a few names (most of whom have now sunk into oblivion) amidst “the endless procession of signatories.”107 In his memoir, true to himself, Grave recognised the validity of Zola’s argument and the importance of facing the consequences of his political stances but also restated that his trial had significant implications for freedom of speech. The enmity between both men and ongoing debate about petitioning and its symbolic and practical merits resurfaced a few years later, when the Dreyfus Affair brought these quandaries back to the fore. Even an old foe like Tucker briefly joined the chorus of Grave’s champions, reprinting Freedom’s transcript of Saint-Auban’s defence over  La Petite République, 4 March 1894.  Charle, Naissance, 132. 104  Ibid., 135. 105  Grave, Mémoires, 249. 106  Ibid. 107  Le Gaulois, 5 March 1894. 102 103

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several pages in Liberty.108 A long article on “The attitude of intellectual France” identified the sociocultural transformations revealed by the mobilisation, concluding that: [the letter] really shows a deep-seated uneasiness—a drifting away from all old moorings on the part of a large number of the brightest minds of France. And doubtless it shows a certain sympathy with the ideal of Anarchy in its free love and freedom from law. […] I see that the American press finds it difficult to appreciate this educated side, as it may be called, of French Anarchy. Yet it is this which gives its dangerous character to the movement.109

The truce, however, was short-lived, and in September Tucker derided Grave’s referring to Proudhon in his self-defence in court, since Proudhon was a bitter opponent of communism. “I am not disposed, on account of this, to brand M.  Jean Grave as a coward and a rascal […]. I therefore content myself with saying that on this particular occasion M. Jean Grave acted as a coward and a rascal would have acted under the same circumstances.”110 The interest in Grave went beyond anarchist circles and was as short-lived as it was intense; the foreign press followed eagerly “the great anarchist trial” and took notice of Grave for the first time. The Irish and Belfast Morning News went as far as to claim that “Jean Grave is justly looked upon as a literary genius.”111

The Trial of the Thirty, the Trial of Anarchy Just a few months later, Grave was back in court, for the Trial of the Thirty which opened on 6 August 1894. In the intervening period, French president Sadi Carnot had died at the hand of Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio, in Lyon, on 24 June 1894, bringing a renewed sense of urgency to the repression of anarchism. Grave was charged with penning the first statement of anarchist doctrine in the early 1880s, promoting anarchist organisation, propagating anarchist ideas and illegalism and facilitating support for criminals and revolutionary activity, through the organisation of subscriptions and the “Petites Correspondances” section.112 His early  Liberty, 11 August 1894.  Liberty, 7 April 1894. 110  Liberty, 22 September 1894. 111  Irish and Belfast Morning News, 21 July 1894. 112  La Lanterne, 6 August 1894. 108 109

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pamphlet Society on the Morrow of Revolution was cited as evidence of his endorsement of propaganda by the deed—a position from which he had clearly evolved since then.113 The prosecution intended to prove that the thirty defendants, a hotchpotch of robbers and respected journalists, “belonged to a sort of cult which builds between all its adepts links of companionship aiming for the destruction of any society, and operating through robbery, plunder, fires and killing.”114 Anarchist “leaders,” like Grave, Faure and Armand Matha, faced a sentence of up to 20 years of hard labour. Rather unexpectedly, and as pointed out by the historian Jean-Pierre Machelon, this “show-trial […] was a game changer because the jury perceived the conflation between theorists and plain common-law crooks.”115 The juxtaposition among the accused of “the intellectuals,” “the cerebrals,” “the stars” and, on the other hand, “the impulsive,” “men of action,” or “the herd of vague walk-on actors” was plain to many when the trial started.116 Even a hostile paper like Le Gaulois acknowledged that the alleged conspirators only knew one another “in groups of two or three […]. It is certain, for example, that the writer Grave did not know [the robber] Chiericotti and has nothing to do with the Abbeville robbery.”117 Another accused, the art critic and collector Felix Fénéon, made quite an impression on audiences and commentators with his “discreet and haughty smile” and “resigned surprise,” further emphasising the farcical make-up of the accused, even before he gave his hilarious testimony.118 The peculiar line-up of the defendants was used very effectively by Saint-Auban: “You have summoned Jean Grave, the thinker—a questionable thinker, perhaps, but nonetheless, a thinker, Gentlemen!—in a preposterous setting… next to a robber, Ortiz! […] What a strange set up!”119 The court case was heavily publicised; however, in an age when public testimonies provided a very effective platform for anarchist professions of faith, Grave’s testimony was given behind closed doors to avoid revolutionary contagion, and neither his nor Faure’s pleas were published,  Le Radical, 8 August 1894.  Le Matin, 23 July 1894. 115  Jean-Pierre Machelon, La République contre les Libertés? (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1976), 440. 116  La Lanterne, 6 August 1894; Le Gaulois, 6 August 1894; Le Journal, 7 February 1894. 117  Le Gaulois, 6 August 1894. 118  Le Journal, 7 August 1894. 119  Saint-Auban, L’Histoire sociale, 249. 113 114

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resulting in a lack of sources for historians.120 Grave emerged as a divisive symbolic figure, whose public reception cannot be mapped out onto a simple right/left divide. Saint-Auban’s defence, in the wake of the February mobilisation and close press attention for the case, confirmed his status as an intellectual: the word was used to describe him, although the most common terms were “théoricien,” “penseur,” “philosophe,” “logicien,” “homme de lettres,”121 or still “the party’s most distinguished literary figure.”122 Long eulogies in the press were not uncommon: First, Jean Grave. The fine face of a loyal, stubborn worker, with an energetic physiognomy, verging on ingenuity due to his almost candidly tenacious faith […]. A trumpeting voice, with hints of plebeian cheek, messy gestures whose violence has not been tamed by any education. A man of integrity, but a good man, whose probity is unanimously praised by his friends, whose only fault might have been, in the giddiness of his late philosophical discoveries, to set too much store by logic.123

Lazare published an homage entitled “Jean Grave” on the day of Grave’s court appearance. La Libre Parole stressed that “M. de Goncourt, Mirbeau, Mme Séverine, the intellectual elite, have given Jean Grave a stamp of intellectuality”; beyond occasional sympathy for Grave, what was at stake was nothing less than “the honour of the Third Republic.”124 The mobilisation for Grave and free speech extended to far-right papers and figures such as Drumont, Adam and Barrès, drawn to anarchism’s individualism, libertarianism and radical rejection of the bourgeois state.125 L’Intransigeant, which had moved from the left to far-right nationalist, Boulangist and anti-republican politics under the lead of the polemicist Henri de Rochefort, praised Grave, “a worker who, through his work, intelligence, probity and energy, has become a prominent thinker and a first-class writer.”126 On the opposite side, just before the trial, in August 1894, the paper Débats printed a rather unforgiving assessment of Grave:  Gabriel, “Performing Persecution.”  See for instance Figaro, 7 August 1894; La Lanterne, 6 August 1894. 122  Le Petit Caporal, 6 August 1894. 123  Le Journal, 7 August 1894. 124  La Libre Parole, 12 August 1894. 125  Sonn, Anarchism, 31–48; Jean-Pierre Rioux, Chronique d’une fin de siècle. France, 1889–1900 (Paris: Seuil, 1991), 19. 126  L’Intransigeant, 3 August 1894. 120 121

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a “man of letters of real value,” “a former shoemaker turned publicist, he has retained the physiognomy if not the language of his former state. He has frank eyes and a strong voice. His writings are heavy and dogmatic, with sudden outbursts of violence, no doubt intended to shake the reader’s boredom.”127 In contrast, even a mainstream daily like L’Echo de Paris presented Grave in a very positive light, emphasising the gentleness, studiousness and idealism which were recurring themes in most portrayals and clearly formed the core of Grave’s charismatic appeal, inside and outside anarchist circles: “An ascetic. No wife. The needs of an idealist, of a dreamer, you might say, who only lives through his ideal.”128 Grave was acquitted; only three of the defendants, all of them illegalists, were not, along with a handful of journalists sentenced in abstentia. The conservative press regarded the verdict as a “hideous failure” for the government; for Grave’s supporters, it enshrined the idea that the trial’s premise of a conspiracy had been a farce and “the anarchist attacks had caused no one but the ministers to lose their heads […]. After proving powerless to prevent them, they then sought to exploit them for their reactionary politics.”129 The same views were echoed internationally; Britain’s Shields Daily Gazette commented that “[t]he crusade against Anarchy must be conducted on sensible lines or it will become a powerful means, not of exterminating, but of strengthening the Anarchist camp. To put such men as Sébastien Faure and Jean Grave in the same dock as burglars and pickpockets was the height of absurdity.”130 Such international reports highlight different approaches to anarchist agitation and terrorism, France’s being especially repressive. They also evidence the publicity temporarily brought to Grave and his cause through the trial—a point which detractors emphasised with much annoyance. Grave went back to Mazas to serve the rest of his previous sentence; in September he was transferred to Clairvaux, in the region of Champagne-Ardennes. He later commented that “political prison, in normal times, is not really […] terrible.”131 He “could come and go in the building,”132 although visits to remote Clairvaux were difficult. A letter from Kropotkin suggests that this was another difficult carceral experience for Grave: “We heard from you,  Débats, 6 and 7 August 1894.  L’Echo de Paris, 7 August 1894. 129  La Libre Parole, 14 August 1894; La Petite République, 15 August 1894. 130  Shields Daily Gazette, 21 August 1894. 131  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, Grave, “Autres souvenirs,” 106. 132  Ibid., 114. 127 128

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indirectly, especially through Elisée Reclus, who made us very sad by telling us how much you suffered from being in a military jail.”133 Grave’s own letters, however, do not suggest exceptional hardship, actually revealing a more tender side of his personality—for instance when chastising “my dear Nono,” his nephew, for his arrogant behaviour and signing off “your uncle who sends you kisses but will not have his moustache pulled.”134 The same humour and affection transpire in his letter to his niece Alexandrine: “Learn lots of songs so you can sing them to me when I am free, and instead of calling you a scatterbrain, I will call you my little blue tit.”135 In Clairvaux, he was with Fortuné Henry (brother of Emile, the perpetrator of the Café Terminus attack) and the Blanquist Jules-Louis Breton, a future minister, with whom he shared a cell with two large rooms.136 He received books from Méreaux and Stock, adding up to “an actual library,”137 and remained prolific as ever. A December 1894 letter to Kropotkin recounts his continued writing activity in prison: “I write and I read […]. I try to use the year that I have left to collect materials and see whether I might be able to continue the publication of a collection like our supplement […]. Many publishers are still sending material to me, as if I still had La Révolte […]. I think I will not waste my time here.”138 And indeed, his intellectual and journalistic life somehow continued. In November 1894, Léon Deschamps, the editor of the literary review La Plume, invited him to contribute philosophical articles.139 Grave employed this time to learn English, supported by Kropotkin: “Shall I send you some illustrated papers in English? Gradually you will easily learn to speak English if you wish to, and if you want me to I can send you a book to learn it, which is easy and excellent.”140 In Clairvaux, Grave wrote La Société Future, a depiction of a communist society which received acclaim well beyond French anarchist circles. He later described prison as a congenial writing environment and claimed that without these spells in jail he would have been so busy with the publication of La Révolte that he could not have written La Société Mourante (Pélagie), La Société Future, La  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 3 September 1894.  IFHS, Grave to “Mon cher Nono,” 15 December 1894. 135  IFHS, Grave to “Ma chère Alexandrine,” 15 December 1894. 136  Grave, Mémoires, 299–303; Le Figaro, 2 February 1895. 137  Ibid., 301–2; Figaro, Ibid. 138  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 14 December 1894. 139  Sonn, Anarchism, 18. 140  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 3 September 1894. 133 134

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Grande Famille (Clairvaux) and the outline of his children’s book Les Aventures de Nono (Mazas).141 Strikingly, these were his most influential works, making this a highly prolific and inspired period for him. December 1894 saw a mobilisation for his release, with the publication of a pamphlet by Marc Stéphane, “Pour Jean Grave,” an article by Max Buhr (the pseudonym of André Girard, soon to become Grave’s close collaborator) in La Cocarde and another by the poet François Coppée in Le Journal,142 as well as a front-page article in Georges Clemenceau’s La Justice.143 Once more, the blemish on republican values was decried: “Since this man showed that we were living outside Equality and Fraternity, great efforts were made to show that he was right. And since he added that our so-called Liberty was only a lie, they immediately proved him right, by shoving him into Mazas and pillorying him.”144 Coppée’s unexpected support showed the continued cross-partisan mobilisation for Grave, including from those most opposed to the Republic and its values, since Coppée described himself as “a sort of sentimental socialist, quite reactionary deep down, a champion of God and the flag, who doesn’t believe at all that all freedoms are good […] who would happily settle for a tyranny […] as long as it is truly French, and who has expressed dozens of times, in these very pages, my horror towards anarchist crime, and my stupefaction at the theories which inspire them.”145 Coppée mainly expressed indifference towards Grave—whom he did not know—and his “absurd” doctrine, his “confused and chaotic” book; his sentence was, however, disproportionate, as Grave was only a “harmless” theorist. Above all, Coppée argued, the republican authorities and the bourgeoisie who, effectively, were at the helm, should take heed of popular protests rather than stifle them—there again, the repressive Republic was at fault. Grave was not behind the campaign and in fact caused a stir and drew accusations of martyrdom by responding in La Cocarde, objecting to an early release if it implied any repentance on his part. The authorities followed these developments, and the Préfet even wrote to the Président du Conseil (the de facto head of the

 IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, Grave, “Autres souvenirs,” 106.  Le Journal, 20 December 1894. 143  La Justice, 22 December 1894. 144  Ibid. 145  Le Journal, 12 December 1894. 141 142

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government) to urge him to ignore the campaign and to deny Grave’s conditional release, for fear of “encouraging the anarchist party.”146 Nonetheless, in 1895, Félix Faure was elected president and an amnesty was passed, which extended to the press offences for which Grave had been sentenced. In the early days of February, his low-key release received extensive coverage in the general press. It is clear that, irrespective of the papers’ individual stances regarding Grave, political violence and anarchism, the 1894 trials had turned him into a political celebrity of sorts, which provided him with a platform to advertise his new book La Société Future and the launch of his next periodical, Les Temps Nouveaux. Many hailed his liberation, for instance in the far-right La Cocarde, which cited him at length: “As long as there is unfair suffering, I will keep on saying that society is not good and that it must be changed.”147 Those mainstream broadsheets which disapproved of anarchism adopted different approaches, such as trying to disprove his philosophy148 and restating the dangers of anarchist theories (“The Kropotkins and the Jean Graves of this world are the reason for Vera Zasulich and [propagandist by the deed Emile] Henry”149). The centre-right daily La République Française was pleased to see Grave “returned to public life” and looked forward to challenging these “new anarchist rantings” but made a strong case for the current legal apparatus to remain in place as a deterrent or means of intervention against further anarchist attacks.150 Le Figaro interviewed Grave just after his release, discussing his time in prison and current writings in an altogether sympathetic portrayal of this “sincere man, a thinker parched for the truth,” despite open reservations towards anarchism.151

Conclusion: The Republic’s Anti-hero? The release of Grave, one of the most high-profile detainees of the era of propaganda by the deed and the Wicked Laws, did not bring either to a close. The laws remained in place until the 1980s, despite successive repeal campaigns. In the late 1890s, the legal expert Francis de Pressensé, writing in the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair, joined forces with the anarchist 146  AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, “Renseignements 1888–1897,” letter dated 30 December 1894. 147  La Cocarde, 5 February 1895. 148  Le Gaulois, 11 February 1895. 149  Le Signal, 13 April 1895. 150  La République française, 17 April 1895. 151  Le Figaro, 4 February 1895.

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Emile Pouget to denounce the risks of authoritarianism and “clerical Cesarism” in maintaining the laws—to no avail.152 Clearly, propaganda by the deed, the Wicked Laws and the highly publicised anarchist trials of the early 1890s triggered important debates over republican values and how to reconcile them with the repression of anarchism. “Protests of this kind remain rare,”153 Le Gaulois wrote in March 1895, in a retrospective glance at the Grave campaigns. These protests were also historically important: the two or three years which marked the peak of propaganda by the deed in France and internationally were pivotal in reshaping the French political and intellectual landscape and in defining core human and civil rights in the context of the Republic.154 Through his subsequent activism in the “Spanish atrocities” mobilisations, Grave would remain an important participant in these discussions as they extended transnationally, although in the longer term, such mainstreaming brought its own challenges. Grave’s principled, taciturn and lofty disposition made him an ideal anti-hero in this heady period, one of a handful of figures who were able to draw wide—if far from unanimous—support for the movement and motivate this historical campaign.

 Pouget and Pressensé, “Les Lois Scélérates de 1893–1894,” 7.  Le Gaulois, 5 March 1895. 154  Mark Bray, “Beyond and against The State: Anarchist Contributions to Human Rights History and Theory,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 10, no. 3 (Winter 2019): 323–38. 152 153

CHAPTER 5

The Perils of Mainstreaming? (1895–c. 1905)

The aftermath of the Trial of the Thirty is usually described as a time of ideological reconfiguration for the French movement. Persecutions eased, a host of new individualist and pedagogical initiatives gained ground, while syndicalism created new ideological fault lines between anarchist groups—a process in which the 1895 launch of the French trade union confederation, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), and the 1906 Amiens Charter, the manifesto of revolutionary syndicalism, were landmarks.1 The title of Grave’s new journalistic venture, Les Temps Nouveaux (New Times), often serves as a shorthand for the spirit of these years. Kropotkin gave an evocative description of this atmosphere in the paper’s first issue, dated 4 May 1895: “Over the last 15 months, everything has been set in motion to stifle anarchy. The press was silenced, men were done away with, prisoners shot point-blank in Guyana, thousands were put in jail in Italy […]. They didn’t stop at anything to crush the men and gag the idea. And, in spite of everything, never has the idea progressed as much as it has in the last 15 months.”2 The same issue announced Malato’s release from prison and Pouget’s latest project, La Sociale. A series of conferences by Sébastien Faure was advertised; his Libertaire, which was to become the longest-lived French anarchist paper, was 1 2

 Davranche, “Pelloutier, Pouget,” 2.  Kropotkin, “L’effet des persécutions,” Temps Nouveaux, 4 May 1895.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7_5

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launched a few months later. Les Temps Nouveaux was, like its predecessors, a distinctive editorial project, by and for anarchist communities: “Without any capital and without any advance, we are launching our paper, counting on nothing but the support of the intellectual public and the goodwill of those who know us.”3 Beneath the paper’s forward-thinking title and its continued prestige in France and internationally, the turn of the century signalled the onset of a decline in reputation and influence for Grave and his brand of anarchism, which accelerated catastrophically after 1914. His reservations towards syndicalism and hostility towards individualism confirmed his reputation as an overbearing conservative anarchist. It has also been argued that Les Temps Nouveaux marked the end of any formal innovation for the paper, although others have stressed that artistic avant-gardes continued to rally around the paper and Grave.4 Assessments of his influence and activist acumen (or lack thereof) must also take into account lesser known yet innovative militant pursuits: his educational activism and ceaseless international campaigning. These forms of intervention, nonetheless, ought to be questioned, as a possible watering down of anarchist radicalism through association with parliamentarian and moderate allies. The decade surveyed here was one of intense activity and theoretical debate; it is approached selectively to avoid revisiting episodes already covered extensively elsewhere, such as Grave’s links with visual artists and his tardy involvement in the Dreyfus Affair.5 Instead, the period is explored primarily from the perspective of cross-partisan and transnational networks, in the context of the long-term installation of the Third Republic and debates over the political integration of the working classes. These debates came to a head with the appointment of independent socialist Alexandre Millerand as Minister for Trade and Industry in 1899, in René Waldeck-Rousseau’s “national unity” government. “Millerandism”  Temps Nouveaux, 4 May 1895.  Mayer, “La Révolte,” 8; Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux. 5  Dardel, Les Temps nouveaux; Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux; Sonn, Anarchism; Robyn Rozlak, Neo-Impressionism and Anarchism in Fin-de-Siècle France: Painting, Politics and Landscape (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007); Tania Woloshyn, “Colonizing the Côte d’Azur: Neo-Impressionism, Anarcho-Communism and the Tropical Terre Libre of the Maures, c.1892–1908,” RIHA Journal 45 (July 2012); Katherine Brion, “Paul Signac’s Decorative Propaganda of the 1890s,” RIHA Journal 44 (July 2012); Patricia Leighten, The Liberation of Painting: Modernism and Anarchism in Avant-Guerre Paris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); Bertrand Tillier, L’Artiste dans la cité (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2019). On Dreyfus, see Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 137–65. 3 4

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focused on pacifying labour relations; it divided socialists and was uniformly opposed by anarchists, including Grave and Les Temps Nouveaux. Nonetheless, Grave’s trajectory illustrates similar dynamics of integration; it interrogates the occasional cooperation between anarchists and progressive circles, including parliamentary socialist parties, human rights organisations, academics, freethinkers and freemasons, and reflects the complex position of anarchism at the time, between integration and revolutionism. It illustrates the quandaries of cross-partisan cooperation in a republic for a revolutionary movement and the resulting tensions between revolutionary purism and accusations of compromising; Grave responded to these dilemmas in different ways, partly refusing to engage with statist movements during the Dreyfus Affair but also actively organising beyond anarchist circles and navigating large-scale campaigns against Spanish atrocities.

Les Temps Nouveaux: Continuities and Editorial Innovation Grave started the period as a celebrity within and, to a lesser extent, beyond the movement. His prominence was repeatedly highlighted in Augustin Hamon’s 1895 sociological essay, Psychologie de l’Anarchiste-­ Socialiste. Under the heading “De la curiosité de connaître” (The Thirst for Knowledge), Hamon cited countless individuals won over to the cause by Grave’s writings: a Belgian comrade had been given the literary supplement of La Révolte by a friend and, the following day, had borrowed two francs from his mother to send to Grave; within a short time, he “became acquainted with books not sold in railway station bookshops, or displayed prominently […] in bookstalls.” A Dutch anarchist had read La Révolte “for a long time,” while one Lelièvre commented that “when my son read La Révolte, it did not take me long to realise that I was an anarchist.”6 Moribund Society was cited extensively, and Grave was repeatedly named as a leading theorist: “Grave, Reclus, Malatesta, Kropotkin, Fielden, Parsons, Gumplowicz, Spies, Tolstoy, etc., proclaim the emancipation of the individual by himself.”7 The fact that not all these names have made it to posterity as leading anarchist thinkers points to shifts in the canon which have also affected Grave, resulting in his relative obscurity at present. He was one of the few anarchists portrayed in the 1896 Almanach de la 6 7

 Hamon, Psychologie de l’anarchiste-socialiste, 222–3.  Ibid., 81.

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question sociale and collaborated with a host of French and international publications, often with a high-brow and cultural emphasis, such as La Plume, L’Humanité Nouvelle and the Czech revolutionary calendar for 1903.8 Spain’s La Huelga General (Barcelona, 1901–1903) cites Grave as a key contact, alongside Kropotkin, Domela Nieuwenhuis, Malatesta, Malato, Anselmo Lorenzo, Reclus, Fernando Tarrida del Mármol, Soledad Gustavo (aka Teresa Mañé Miravet) and Robin.9 Such collaborations inscribed him in an international intellectual pantheon which spanned the ideological divides of anarchism, both personal and ideological (typically over syndicalism), increasing intellectual prestige and influence through international networking. Nonetheless, he remained a controversial figure. His solid reputation for “not believing in his own fallibility,” his habit of “admonishing everyone” and settling scores through the paper and thinly-veiled romans à clé, drew mockery from friends and foes, such as Malato,10 while his “ivory tower” anarchism remained a bone of contention even for Reclus: “As for papers, journals, books, their role is not to act; rather, it is to critique […]. The onus is […] upon you to come down from your tower and mingle with the masses in order to find people of goodwill and unite with them for a common goal—to you Jean Grave.”11 His propensity for attracting antipathy and picking quarrels was undiminished. In 1896, the ex-­anarchist Ernest Gégout’s scathing review of Grave’s antimilitarist novel La Grande Famille found  it “deplorable” and described Grave as “a doctrinaire of anarchy, an austere predicator of human happiness through dynamite, a slightly wise philosopher who dreams of turning society into a socialist convent.”12 The late 1890s also saw a protracted public argument with the journalist Urbain Gohier in the pages of the republican socialist daily L’Aurore. After the repression of the early 1890s, Les Temps Nouveaux soon resumed its predecessors’ liaison work, reactivating networks of subscribers, readers and partner papers. As soon as Les Temps Nouveaux was launched, it was sent to old subscription lists and papers were thanked for 8  L’Humanité Nouvelle, November 1902, 202; for a comprehensive overview of Grave’s external contributions, see “Jean Grave,” Bianco: presse anarchiste, accessed 3 July 2020, https://bianco.ficedl.info/mot4570.html?debut_articles=25#pagination_articles. 9  La Huelga General, 1901–03. 10  L’Aurore, 2 January 1903. 11  L’Anarchie, 7 September 1905. 12  L’Attaque, 18 October 1896.

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advertising it.13 Its very existence emerged from transnational links: upon his release from prison, Grave received a cheque for 300 francs from Argentina, sent by Franco-Argentine anarchist Jules Alexandre Sadier. Reclus could no longer afford his usual 100 francs of monthly support, but Charles Albert, whom Grave had met in the early 1890s and who became a close collaborator, collected a few hundred francs while Grave found another 800.14 Kropotkin’s backing was readily granted after Grave visited him in London. His and Grave’s editorial and ideological partnership continued, reflected in the paper and their respective writings: “[S]ince many know nothing more about socialism than parliamentary socialism, it may be useful, in An Appeal to the young, to add an explanatory note.”15 There were significant editorial changes in this new venture. Published articles were now signed, which meant that contributors assumed responsibility for their writings and also implied a form of publicity in showcasing prestigious contributors.16 While it remained known as Grave’s pet project, it had a more diffuse functioning: Grave managed it, assisted by Charles Benoît, Paul Delesalle after 1897 and until 1906, followed by Amédée Dunois, André Girard (aka Max Buhr, who had instigated the December 1894 campaign for Grave’s release) and Charles Desplanques. For the first time, some staff were paid, for their material rather than journalistic contributions, such as proofreading, running errands and sending out the paper: the distinction, emphasised by Delesalle, was essential to preclude accusations of belonging to a separate, privileged class of journalists rather than writing as a form of activism.17 Girard worked closely with Grave after the launch, as the editor of the “Mouvement social” section.18 Grave, as the “director of the paper,” was criticised for his authoritarianism and sectarianism, although he pledged impartiality and openness—up to a point:19 “I gave free rein to write what they wanted to all those who brought their goodwill to the paper, once they had proven that they could write interesting things. I was intractable with those who were vain and

 Temps Nouveaux, 11 May 1895.  Grave, Mémoires, 310. 15  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 5 May, year unknown. 16  Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 45. 17  Temps Nouveaux, 5 December 1903. 18  Grave, Mémoires, 520. 19  Ibid., 326. 13 14

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useless.”20 He also challenged the widespread assumption that “the paper, it was Grave”21 by stressing that he had several collaborators whom he trusted unreservedly. This is confirmed by Lucchini’s estimate that about one third of the articles and various contributions printed in the paper were directly linked to just 11 contributors. Lucchini interprets this relatively small number as characteristic of a dogmatic, hermetic and altogether marginal paper.22 Nonetheless, it was quite a departure from Grave’s assumed leadership; if considered alongside the ongoing artistic partnerships examined below, the paper does appear as a profoundly collaborative endeavour. Pamphlet printing was one area where Les Temps Nouveaux was peerless. The Groupe de propagande par la brochure (Group for Pamphlet Propaganda) launched in 1893 still operated, combining propaganda with fundraising and enlisting support from artists for cover illustrations. It was supplemented from 1896 by the Publications des Temps Nouveaux, a collection of 72 illustrated pamphlets published between 1896 and 1914, each with a print of 10,000 and numerous reeditions;23 Grave proudly spoke of a total output of 1.294 million pamphlets and 12 million newspaper issues, as well as postcards and posters.24 This was a key outlet for his own writings, which sold well, alongside bestsellers by Kropotkin, Reclus, Malatesta, Mirbeau and so on. The Brussels-based publishing house Bibliothèque des Temps Nouveaux (1895–1904) bore Elisée Reclus’s influence in particular, still working collaboratively with Grave.25 Pamphlets were an important vehicle for anarchist doctrine, as part of a comprehensive conception of anarchist print culture using different, interrelated types of publications, with different purposes and modes of distribution, enhanced by a strong visual element (Fig. 5.1). By 1906, Grave’s headed notepaper flagged an ambitious programme: “Editions des Temps Nouveaux. Economie, Société, Sciences, Arts, Littérature.”26 As Lucchini has summarised, “the intellectual ambition of  Ibid.  Ibid. 22  Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 41 23  For a complete inventory, see “Publications des Temps Nouveaux,” Bianco: presse anarchiste, accessed 5 May 2020, https://bianco.ficedl.info/spip.php?article1741; Grave, Mémoires, 524–9. 24  Ibid. 25  Ibid. 26  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, 14AS158, letter dated 22 April 1906. 20 21

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Fig. 5.1  The cover of Grave’s “Contre la Folie des Armements” (Against the madness of the arms race), by M. Luce, Publications des Temps Nouveaux, 1913

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Les Temps Nouveaux […] played out on two fronts: militancy and social protest, as well as science and knowledge.”27 Journalism had evolved into a wider editorial project. The emphasis on knowledge and science alongside politics was reflected in Grave’s diverse and learned networks: his “first circle” of scientists and geographers (Kropotkin and Reclus), artists and art critics, writers, academics, political figures, students, teachers (Pierre Monatte, Charles Albert, Christian Cornelissen), doctors and lawyers.28 Grave’s books were published by the well-regarded editor Stock, in sociology-themed collections such as the “Bibliothèque sociologique,” in which Grave’s essays and some of his fiction appeared between 1893 and 1910, alongside volumes by famous anarchists such as Kropotkin, Reclus, Hamon, John Mackay, Louise Michel, Max Stirner, Bakunin and José Rizal.29 Editorial matters were often discussed among the members of Grave’s intellectual anarchist networks. For instance, the Dutch anarchist Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis requested Grave’s advice regarding a contract with Stock, for which he had “not received a penny.”30 Both men exchanged texts and images for their respective publications, and Grave sent his publications to Domela.31 These were networks of financial and institutional support among intellectuals, which have also been brought to light by Federico Ferretti’s recent work on Elisée Reclus’s editorial politics and anarchist scholarly and scientific networks.32 Grave’s sustained and extensive correspondence with Jacques Gross over the printing of international translations from the Temps Nouveaux collections as well as newspaper exchanges and sales illustrate similar dynamics.33 These various forms of exchanges and mutual support were a central—albeit largely elitist— part of print activism. The first issue of Les Temps Nouveaux contained a financial statement announcing that the paper would be kept afloat without advertising, through sales and subscriptions only. It was a weekly broadsheet which appeared on Saturdays, over four pages (eight from 1904), with its literary  Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 96.  Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 97, and Appendix 1, 252–8, with comprehensive tables of contributors according to their statuses, generations and nationalities. 29  See the inventory at https://cgecaf.ficedl.info/mot329.html, accessed 5 May 2020. 30  IFHS, Domela to Grave, 22 December 1897. 31  IFHS, Domela to Grave, 28 May 1901, 22 December 1897. 32  Federico Ferretti, Elisée Reclus, Pour une géographie nouvelle (Paris: Éditions CHTS, 2014). 33  IISG, Jacques Gross papers, item 47, Correspondence with Grave, 1885–1915/16. 27 28

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supplement. Financial difficulties forced it to appear as a bi-monthly between May 1909 and January 1911. It cost ten centimes per issue and six francs for a yearly subscription. The initial 18,000 print run, carried by promises of high-profile contributions, dropped to 8000 and eventually stabilised at 7000, including 1000 subscribers.34 Such figures, however, tell an inaccurate story: not all issues were sold,35 while multiple and public reading meant that single issues had a wider impact. Grave’s relentless efforts to boost circulation and raise money continued, through calls to comrades and readers.36 In 1901, Kropotkin’s second lecture tour in the United States collected funds for the paper, as well as London’s Freedom and Chicago’s Free Society.37 More creative strategies included “sowing” the paper, by rolling unsold copies into coloured sheets of papers and leaving them on benches on boulevards. Comrades visiting the countryside would also “throw copies into houses” and “hang them on trees.”38 The paper’s existence was always precarious, limiting Grave’s ambitions and imposing adjustments, for instance cancelling the supplement.39 He recalled that “the years 1903–1904 were especially hard.”40 The inclusion of drawings after 1905 helped, until the April 1906 typographers’ strike dealt a new blow to the paper’s finances. Through these financial vagaries, Grave’s correspondence in this period conveys a new sense of daily routine (“nothing new here, always the same daily grind”41), increasingly broken up by exhaustion and occasional illness.42

“Mon cher Grave”: Artistic and Literary Networks The support of visual artists for Les Temps Nouveaux publications had profound reputational and financial impact and is an important legacy of Grave’s, who has been described as “the most crucial link connecting  Grave, Mémoires, 316.  Ibid., 513. 36  APP BA 1497, report dated 30 November 1897. 37  Avrich, “Kropotkin in America,” 24. 38  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, Grave, “Autres souvenirs d’un révolté,” 96–7. 39  BNF, Correspondance et papiers de Félix et Paul Nadar, NAF 24990–25006, Grave to Nadar, item 4259, 18 May 1896; Grave to Nadar, item 4251, n.d. (most likely 1895). 40  Grave, Mémoires, 408. 41  BNF, Correspondance et papiers de Félix et Paul Nadar, Grave to Nadar, item 4263, 10 January 1898. 42  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 27 January 1902. 34 35

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revolutionary art and thought during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.”43 Artists, and especially Neo-Impressionists, derived visual inspiration from Kropotkin’s and Grave’s writings; their art expressed faith in scientific progress and in the reconciliation of intellectual and manual labour, work and leisure for the shared benefit of mankind. These collaborations started with a series of 30 lithographs which appeared between 1896 and 1903 and were also available as an album. From 1905, drawings based on current events were published, totalling 153 between 1905 and 1914, in addition to the 72 pamphlet covers of the Publications des Temps Nouveaux. Fairly lucrative raffles were also organised to collect funds for the paper, starting in April 1899 and followed by five others between February 1900 and May 1912.44 Regular contributors included Henri-­ Edmond Cross, René Georges Hermann-Paul, Henri Lebasque, Maximilien Luce, Charles Maurin, Camille Pissarro and his sons, Paul Signac, Kees Van Dongen and Théo Van Rysselberghe. Grave’s 1901 children’s novel Les Aventures de Nono was illustrated by distinguished names like Luce, Van Rysselberghe, Lucien Pissarro and “Mab”/“Mabel” (Mabel Holland). As Aline Dardel has stressed, alongside the sheer volume of this output, its quality and depth of feeling are striking: humour and light-­ heartedness were rare, in sharp contrast to Le Père Peinard, typically, but also to the more elegiac tone of Neo-Impressionism outside the paper and its associated publications.45 Much has been written regarding these partnerships: the artistic and financial contributions to the paper have been documented by Dardel (who curated an exhibition of Les Temps Nouveaux art at the Musée d’Orsay in 1987–1988),46 Reynaud-Paligot, Rozlak (examining the creative interplays between anarchism and the Neo-Impressionists, as well as the discontent over the art market and status of the artist which drew them to anarchism) and, more recently, Julien Lucchini (centring on the  Varias, Paris and the Anarchists, 21.  Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux, 55. 45  Aline Dardel, “Les illustrateurs des Temps Nouveaux. Conférence autour de l’exposition L’Art Social à la Belle Epoque,” http://adiamos-89.wifeo.com/documents/LArtsocial%2D%2Dla-Belle-Epoque-LesIllustrateursDesTempsNouveaux%2D%2DPDF.pdf, accessed 20 July 2020; See also the online collection and inventory of symbols at: https:// cartoliste.ficedl.info/article413.html?lang=fr, and the inventory of albums and financial profits at https://bianco.ficedl.info/?article80, accessed 26 March 2020. 46  A smaller exhibition, “Anarchism and the Political Art of Les Temps Nouveaux, 1895–1914,” was held at the Nasher Museum at Duke University in 2019. 43 44

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paper’s networks). These studies have highlighted the remarkable artistic contents of Temps Nouveaux publications, as well as some limitations, such as disagreements over the concept of Art Social and tensions between artistic autonomy and political engagement, which were already clear for contemporaries; Signac as well as Lucien Pissarro voiced their reservations towards completely merging anarchism and art.47 Another problematic aspect is the contrast between Les Temps Nouveaux’s avant-garde discourse and its altogether timid practice: “New Times must be answered by a new art,” André Girard announced in the second issue of Les Temps Nouveaux.48 And yet, Grave, having used illustrations in pamphlets from 1897, was comparatively late (1905) in introducing them into the paper. Prins also points out that by the 1890s it had become common for journals to offer separate, high-quality printouts of their illustrations to readers, as Grave later went on to do.49 This section supplements this extensive literature by documenting a less familiar aspect: the creative dialogue in which Grave participated actively and the singular charismatic leadership which these exchanges reveal. Beyond the small fee paid by Grave for these works, which artists often waived, affinities with Grave’s personality and his philosophical outlook were important draws for their support, showing Grave’s ability to “motivat[e] broad political mobilization”50 through his quietness and intellectualism, as well as through the philosophical appeal of his writings and publications. This represents a somewhat paradoxical type of leadership, since much of the literature on prominent anarchists emphasises the importance of theatricality and oratorical ability.51 Paul Signac, among others, drew laudatory parallels between nature’s beauty, its representation in painting and Grave’s anarchism:

47  Laura Prins, “L’Art pour l’Art or L’Art pour Tous? The Tension between Artistic Autonomy and Social Engagement in Les Temps Nouveaux, 1896–1903,” International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 4, no. 1 (2016): 92–126; Temps Nouveaux, 23 November 1895, 1–2. 48  Temps Nouveaux, 11 May 1895. 49  Prins, “L’Art pour L’Art,” 99. 50  Minuto, “Pietro Gori’s Anarchism.” 51  Carl Levy, “Charisma and Social Movements: Errico Malatesta and Italian Anarchism,” in Modern Italy 3, no. 2 (1998): 205–17; Candace Falk, “Emma Goldman: Passion, Politics, and the Theatrics of Free Expression,” in Women’s History Review 11, no. 1 (2002): 11–26.

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I shall read [your last book] in the shadow of a pine tree, in front of the sea—and in the beauty of this setting I am naturally depicting the life of goodness and harmony for which you let us hope.52 In the great poetic landscape, in the manner of Puvis [painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes], of Kropotkin, what solid, practical and inhabitable monuments you build! How easily one breathes there! 53

Bertrand Tillier has examined Camille Pissarro’s 1889 drawing collection Les Turpitudes Sociales as a visual rendition of Kropotkin’s and Grave’s theories on mutual aid and the education of the masses, “a synthesis of the possible options for proletarians aspiring to emancipate from the wealthy.”54 Others, like the illustrator Henri Jossot, debated with Grave, which was another form of engagement with his theories: “Let us observe that we share the same ideas but differ as to how to put them into practice.”55 Grave’s closest artistic collaborators often expressed their deep commitment to him and the cause, and many echoed the painter Francis Jourdain’s pledge: “Be sure that I will always be happy to be of service to you, and that I am yours most sincerely and warmly.”56 Hermann-Paul’s expression of commitment conveyed a sense of inescapability: “I never ever thought I would ever draw frogs!!! To hell with you; I’m planning on meeting you there.”57 These exchanges were usually gracious and humorous, the main bone of contention usually being the timescale for delivering the works volunteered: “If you are not afraid of having too many drawings, I am not afraid of making too many drawings! […] I will only ask you this: when do you want these drawings—set me the final date […]. Don’t be afraid to ask me anything you like for ‘les temps nouveaux’ [sic].”58 Financial support was also provided directly, not just in the form of artistic contributions. Grave reminisced that “[i]t was Pissarro who, twice, paid off our debt with the printer, which was over one thousand

 IFHS, Signac to Grave, n.d.  IFHS, Signac to Grave, n.d. 54  Tillier, L’Artiste dans la cité, 81. 55  IFHS, Jossot to Grave, n.d. (1906?). 56  IFHS, Jourdain to Grave, n.d. 57  IFHS, Hermann-Paul to Grave, 1905. 58  IFHS, Iribe to Grave, 25 September 1905. 52 53

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francs each time.”59 Subscriptions were taken and, funds permitting, donations volunteered without prompting: I enclose a money order—the paper’s Christmas gift.60 My apologies for not taking part in the subscription for the supplement. I am skint, skint as hell.61

Material support was reciprocal, sometimes verging on patronage: Grave put his regular contributor Nadar in touch with a certain Baillet, “who is starting his collections. […] I thought I’d help him as well as you.”62 He sent potential buyers to Camille Pissarro.63 His long correspondence with Hermann-Paul refers to several mutual introductions. Some came to Grave through other famous anarchists: the sculptor Emile Derré started supporting Les Temps Nouveaux after “being enthused” by a talk given by Louise Michel and approached Grave to intercede and ask her if she would be willing to sit for a few sessions.64 The Czech František Kupka had pledged his indefectible support “in respectful memory of Elisée Reclus, who was pleased to know that I was here with you” (Fig. 5.2).65 The artistic dialogue informing these contributions must be stressed, as well as the extent of Grave’s involvement in discussions over the design of this visual material. These include exchanges with Nadar over the quality of the paper and the layout for the publication of brochures by Reclus.66 Paul Iribe consulted at length about the layout of a text which he illustrated and repeated his hope that the work “would bring something.”67 Others voiced reservations: [Nono] is charming, in all sincerity, but I don’t really picture myself drawing [allegories like] Solidaria, Liberta or Labor.68

 Grave, Mémoires, 517.  IFHS, Angrand to Grave, n.d. 61  IFHS, Luce to Grave, n.d. 62  BNF, Grave to Nadar, item 4255, n.d. 63  IFHS, Camille Pissarro to Grave, 9 June 1901. 64  IFHS, Derré to Grave, 21 April 190[illleg.] 65  IFHS, Kupka to Grave, 1905. 66  BNF, Grave to Nadar, item 4246, n.d. 67  IFHS, Iribe to Grave, n.d. 68  IFHS, Hermann-Paul to Grave, n.d. 59 60

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Fig. 5.2  Le Lotissement de l’espace, by F. Kupka, Les Temps Nouveaux, 24 February 1906 I have not forgotten that you once asked me for drawings. If I have not yet answered your wish, it is not for want of thinking about it, but rather to overcome the difficulty which this poses for me—the kind of drawings required for Les Temps Nouveaux is not much of my business, in the sense that my thinking (from a plastic point of view, I mean) goes in a very different direction […]. My good intentions are fighting with my inability.69

These artistic networks remained primarily national during this period, even though Art Social was central to anarchism and syndicalism globally.70 Grave’s international artistic contacts were almost non-existent  IFHS, Cross to Grave, July 1906.  Martyn Everett, “Art and the Anarchist Movement in Britain,” Freedom 47, no. 9 (October 1986); Kirwin Shaffer, Anarchist Cuba: Countercultural Politics in the Early Twentieth Century (Oakland: PM Press, 2019); Morna O’Neill, “Cartoons for the Cause? Walter Crane’s The Anarchists of Chicago,” Art History 38, no. 1 (2015): 106–37; Shelley 69 70

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compared with other aspects of his transnational activism. He was influenced by John Ruskin’s and William Morris’s ideas about bringing art to the masses through applied art and was the first to publish Morris’s ideas in France. He initially wanted him to design the frontispiece of Les Temps Nouveaux, but this did not materialise.71 Kupka’s Temps Nouveaux drawings were later reprinted in Czech paper Prace [Le Travail], and there were further exchanges with Czech anarchists over image exchanges.72 International gifts were sometimes donated for the paper’s raffles.73 However, despite such occasional interactions and exchanges, and the intense international circulation of images in anarchist print networks, Grave’s own artistic circles remained overwhelmingly French; surprisingly, visual material appears to have crossed borders less easily than texts in this golden age of internationalism.

Expanding Horizons: Global Print Networks and the Emergence of an Anticolonial Consciousness Grave saw Les Temps Nouveaux as having a unique role in organising anarchists in France and internationally, as “the faithful monitor of all the economic movement of the entire world”:74 Without boasting, I can say that our paper was truly international […]. When riots broke out in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, it was to us that the initiators of these movements wrote to publicise their aims […]. The Guatemalan government wrote to us, asking us to indicate a selection of anticlerical pamphlets to them, and even the German government had thought it necessary to subscribe through a Berlin bookshop. Later it was the Russian Tsarist government.75

Streeby, “Labor, Memory, and the Boundaries of Print Culture: From Haymarket to the Mexican Revolution,” American Literary History 19, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 406–33. 71  Prins, “L’Art pour l’art,” 113. 72  Markéta Theinhardt, “L’art télégraphique ou l’allégorie de la vie moderne: František Kupka dessinateur de presse,” in L’Europe des revues II (1860–1930). Réseaux et circulation des modèles, ed. Evanghélia Stead and Hélène Védrine (Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses, 2018), 624; Xavier Galmiche, “Les Šibeničky [Petites potences] et l’internationale des revues satiriques anarchistes,” in L’Europe des revues II, 487–503. 73  E.g. from Australia, Temps Nouveaux, 14 February 1900. 74  Temps Nouveaux, 20 July 1895. 75  Grave, Mémoires, 323.

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The “Mouvement social” section resumed its international coverage within weeks of the paper’s launch, and dozens of correspondences were printed every week, from Switzerland, Naples, Constantine and New York.76 Julien Lucchini has conducted quantitative surveys of the areas covered in that section between 1895 and 1905, which evidence a clear dominance of European countries (over 77%) but also a vast number of countries covered from all other continents.77 From April 1896, each issue featured lists of recommended papers in all languages. These were language—rather than area-focused, reflecting the cross-border linguistic diasporas in which anarchist publications were produced and consumed. The first list of 29 titles in 7 languages included Greek, German and Danish papers, alongside French, Italian, English and Spanish publications from Europe and America—a Western outlook, albeit one that exceeded the main anarchist centres.78 In May 1896, the paper provided a list of 13 papers in Spanish published in Spain, Argentina (including the communist anarchist-feminist La Voz de la Mujer, a strand to which Grave would have been less open in a French context),79 Uruguay and the United States. Information-sharing remained a focus. Grave’s “dream” of having a permanent correspondent in each country providing first-hand information was only partly realised.80 Among many others, Alex Sadier (“A.S.”), John Creaghe and “L.H.” reported from Argentina;81 “P” wrote (in immaculate French) about the treatment of indigenous populations in Peru;82 Henry Glasse remained a link with South Africa. In Europe, multiple correspondents wrote from or about neighbouring countries with a lively movement (Italy, Spain, Belgium, Britain). Grave convinced Max Nettlau to cover the Czech press for the paper.83 “M.  Mihal” reported from Poland throughout 1905. French-speaking anarchists based in the United States, such as Louis Picavet, covered until the First World War.84  Temps Nouveaux, 20 July 1895.  Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” Appendix 1, Table 6, 259–60. 78  Temps Nouveaux, 18 April 1896. 79  Maxine Molyneux, “No God, No Boss, No Husband: Anarchist Feminism in NineteenthCentury Argentina,” Latin American Perspectives 13, no. 1 (1986): 129. 80  Grave, Mouvement, 156–7. 81  Temps Nouveaux, 22 December 1900, 5 August 1905 and 9 January 1909. 82  Temps Nouveaux, 5 October 1912. 83  IISG, Nettlau Collection, Correspondence with Grave, items 504–5, Grave to Nettlau 4 June and 5 [?] June 1897. 84  Temps Nouveaux, 3 January 1914. 76 77

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Many international articles carried an anonymous signature such as “XXX” or a generic one, for instance “un camarade georgien.”85 As Grave pointed out, “[w]illing comrades were never in short supply. There was always, after a short break, a comrade to replace the one who had left. It did not always last long, but information always came through.”86 International information was also obtained by reprinting extracts from other papers—not necessarily anarchist ones—which were then translated.87 Short- and long-distance print and fundraising networks continued to operate in reciprocity: Buenos Aires’s La Protesta Humana sold pamphlets by Grave and Reclus, French material from Roubaix and Le Père Peinard and advertised local performances of Mirbeau’s plays.88 Montevideo’s La Rebelión listed Les Temps Nouveaux alongside Le Réveil (Geneva), La Protesta Humana, L’Avvenire, Tierra y Libertad and so on.89 In many countries, European anarchist theories—especially Kropotkin’s and Reclus’s—had been instrumental in the development of local movements. This favoured the circulation of Temps Nouveaux—and Grave’s own—material and gave it a prominent place in these global “ideological and cultural-intellectual” circulations, fostering an enduring legacy of influence for French-language anarchism.90 Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth noted that, in the United States, La Questione Sociale and Italian activists “ha[d] for several years been very active, and through the efforts of the Italian groups the writings of Kropotkin, Jean Grave, Malatesta, Morris and others ha[d] been translated and published in the Italian language and distributed throughout the entire country.”91 In 1904, Les Temps Nouveaux published its first extract from Luigi Galleani’s Vermont-based La Cronaca Sovversiva,92 as well as a list of about 20 anarchist periodicals in Italian from across Italy but also the United States (La Questione Sociale, La Protesta Umana, Secolo Nuevo), Argentina  Temps Nouveaux, 15 June 1901.  Grave, Mémoires, 324. 87  Ibid., 323. 88  La Protesta Humana, 9 January 1898. 89  La Rebelión, 12 October 1902. 90  Steven J.  Hirsch, “Peruvian Anarcho-syndicalism: Adapting Transnational Influences and Forging Counter-hegemonic Practices, 1905–1930,” in Anarchism and Syndicalism, 227–8; Javier Navarro Navarro, “Transnational Anarchist Culture in the Interwar Period,” in Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States, ed. Christopher J. Castañeda and Montse Feu (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2019), 221. 91  Mother Earth, II, 8, October 1907. 92  Article by “E. Vecc,” “Free Country,” Temps Nouveaux, 9 April 1904. 85 86

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(L’Avvenire) and Switzerland (Il Risveglio/Le Réveil).93 Cronaca sold brochures by Grave and works by Zola and Mirbeau.94 As late as 1914, Grave still featured among the anarchist authors being read internationally, and French-language anarchist publications remained prominent. Latin American contacts were especially active, reflecting the rise of anarchist and syndicalist movements across Hispanic America after 1890. These connections also resulted from the migration of French-speaking anarchists, the presence of prominent European activists (especially Malatesta and Pietro Gori), and the Hispanic and Italian mediation which helped connect these movements with France. As pointed out by Carl Levy, “if we look more closely at the spread of anarchism in Brazil or Argentina, we will find a language kinship between Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.”95 These personal and linguistic bonds extended to the French movement, albeit to a lesser extent; these dynamics show the relevance of an “ethnolinguistic approach” to the history of global anarchism, taking into account circulations between languages through the role of multilingual intermediaries, translation and these linguae francae.96 Grave and Les Temps Nouveaux were also plugged into English- and French-language North American print networks, which in turn were connected with Latin America and Britain, within multilingual networks. These extensive networks had strong multiplying effects, as suggested by Castañeda and Feu’s overview: “Anarchist periodicals connected Spanish-­ speaking radicals and groups in major metropolises, including Barcelona, Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Havana, Los Angeles, Madrid and New York City among many others, but also smaller urban areas such as Detroit, New Orleans, Tampico (Mexico), Steubenville (Ohio) and Ybor City (Tampa).”97 Formal mapping exercises have also evidenced the reach and complexity of these international print networks for the most connected and widely read publications, such as Freiheit.98 The international circulation and promotion of Grave’s Moribund Society provides just one example of these interlocking circulations. The book was praised in  Temps Nouveaux, 26 November 1904.  Cronaca Sovversiva, 3 October 1903. 95   Carl Levy, “Anarchism and Cosmopolitanism,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, p. 134. 96  Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo, “The Anarchist Imaginary. Max Nettlau and Latin America, 1890–1934,” in Writing Revolution, 189. 97  Christopher J. Castañeda and Montse Feu, “Introduction,” in Writing Revolution, 2. 98  Tom Goyens, “Freiheit: Geographical Reach of an Anarchist Newspaper (1879–1910),” accessed 20 July 2020, https://txgoyens.wixsite.com/tomgoyens/mapping-anarchism. 93 94

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Boston’s The Rebel, edited by US anarchist Harry Kelly and the British Charles Mowbray, as “the famous work […] for which Jean Grave was sentenced […] for his outspoken criticism of the social order of present-­ day society.”99 In 1899, the French-language Germinal (Paterson, NJ), a well-established contact of Grave’s, advertised Temps Nouveaux pamphlets and the English-language translation of Moribund Society by Voltairine De Cleyre.100 In London, Moribund Society was available in serialised form or as a book, via the offices of The Torch and Freedom: “Jean Grave’s famous book, Moribund Society and Anarchy, translated by Voltairine de Cleyre, is now ready. We have some on sale, price 1s. Emma Goldman will have some with her at her lectures.”101 Research into De Cleyre’s work as a translator has shown that she had translated from Pouget’s London print of the book and that the essay was well-received in the United States because the ongoing Spanish war gave it added resonance—but also that, for all the public praise, De Cleyre found Grave’s style impenetrable.102 Grave’s writings also circulated as translated books and pamphlets. James Yeoman estimates that about 15 of these were published in translation in Spain.103 His 1930 memoir shows the extent of this circulation in translation: Society on the Morrow of Revolution had been translated into Greek, Armenian, English, Italian, Russian, Bulgarian and Rumanian. Moribund Society was available in Dutch, Portuguese, English, Russian (two translations), Spanish (two translations) and Italian. All his works were available in multiple editions, including his rather inferior fiction: Malfaiteurs had four editions and appeared in Dutch, while his 1904 play Responsabilités also had four editions and an Italian translation.104 Les Temps Nouveaux and Grave thus operated within personal and print networks located in criss-crossing linguistic diasporas, which challenges centre-periphery diffusionist accounts. A global coverage was attempted but never realised: in contrast to Grave’s dense transatlantic links, reports from non-Francophone Africa outside Egypt and South Africa were scant or focused on deportations of French and European prisoners, while Asia  The Rebel, February 1896.  Germinal (Paterson), 15 November 1899. 101  Freedom, January–February 1900. 102  Rita Filanti, “‘We must dig our trenches, and win or die’: Voltairine de Cleyre’s Transnational Anarchism,” Transatlantica, forthcoming. 103  Many, many thanks to James Yeoman for compiling this overview of Grave’s presence in the Spanish anarchist press and tracking down translations. 104  Grave, Mouvement, VI. 99

100

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remained under-represented for another few years. Thus, personal networks and linguistic connections opened and extended transcontinental channels of communication but also set their limitations. However, the main impetus was to form links connecting individuals and groups and to exchange information—and in this period at least, this aim was achieved, without any sense of hierarchy. These exchanges made Grave visible and his publications accessible, and in return they ensured access to international news and anarchist literature for Temps Nouveaux readers in France and across the world. These links varied in density and significance; they were often restricted to the exchange of print and information, but in other instances they facilitated sustained discussions and coordinated action. The “Spanish atrocities” campaigns examined below show how these networks could be mobilised into action. Print connections increasingly supported the fight against colonialism and the national liberation movements which gained momentum in this period. Les Temps Nouveaux frequently featured extended articles questioning colonialism. While “concrete forms of grassroots’ anti-imperialist solidarity” (including sharing bombmaking recipes) were realised in other quarters of the anarchist movement,105 information-sharing as well as exchanges of periodicals and theoretical writings remained the main mode of intervention for Grave and his collaborators. This coverage was, inevitably, patchy; many of the movements and activists highlighted by the recent historiography of anarchist anti-imperialism and syndicalism in the Global South are absent from the paper. Important figures of anticolonialism are overlooked; for instance, the Filipino political novelist José Rizal only appears twice, while José Martí is never mentioned, just like the Canarian Secundino Delgado, who was active internationally and played a major role in Canarian and Cuban independence movements.106 The growing interest in national liberation was spearheaded by Kropotkin, as part of broader anarchist and socialist mobilisations in France and internationally.107 In 1902, Grave, Girard and Gauche were  Ole Birk Laursen, “Anti-imperialism,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, 153–5.  Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags. Anarchism and the Anti-colonial Imagination (London: Verso, 2007 (2005)); Enrique Galván-Álvarez, “Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Canarian Imagination: the Missing Flag,” History Workshop Journal 83 (2017): 253–71; Temps Nouveaux, 6 November 1897, 29 July 1911 (Supplément littéraire). 107  Hirsch and Van der Walt (eds.), Anarchism and Syndicalism; Ruth Kinna, Kropotkin. Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 180–1. 105

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among the many international signatories backing the Brussels “Congress of Armenophiles” in Pro Armenia, the influential paper bringing together intellectuals and progressive political figures in support of the Armenian cause.108 As a highly visible and geographically close contemporary mobilisation, the Fenian movement had elicited anarchist support from the early 1880s.109 Grave corresponded with nationalist activist Maud Gonne, the editor in chief of L’Irlande Libre. The paper was advertised in Les Temps Nouveaux, where Ireland was often discussed, although national emancipation was often in tension with economic injustice. Thus, when reporting on a talk given by Gonne, Grave commented that she had focused on “the exclusively patriotic terrain” and should have stressed that the Irish’s grievances derived “from the economic regime just as much as the political regime.”110 Grave’s own theoretical contribution in this area was significant, in contrast to the general lack of interest within the movement in France, where national emancipation was still widely perceived as contradictory with internationalism.111 In 1897, Reclus praised him for a “[g]ood reply to the anarchist students, too haughty in their ideas to condescend to care for the Armenians, the Cubans or the Greeks. For Heaven’s sake! We suffer with those who suffer! We fight with those who fight!”112 His pamphlet La Colonisation (1900) was an incisive and well-informed systemic critique of colonialism, which denounced state collusion with the army, assimilation, the plunder of natural resources, the use of a “civilising” rhetoric and the spreading of diseases along with colonisation—although, like many contemporary texts, it refrained from disputing the assumed superiority of white European colonisers.113 It was followed in 1903 by Patriotisme et colonisation, prefaced by Reclus, “the first expression of left-wing anticolonialism in France.”114 Grave, like Faure, wrote for the Algiers-based periodical Le Réveil de l’Esclave.115 His writings were still widely circulated in  Pro Armenia, 10 July 1902.  Ferretti, “Political Geographies,” 18. 110  Temps Nouveaux, 17 April 1897. 111  Philippe Bouba, “L’Anarchisme en situation coloniale: le cas de l’Algérie. Organisations, militants et presse (1887–1962)” (PhD diss., Université de Perpignan, Université d’Oran, 2014), 12. 112  IFHS, Reclus to Grave, 13 March 1897. 113  Bray, “Beyond and against the State,” 328. 114  Ferretti, “Political Geographies,” 18. 115  Bouba, “L’Anarchisme,” 121. 108 109

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Algeria in the early 1920s; the travelling library inventoried by the historian Philippe Bouba contained more writings by Grave than Reclus.116 This overall level of engagement, while limited ideologically, in terms of coverage and actual links, remains impressive amidst the insularity of the contemporary French movement (Fig. 5.3).

Grave on Syndicalism and Individualism The leading historian of French anarchism, Jean Maitron, famously spoke of an ideological “scattering” to describe the late-1890s landscape of anarchism, in reference to syndicalism, the revamping of individualism and “lifestyle” experimentations, such as agrarian and free love communities, and, a few years later, the resurgence of illegalism. All of these were dismissed by Grave, who did not look favourably on perceived challenges to his anarchist orthodoxy. In post-attentats France and internationally, the doctrine of syndicalism polarised anarchists. Several prominent communist anarchists, and especially Max Nettlau, while interested in labour organisation, were wary of trade union methods. Kropotkin was favourable to worker organisation from an anarchist perspective117—far more so than Grave, who expressed clear reservations in a front-page article stating that Les Temps Nouveaux regarded union-based activism as “insufficient” and would not get involved in trade unions but would still discuss them to extract their “philosophy.”118 In fact, the paper became a key anarchist forum to discuss syndicalist ideas and counted prominent exponents of these ideas among its staff, such as Delesalle, Dunois, Pierre Monatte and Marc Pierrot. The exclusion of anarchists from the Second International at the 1896 London congress strengthened the case for unionisation and action “on the economic terrain.” Grave stuck to the position that revolutionary unions might help develop class consciousness and secure piecemeal improvements but not revolutionary change, as theorists like Pouget and Pelloutier envisaged. His fear that syndicalism would absorb anarchism was expressed more clearly in the early 1900s, and by 1902 even Kropotkin expressed similar concerns.119 Internal discussions clarified the perceived  Ibid., 127–8.  Kinna, Kropotkin, 70–7. 118  Temps Nouveaux, 20 July 1895. 119  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 3 July 1902. 116 117

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Fig. 5.3  Les Temps Nouveaux’s transnational print networks: ad from Algiers’ La Révolte, 31 July 1909

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dangers of syndicalism five years before Malatesta and Monatte’s landmark confrontation over the hierarchy of anarchism and trade unionism at the 1907 Amsterdam congress: dropping numbers of anarchists, a reformist reorientation of the revolutionary movement and, lastly, the fear of seeing libertarian aims replaced by a strictly syndicalist and economist outlook. Grave repeated these arguments in his 1908 pamphlet Le Syndicalisme dans l’évolution sociale, which criticised the all-encompassing aspirations of syndicalists.120 He restated the need for complete individual liberation beyond the transformation of working conditions. Far from being the “basic cell of future society,” as argued by syndicalist militants, trade unions should “disappear with the regime which produced them, to make room for more complex, less narrow groupings.”121 Ce que nous voulons (1914) made the argument again. The discussion was ongoing and open, however, and Grave also wrote for the syndicalist press, for instance Lausanne’s La Voix du Peuple, to which he contributed the long article “L’influence des milieux,” which examined the “moral and philosophical” dimensions of emancipation.122 At the opposite end of the anarchist spectrum, Grave was far more hostile towards the new currents of individualism. In 1897, he published L’Individu et la société, which restated that individual autonomy and initiative were the sources of anarchism and the revolution but firmly rejected unfettered and intellectual individualism at the expense of altruism and mankind’s social nature—a critique of Stirnerite egoism.123 The essay also rebutted Neo-Malthusianism with customary directness: “I think they are sorely mistaken, those who claim to solve the social question by limiting the birth rate.”124 In 1911, Les Temps Nouveaux campaigned against the right of abortion promoted by the Neo-Malthusianists.125 These positions have been regarded as part of Grave’s patriarchal and doctrinaire stance; nonetheless, equally customary was the continued promotion of Neo-­ Malthusian publications and gatherings in the paper, despite these fundamental disagreements.126 Grave was scathing towards more radical trends:  Jean Grave, Le syndicalisme dans l’évolution sociale (Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1908), 5–6.  Ibid., 12. 122  La Voix du Peuple (Lausanne), 10 and 17 November 1906. 123  Jean Grave, L’Individu et la société (Paris: Stock, 1897), 195. 124  Temps Nouveaux, 25 March 1899, 18 November 1899. 125  Grave, Mémoires, 423. 126   For instance, “Correspondances et Communications,” Temps Nouveaux, 28 February 1903. 120 121

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“Amongst the divagations which anarchism caused in some ‘unstable’ brains, one must cite the ‘Naturiens,’ who blame civilisation for all the evils with which mankind is afflicted, and do not distinguish between civilisation and social and political institutions.”127 He was only marginally kinder to vegetarians and vegans: “[The Naturiens] were replaced with the vegetarians, who were divided between végétaliens, who go as far as to claim that vegetables must be eaten raw. It is true that vegetarianism includes some fair ideas, but can these be applied to all? This remains to be proven.”128 These critiques were also informed by a thoroughly biased conflation of individualism with illegalism. They were also underpinned by deep personal enmities and differences in both style and ideology, especially with the individualist paper L’Anarchie after 1905. These were expressed through the perennial bone of contention of mutual recognition and resale: the individualist Albert Libertad wrote about Grave’s refusal to have Temps Nouveaux pamphlets sold at L’Anarchie’s gatherings, where about 500 pamphlets had been sold monthly—a decision which was criticised for hindering the spread of anarchist ideas.129 Nonetheless, L’Anarchie continued to review carefully and engage (increasingly sardonically) with Les Temps Nouveaux each week and to advertise Grave’s pamphlets, confirming Lucchini’s claim that a sense of unity remained beneath surface hostilities—for the time being at least. Feminism was another area where the notion of a conservative Grave has become entrenched. His Société Future (1895) affirmed the equality of women and men while continuing to subsume gender emancipation under a universalist class-based approach.130 This unimaginative and traditionalist position was marginally more progressive than that of the wider French anarchist communist movement, which remained pervaded with “patriarchal biological determinism […] defining the position of women in society on the basis of the view that women were by ‘nature’ made to be caring mothers and housekeepers.”131 Les Temps Nouveaux remained a male preserve in all respects, even featuring critical pieces on feminism by Henri Duchmann, who by 1904 was a notorious anti-feminist anarchist. Neither  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, Grave, “Autres souvenirs,” 147.  Ibid., 148. 129  L’Anarchie, 7 September 1905. 130  Jean Grave, La Société future et l’anarchie (Paris: Stock, 1895), 321–2. 131  Hubert van den Berg, “Pissarro and Anarchism,” History Workshop 32 (Autumn 1991): 227. 127 128

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Grave nor the paper, both of whom were remarkably well connected, could boast meaningful or sustained interactions with women, be they anarchists or other. Delesalle’s partner Léona replaced him in his administrative role with the paper in 1898–1899, but this was only noted later, by Jean Maitron.132 One exception was Mabel Holland-Thomas, in whom Les Temps Nouveaux gained its first regular woman contributor and Grave an intellectual as well as a romantic partner. “Miss Holland” was the author of the romance Fraternity (1888) and the autobiographical Some Welsh Children (1898). Born in Wales in 1861 to a retired sea captain and a mother whose own father was the head of a Liverpool shipping firm, she was one of eight children, had been to boarding school and grew up in a “staunch Tory family.”133 She was an educated and talented woman and an accomplished visual artist.134 It was Kropotkin who, having met her in London at the house of Russian revolutionary Sergei Stepniak, an important figure in London’s liberal and revolutionary intelligentsia, had encouraged her to make contact with Grave during her forthcoming trip to Paris.135 The exact details of her courtship with Grave are unknown; her nieces later noted that “she surprisingly married Monsieur Jean Grave, a famous anarchist […]. But the marriage was happy.”136 Correspondences yield a few clues, with Grave’s regular trips to Wales mentioned throughout the 1890s and a five-week stay in London in 1905, in order to finish a book.137 By 1897, Kropotkin sent his family’s regards to Miss Holland in his letters to Grave, which suggests that she was now in Paris with him.138 This was the year when she started writing short stories for Les Temps Nouveaux. In 1898, she illustrated Grave’s pamphlet La Panacée Revolution; in 1905 and 1906, she translated and illustrated two children’s albums sold by Les Temps Nouveaux. In 1904, she was one of the illustrators of Grave’s Terre Libre, as well as the recipient of its dedication (Fig. 5.4). She also reported

 Jean Maitron, Paul Delesalle. Un anarchiste de la Belle Epoque (Paris: Fayard, 1985), 106.  Ethel Holland-Thomas, My Welsh Heart (Caernaron: Gwenlyn Evans Ltd, 1969), Foreword; Jane Aaron, Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing in Wales: Nation, Gender and Identity (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2010), 168. 134  Holland-Thomas, My Welsh Heart, 30, Foreword. 135  Publications du Groupe de propagande par l’écrit, no. 6, 1921, 15. 136  Holland-Thomas, My Welsh Heart, Foreword. 137  Temps Nouveaux, 2 December 1905; IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 3 September 1894. 138  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 14 December 1897. 132 133

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on Welsh labour for the paper.139 Tellingly, when Grave published his memoir in 1930, it was dedicated, again, to “the memory of the woman who, often, was my inspiration, and always my companion and my comfort.”140 Her work for Les Temps Nouveaux as an artist, correspondent, translator and writer contrasts with the rather backward stance of the paper regarding feminism and gender issues, highlighting the tension between conservative theory and a marginally more open practice.

Grave as a Campaigner Campaigning was a key focus; the paper always had “two or three subscriptions on the go,” and was the go-to destination for anyone planning an international campaign, which also helped in collecting information regarding the global movement.141 The complex series of mobilisations against “Spanish atrocities” was one of the longest-lasting, most impactful and original set of campaigns in the history of the pre-1914 movement. The relentless repression of anarchism and dissident movements in the Hispanic world triggered several waves of campaigning, culminating with the international wave of protests over the execution of the Catalan pedagogue Francisco Ferrer i Guàrdia in 1909.142 The “Spanish atrocities” campaigns illustrate the functioning and dilemmas of transnational and cross-partisan organising and their intersection with educationalism and art—all aspects to which Grave made a central but occasionally polemic contribution, in a wider context of transnational campaigning and internationalisation of public opinion.143 Grave led the paper’s vigorous Spanish campaigns, acknowledging that “meetings are not our thing at the Temps Nouveaux” but aiming to “move comrades” and thus “bring about a whole meeting campaign, in order to somehow raise public opinion.”144  Temps Nouveaux, 8 July 1911.  Grave, Mouvement, VII. 141  Grave, Mémoires, 324, 350. 142  Daniel Laqua, “Freethinkers, Anarchists and Francisco Ferrer: The Making of a Transnational Solidarity Campaign,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 21, no. 4 (2014): 467–84; Mark Bray and Robert H. Haworth, Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader (PM Press, 2019); Vincent Robert, “La protestation universelle lors de l’exécution de Ferrer: Les manifestations d’octobre 1909,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 36, no. 2 (1989): 245–65. 143   Alexandre Dupont and Caroline Moine, “Médiatiser la solidarité internationale: informer, mobiliser et agir au-delà des frontières,” Le Temps des Médias 33, no. 2 (2019): 9. 144  Temps Nouveaux, 27 December 1902. 139 140

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Fig. 5.4  Cover of Grave’s Terre Libre, by Mabel Holland-Thomas

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Spanish repression appeared as early as January 1885 in Le Révolté, with the execution of seven members of the anarchist group Mano Negra;145 the 1890s wave of mobilisation was triggered in 1896, by the plight of the Spanish prisoners held and tortured in the Catalan military fortress of Montjuich. Grave had been receiving letters from Spain since 1894, which he could not read because they were in Spanish.146 Having finally found a translator, he learnt that the letters were from comrades imprisoned in Montjuich after the 1893 Liceo and 1896 Corpus Christi anarchist attacks, whom Spanish authorities were torturing to exact a confession. In March 1897 came the Montjuich trial, and Les Temps Nouveaux published first-­ hand letters to disprove the prosecutors’ claim that there had been no torture in the fortress.147 After the trial, Grave was one of several editors contacted and urged to “publicise in the press our energetic protest against the French and Spanish governments” and make it known that the newly released Montjuich detainees had not been given the option of deportation to France despite official claims to the contrary.148 In 1898, the focus was on revising the trial, and Les Temps Nouveaux was part of the “bombardment” initiative led in Spain by Federico Urales (aka Joan Montseny) in the republican daily El Progreso; the strategy focused on rousing public opinion by using papers to share horrific first-hand testimonies from the actual “martyrs” and as echo chambers for a wide range of international publications with similar contents.149 These anarchist mobilisations were part of wider, multicausal and more complex campaigns, as examined by Mark Bray.150 Benedict Anderson has also stressed, in particular, the wide-ranging agitation resulting from the presence of Cuban activist Fernando Tarrida del Mármol in France and Britain at the time, the broad set of left-wing publications publicising the Montjuich atrocities across Europe, Argentina and the United States, as well as the French socialists’ strong interest in these causes.151 Perceptions of Spain as deeply “unstable” and the critique of Spain’s Bourbon monarchy, buttressed by Church and Army, were also important factors for the  Le Révolté, 4 January 1885.  Grave, Mémoires, 321. 147  Temps Nouveaux, 27 March 1897. 148  IFHS, Grave correspondence, Folder “Espagne, prisonniers,” n.d. 149  Federico Urales, El castillo maldito (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1992), Introduction by Lucienne Domergue, 46; Yeoman, “Print Culture,” 92. 150  Mark Bray, The Anarchist Inquisition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming). 151  Anderson, Under Three Flags, 170–84. 145 146

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human rights organisation Ligue des Droits de l’Homme and satirical publications like L’Assiette au Beurre.152 As argued by Bray, these campaigns are fruitfully analysed through what he calls the “Montjuich template of resistance,” which had four main components: an aggressive press campaign, large public demonstrations and meetings, broad cross-partisan coalitions and “the explicit and implicit threat of reprisals.”153 Les Temps Nouveaux and Grave engaged very actively with all the strategies identified by Bray, except threatened reprisals. The paper organised exchanges of first-hand and printed information, funds, meeting announcements and reports, between France, Spain, Latin America and London’s exile circles.154 In Britain, the politically diverse and international agitation was focused on meetings and soon formalised into a Spanish Atrocities Committee, a coalition of influential progressive activists, intellectuals and MPs, whose activities were reported in Les Temps Nouveaux.155 The Committee’s protests extended to calls for the “complete autonomy” of Cuba and the Philippines.156 When Spanish refugees arrived in Britain after deportation from France, donations for them were sent from all over France, and Les Temps Nouveaux continued to relay all aspects of the agitation and to organise grassroots support.157 Urales communicated with Freedom’s Joseph Presburg, who was also in touch with Grave regarding the campaign’s strategy to raise funds.158 La Verdad (Montevideo) urged its readers to collect all “bourgeois papers” discussing “the tortures applied to the Barcelona martyrs” and send them on to Les Temps Nouveaux.159 Single-issue publications were an essential component of such campaigns, which relied on a diverse print culture; alongside Louise Michel, Malato, Kropotkin, Lorenzo Portet, Pouget, Reclus, Tarrida, Lazare and other anarchist writers and intellectuals, Grave was involved in the February 1897 single-issue L’Incorruptible, whose 90,000 copies sold out 152  Jean-Marc Delaunay, “La Ligue de défense des droits de l’homme et du citoyen et les affaires espagnoles au début du XXe siècle,” Relations internationales 131, no. 3 (2007): 28. 153  Bray, Anarchist Inquisition, chapter 11. 154  Temps Nouveaux, 27 November 1897. 155  IISG, Joseph Presburg papers, letter from Joseph Presburg to Nettlau, item 164, 25 May 1897; Les Temps Nouveaux, 13 February 1897, 1 May 1897, 19 June 1897. 156  Temps Nouveaux, 30 April 1898. 157  Ibid., 18 September 1897, 14 August 1897. 158  IISG, Joseph Presburg papers, letter from Urales to Presburg, 9 January 1898; Grave to Presburg, 2 and 9 August 1897. 159  La Verdad (Montevideo), 5 September 1897.

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quickly.160 In January 1901, London’s Freedom published the circular of the International Solidarity & Prisoners’ Aid Group sent by French anarchists including Grave but also prominent figures involved in earlier campaigns for the defence of human rights, such as Francis de Pressensé, Georges Clemenceau and Emile Zola. It called for subscriptions and donations to be sent to Les Temps Nouveaux and articulated a clear universalist, human-­rights-­oriented plan of action: “We propose, by means of the press, by placards and pamphlets, to make public every act of oppression, every abuse by Authority, every violation of the rights of men; we shall organise meetings, arouse public protest, etc. etc.”161 While Spanish repression never stopped and remained the quintessential example of governmental and police despotism among anarchists, a lull was felt until 1902, when the Barcelona paper Tierra y Libertad launched a campaign for the liberation of Mano Negra survivors, with the backing of Les Temps Nouveaux. The first step was the publication of a lead article stating the importance of the cause and calling for mobilisation across political boundaries: “Here we will set out the facts and relay the testimonies but, from today, we send an appeal to the fighters of the good fight, to Anatole France, to Séverine, Bauer, Quillard, Descaves, Jaurès, Pressensé, to the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme.”162 Grave drummed up support across his networks, and he even boasted to Kropotkin about winning the backing of the influential republican politician and journalist Georges Clemenceau: “There is nothing he can refuse me.”163 This set off an intense print campaign, in which “La Mano Negra” became a standing front-page feature. Les Temps Nouveaux’s 1903 “Déclaration en faveur des condamnés espagnols” was endorsed by the Spanish groups of Paris and Marseille, former Montjuich detainees Baldomer Oller and Antonio Ceperuelo, now based in Britain, and dozens of organisations in Spain, France, Portugal, England and Algeria. Counter-campaigning explicitly seeking to disprove official claims was a major focus.164 A cornerstone in the campaign was the 1903 Temps Nouveaux pamphlet “La Mano Negra,” written by contributors from a wide socialist spectrum and starkly illustrated by Hermann-Paul, which was sold for the benefit of Mano Negra 160  “L’Incorruptible,” in Bianco, Presse anarchiste, accessed 20 July 2020, https://bianco. ficedl.info/article1161.html. La Tribune Libre (Charleroi, US), 4 March 1897. 161  Freedom, January 1901. 162  Temps Nouveaux, 1 November 1902. 163  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 31 September, no year; Grave, Mémoires, 350. 164  Temps Nouveaux, 7 February 1903.

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victims.165 The campaign was effective, and several Mano Negra prisoners were released in February 1903; they were now in exile and needed money, and so the paper set about collecting it (Fig. 5.5).166 Grave’s dedication and effectiveness as a campaigner contrasts with his reluctance to get involved in the Dreyfus Affair—a striking exception, since the anarchists’ Dreyfus mobilisation has been regarded as a forerunner of the Spanish atrocities agitation, within a wider set of human-rights-­ oriented large-scale mobilisations.167 Grave’s position initially mirrored that of the broader anarchist communist camp, where indifference if not glee over Dreyfus’s sentence prevailed, on account of his bourgeois extraction. Some complacency with antisemitic tropes might have been a factor; for instance, Grave’s memoir described one of the judges he had faced in 1894 as “a dirty Jew. […] The epithet is all too apt for this character not to award it to him.”168 Grave assumed that being “a millionaire, the son of a millionaire, [Dreyfus] could only have betrayed for money.”169 It was Bernard Lazare, the first anarchist to expose the scandal, who changed his views, with his 1896 brochure, Une erreur judiciaire, la verité sur l’affaire Dreyfus, and then Zola’s landmark “J’Accuse.” The 26 November 1898 issue of Les Temps Nouveaux, in which Grave denounced the Affair as a systemic scandal, marked a turning point. Nonetheless, he remained reticent. While praising “the abnegation and commitment” of many Dreyfusard campaigners, he pointed out the murky finances of pro-Dreyfus publications and their connections with “the Jewish world” and remained convinced that Dreyfus somehow had “dirty paws”; this section of his memoir digresses to an account of his quarrel with Gohier at L’Aurore, remaining terse on the Affair.170 Some historians have argued that Grave resented losing his leadership to Sébastien Faure, who followed Lazare in denouncing the Affair as a collusion of the Church and the Army. For others, Grave simply “didn’t understand what was

165   Georges Clemenceau et  al., La Mano Negra, ill. Hermann-Paul (Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1903). 166  Les Temps Nouveaux, 14 March 1903. 167  Bray, “Beyond and against the State,” 324. 168  Grave, Mémoires, 274. 169  Grave, Mémoires, 332; L’Aurore, 17 February 1898. 170  Grave, Mémoires, 331–4.

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Fig. 5.5  The pamphlet “La Mano Negra”

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going on” and was generally uninterested in the cause.171 These are relevant considerations, given his keen attention to campaign ownership in the context of Spanish atrocities protests; however, most authors agree he was wary of any intervention on the part of the anarchists which required an alliance with politicians. He turned down Faure’s repeated invitations to write for Le Journal du Peuple, the pro-Dreyfus anarchist daily launched in 1899, to which many prominent anarchists contributed and which he regarded as a compromise with parliamentarianism. He also judged that Zola and his allies were too placating of the Army and Parliament and stressed that anarchists had often been sentenced for their opinions without anyone standing up for them—a recurring complaint on his part.172 The conundrums of campaigning across the political spectrum were explicitly debated among anarchists: Faure chastised Grave for refusing to write in Le Journal du Peuple, arguing that he had more in common with this publication than he did with Clemenceau and the republican L’Aurore, to which he actually contributed. Faure insisted, promising Grave the freedom to write anything and even offering to pay him—“this advantage which, I know, appears secondary to you, although the money you would receive […] would be of great help in keeping TN alive.” Faure predicted, quite rightly, that non-involvement would isolate Grave and publicly mocked his neutrality: “Some […] did not use to find it so bad when lists signed by intellectuals circulated for their benefit.”173 The reference to the 1894 pro-Grave mobilisations shows that the strategic continuity between these progressive campaigns was clear to those involved, even if their remit and functioning were proving divisive. Eventually, Grave considered that the Affair had “fizzled out” and was partly to blame for bringing Waldeck-­ Rousseau’s government of national unity to power.174 Grave’s campaigning was linked to his involvement in libertarian pedagogies, which was an important channel in establishing these cross-­partisan and transnational networks, especially for the pro-Ferrer mobilisations after 1905. Grave knew Ferrer well, as a long-term subscriber to the paper

171  Nelly Wilson, Antisemitism and the Problems of Jewish Identity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 200; Luc Nemeth, “Un accélérateur d’énergies dans l’espace dreyfusard: Sébastien Faure, du début de l’Affaire au procès Zola,” Historical Reflections/ Réflexions Historiques 31, no. 3 (2005): 409–32. 172  IFHS, Faure to Grave, 9 January 1899; Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 158. 173  Le Gaulois, 23 January 1898. 174  Grave, Mémoires, 338.

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and through their shared interest in pedagogy.175 The late nineteenth century was a turning point in the long tradition of anarchist interest in the transformative and revolutionary power of education, during which anarchists initiated or took part in pioneering pedagogical initiatives, informed by circulations of ideas and practices, emphasising education and long-­ term propaganda as opposed to short-term revolutionary action. Grave’s conceptions of education were the inverse image of his upbringing, particularly his father’s harshness, lack of compassion and brutality.176 His schooling had been monotonous, marked by intermittent violence and the dreaded confession.177 These experiences intersected with the French context: the institution of compulsory free and secular education for boys and girls in 1881–1882—a cornerstone of the Third Republic’s ideological apparatus—was denounced by anarchists as an authoritarian, hierarchical and intellectualist attempt to domesticate popular protest and inculcate nationalism.178 In contrast, libertarian pedagogies celebrated manual and technical work and intuition. Children’s physical and psychological welfare was foregrounded, as were their rights and autonomy. Depending on the context and the key aspects which were stressed, this set of principles was known as the “integral education” practised by Paul Robin and his disciples or the “rational education” associated with Ferrer. Grave made a significant contribution to educationalism for both adults and children. This was done primarily in writing, with the pamphlet “Enseignement bourgeois et enseignement libertaire” (1900), illustrated by Cross and adapted from a rare public speech by Grave.179 His children’s book Les Aventures de Nono (1901) was especially influential, including internationally: in 1902, Escuela Moderna published a Spanish translation, followed in 1905 by Educación burguesa y educación libertaria. Anselmo Lorenzo later translated Grave’s Terre Libre into Spanish (1908); the book, also published by Escuela Moderna, was very popular in Spain and went on to multiple reeditions.180 Extracts from Nono were published in La Revista Blanca.181 Les Temps Nouveaux supported the Universités  Ibid., 426; APP BA 1575, report dated 5 December 1906.  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, Grave, “Autres souvenirs,” 11, 18. 177  Ibid., 10. 178  Jean Grave, Enseignement bourgeois et enseignement libertaire (Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1900), 1. 179  Ibid. 180  Yeoman, “Print Culture,” 149. 181  La Revista Blanca, 1 March 1903. 175 176

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populaires movement and other workers’ pedagogical initiatives. Numerous educational events were advertised weekly: in a single issue from May 1902, these made up more than half of all “Correspondances et communications,” ranging from talks at the Bourse du Travail to a Université Populaire talk on the death penalty, a literary “causerie” and excursions to the countryside for a picnic, a talk and pamphlet distribution.182 Grave himself wrote “Acts” to be performed at the Théâtre du Peuple, which aimed to make performance accessible to all.183 Les Temps Nouveaux included a section for children, “Le coin des enfants,” featuring literature “devoid of false, preconceived ideas, of axioms of stupid and enslaving morality.”184 It also sold images for children from 1898.185 Three different children’s albums prefaced by Grave and illustrated by Mabel Holland-Thomas  were sold during 1905–1907. These pedagogical pursuits and the Franco-Hispanic links which they fostered were an important nexus in the transnational progressive campaigns of the period.

The Cancelled 1900 Paris Congress: Organisation and the Repression of Anarchism Public authorities seemed impervious to Grave’s reluctance towards the movement’s more subversive trends in this period: repression abated but did not stop after the climax of 1894. International anti-anarchist repression only increased, culminating with the anti-anarchist conferences in Rome (1898) and St Petersburg (1904), which formalised and coordinated supra-national efforts. Grave remained under close surveillance: in February 1895, an agent reported to the Préfet de Police that “since Grave has not left his home in the past two days, our agents have been investigating.”186 In August 1897, in the wake of the assassination of Spanish council president Canovas by Michele Angiolillo, an agent’s report rehearsed the international conspiracy tropes associated with propaganda by the deed: “Matha, Grave, Faure and Tarrida del Mármol had planned Canovas’s assassination, which was already agreed when Grave  Temps Nouveaux, 24 May 1902.  L’Humanité Nouvelle, December 1903. 184  Temps Nouveaux, 13 January 1906. 185  Dardel, Les Temps Nouveaux, 22. 186  AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, “Renseignements 1888–1897,” unsigned note dated 14 February 1895. 182 183

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took Tarrida to London.”187 Grave and Delesalle were allegedly “in the know” of an anarchist attack against the Czar plotted in Zurich by Russian anarchists,188 and Grave was believed to be bankrolling Switzerland-based Italian comrades planning terrorist attacks in Rome and Milan “to avenge the victims of the Milan insurrection,” using explosives hidden near the Swiss-Italian border. The agent claimed to have received first-hand information from Grave about the location of dynamite to be carried across into Italy.189 As late as 1900, police reports spoke of a New York-based “International bureau” centralising information about all anarchist groupings. There were rumours of a “Caisse internationale,” with Grave as its “treasurer” for France.190 In 1905, Grave was inevitably dragged into the Rue de Rohan investigation which followed the assassination attempt again Spanish King Alfonso XIII in Paris.191 These fears resulted in the banning of the 1900 Paris Congress, in which Grave had been heavily involved. The idea of a revolutionary congress had been launched in 1899, to coincide with the 1900 international trade union congress and the Exposition Universelle, bringing together “labour organisations, revolutionary socialists, anarchists, communist anarchists, with the aim of agreeing on ways to fight the economic and political oppression of contemporary society and to destroy the capitalist regime.”192 The anarchist label was not exclusionary; the congress was to be an “antiparliamentarian working-class” gathering.193 The organising committee included Pouget, Pelloutier, Girard from Les Temps Nouveaux and Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. The ambitious programme covered syndicalist ideas and more traditional anarchist perspectives; coming to an international agreement between revolutionary groups was a prime objective. Twenty-seven international groups—a mixture of working-class reading groups and anarchist, labour and antimilitarist organisations—had signed the organising committee’s appeal. The congress was scheduled for September but, as 36 international delegates were already in Paris, it was banned by French authorities, using the still-extant Wicked Laws. It was postponed and individual papers were printed in a special issue of the Temps Nouveaux’s literary supplement.  APP BA 894, note dated 17 August 1897.  APP BA 894, report dated 20 August 1898. 189  APP BA 894, report by Caraman dated 8 June 1898. 190  APP BA 1504, report dated 9 November 1900. 191  Grave, Mémoires, 411–13. 192  Temps Nouveaux, 1 April 1899. 193  Le Libertaire, 10 September 1900. 187 188

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Conclusion Many of the dynamics of this period as well as Grave’s own contradictions are encapsulated in his comments regarding his campaigning with non-­ anarchist groups and individuals. Replying to a comrade’s objections to alliances with “bourgeois” individuals and organisations, he stressed the need “to evolve if we do not want to remain a small minority doomed to endless sterile discussions.”194 These associations were needed to topple the entire social order and this did not mean reneging on one’s own ideas. If we wanted to move public opinion, we had to approach those it listens to. The anarchists could have published article after article in their papers, and in their meetings given speech after speech; the agitation would not have gone beyond the restricted boundaries of a small group of converts but would have left the Spanish government completely indifferent. In order to stir public opinion, facts must be brought to it by big names.195

Much of Grave’s impact resided in his ability to form links within and outside the movement and to activate them for various purposes, be they contributions to the paper or its diffusion, financial aid, artistic contents or campaigning. The first decade of the Temps Nouveaux illustrated the successes of this approach; the following decade proved far more problematic.

194 195

 Temps Nouveaux, 4 April 1903.  Grave, Mémoires, 434.

CHAPTER 6

The Limitations of Print Activism (1905–1918)

The years 1905–1918 are framed by two world-changing events, for the anarchist movement and the societies in which it existed. First, the 1905 Russian revolution, which seemed to herald the advent of the long-awaited revolution, fulfilling the promise of earlier upheavals by bringing down autocracy and reshaping society and economic relations entirely.1 Second, bookending the period and the long nineteenth century, the First World War, which put to the test the Western anarchists’ antimilitarist and internationalist principles. The outbreak of the war and the following years were, notoriously, a defining moment for Grave, who operated a dramatic U-turn in rallying to Kropotkin’s pro-war positions, in the name of fighting German militarism. The ensuing debates and divisions unfolded throughout the conflict and beyond. Grave, now living in Britain, was instrumental in writing the 1916 Manifesto of the Sixteen, setting out the pro-war argument and tearing apart the international anarchist movement lastingly. It is difficult to avoid a retrospective narrative of decline which centres around Grave and Kropotkin surrendering to bellicose “defencism” in 1914, resulting in marginalisation for themselves and their strand of anarchist communism. This chapter nuances this interpretation, by rectifying the traditional depiction of Grave as blindly following Kropotkin’s support 1

 Temps Nouveaux, 6 May 1905.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7_6

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for the war; his initial reluctance, in sharp contrast to Kropotkin and other prominent signatories of the Manifesto, must be emphasised.2 As stressed recently by Matthew S.  Adams, the debate over the war also requires a great deal of contextualisation, since it rested on long-term intellectual positions “revolving around competing understandings of history, the role of national struggles, and differing conceptions of revolutionary change.”3 Lastly, the consistency and nuances of Grave’s positions should be underlined, and in particular his ceaseless efforts to organise an international progressive coalition to mobilise public opinion against nationalist militarism, in clear continuity with his earlier campaigns. While partly revising existing accounts of Grave’s response to the war, this chapter argues that the decade leading up to 1914 throws into sharp relief the limitations of the print activism which he orchestrated. Through a succession of crises, the paper continued to implement all its established print strategies, especially campaigning, but increasingly failed the test of action. The revolutionary climate of the pre-war years, characterised by antimilitarist agitation, intense strike activity (repressed with exceptional violence), the rise of new insurrectionary anarchist currents, and finally the quandaries of the war demanded more creative and radical responses, making both Grave’s anarchism and his strategic vision for the paper seem outdated—although this only appeared fully once the war broke out. As Grave, looking back at the fated summer of 1914, later commented, it was pointless to gather “in small numbers in a closed room, it was in the street, among the crowd, that we should have been. This would have been the time to act, not to talk.”4

“A Sort of Family”5 The year 1905 started with the Russian Revolution. Kropotkin had been closely following Russia’s mounting social unrest for several years, and the uprising was understood from the very start as an epochal change, representing a transformed geography of protest, where “the revolutionary 2  Jean Maitron, Le Mouvement anarchiste en France de 1914 à nos jours (Paris: Gallimard TEL, 1992 (1975)), 12. 3  Matthew S. Adams, “Anarchism and the First World War,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, 389. 4  Grave, Mémoires, 442. 5   Centre d’Histoire Sociale (CHS), Fonds Jean Maitron, Girard to  Mougeot, 25 January 1915.

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wind blowing from Russia” displaced France.6 Les Temps Nouveaux sought to amplify and support the revolutionary cause. At the end of January, Kropotkin sent Grave a telegram to be read at a meeting: “The people have inaugurated the revolution. Peasants following their brothers from the city. French workers, help them! Down with all the treacherous Romanoff race!”7 The paper raised funds for Russian revolutionaries, pledging to share donations with them, reminding readers that “[i]n the face of these events, which herald a revolution, it is everyone’s duty to do their best to support the demands of the Russian people.”8 It provided extensive factual and analytical coverage of the national and local situation throughout the year.9 The Russian-language paper Khleb y volia was sold at the rue Broca office for the benefit of “Russian comrades living in Paris.”10 However, despite the shared links with Kropotkin, who edited Khleb y volia, the connection between the two papers remained very tenuous. There is also little sign of change in Grave’s perspective as a result of the Russian events. Thereafter, normality if not routine prevailed in the decade leading up to the First World War. In a 1915 letter to the former anarchist Auguste Mougeot, André Girard spoke of Les Temps Nouveaux as “a sort of family” about to be broken up by the war. The comparison and sense of foreboding were apt and capture the dynamics of the pre-war period as well as their profound disruption after 1914. Most of the sources relating to Grave’s personal life, militancy and editorial work point to a slower, wearier life, while his writings suggest an increasingly gradualist conception of the revolution (Fig. 6.1). His goal remained the abolition of salariat, and he criticised not only reformists who let themselves be charmed by politicians but also “revolution fetishists” defining revolution as a one-off event transforming society once and for all. The main change in his life was his marriage to Mabel Holland, in Folkestone, in 1909,11 and a move to the small fashionable town of Robinson, southwest of Paris, around then. A few years earlier, his collaborator and friend Edouard Duchemin had already perceived a change in his mindset:  Temps Nouveaux, 6 May 1905.  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 27 January 1905. 8  Temps Nouveaux, 4 February 1895. 9  Temps Nouveaux, 26 August 1905, 27 May 1905. 10  Temps Nouveaux, 24 November 1906. 11  Maitron and Davranche, “Jean Grave.” 6 7

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Fig. 6.1  Cover portrait of Grave by A. Delannoy in Les Hommes Du Jour (1908) Grave is now convinced that he needs to take every year a period, not of holiday, but a change from his life and work; to replace the immobile existence of the office and the paper’s current drudgery with a period of at least one month when he can get plenty of fresh air, movement, health and life

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[…]. The main difficulty is to replace him at work without hurting the budget. The first point can be resolved with an agreement with Charles Albert and Delesalle.

Duchemin was having a house built in Brittany, which included rooms for Grave and “Miss Holland Thomas”: “[T]he garden will provide a space for Grave to exercise his muscles, and there will be flowers, animals and groups of children—which should delight Miss Holland.”12 Grave’s move to Robinson meant that he was now “forced to go to the office only three times a week.”13 He added that “on the days when I stay at home, besides correspondence work, I try to do a little gardening, which allows me to be less sedentary and to do some exercise, which I hope will prevent me from putting on weight.” Overwork and issues with the paper’s team nonetheless remained recurring complaints.14 The paper continued to see some staff turnover as a result of changing allegiances, ideological disagreements and Grave’s cantankerousness.15 Delesalle left in 1906 after publishing a controversial antisemitic article but remained a close friend of Grave. Syndicalism continued to be represented by Monatte, Amédée Dunois and Charles Desplanques. Around 1912, Charles Albert left to join the Socialist Party. The paper still received contributions from an eclectic set of respected collaborators. The syndicalist economist and journalist Francis Delaisi wrote regularly and was on good terms with Grave, providing guidance on specialised questions. Cultural and educational activities continued to expand: “Le coin des enfants” section was introduced in 1906,16 and on the eve of the war, the paper ran a travelling library.17 In 1910 the Groupe de Propagande par la brochure was relaunched, led by Charles Benoît; it aimed to gain 500 subscribers to make pamphlet-based propaganda more systematic and efficient, although the target was never reached.18 Outside the paper, Grave made a rare foray onto the stage in February 1912, with a performance of his 1904 play Responsabilités by “L’Avenir,” a trade union-based troupe

 IFHS, Duchemin to Unknown, 4 November 1905.  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 23 July, no year. 14  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, n.d. 15  Maitron, Delesalle, 68. 16  Temps Nouveaux, 6 January 1906. 17  Temps Nouveaux, 10 January 1914. 18  Temps Nouveaux, 9 July 1910, 15 November 1913. 12 13

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from Roanne.19 The play, a didactic dramatisation of the Wicked Laws and repression centring on an anarchist protagonist once more modelled on Grave, had long been censored and turned down by all theatres until then.20 Grave was also one of the “scientists, artists, men of letters” from a wide political spectrum who contributed to the Dictionnaire La Châtre, edited by the writer Hector France and Girard, among others.21 The paper’s ever-strained finances continued to deteriorate, although Varias has argued that Grave’s “marriage to an aristocratic woman also gave him enough financial support to sustain his publications.”22 The 1906 typographers’ strike forced him to borrow 700 francs from Dunois and entailed a substantial increase in production costs.23 In August 1907, Kropotkin described the paper’s situation as “embarrassing” and hoped to find some new writers to contribute “short, strong articles.”24 The September 1907 issue referred to the “perpetual begging” through which the paper survived,25 and the price briefly increased from 10 to 15 centimes in 1906–1907, with the resulting drop in sales quickly forcing a return to the previous price.26 As Grave complained to Kropotkin, “I have always counted on what the future might bring. It never brought much, but it was always possible to hold out; however, [the price increase] was the final straw.”27 The “Souscription remboursable” launched in 1907 aimed to raise 5000 francs through a raffle in which participants were guaranteed to win items worth at least 1 franc; the items donated ranged from books and pamphlets to lighters, drinking glasses and vases, wine and knitted accessories.28 Tellingly, the chapter of Grave’s memoir which discusses these years is entitled “The Struggle for Life.” These constant difficulties took their toll, leading an especially bitter Grave to rant to Kropotkin about their publisher, Pierre-Victor Stock: “And to think that this good-for-nothing gets 40,000 francs per year from his business!”29  IFHS, Daiderie to Grave, 14 February 1912; Temps Nouveaux, 10 February 1912.  Mayer, “Théâtre et anarchisme,” 55. 21  L’Aurore, 22 October 1906. 22  Varias, Paris and the Anarchists, 21. 23  Grave, Mémoires, 409. 24  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 15 August 1907. 25  Temps Nouveaux, 7 September 1907. 26  Temps Nouveaux, 10 August 1907. 27  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, n.d. 28  Temps Nouveaux, 10 August 1907, 4 May 1912. 29  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 6 June, year unknown. 19 20

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They also confirm the hypothesis of a long-term decline of the paper in the run up to the war, in a far more diverse anarchist ideological and press landscape. Gustave Hervé and Miguel Almereyda’s La Guerre Sociale (1907–1914) brought together anarchists, socialists and syndicalists through antimilitarism, antiparliamentarianism and antipatriotism, with a pro-sabotage and insurrectionist rhetoric which soon allowed it to sell up to 19,000 issues in 1909—reaching levels of success far beyond Grave’s or Le Libertaire’s hopes by appealing to a broader base.30 Grave stood clear of the “loud-mouthed” (braillard) publication, with which Pouget, Faure, Malato, Delaisi and some artists like Hermann-Paul and Delannoy collaborated. In contrast, Les Temps Nouveaux sought to attract readers by emphasising its “honesty” and sincere dedication to propaganda; it may be the case that these now appeared dated.31 Countless initiatives were launched to help the struggling Temps Nouveaux. Temporarily reducing the paper’s frequency was a frequent but galling strategy, which was a limitation on its raison d’être, as Kropotkin pointed out to Grave.32 The paper eventually returned to weekly publication, as “the desire to take our place again in the movement prevailed over caution.”33 Grave also acknowledged many acts of generosity but he had to “stimulate them” and eventually found such insistence “embarrassing.”34 One sustained initiative was stamp-collecting, which capitalised on the paper’s worldwide contacts to build a collection; this easily earned up to “100 to 150 francs per year for the paper,” especially with valuable exchangeable stamps.35 Grave sent Nettlau the very impressive list of countries from which he had collected stamps, in Europe and the United States, but also China, Siam, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Venezuela, Martinique, Guyana, New Caledonia, Chile, Hong Kong, Tunisia, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Uruguay, Haiti, Cuba, Peru and Brazil. The whole collection, having become quite valuable, was eventually sold.36 The 10 January 1914 issue illustrates the many appeals through which funds were collected for the paper: “Pour l’extinction de la dette” (Paying off our debt), “Pour la vitalité du journal” (For the paper’s vitality), “En vente au profit du  Davranche, Trop jeunes pour mourir, 33–7.  Temps Nouveaux, 10 August 1907. 32  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 8 April 1909. 33  Grave, Mouvement, 230. 34  Grave, Mémoires, 516–8. 35  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, February 1919; Lucchini, “Les Temps Nouveaux,” 262. 36  Grave, Mémoires, 519. 30 31

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­journal” (For sale for the benefit of the paper). The latter included a watercolour by Signac priced at 250 francs, in the hope that “among our readers, someone is wealthy enough to be able to afford this piece of art.”37 As always, financial support remained a moral imperative and readers were reminded that “any conscious anarchist must help propagate the paper which best illustrates his conception of the idea. Find us some new subscribers.”38 Meanwhile, fundraising to support comrades in distress and their families also continued. Artistic contributions remained a key income stream as well as a source of editorial and moral support, despite the ongoing transfer of artistic partnerships from anarchism to syndicalism. These fluctuating but enduring partnerships bring a corrective to the idea that anarchism was a fad for many artists and also qualify Grave’s generally downcast assessment of these years. From 1905, illustrations appeared every week in Les Temps Nouveaux, although Grave regretted their lack of satirical bite and failure to attract new readers.39 On the eve of the war, the paper commandeered an exceptional art collection (Fig. 6.2).40 Some artists remained strikingly supportive. Kupka apologised profusely for delays: “Once more, believe me, I am very annoyed to have overlooked [sending his drawing] like that; I usually insist on being true to my word.”41 Several letters from Charles Angrand included generous donations and pledges to publicise the paper’s work (“I will try to get as many friends interested as possible”42); he categorically refused payment. Aristide Delannoy and Jules Grandjouan, both of whom were deeply political artists, remained supportive of Grave and Les Temps Nouveaux: “We were very happy to receive a book from you. I already know that ‘Terre Libre’ will be for me an intellectual pleasure and a source of meditations.”43 Grandjouan assured Grave of his continued commitment: “Whenever you will ask me for something and your letter gets to me, you can count firmly on it being done unless absolutely impossible, in which case you will be informed promptly […]. Your Grandjouan.”44 In 1905,  Temps Nouveaux, 10 January 1914.  Ibid., 17 and 24 January 1914. 39  Grave, Mémoires, 408. 40  Temps Nouveaux, 23 November 1912. 41  IFHS, Kupka to Grave, n.d. 42  IFHS, Angrand to Grave, 9 April 1905. 43  IFHS, Delannoy to Grave 10 July 1905. 44  IFHS, Grandjouan to Grave, 25 November 1906. 37 38

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Fig. 6.2  Jean Grave by Théophile Steinlen (1907)

Grave also remained in distant contact with Nadar, who sent him the illustrated satirical publication L’Assiette au beurre.45 Some of these collaborations eventually fizzled out, due to lack of time, payment or weariness with the type of work involved. The collaboration with Delaw stopped abruptly after several good-humoured letters: “Do not count on me for the cover of Evolution—Révolution [1909]. The evolution has also taken place  BNF, Grave to Nadar, item 4271, n.d.

45

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within me; in this direction: I do not work for nothing, because I hate work.”46 The illustrator Auguste Roubille, who had designed a new frontispiece for the paper in 1905, was very aggravated to be nudged for an overdue contribution: “He didn’t like being lectured […] besides, he was fed up with working on the never-never.”47 Long-term collaborator Iribe also defected and moved to the far right.48 Finances and staffing were two facets of a wider resource question wearing Grave down: “My health is good, but I am tired, ground down, harassed. Once I get going, things are fine, but it takes a long time to start every morning,” as he told Kropotkin.49 He also complained to readers: “For 10 years, I have handled all the paper’s business myself, and there was work for two, always trying to find the money to fund the issue of the week. For a few years now there have been two of us, but there is enough work for four.”50 Other correspondence followed the same themes, with an even more dejected tone: “I am alone at the paper, tackling a slave’s work without a minute to myself.”51 There were hints of medical problems in a letter from Faure: “I hope you […] still do not regret resorting to surgery.”52 In 1914, Grave remained a towering figure in the French anarchist movement, and retrospective readings of decline should be approached with caution. Nonetheless, there were unmistakable signs of weakening in the paper’s strained finances, but also of aging, mental exhaustion and problematic respectability for Grave and some of his closest allies. In 1905, the deaths of both Louise Michel and Elisée Reclus symbolised a process of generational change. In 1912, Kropotkin’s 70th birthday was celebrated in Paris; Domela had suggested that Grave, being one of his closest friends, should organise an “hommage mondial.”53 It was also Grave who gave a long speech extolling his friend at the event. Within the movement, however, his positions were increasingly questioned and marginalised. The contrast with the success of La Guerre Sociale points to his failure to capture, or even engage with, the pre-war zeitgeist of the far left, for instance  IFHS, Delaw to Grave, n.d.  Grave, Mémoires, 430. 48  Ibid. 49  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, n.d. 50  Temps Nouveaux, 10 August 1907. 51  BNF, Grave to Nadar, item 4272, dated 7 May 1907. 52  IFHS, Faure to Grave, 11 May 1911. 53  IFHS, Domela to Grave, 14 February 1912. 46 47

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through a less theoretical approach to antimilitarism and labour militancy, in a period of strikes and violent repression. His quarrels with the new generation of individualist anarchists were exacerbated by dissensions over the new wave of illegalism and his hostility towards the violent robberies of the Bonnot gang.54 Emile Armand’s L’Anarchie satirised “the legalist and militarist T.N. anarchists,” inviting Grave to apply for the highly conservative “Prix Montyon” awarded in recognition of virtue and bravery on the part of a Frenchman.55 His customary dogmatism continued unabated: his essay L’Entente pour l’action (1911) was a comprehensive assessment of rights and wrongs across the movement. His 1912 article “Ce que j’entends par anarchie” (What I mean by anarchy) inventoried the many faults of which he stood accused; these included being dismissive of “loud-­ mouthed meeting anarchists” (a reference to the Guerre Sociale), publishing “boring” articles and not understanding the idealism of young people, and being far too “sectarian.” However, these were promptly dismissed: “Too bad for the anarchists, if they can’t hear the truth.”56

Campaigning Campaigning remained familiar but problematic ground for Grave, who followed established strategies: using the paper as a trigger, a forum and a relay for meetings and demonstrations, echoing and organising agitation, reprinting letters and publications, fundraising, using illustrations and striking layouts to provoke emotions, in the context of campaigns which straddled national borders and the boundaries of radical and progressive politics. A rich print culture of periodicals, pamphlets, placards, literary supplements and books, multiplied by reprints and mutual citations, generated a virality which was key to effective campaigning. This remained an impactful mode of intervention because it tapped into Grave’s and the paper’s transnational and cross-partisan networks and was relayed by dynamic street agitation and meetings as well as national organisations such as the CGT and the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (LDH). International campaigning remained centred on repression in Spain and in Hispanic America, but not exclusively so; Grave’s memoir details 54  Grave, Mémoires, 376–82; Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang, 2nd ed. (Oakland: PM Press, 2016), 203–4. 55  L’Anarchie, 11 March 1909. 56  Temps Nouveaux, 14 December 1914.

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the national and international campaigns which mobilised anarchist circles in this period. These included protests against the brutal suppression of labour agitation at Draveil-Villeneuve-Saint-Georges in 1908 and, in 1912, calls for the release of soldier Emile Rousset, wrongly accused of murder. Les Temps Nouveaux also reported on mass arrests of workers and activists as well as raids against papers under Argentina’s state of emergency, with first-hand testimonies and correspondences from Buenos Aires’s paper La Protesta.57 Moreover, 1912 onwards saw the pro-Masetti antimilitarist international campaign, for the liberation of an Italian anarchist conscript who had shot his commanding colonel58; Grave was involved in the one-off publication Liberiamo Masetti! printed by a Paris-­ based revolutionary Italian group, which was the cornerstone of the transnational print campaign.59 The arrest of Ferrer, on 1 September 1909, and his execution on 13 October 1909 were landmark moments for the international anarchist movement and the emergence of progressive values and human rights globally.60 They also inaugurated the use of new forms of protests, for instance car processions with leaflet distributions.61 A first wave of agitation occurred in the spring and summer of 1907, when Ferrer was arrested following an attack on the Spanish King, Alfonso XIII, tried and acquitted.62 In continuity with earlier mobilisations, Grave sought to obtain “the signature of all those who find the police’s arbitrariness and tricks indignant.”63 The project of a placard had to be dropped due to low take up, which Grave blamed on the Dreyfus Affair, “which ha[d] exhausted many people’s energies.”64 The second wave of protest, in 1909, followed the violent anarchist, antimilitarist and anticolonial agitation of the Tragic Week across Catalonia, which triggered a wave of intense repression, leading to Ferrer’s arrest and eventual execution. The mobilisation, like its forerunners, brought together a loose coalition of 57  Temps Nouveaux, 5 August 1905, 18 December 1909, 25 December 1909; GARF, letter to Kropotkin, n.d., item 547; Grave, Mémoires, 422. 58  Pietro Di Paola, “‘Capturing Anarchists Across Borders’: the transnational dimensions of Italian antimilitarist campaigns, 1911–1914,” Immigrants & Minorities 35, no. 3 (2017): 177–95. 59  Ibid. 60  Bray, “Beyond and Against the State”; Delaunay, “La Ligue de défense,” 30. 61  Delaunay, “La Ligue de défense,” 31. 62  Temps Nouveaux, 6 July 1907. 63  BNF, Grave to Nadar, item 4272, dated 7 May 1907. 64  BNF, Grave to Nadar, item 4273, dated 14 June 1907.

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anarchists, socialists, liberals, freethinkers and freemasons. These associations reflected Ferrer’s own eclectic militancy, from educationalism to syndicalism, and the cross-partisan resonance of his anticlericalism; some of the campaigners also toned down Ferrer’s anarchism for greater appeal.65 Les Temps Nouveaux’s Charles Albert, having received a letter from Ferrer in August imploring him to “do anything possible” to raise awareness of his situation in the French press,66 set up a Comité de défense de Ferrer, which joined forces with the Comité de Défense Sociale (CDS), a group formed in 1908 against the repression of labour protests, comprising anarchists of all tendencies (from Les Temps Nouveaux to La Guerre Sociale), CGT affiliates, antimilitarists, but also socialists.67 In September 1909, a Comité de défense des victimes de la répression espagnole was set up by Ferrer’s friends Charles Albert, Laisant and Naquet. Laisant and Naquet contributed to Les Temps Nouveaux and also prefaced the posthumous Temps Nouveaux pamphlet “La Verité sur l’affaire Ferrer,” illustrated by Luce, 10,000 copies of which sold quickly.68 The paper agitated through its transnational networks. Articles and direct testimonies were shared, as well as financial support: Algiers’s La Révolte reprinted an article from Les Temps Nouveaux about the general strike and militarism in Spain.69 Montevideo’s Adelante! sent money for Grave “to use […] as he sees best.”70 Grave collected a staggering 1500 francs just from Montevideo, but he later confessed that he had been swindled out of 1000 of these by a man who visited him with Ferrer’s partner Soledad Villafranca.71 The campaign was especially prominent in the literary supplement, with three thoroughly documented special issues on “The assassination of Ferrer.”72 The mobilisation went far beyond anarchist circles, in its demographics, in its resonance and ultimately in its impact. One of the strengths of Les Temps Nouveaux’s contribution was the powerful articulation of the causes  Laqua, “Freethinkers, anarchists and Francisco Ferrer.”  Le Comité de défense des victimes de la répression espagnole, Un Martyr des Prêtres: Francisco Ferrer, 10 janvier 1859–13 octobre 1909, sa vie, son œuvre (Paris: Schleicher Frères, 1909), 44. 67  Davranche, Trop Jeunes pour mourir, 45–6. 68  Auguste Bertrand, “La Vérité sur l’affaire Ferrer,” Publications des Temps Nouveaux no. 40, 1910; Grave, Mémoires, 524. 69  La Révolte (Algiers), 28 August 1909. 70  Adelante!, 11 November 1909; Temps Nouveaux, 10 April 1909. 71  Grave, Mouvement, 207. 72  Temps Nouveaux, Supplément Littéraire, 20 November 1909, 27 November 1909, 11 December 1909. 65 66

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at stake and their importance; the 1909 special issue on Argentina was fronted by an “Appeal to all men with a heart” penned by Grave, making a case for freedom of speech and the right to organise and calling it a duty for all champions of these rights to join the campaign, with a targeted address to specific organisations, such as the LDH.73 In contrast, however, Grave’s memoir pondered at length the politics of campaigning and was far less attuned to the protests’ wider humanitarian significance. He judged that the Ferrer campaign had been “well conducted” but felt that he had been dispossessed.74 In August 1909, a tense epistolary exchange with Augustin Hamon highlighted tensions over press agitation tactics: having received a letter from Spain about the crimes unfolding in Barcelona, Hamon had sent it to the socialist leader Jean Jaurès to print in the daily L’Humanité and publicise the situation “with a louder voice than that of T.N.”;75 Jaurès would then send the letter to Grave, who was asked to forward it to Buenos Aires. This suggests that despite the national prestige and circulation of Jaurès’s paper (about 5000 weekly issues for Les Temps Nouveaux but 22,700 daily copies of L’Humanité sold in Paris, not counting subscriptions, at the end of 190876), Grave’s paper was recognised for its international contacts. Grave complained vocally and Hamon apologised twice for giving L’Humanité precedence: “I acted in the best interest of the Spanish comrades. You did not like it and made it clear to me.”77 The exchange and L’Humanité’s “lack of consideration” were Grave’s main recollections about the agitation in his memoir, where he still challenged Hamon’s implication that his priority had been to increase Les Temps Nouveaux’s sales rather than the best interest of the campaign.78

Globalising Anarchism The pre-war period saw a further extension of the paper’s international networks. Hispanic American links remained prominent; an example of dense connections is provided by Adelante! (Uruguay), which contained addresses to Grave in French requesting material, advertised Les Temps Nouveaux at length, provided subscription information and promoted  Temps Nouveaux, 18 December 1909.  Grave, Mémoires, 427–8. 75  IFHS, Hamon to Grave, 7 August 1909. 76  Reynaud-Paligot, Les Temps Nouveaux, 118; L’Humanité, 1 January 1909. 77  IFHS, Grave to Hamon, 19 August 1909. 78  Grave, Mémoires, 427–8. 73 74

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Kropotkin’s Temps Nouveaux writing. Adelante! was part of French-­ language and international networks which included Freedom, Mother Earth and Tierra y Libertad; it published articles by Malato and a translation of Grave’s “Rebelión y Revolución.”79 It had links with Brazil’s Italian-language La Battaglia, a widely read anarchist publication which devoted considerable space to printing European anarchist communist material, extending a longer tradition of importing and circulating anarchist literature from Europe in Brazil, ensuring “great influence” for Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and Reclus, but also Grave and Faure.80 Such exchanges and circulations, however dense and geographically widespread, should not be idealised: in 1930, in what might be read as an early critique of diffusionism and the canon, Max Nettlau cautioned against the naïve belief that anarchism might be “imported” by translating “a few pamphlets by Kropotkin, Grave or a few other comrades” or by setting up papers “modelled on ‘La Révolte.’” Such imports, Nettlau pointed out, would not be sufficiently adapted to local conditions.81 However, while their effectiveness as revolutionary triggers is indeed debatable, these links and exchanges were central to transnational strategic discussions and the development of local movements. Moreover, as Arif Dirlik has highlighted and illustrated in his research on Chinese anarchism, considerable efforts were made to domesticate these ideas and articulate them to the locales in which they were read—a dialectic which challenges Nettlau’s criticism.82 The development of connections across Asia was a salient feature of the period, as illustrated by links with Japan and China. Indian nationalists also crossed paths with European revolutionaries and anarchists in Britain, Switzerland and France. As stressed by Maia Ramnath, early twentieth-­ century Paris also remained an “unparalleled hub for cross-fertilization among Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Egyptian, Lebanese, and Filipino modernist, liberal and Left, anarchist, nationalist, and internationalist movements, hosting exiles from countries throughout East Asia and the

 Adelante!, 1 June, 15 July, 15 September, 11 November 1909.  Edilene Toledo and Luigi Biondi, “Constructing Syndicalism and Anarchism Globally: the Transnational Making of the Syndicalist Movement in São Paulo, Brazil, 1895–1935,” in Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 374. 81  Cited in Centre de documentation anarchiste Max Nettlau, “Max Nettlau, historien anarchiste” (Paris, 1981), 11. 82  Arif Dirlik, “Anarchism and the Question of Place,” in Anarchism and Syndicalism, 131–2. 79 80

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Ottoman Empire.”83 Neither Grave nor Les Temps Nouveaux appear to have been involved with these circles in a sustained way; the main French anarchist durably connected with Paris-based Indian revolutionaries in this period was the individualist Albert Libertad, leading to a contentious exploration of illegalism and terrorism.84 Ole Birk Laursen has identified other links with the French anarchist movement involving Grave and Les Temps Nouveaux, through the Indian nationalist Virendranath Chattopadhyaya: during a court testimony, the British spy Edward Briess mentioned connections within the French anarchist scene, including with Grave, Mauricius and, allegedly, the Bonnot gang.85 Laursen connects this with Grave’s anticolonial writings, but it remains difficult to trace more sustained links or indeed genuine interest on Grave’s part. Naturally, Les Temps Nouveaux covered the 1910–1911 “Savarkar affair,” involving a young Hindu nationalist who had escaped to Marseille but was eventually sentenced to deportation for life in the Bay of Bengal, in violation of asylum laws and to international outrage. This was led by the multilingual anarchist Aristide Pratelle, who had a track record of writing on and protesting against British colonialism and played an important role in covering international campaigns in the paper throughout this period.86 Grave’s links with the Chinese “Paris anarchists” provide a rare example of networking within the French capital’s non-European revolutionary circles, with resounding impact but, once more, limited engagement on Grave’s part.87 In the early 1900s, Paris was an important hub for the young Chinese anarchist movement, through the presence of radical students such as Li Shih-Tseng (also Li Shizeng) and Chang Ching-Chiang, who were part of an intellectual student activist diaspora. Around 1908, Grave was introduced to a group of Chinese activists deeply influenced by Kropotkin’s ideas, who wanted to agitate from outside in order to precipitate the revolution in China, through a publication to be sent there and 83  Maia Ramnath, Decolonizing anarchism: an Antiauthoritarian History of India’s Liberation Struggle (Oakland: AK Press, 2011), 62. 84  Ibid., 65–6; Laursen, “Spaces of Indian anticolonialism.” 85   Ole Birk Laursen, “Anti-Colonialism, Terrorism and the ‘Politics of Friendship’: Virendranath Chattopadhyaya and the European Anarchist Movement, 1910–1927,” Anarchist Studies 27, no. 1 (2019): 51. 86  Ibid.; Temps Nouveaux, 1 October 1910. 87  Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), no page, accessed 22 July 2020, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/ library/arif-dirlik-anarchism-in-the-chinese-revolution.

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distributed globally. He agreed to receive their correspondence at the rue Broca office. Their paper, the New Era (Xin shiji), carried the Esperanto subtitle La Tempoj Novaj, probably a nod to Les Temps Nouveaux; it appeared for three years, featuring extensive translations of European anarchist writings which, over time, built into an extensive corpus of Western anarchism in translation and introduced a radical current into Chinese socialist thought.88 Grave argued that it had been instrumental in accelerating China’s regime fall.89 China was discussed extensively in Les Temps Nouveaux, from a variety of angles, yet with minimal traces of sustained personal contacts, although Grave corresponded (in English) with Chinese anarchist Miss Roo Wo Nan, who travelled between China and Japan in 1906–1907 and provided detailed updates on the Chinese movement.90 La Volo del populo, published in Chinese and Esperanto in Canton by “H.S.” and soon banned, was advertised in Les Temps Nouveaux, as well as a tract from the Chinese group Fuj Min.91 Gregor Benton concludes that these contacts were superficial and largely one-sided: the French knew more about Japanese anarchists, despite the press and paper name which they shared with Chinese activists.92 The reprinting and circulation of translated European material was highly influential in China,93 but this was not reflected in Temps Nouveaux. Given the Chinese Paris anarchists’ embracing of Esperanto and other instances of overcoming language barriers, it is difficult to put this relative indifference solely down to difficulties in communication.94 The links with Japanese anarchists were indeed more substantial. They were accelerated by an international mobilisation against repression, with the “High Treason Incident” of 1910–1911, when the prominent anarchist Kō toku Shūsui was among 24 individuals sentenced to death by a court martial for an alleged plot against the Emperor of Japan.95 This was part of an attempt to suppress Japanese anti-imperialism, labour militancy  Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, n.p.  Grave, Mouvement, 289. 90  IFHS, Miss Roo Wo Nan to Grave, 18 and 22 September April 1906, 2 February 1907. 91  Temps Nouveaux, 11 October 1913; 8 August 1914. 92  Gregor Benton, Chinese Migrants and Internationalism: Forgotten Histories, 1917–1945 (Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2007), 11. 93  Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, n.p. 94  Gotelind Müller and Gregor Benton, “Esperanto and Chinese anarchism in the 1920s and 1930s,” Language Problems & Language Planning 30, no. 2 (2006): 173–92. 95  Temps Nouveaux, 10 December 1910. 88 89

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and the lively radical press for which Kō toku worked and which was pivotal in spreading anarchism in Japan and China.96 Kō toku Shūsui had been one of Les Temps Nouveaux’s contacts since 1907 at least, reporting on the growing Japanese movement and its press. A cooperativist and an “intransigeant Kropotkinian,”97 he had translated Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread into Japanese.98 The failed campaign to save him was initiated by Mother Earth and Freedom, and relayed by Les Temps Nouveaux from December 1910, with Pratelle once more working as the intermediary.99 He covered the Japanese movement and Kō toku’s life, trial and execution in long serialised articles drawing parallels with Ferrer’s revolutionary martyrdom, based on extensive sources from across the international socialist press.100 These expanding international networks testify to the enduring relevance of Les Temps Nouveaux and Grave himself, but also to the limitations of their involvement with new movements and ideas. International coverage remained extensive and often well-informed but also largely theoretical; first-hand information and active links were often restricted to crises, focused on prominent personalities and periodicals, and covered by French or European writers, especially Aristide Pratelle in this period.101 This was in continuity with a long anarchist tradition dating back at least to the “Chicago martyrs,” in which crises and repression had shown a clear mobilising power, functioning as movement accelerators. The limitations of international engagement might have been partly linguistic—hence the reliance on multilingual comrades such as Malato and Pratelle, who explicitly recommended Indian publications to “comrades who can speak English.”102 It was also probably the case that the personal links with these movements were too tenuous to foster militant bonds and meaningful mutual exchanges and that, despite the continued international aura and influence of French anarchism and Kropotkinism, the ideological kinship was not evident, at least for Grave. In any case, a retrospective reading gives a clear sense of a missed opportunity in the face of important movements. 96  Mother Earth, vol. 5 (March 1910–February 1911): 319; Dirlik, “Anarchism and the Question of Place,” 135–6. 97  Temps Nouveaux, 20 May 1911. 98  Temps Nouveaux, 6 May 1911. 99  Temps Nouveaux, 7 January 1911. 100  Temps Nouveaux, 6, 13, 20, 27 May 1911. 101  Temps Nouveaux, 29 April 1911. 102  Temps Nouveaux, 6 March 1909.

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Grave’s and the paper’s response to the Mexican revolution also illustrates more conservative dynamics altogether, showing how his keen sense of orthodoxy restricted his international outlook.103 Les Temps Nouveaux initially reported sympathetically and in great detail on the revolutionary agitation and repression unfolding in Southern California and Mexico, in long articles by Pratelle. These started in November 1907, with the announcement that revolutionaries Ricardo Flores Magón, Antonio Villareal and Lázaro Gutiérrez de Lara had been arrested.104 Practical information to support the movement was also shared. This coverage became increasingly critical with time and the input of other writers. In April 1911, an insert mentioned the internal politics of the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM); a few months later, a long article by Antonio Cavalazzi from Cronaca Sovversiva denied the revolutionary character of the Mexico events—an assessment which was then relayed by Les Temps Nouveaux.105 By March 1912, urged by Le Libertaire to follow the Mexican revolution more closely, Les Temps Nouveaux published a brief piece criticising the “contradictory” and authoritarian policies of the PLM and Emiliano Zapata.106 This prompted a long reply from W.C. Owen and the Magón brothers, the editors of the PLM’s paper, Regeneración, setting the record straight on the PLM’s revolutionary agenda and pointing out that the Temps Nouveaux’s ill-informed position revealed its ignorance and lack of research on Mexican matters. They also rejected the paper’s claim to “judge and decide by [its] own yardstick whether the editors of Regeneración are or are not good anarchists.” Grave himself responded to the letter, reasserting that the Mexican uprisings were not revolutionary— at least not “as we understand the term,” thereby illustrating the editors’ reproach of narrow-minded orthodoxy. Perhaps immune to the irony of criticising writing as a form of activism, he concluded by asking why the Magóns remained so disengaged from the actual fighting.107 In 1913, Jean Humblot contributed another long and very critical piece in Les Temps Nouveaux, describing Ricardo Flores Magón as vain and politically deluded in his revolutionary hopes for Mexico and Regeneración as “incoherent and sterile” and undeserving of the substantial donations addressed 103  David Struthers, The World in a City: Multiethnic Radicalism in Early TwentiethCentury Los Angeles (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019), 150–1. 104  Temps Nouveaux, 16 November 1907, 30 April 1910. 105  Temps Nouveaux, 22 April 1911, 18 November 1911. 106  Temps Nouveaux, 2 March 1912. 107  Temps Nouveaux, 20 April 1912.

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to it.108 The historian David Struthers sees this coverage as evidence of “the racist and conceptual limits of [the] revolutionary imagination” of the Temps Nouveaux team.109 This last point is especially salient and an apt summary of the revolutionary purism which, combined with the inherent limitations of print and networked activism, clearly bounded Grave’s and the paper’s “global” anarchism.

From War Mobilisation to the Manifesto of the Sixteen “I was gardening when, on Saturday 1st August [1914], the Robinson news crier announced that mobilisation had been decreed. Even then, I wanted to hope that things would be mended at the last minute,” Grave later recalled.110 Subversive groups and individuals were under close surveillance, often listed—as Grave was—on the Ministère de l’Intérieur’s “Carnet B,” a list of antimilitarists to be arrested when war broke out.111 Grave immediately looked for friends to hide with. He soon obtained reassurance that he would not be arrested, from an acquaintance now employed at the Chamber of Deputies, who confirmed that there would be no preventative arrests if revolutionaries were compliant—which they were.112 The assassination of socialist leader Jean Jaurès on 31 July was one of the contributing factors which led the CGT and socialists to turn their backs on years of antimilitarist and anti-war advocacy and, soon, to declare their support for the government. The last issue of Les Temps Nouveaux appeared on 8 August 1914; the suspension was decided by Grave in anticipation of war censorship and the collapse in readership which was bound to deal the final blow to the paper’s finances.113 He reflected on “[h]ow difficult it was for me to suspend Les Temps Nouveaux,” whilst acknowledging that “Les TN have left me crippled with debt.”114 Soon after, hearing that German troops were closing in on Paris and judging that Mabel’s health would not survive the deprivations of a siege or an occupation, the Graves decided to  Temps Nouveaux, 1 March 1913.  Struthers, World in a City, 151. 110  Grave, Mémoires, 437. 111  AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, Folder “Renseignements 1900–1913,” letter from the Préfet de Police to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, 17 January 1913. 112  Grave, Mémoires, 439. 113  Ibid., 438. 114  La Libre Fédération, 21 January 1916. 108 109

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move with her sister and brother-in-law into their property, Hereford House, in Clifton, in the southwest of England.115 Another year and a half elapsed before the publication, in February 1916, of the Manifesto of the Sixteen in which pro-Entente anarchists, led by Kropotkin and Grave, spelt out the risk of “pan-German political domination” which, they argued, rendered all hopes for peace illusory and even “disastrous,” as long as bellicose imperialism prevailed among populations.116 The Manifesto is one of the most (negatively) commented-upon aspects of Grave’s life and career; this section revisits it by emphasising Grave’s critique of militarism as well as his initial distancing from and gradual coming round to Kropotkin’s positions. It documents his sustained affinities with the positions of the UK-based Union of Democratic Control, as well as his awareness-raising efforts from Britain through epistolary links and contributions to periodicals other than his own.117 These points highlight the continuity of his activism through cross-partisan campaigning and provide a corrective to the established narratives of revolutionary betrayal which continue to beset him. Grave shared the collective sense of inevitability which preceded the war and felt that anti-war propaganda was futile.118 As early as 1911, he bluntly assessed that the anarchists’ sectarianism doomed them to powerlessness119—an idea by which he stood years later. The early 1910s had seen a new momentum in anarchist organisation, with the aim of coordinating national movements and providing a dedicated forum for revolutionary socialists.120 Following the 1904 International Antimilitarist Congress in Amsterdam and the launch of the Antimilitarist International, organising efforts came to fruition in 1907 with the Amsterdam congress. Its outcome was ambiguous, as the Congress remains of historic note for highlighting the identity crisis of anarchist communism, through the famous debate between Malatesta and the young syndicalist Monatte. The same years witnessed convergent efforts towards local and national unity  Grave, Mémoires, 450.  Peter Kropotkin  et al., “Manifesto of the Sixteen,” (1916), trans. Shawn P.  Wilbur, accessed 7 July 2020, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-manifesto-ofthe-sixteen. 117  Patsouras, The Anarchism of Jean Grave, 103. 118  Grave, Mémoires, 440. 119  Ibid., 446; see also Jean Grave, “L’Entente pour l’action” (Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1911) which castigated the inertia of many. 120  Bulletin de l’internationale anarchiste, October 1906. 115 116

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in France, in the hope of overcoming the divisions between syndicalists  and communist and individualist anarchists, which were seen as the cause of the movement’s overall weakness.121 By the eve of the war, coordination had progressed greatly, materialising in the 1913 launch of the Fédération communiste anarchiste révolutionnaire (FCAR). In August, the Temps Nouveaux group and the FCAR were among the organisers of the Congrès anarchiste-communiste, a major organising breakthrough for the movement. Nonetheless, divisions remained entrenched and organisation did not foster any effective anarchist resistance in 1914. Grave retrospectively viewed the outbreak of the war as a missed revolutionary opportunity, as all leaders of the left had supported the government unconditionally. However, he also restated the verdict of “complete powerlessness” for the anarchists, “unorganised, too few in numbers, having always kept separate from the masses.”122 Against his hope for the general strike or even the revolution ceaselessly called for in anarchist antimilitarist propaganda, “it was all too clear that no one was moving and […] I could not do the revolution just by myself.”123 Decades of propaganda intended to spur the revolutionary spontaneity of the masses had been in vain; the anarchists were “trapped in their dogmatism. […] We had spoken a lot about the revolution, but we had never realised what a revolution is, nor how it may present.”124 Different explanations for this collective response have been put forward in scholarship, emphasising popular assent rather than ineffectiveness in the face of the war. Thus, authors have stressed the ongoing process of individual and collective integration of the French workers and their attachment to the Republic, which had been obscured by the CGT’s revolutionary rhetoric and which the watershed of 1914 revealed.125 International ties were also overridden as responses to the war were made nationally, with individual positionings depending on one’s place of origin, residence, gender, occupation and so on.126  Maitron, Histoire, vol. I, 418–23.  Grave, Mémoires, 441. 123  CHS, Fonds Jean Maitron, 8-JM—A, Grave to Mougeot, 26 April 1915. 124  Grave, Mémoires, 445. 125  Susan Milner, Dilemmas of Internationalism: French Syndicalism and the International Labour Movement 1900–1914 (New York: Berg, 1991); Jacques Julliard, “La CGT devant la guerre (1900–1914),” Le Mouvement social, no. 49 (Oct.–Dec. 1964): 47–62. 126  Wayne Thorpe, “Uneasy family: Revolutionary syndicalism in Europe from the Charte d’Amiens to World War I,” in New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism, 16–23. 121 122

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Kropotkin’s position was different from Grave’s. He had made his profound hostility to German militarism clear as early as 1905 and—polemically—stated his support for a defensive war. The mainstream French daily Le Temps had published an interview in which Kropotkin, aged over 60 at the time, had declared that “all [he] wished for was to have enough strength left to grab a gun, if France was attacked, and defend it.”127 Duchemin had commented privately that this public statement would position Kropotkin as an opponent of antimilitarism and internationalism and Les Temps Nouveaux as “the organ of reactionary anarchists […] conniving with the authorities.”128 Almost a decade later, Kropotkin’s October 1914 “Letter to Steffen” in Freedom reasserted that “the duty of every one who cherishes the ideals of human progress altogether, and especially those inscribed by the European proletariat on the banner of the International Working Men’s Association, is to do everything in one’s power […] to crush down the invasion of the Germans into Western Europe.”129 These positions have been reassessed by recent historiography; Ruth Kinna has shown that Kropotkin’s support for the Entente powers was not an expression of Germanophobia and Russian nationalism but a consistent application of principles deriving from “important differences within anarchism about internationalism and the idea of the state” and from his evaluation of current revolutionary prospects.130 Peter Ryley has argued that Kropotkin (and later Grave) was “a war too early for general acceptance” when arguing that German militarism must be crushed at all costs.131 In contrast, Grave’s starting point in 1914 was much closer to the dominant anarchist antimilitarist and internationalist discourse. As late as December 1914, he openly criticised the analogy with the French revolutionary patriotism of 1792 used by Kropotkin and other supporters of the war.132 Like many, he expected the war to be brief due to a lack of funds, and he focused on organising a progressive opposition front.133 Throughout  Le Temps, 19 October 1905.  IFHS, Duchemin to Unknown, 4 November 1905. 129  Freedom, October 1914. 130  Kinna, Kropotkin, 2, 155–6. 131  Peter Ryley, “The Manifesto of the Sixteen: Kropotkin’s rejection of anti-war anarchism and his critique of the politics of peace,” in Anarchism, 1914–1918, 64. 132  La Bataille syndicaliste, 16 December 1914, “Sophismes périmés”; La Voix du Peuple, 26 December 1914, “Il n’y a pas d’absolu.” 133  Grave, Mémoires, 451. 127 128

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the summer of 1914, he contacted pacifist writers, not hoping to “stop the cataclysm already under way” but rather to “fight the outpouring of reaction” and halt “Germanophobic clamours.”134 Following the model of his earlier progressive awareness-raising campaigns, he contacted long-term allies within and outside anarchism, such as Anatole France, Séverine, Frantz Jourdain, Hermann-Paul and Mirbeau, to organise and campaign by urging public opinion to distinguish between the German people and their rulers. However, the few replies which he received judged such an intervention ill-timed. Hermann-Paul approached Anatole France, who, while not opposed to the idea, did not fully agree either.135 The symbolist writer and LDH member Ferdinand Herold responded that “it is premature to start a campaign regarding the possible conditions of peace. The war is just beginning, and we can hardly plan how it will end.”136 Once in Britain, it is likely that Grave’s wife’s family ushered him into new, non-anarchist circles and exposed him to local political developments and an altogether different political outlook. Mabel Grave was one of eight siblings; her sister Fanny, an award-winning singer, was married to Claude Haigh, who appears to have hosted the Graves during a stay in Guildford, Surrey, in January 1914.137 Intriguingly, Mabel’s sister Ethel was married to Sir Isambard Owen, a prominent medical academic and the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol. Owen was also the executor of the will of Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte (1813–1891), having acted as his medical advisor during his exile in London.138 While, frustratingly, Grave did not leave any comment on these unexpected connections, his memoir was surprisingly candid in discussing his new milieu and circles, which were a pantheon of authority figures reviled by anarchists: “My brother-in-law entertained all sorts of officials: professors, judges, military men of all ranks, including generals and even diplomats from allied countries […]. I even saw some bishops there.”139 Grave described Owen as “a

 Ibid., 446.  Ibid., 447–8. 136  IFHS, Herold to Grave, n.d. 137  IFHS, card addressed to “Monsieur Jean Grave, C/o Claude Haigh Esq.,” 12 January 1914. 138  Terry Richards, “OWEN, Sir (HERBERT) ISAMBARD (1850–1927),” Dictionary of Welsh Biography, 1959, accessed 22 July 2020, https://biography.wales/ article/s-OWEN-ISA-1850; IISG, Nettlau Collection, Grave to Nettlau, 5 May 1912. 139  Grave, Mémoires, 454. 134 135

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charming man, with liberal views.”140 All these encounters seem to have convinced him that pacifist sentiment was prevalent in the early days of the war. Grave, who stayed in Britain as a Registered alien, noted the hostility to the war in Wales and the generosity towards Belgian war refugees. Even when visiting local “old aristocratic families” and landowning relatives, many of whom had family serving in the British or German army, he observed “loathing for the war, the hope to do away for good with massacres, conquests.”141 His unsympathetic account of the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Ireland, pervaded with anti-Irish prejudice, may also be traced back to the influence of the circles among which he spent the war: “Like all peoples, the Irish were allowed to ask for their autonomy. But it must be said that they are rather cumbersome and very uninteresting people.”142 In late November 1914, Grave sent Mirbeau the programme of the Union of Democratic Control (UDC), a league set up in August by leading pacifists, socialists and liberals which he had joined and which was a key anti-war organisation in Britain. From just a few dozen members in 1915, the UDC grew to 650,000 by the end of the war, although it remained a minority organisation both on the left and nationally.143 Its intellectual make-up might have been congenial to Grave, who conceded that “it was a parliamentary affair, but the aim was one which, for want of a better option, one could support without betraying oneself too much.” The UDC’s objectives were embedded in parliamentarianism, such as ensuring that Parliament had control over foreign policy and that post-war international organisation should rest on popular parties rather than rulers’ alliances. Grave’s aim was to set up a similar group in France; his letters to Séverine, Mirbeau, France and others recommending this, possibly seized by censors, remained unanswered.144 He also made contact with anti-war radical and UDC member Josiah Wedgewood and wrote about the organisation in La Bataille (renamed from La Bataille Syndicaliste after November 1915), although his article was censored. Even in the absence of Les Temps Nouveaux, the press remained the main site where Grave publicised his views. La Bataille Syndicaliste  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, item 109, n.d.  Grave, Mémoires, 545. 142  Ibid., 473. 143  David Swift, For Class and Country: The Patriotic Left and the First World War (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), 68–9. 144  Grave, Mémoires, 462. 140 141

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(Paris)  was the principal forum for the anarchists’ war-related debates, albeit a problematic one due to censorship and, before long, ideological disagreements, especially over Grave’s criticism of socialists.145 Grave defaulted to other papers, in particular Luigi Bertoni’s Le Réveil/Il Risveglio (Geneva)  and Jean Wintsch’s La Libre Fédération (Lausanne). Wintsch, originally a collaborator of Bertoni at Le Réveil, had written for Les Temps Nouveaux on the Swiss movement and the Ferrer school in Lausanne. After he left Le Réveil over his disagreement with Bertoni’s anti-war position, Grave assisted him in setting up La Libre Fédération (1915–1919), providing him with Les Temps Nouveaux’s readers’ lists.146 Wintsch, later a Manifesto signatory, broadly shared Grave’s aim of consolidating antimilitarist forces, and his paper therefore became the defencist anarchists’ main forum. It was sympathetic to Kropotkin’s positions and published illustrations and contributions by Temps Nouveaux alumni such as Pierrot, Guérin and Grave, who wrote in all of the first ten issues on various war-related topics, including book reviews, censorship, socialism, “war and reaction” in France, England and Ireland. The second issue advertised the work of the UDC, most likely at Grave’s behest. Well into 1915, Grave’s press writings and letters are evidence of his consistent critique of French nationalism and militarism, despite his support for interventionism. In late 1914, a string of articles in Geneva’s antimilitarist La Voix du Peuple argued that, while self-defence had been the “only possible response” to the attack on Belgium, French nationalist militarism was also a major risk, replicating Germany’s own militarism and imperialism. Looking ahead to post-war societies, he argued for mutual disarmament and grassroots reconciliation through pacificism and solidarity against the forces of nationalist reaction. His article in the final issue of La Voix du Peuple, “Il n’y a pas d’absolu” (December 1914), justified anarchist support for the war in the name of self-defence against German aggression and authoritarianism—an unambiguous pro-war statement but nonetheless one of his rarer pieces emphasising the interventionist argument rather than long-term pacifist endeavours.147 La Voix du Peuple published texts censored in France, from a broad ideological spectrum, so that 145  IFHS, Marie to Grave, dated 31 January 1915; Le Réveil, 20 March 1915, signed Clifton, 12 January 1915. 146  Grave, Mémoires, 465. 147  La Voix du Peuple, 28 November, 12 December, 26 December 1914; Freedom, November 1914.

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Grave’s pieces coexisted with Malatesta’s anti-war articles. In March 1915, Grave’s Réveil article “Bas les cœurs” (also censored in France) lamented the triumph of “clerico-militarism,” calling for resistance against the alliance of Church and Army, as Lazare had during the Dreyfus affair: “Where is the Zola who will write the ‘J’accuse’ for today’s events?” He called out to many of his former campaigning allies, such as the LDH. Denouncing all-out militarism and anti-Germanic xenophobia, and exhorting to pacifist mobilisation, he noted that some organisation was beginning in England, with the UDC’s lobbying for grassroots union and mutual disarmament.148 As late as 1917, he attempted to get LDH member Herold to read out a letter from him to the Ligue in the hope of winning them over to his point of view and the work of the UDC—to no avail.149 Overall, Grave’s voice was a far cry from the “shrill tones” and “deep loathing” which pervaded the Manifesto,150 and from the “social chauvinism” attributed to far-left Entente supporters by Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin.151 Grave was far more moderate than other signatories, for instance Cherkesov, who declared his profound hostility towards Germany and the need to crush it after the damage inflicted upon others.152 Malato even tried to enlist with his nephew in London but was turned down because of his age; as late as 1918 he raged against those anti-war anarchists such as Emma Goldman who “carried out hateful pro-German work.”153

The Manifesto of the Sixteen “I have just received your letter. My heart tightened up with pain upon reading it. In what world of illusion do you live, that you can speak of the peace?” an irate Kropotkin wrote to Grave in September 1914, telling him off for believing in peace when Belgium was “crushed, mutilated” and urging him to join the war effort and spread the interventionist word.154 Kropotkin’s famous, striking letter was the starting point of a dialogue which was pivotal to Grave’s eventual change of position. Kropotkin’s  Le Réveil, 22 January 1915, 6 March 1915.  IFHS, Letter from Herold to Grave, 10 November 1917. 150  Carl Levy, “Malatesta and the war interventionist debate 1914–1917: from the ‘Red Week’ to the Russian revolutions,” in Anarchism, 1914–1918, 77. 151  Cited by Adams and Kinna, “Introduction,” in ibid., 4. 152  IFHS, Cherkesov to Grave, 22 October 1914. 153  IFHS, Malato to Grave, 7 March 1918. 154  IFHS, Kropotkin to Grave, 2 September 1914. 148 149

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own assessment was subtler than often acknowledged: his primary concern was the threat of a victory for German militarism, and he saw little hope in a possible socialist uprising which was bound to be crushed, just like the 1905 Russian revolution.155 Grave’s initial reply to Kropotkin’s admonition was terse and firm: “You have no idea of the situation in France, where civilian power is completely annihilated by military power […], where nothing is left to initiative.”156 His following letter, written soon afterwards, still focused on the idea that this war should “kill war” once and for all and that spreading pacifism and advocating for disarmament were priorities.157 He also wrote to Kropotkin about the UDC’s endeavours to disseminate anti-war ideas internationally: “If we remain silent, we risk finding ourselves in front of a false, misled public opinion, and this is what we need to react against. I would have liked to see in France a grouping similar to the Union of Democratic Control.”158 He hoped that this propaganda would stir German socialists and social-democrats to start agitating and prepare public opinion for a “revolution,” once militarism was exposed: “A revolution in Germany, that is the real solution.”159 He also restated—rather presciently—that, without public education through campaigning, Germany’s defeat might entail a surge of nationalism among the victors, which was sure to lead to revanchism and further wars.160 Grave’s position evolved gradually. His memoir stressed the damage inflicted by the war, the “[t]en départements invaded, populations terrorised, deported en masse, at the whim of the invaders, forced to work for them, this changed everything. I would have understood non-resistance coming from Tolstoyans [an anarchist strand foregrounding pacifism]. From revolutionaries, this was beyond me!”161 The conflict tearing apart the Temps Nouveaux group and the need to justify his position precipitated the decision to write up the Manifesto. The rift over the war cut through the Temps Nouveaux team, causing deep antagonism between Grave, André Girard and Charles Benoît. In Paris, the paper’s team resumed publication of Les Temps Nouveaux as a bulletin between 1914 and 1916, in the form of a “Lettre aux abonnés des Temps Nouveaux”  Ibid.  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 18 September 1914. 157  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 23 September 1914. 158  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, n.d. (1915?) 159  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 2 June 1915. 160  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 28 July 1915. 161  Grave, Mémoires, 464. 155 156

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(Letter to subscribers). In Grave’s absence, the group continued to meet up every week at the rue Broca office. They received a very high volume of letters, which were instrumental in their gradual move towards pacifism, eventually leading to the split: the historian Jean-Louis Robert has identified “a close correlation between the group’s evolution and the situation on the front,” and in particular military offensives, which realigned alliances incrementally. Grave’s views continued to be discussed and his letters were read at each meeting, showing his enduring influence.162 However, reports from an infiltrated agent also refer to jibes against Grave, who was considered to have gone on “holiday” and was criticised for being detached from the horrific realities of the war relayed in the paper’s correspondences. As Robert points out, Grave’s physical removal, in the United Kingdom, “could only be seen as evidence of his being on the outside of ‘the great family.’”163 It was also considered “ill-judged” on his part, “being still valid,” to encourage others to keep fighting.164 Archival sources do not establish whether the full details of Grave’s British stay and travels between England and Wales, albeit for medical reasons, were known, as well as his elite frequentations; given the circumstances, this ignorance might have been preferable for him. The schism was under way by August 1915, at which point the group collectively decided to write a manifesto stating that peace was more important than any of Germany’s wrongs. In December, they joined the international socialist pacifist movement launched at the September 1915 Zimmerwald conference and the pacifist Comité pour la reprise des relations internationales (CRRI; Committee for the Resumption of International Relations), announcing their position to subscribers that same month. In October 1915, Girard, Benoît and Mesnil turned their backs on Grave’s conceptions, while Pierrot and Guérin remained defencists. At the international level, the February 1915 “International anarchist manifesto on the war” was published in Freedom, in New York’s Spanish language Cultura Obrera, the Italian paper Volontà and Mother Earth, among many others, the bulk of its signatories being in London, 162  AN F7 13061, “Note sur l’attitude des anarchistes parisiens depuis janvier 1915,” April 1915. 163  Jean-Louis Robert, “Une analyse d’implication: l’étude du groupe des Temps Nouveaux en 1915,” Le Mouvement social, no. 122 (1983): 73–4. 164  AN F7 13061, “Note sur l’attitude des anarchistes parisiens depuis janvier 1915,” October 1915.

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Holland, Switzerland and New York.165 Reasserting that “war is permanently fostered by the present social system” and the coercive state propped up by military force, it rejected the distinction between offensive and defensive wars and the legitimacy of any war except for the social revolution, pressing readers to spread “the spirit of revolt” and “discontent in peoples and armies.”166 The text was endorsed by long-term collaborators of Grave and highly influential figures, such as Malatesta, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, Alexander Schapiro, Freedom’s editor Tom Keell, Rudolf Rocker and Domela Nieuwenhuis. In early 1916 Grave spent “a few weeks” with Kropotkin in Brighton, during which the project of the Manifesto of the Sixteen emerged167: “What we wanted to assert was the risk of an attempt at German hegemony, the risk for human evolution if German militarism triumphed, and nothing else.”168 Back in Clifton, Grave drafted the statement, which was then edited by Kropotkin and sent to several comrades.169 It collected 15 signatures initially (rather than the 16 advertised in its name) and then a further 107, primarily from Italy and other European countries. The Manifesto was published in La Bataille on 14 March 1916 and in La Libre Fédération just a month later. The Manifesto brought out in the open the conflict which had been brewing among anarchists for months, tearing the French and international movement asunder for decades. One of its many casualties was the Temps Nouveaux group, whose members fell out over the war but also the ownership of the paper and even of its editorial office. Grave saw the group’s “Letters” as a travesty of the paper, which instrumentalised its name for anti-war propaganda. He acknowledged the sincerity of the comrades who published them and their previous association with the paper, but as the official tenant of the rue Broca office and the manager of the paper, he challenged their claim to speak in the name of the paper: “I never was a straw man, and have no intention of becoming one so late in the day.”170 The May 1916, 60-page pamphlet Un désaccord, published 165  Kate Sharpley Library, “NO DESPONDENCY: The International Anarchist Manifesto on the War February 1915,” accessed 22 July 2020, https://www.katesharpleylibrary. net/mpg5xs. 166  Ibid., “International Anarchist Manifesto on the War.” 167  Publications du “Groupe de propagande par l’écrit,” no. 6, 1921, 19. 168  Ibid. 169  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 28 February 1916. 170  La Libre Fédération, 18 March 1916 (printed from La Bataille, 8 March 1916).

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under the auspices of the CRRI, exposed the rift in the wake of the post-­ Zimmerwald and post-Manifesto realignments. It was intended to rectify the misconception that all anarchists supported the war, which the CRRI attributed to the Manifesto. It also dwelt on the dispute over the ownership of the paper title and its office, which Grave wanted back; the quarrel had ended up with Grave having the lock of rue Broca changed, effectively evicting the group, who retaliated by publishing his letters in Un désaccord. Benoît and Girard openly distanced themselves from Grave’s positions; signatories included several local groups as well as Grave’s old friend Paul Signac. The authors stated their determination to remain known as “Groupe des Temps Nouveaux.”171 The Manifesto, of course, resonated far beyond the rue Broca, tearing through dense and longstanding national and international networks and reshaping them, with elements of both continuity and rupture. Jean Maitron has highlighted the national, linguistic and generational solidarities which bound the signatories, as well as their rejection of German imperialism and shared sense that France and Western Europe embodied a set of values and conceptions of progress, which often hinged on the legacies of the Paris Commune.172 A positional if not sociological element might be added, since the document was initially known as the “Manifeste des Intellectuels anarchistes,” reflecting the strong representation of influential theorists and activists among its first signatories—although the same could also be said of the International Anarchist Manifesto. However profound and long-lasting, the new ideological fault lines drawn by the Manifesto of the Sixteen nevertheless were not entrenched at first: Grave had hoped that Girard might sign it, and perhaps the CGT’s secretary general Léon Jouhaux, as well as Pouget (who had withdrawn from politics). In contrast, he was reluctant to ask Malato, who did sign, because of his all-out Jingoism.173 Japanese signatory Ishikawa Sanshirō was a friend of Paul Reclus who had been staying in Belgium for some time and had many ties with European anarchists, while Federico Urales had a long association with Grave, as did Philippe Richard, the Temps Nouveaux correspondent in Algiers. Thus, “emotional affinities, randomness, and

171  CRRI/Groupe des Temps Nouveaux. “Deuxième Lettre. Un désaccord. Nos explications” (Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1916), 26–7. 172  Maitron, Histoire, II, 20–22. 173  GARF, Grave to Kropotkin, 2 March 1916.

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contingency”174 must be added to the list of factors informing the wartime realignments; conversely, the full story of this schism is not told if its emotional, even traumatic, impact is not taken into account. The links ruptured by the war were strong and had been central to pre-war anarchist internationalism. The deep rift enshrined by the Manifesto became fully apparent over the next few months. The London “Internationalists” responded immediately, in Freedom in April 1916, stressing the incompatibility of the Manifesto positions with anarchism. In France, Faure briefly reserved judgement, arguing that post-war reconstruction would require unity.175 Fierce discussions continued in La Bataille; in December 1916, Faure referred to Grave as an “old drone gone wrong” who persisted in engaging with them.176 By January 1917, Grave and his cohort were considered to be at best eliciting “some curiosity,” without any actual following. Moreover, by 1917, Kropotkin had left for Russia, as the Revolution allowed him to return after 40 years in exile: new ideological fronts were opening.

Conclusion Girard’s verdict on Grave in 1916 was damning but fair, encapsulating the long ideological journey which had led to his co-authoring the Manifesto of the Sixteen: My dear Grave, you have lost touch with your milieu, with your collaborators and your comrades in struggle, gradually you have forgotten what you used to write before the war and what we wrote alongside you in the manifestos which we launched to fight the rising chauvinistic and war-minded tide. Re-read Contre la folie des armements [Grave’s 1913 antimilitarist pamphlet, Against the madness of arming up] […] and you will see the distance that separates you now from what you wrote two years ago.177

The war put an end to the anarchists’ collective internationalist and antimilitarist project in its pre-1914 formulation. For Grave, it was also the 174  Nadine Willems, “Transnational anarchism, Japanese revolutionary connections, and the personal politics of exile,” The Historical Journal 61, no. 3 (September 2018): 741. 175  Ce qu’il faut dire (C.Q.F.D.), 2 April 1916. 176  AN F7 13061, January 1917. 177  CRRI, “Un désaccord,” 20.

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collapse of 30 years of print and relational activism: the Temps Nouveaux “family” was deeply divided, the paper had become a bone of contention and anarchist international networking was now largely focused on responding to the war and taking sides. This new state of affairs would only be exacerbated after the war.

CHAPTER 7

“Dreaming of Reorganising”: Isolation and (Self-)Memorialisation (1918–Present)

After the war, militants like Grave “barely survived,” in the words of Chambelland and Maitron.1 Grave, now ostracised and ageing, desperately tried to resurrect his pre-1914 activist strategies, with little success. His near-complete isolation and moral defeat in this period reads as a microcosm of the “heroic” generation of the 1890s and the Manifesto of the Sixteen signatories, who found themselves marginalised, left the movement or died, within a broader reconfiguration of anarchist ideas and personnel in the post-war political landscape. As summarised by Kinna and Adams, “[p]opular patriotism, emergency legislation and the loss of the comrades to the trenches proved to be a toxic mix that all but destroyed pre-war networks and organisations.” Before long, the rise of Bolshevism and “accelerating processes of centralization and technocratic organization” further weakened the appeal of anti-state politics.2 Grave’s relegation was exacerbated by the demise of the strand of anarchist communism which he partly embodied; in 1919, when Le Libertaire was relaunched, its first issue was scathing towards Grave, Pierrot, Malato 1  Colette Chambelland and Jean Maitron, “La correspondance de Jean Grave: inventaire et études,” L’Actualité de l’histoire 24 (July–Sept 1958): 39. 2  Adams and Kinna, “Introduction,” in Anarchism 1914–1918, 3; Matthew S. Adams, “A Truly Pathological Case: Kropotkin, War and Anarchist Remembrance,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 56 no. 2 (April 2020): 201.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7_7

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and all anarchist supporters of the war. The brief resurrection of Les Temps Nouveaux (1919–1920) came to a bitter conclusion, with Grave’s (self-) eviction. He went on to publish a series of pamphlets, the “Publications de la Révolte et des Temps Nouveaux” (1920–1936), which showed his continued engagement with a range of new topical themes, still with his distinctive international focus. However, by then, even the police had lost interest: in 1922, Grave had been struck off the infamous Carnet B, with a note that read “No longer the object of any national notification.”3 Grave’s trajectory was shaped by the historical dynamics of socialist internationalism, as summarised by Daniel Laqua, from “the enthusiasms of the Belle Epoque, the ruptures caused by four years of military conflicts, the transnational bonds that survived the war and the new structures,” which were far more institutional and centralised than before 1914.4 His failed efforts to resurrect his earlier international contacts and print activism present a striking example of the dissolution of networks, personal influence and the previously successful strategies underpinning them. His gradual withdrawal from political activity is evident in his growing focus on analysis, memorialisation and the historiography of anarchism, until his death in 1939. These processes unfolded primarily in his two autobiographies and his sustained discussions with Charles Malato and Max Nettlau regarding the heroic period of anarchism and the anarchists’ response to the war. This memorialising work was both a reassessment of the heyday of anarchism and a contribution to the first wave of anarchist historiography. While Grave’s political writing became increasingly irrelevant, these must be regarded as a significant historiographic contribution.

Excommunication “And finally, the nightmare ended,” and the Graves returned to France in July 1919, later than expected, only for Jean to be thrown into the post-­ war internal politics of anarchism and gradually evicted from Les Temps Nouveaux—the collapse of a lifelong personal, political and professional pursuit.5 The post-war period fully disproved his prediction from December 3  AN, Fonds de Moscou, Jean Grave file, folder “Grave. Un anarchiste antimilitariste,” document 131. 4  Daniel Laqua, The Age of internationalism and Belgium, 1880–1930. Peace, Progress and Prestige (Manchester: MUP, 2013), 2. 5  Grave, Mémoires, 476.

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1915, that “after the war, Les Temps Nouveaux will have to resume its place in the movement. There is a place in the sun for all those of goodwill.”6 After the split from the pacifist Temps Nouveaux rump, the publication had been resurrected from May 1916  by the defencist group, as a free, irregular, 16-issue “Bulletin,” starting with a reprint of the Manifesto of the Sixteen. The following issues continued to uphold the views of Manifesto supporters, gradually announcing new signatories.7 Since Grave had won the wrangle over the rue Broca office, the Bulletin could be obtained there, while donations were handled by Jacques Guérin’s wife at an address in the 6th arrondissement’s rue du Four; from January 1919 onwards, Mme Guérin was fully in charge of the paper’s editorial correspondence. After its very bare first few issues, the publication grew in contents and its contacts expanded steadily. Early issues contained only a text followed by basic editorial information: announcements for the next issue, calls for “readers and friends” to support the publication, lists of contributors and advertisements for a handful of other publications. The historical members of the original Temps Nouveaux group and initial Manifesto signatories featured prominently among donors: Grave, from Clifton (10 francs), Malato and “P.K. Brighton” (Kropotkin), who had donated 27.80 francs, more than 20 per cent of the total. Other international subscribers included “T” (most likely Cherkesov) from London and Philippe Richard in Algiers.8 Subsequent lists retained this strong international component, with funds originating from areas of earlier influence, such as Tunis, Bordj Bou Arreridj (Algeria), Hussein-Bey and Casablanca in Northern Africa9 and, in the United States, collections from New York and St Louis. In April 1918, issue 10 contained two extensive donation lists, featuring dozens of names each; donors from France were the majority, with a few additions from Lisbon, Ashford, London, Lausanne, Algiers, Spring Valley in the United States, Klintonel and Manitoba (Canada) and Buenos Aires, as well as further international contacts subsequently.10 Grave wrote the lead articles for the 5th, 9th and 11th Bulletins. In September 1916, Kropotkin’s article “La Nouvelle Internationale” had made a case for worker organisations to challenge state socialism by  La Libre Fédération, 21 January 1916.  Bulletin, no. 3, September 1916. 8  Bulletin, no. 2, August 1916. 9  Bulletin, no. 3, September 1916. 10  Bulletin, no. 14, April 1919. 6 7

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socialising production, goods and essential services.11 Grave’s first piece, “Temps nouveaux, Méthodes Nouvelles” (January 1917), responded to Kropotkin and marked a departure from his—and Grave’s earlier—position by proposing a federation of single-issue international organisations with a clear anti-war programme, to avoid destructive dissensions. He also initiated a discussion on the anarchist propaganda to be conducted after the war, predicting changes in the movement’s personnel and looking ahead to a new publication, which would be rid of the “begging” of the previous 30 years.12 In January 1918, he published another lead article, which criticised the League of Nations as a top-down, centralist and authoritarian institution.13 This was one of a series of critical contributions on the League, which marked a clear difference with the Union of Democratic Control (UDC), a staunch advocate of the new organisation. In his 1930 memoir, Grave concluded that “a ‘League of Nations’ was a beautiful goal to aim for, but only as long as the association was truly formed by nations. A society of nations whose members were appointed by governments was a ridiculous bloc, of which I was deeply distrustful”14— an internationalist, if not remotely anarchist, perspective. The preparations for the relaunch of Les Temps Nouveaux started in earnest in the April 1919 Bulletin, with an address to readers signed by Grave, Pierrot and Guérin, restating with a modicum of self-criticism their reasons for supporting the war and reactivating old fundraising and organising strategies. The Bulletin called for new groups to organise, make themselves known and donate money; 3000 francs (out of a required total of 8000) had been collected towards the relaunch. A small leaflet supplement listed the pre-war publications for sale, as well as “a certain quantity of superb lithographs by Steinlen, Luce, Signac” among others, now offered at “reasonable prices.”15 The Bulletin’s contents had by then become more diverse, comprising a brief coverage of cultural matters and current events as well as slightly longer bibliographies. Despite the clear awareness that times had changed irretrievably and the movement had been partly destroyed, there were some signs of rebuilding.

 Ibid.  Bulletin, no. 5, January 1917. 13  Bulletin, no. 9, January 1918; no. 10, April 1918. 14  Grave, Mouvement, 266. 15  Bulletin, no. 14, April 1919. 11 12

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When contemplating the “reorganisation” of Les Temps Nouveaux, Grave had hoped to continue publishing the Bulletins in an extended format. He expected to relinquish editorial duties and focus on writing and, while still in Clifton, he sent Pierrot and Guérin a structured programme, which involved recruiting five or six comrades who would stay clear of factional involvements. Grave’s strategic vision had evolved, taking in his diagnosis of the war debacle by stressing the importance of grassroots organisation and agitating beyond print propaganda. His suggestions were part of wider plans to reorganise the movement; these included conference tours and intense fundraising to restart the paper. Revitalising local groups was a priority; they had a clear revolutionary role to play and would replace capitalist organisations eventually. However, the Bulletin soon announced “the absolute opposite” of this programme, starting with a different funding model for the paper.16 Grave retorted with a lengthy letter asking for his withdrawal from Les Temps Nouveaux to be formally announced. After his return to Paris, in July 1919, he paid a conciliatory visit to Guérin and received assurances that no final decision had been made—only to discover soon after that the paper’s first issue was already printed. His request of a formal response in the paper was rejected, prompting him to comment that “I found it quite excessive to be denied the inclusion of a note […] in a paper which, in every respect, I could regard as mine.”17 However, his desire for unity—and no doubt a measure of sentimental attachment—prevailed, and he followed Cherkesov’s and Paul Reclus’s encouragements to swallow his pride and continue his collaboration. The first issue of what is known as the “série jaune” (yellow series) of Les Temps Nouveaux appeared on 15 July 1919.18 It flagged its editorial and ideological continuity with its predecessors: “During the war, we sided with the defence against German militarism, because we understood that the triumph of Prussian autocracy would have entailed a formidable setback in the evolution of human freedoms.” This statement of intention advertised the editors’ “idealism” and the blending of social and moral intentions in the publication while settling scores with a few “scoundrels.” The paper displayed “a quite astonishing anti-bolshevism” which differed from Kropotkin’s informed critique of bureaucratic communism from  Grave, Mémoires, 477–80.  Ibid., 485. 18  Temps Nouveaux, no. 1, 15 July 1919. 16 17

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Russia.19 It relayed rumours on the situation in Russia (including Kropotkin’s alleged murder by the Bolsheviks in 1919), regarded the revolution as a coup and described Bolshevism as “a very authoritarian State socialism, strongly centralised and living through violence. Now, it is not in our programme to make the people happy from above and despite them. We do not believe in benevolent tyrants.”20 This new Temps Nouveaux was to appear monthly; like its pre-war incarnation, it focused on political analysis and covered the arts and the international movement. The clear continuity of personnel, even with the addition of new recruits, pointed to the entrenchment of the ideological positions redrawn by the war. Concealing the arguments unfolding behind the scenes, Grave was listed on the editorial committee alongside prominent international activists of his generation as well as Manifesto signatories and sympathisers: Guérin, Pierrot, Cherkesov, Wintsch, Malato, Paul Reclus, Charles-Ange Laisant, Charles Desplanques, Cornelissen, Emilio Costa and Marie Goldsmith. The new paper reflected the displacements caused by the war. Nettlau, now surviving on charity, wrote from “the hell that is Vienna.”21 Pierrot reported from Bosnia, where he had been deployed to serve as a medical doctor. The section “A travers le monde” (Across the world) and articles on European and global politics brought in the continued international outlook, with an even greater awareness of living in interdependent societies and systems. Thus, a single issue from 1920 discussed Bolshevism and Islam, Guild socialism and the Soviets, the situation in Russia and Poland, and also featured an interview with British syndicalist Tom Mann.22 International information was still obtained through a mixture of direct reporting, local correspondents and foreign press cuttings. Nonetheless, the paper’s reduced audience and the post-war disruption resulted in an even greater theoretical emphasis than previously, despite the small participatory “Coin des lecteurs” section. It also carried brief and occasional artistic reviews of painting, drama and music. In April 1920, the paper started calling for more regular subscriptions, towards a target of 2500 subscribers, signalling a return to the familiar financial vagaries. 19  David Berry, A History of the French anarchist movement 1917 to 1945 (Oakland: AK Press, 2009), 111–5. 20  Temps Nouveaux, no.1, 15 July 1919. 21  Temps Nouveaux, no. 8, 15 February 1920. 22  Temps Nouveaux, no. 12, 15 June 1920.

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Grave’s reluctant collaboration was short-lived. He pondered the lessons from the war, and organisation remained his strategic priority: “If we do not want, once more, to prove our helplessness when the opportunities to act arise, our first priority must be to form groups […] not just for endless discussions, but to do some work, each time it comes up, and to provoke it if needed.”23 Even before the war, in a rare admission of guilt in “L’anarchie, ses déformations, ses déviations,”24 he had argued that, as it developed, anarchism had lost some of its grassroots momentum, causing groups to lack focus and a clear aim. Anarchists never actually tried to organise, lacked sustained engagement and “should have undertaken something.” Attacking the shallowness of “Entente libre” (free association), he revived an idea from the early days of the anarchist movement, still focusing on print activism within a broader organisation: a monthly liaison and discussion bulletin. He saw this as the key to post-war organisation, connecting anarchists without the centralisation which stifled initiative and autonomy.25 However, in an age of mass labour organisations and parties, this was a throwback to the 1890s, profoundly at odds with the broader trends dominating among anarchists and the revolutionary left: the short-lived pro-Soviet enthusiasm, the creation of the French Communist Party in 1920 and the progress of mass unionisation. Grave was firmly “on the margins” of a marginalised strand,26 and his printed call to reorganise unsurprisingly fell on deaf ears.27 He was also offended and aggravated by a series of symbolic evictions, starting with the obituary which, following Guérin’s very premature death, portrayed him as the sole engineer of the paper’s post-war relaunch.28 In contrast, the reading notes which Grave contributed were rarely inserted. As a correspondent later observed, he barely had an audience now, as “everyone want[ed] to be a Bolshevist” and the communist daily L’Humanité held pride of place.29 Grave finally decided to leave, asking the editors to give up the publication’s title. This triggered a new bargaining episode which echoed the  Temps Nouveaux, no. 3, 15 September 1919, “Au travail.”  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, 14AS158, manuscript “L’anarchie, ses déformations, ses déviations,” Chapter 11, “L’Envers de la médaille.” 25  Ibid., 184–6. 26  Berry, History of the French Anarchist Movement, 35–180. 27  Temps Nouveaux, no. 11, 15 May 1920; n. 10, 15 April 1920, “Voudra-t-on nous comprendre?”. 28  Temps Nouveaux, no. 8, 15 February 1920. 29  Temps Nouveaux, no. 4, 15 October 1920. 23 24

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1916 split and testified to the influence and the legacy still imbuing the name “Les Temps Nouveaux.” The point had been made in January 1919, when the Bulletin had announced plans to relaunch Les Temps Nouveaux immediately after demobilisation: “The reputation that La Révolte, Le Révolté and Les Temps Nouveaux have acquired in all countries across the world, thanks to the high intellectual and moral conscience of men like Elisée Reclus, Peter Kropotkin and Jean Grave […] will endure tomorrow.”30 The final break came when the editors refused to grant Grave ownership of the name, arguing that the title itself was sure to bring in “1500 subscribers within months.”31 They added that they had been very conciliatory, but “Grave […] was tormented by the disease of distrust, […] contaminated with the illness of persecution.”32 At that point, Grave “separated from them completely.”33 The paper disappeared after 24 issues, and some of its contributors went on to launch the more successful albeit still marginal anarchist periodical Plus Loin (1925–1939), a predominantly anti-individualist publication whose first issue clearly went against the earlier economic model of Les Temps Nouveaux, if not Grave himself: [T]he tradition had been to subordinate the life of such an organ to the periodic generosity of its most fervent and dedicated readers. This was a despicable tradition which made it necessary to always ask for charity, and turned the publication’s director into a sort of begging monk. We are deliberately breaking with this tradition. We will not pester our best friends by constantly placing under their eyes, like a permanent reproach, the constant loss-making of these idealistic undertakings, where material contingencies […] become more important as the unavoidable deficit grows.34

Grave then embarked on his final publishing undertaking: a series of 99 pamphlets which appeared irregularly between 1920 and 1936, the first 8 of which were known as Publications du Groupe de propagande par l’écrit (Publications of the group for written propaganda). The Publications’ office was Grave’s house, 9 rue Edmond About in Robinson. This project

 Bulletin, no. 13, January 1919.  Temps Nouveaux, July 1920; Grave, Mouvement, 275. 32  Grave, Mémoires, 489. 33  Temps Nouveaux, no. 13, 15 July 1920. 34  Plus Loin, March 1925. 30 31

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continued in the spirit of its predecessors, albeit with a drastically reduced scope and readership: Having been forced, by a few “comrades” (?) […] to withdraw from a paper which was once entrusted to my control, and given that now is not the time to try and set up a new one, I am setting up the Groupe de propagande par l’écrit. For now, the group has two members. It may grow in the future, if some comrades are interested in its propaganda. For now, we propose to publish pamphlets (funds permitting), placards, manifestos, as required by circumstances and permitted by funds, of course.35

His print-centred associational ideal remained: Our dream would be to help the anarchists re-organise by making them understand the need to form groups and maintain links with one another. If nothing else is possible, if only to pool funds to buy books that they should read […]. We ask those anarchists who, amidst the chaos of disastrous ideas and events which have shaken the so-called civilised world, have not lost their minds, to help us publicise our enterprise, to circulate our publications, both future and past – of which we have a considerable stock.36

The publication combined new topics and articles with a heavy retrospective emphasis; it was primarily a vehicle for Grave’s long theoretical pieces on strategic matters past and present.37 The first issue included a letter from Kropotkin, still in Russia, to Western workers, warning them against Russian imperialism, envisaging a future Federation of free rural communes. The second pamphlet set out Grave’s analysis of the present political situation, which owned up to past errors and dejectedly surveyed the current state of the movement and society at large, in particular the encroachment of the state into public life, as it “invade[d] social activity and the lives of individuals” through centralisation and a growing civil service.38 Grave’s anti-Bolshevism continued unabated. The October 1922 issue reprinted the Manifesto and complete lists of its signatories. The Publications limped on until 1936; were it not for Grave’s absolute sincerity, it would be tempting to describe them as a vanity project intended 35  Publications de la Révolte et des Temps Nouveaux (henceforth Publications), no. 1, August 1920. 36  Publications, no. 1, August 1920. 37  Publications, no. 13, 15 May 1922, “Encore la question d’organisation.” 38  Publications, no. 2, September 1920.

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to keep links “with the few friends [he] had left,”39 or just to carry on for the sake of it. As he put it himself, “the main thing is to hold out.”40 In any case, the publication was a shadow of its pre-war predecessors, in which he deployed all his traditional editorial tactics, without success. There was no editorial team, just Grave, and the paper’s paltry set of contributors was made up of old and new contacts. Among the former were Gustave Brocher, one of the movement’s historical activists, now living in Switzerland and writing under his pen name “Rehcorb.” Another was Sadier, whose generous donation had allowed Grave to launch Les Temps Nouveaux in 1895 and who had supported and written for the paper from Argentina since then. Nettlau seems to have assisted sporadically too, by reporting on the situation in Bulgaria in the early 1920s and trying to relay Grave’s publications.41 Other regular contributors were Philippe Richard,42 the cooperativist Achille Daudé-Bancel and prolific anarchist writer and activist Achille Dauphin-Meunier. Grave published texts by Belgian anarchist Paul Gille, who also wrote for Plus Loin, most likely reprinting his material rather than receiving original contributions. Similarly, the origin of the artwork which he published is hard to ascertain in the absence of relevant editorial and personal correspondence, and it seems that much of this material was reprinted, not necessarily with permissions. The Publications’ initial print run was 1200.43 They ran with a constant deficit, which approached 4000 francs by 1924.44 Grave collected money from the sale of international stamps and old series of Les Temps Nouveaux, which had become rare and commanded a good price.45 Artistic works which had been donated to the pre-war Temps Nouveaux were also sold. Small national and international donations were received, and the paper continued to take part in humanitarian fundraising campaigns, for instance in support of Russian prisoners in France, to commemorate Kropotkin and to set up the Kropotkin museum in Russia.46 As late as 1937, he  Grave, Mémoires, 491.  Ibid. 41  IISG, Grave to Nettlau, 26 May 1922, 10 June 1922. 42  Publications, no. 14, 15 July 1922. 43  Publications, no. 4, 1920. 44  Publications, no. 28, August 1924. 45  IISG, Pierre Ramus papers, Grave to Ramus, 15 June 1924, 13 September (year unknown), 27 November 1921. 46  Publications, no. 13, May 1921; no. 33, 15 April 1925. 39 40

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donated money and even some art in support of syndicalist activist Louis Lecoin’s “Comité pour l’Espagne Libre.”47 The brochures’ “Exchange” section fluctuated in size; whilst never extensive, it retained a level of eclecticism and an extensive international coverage reminiscent of Grave’s glory days. The early issues of the Publications were exchanged with Italian, German, Czech, French, Swiss, Uruguayan, Norwegian, Peruvian, Swedish and Chinese titles.48 By 1922, exchanges were in place with a dozen Spanish-language periodicals from Argentina, Peru and Paris. Similarly, the few contacts and donors listed in each issue remained very international, which in turn ensured a continued international focus in contents, with regular but usually one-off extended coverage of a wide range of countries, emanating from individuals rather than groups. Bibliographic contents were large and diverse, with a broad social science scope in the detailed reviews penned by Grave. He retained his proactive tone, calling companions to reorganise, fund and reinvigorate the paper. However, it was all too clear that its communities had dissolved: in August 1924, a bitter Grave announced that only two comrades had responded to his appeal to disseminate the brochures.49 The Publications’ final issue contained an article on the fight against fascism in Spain, which admitted that there was no point trying to cover Spanish events extensively in such an irregular publication. Local contact details were also shared for French antifascists travelling to Spain.50 Grave was no longer a campaigner, but some traces of his former networked activism endured. The dissolution of networks of contributors, readers and supporters was also reflected in the predominance of long articles and book reviews, written chiefly by Grave, while the more participatory and conversational sections of the paper more or less vanished over time—despite Grave’s relentless and often failed efforts to initiate debates and discussions with various correspondents. Issue 99 put an end to the publication in 1936, with a simple insert declaring: “In the face of such indifference, why persist in speaking to those who are not interested? This pamphlet is the last one. I am ceasing publication.”51

 IFHS, Lecoin to Grave, 19 May 1937.  Publications, no. 5, 1921. 49  Publications, no. 28, 10 August 1924. 50  Publications, no. 99, September 1936. 51  Ibid. 47 48

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“Dreaming of Reorganising”:52 Networking Efforts Grave’s marginalisation resulted from the collapse of his earlier networks and generational changes, in a wider context of dwindling anarchist influence and ideological transformation, all of which combined to make him and his brand of anarchist communism irrelevant. The historian Richard Sonn has outlined the various crises in which the French movement was caught: “[By] the 1920s and 1930s anarchists could only look back nostalgically at a pre-war era remembered as the heroic age of anarchism […]. Anarchists were being jailed by Bolsheviks in Russia, fascists in Italy, and the dictator of Spain. In France the movement was beset by polemics and division.” The movement remained divided, “outflanked on the left by communism and offering a vision of the liberated individual in a world increasingly dedicated to masses and the state.”53 Grave, embodying the divisions of the war, shouldered part of the blame for these divisions. The Italian anarchist and editor of Le Réveil, Luigi Bertoni, later argued that, in addition to his authoritarian character, the main reason for Grave’s post-war isolation was the loss of his closest allies, that is to say his Manifesto co-signatories, who were removed geographically and/or ideologically. This illustrates the interpretative framework proposed by Gisèle Sapiro to explain the formation as well as the dissolution of networks, which stresses the impact of generational, but also positional (e.g. avant-garde vs institutional/old guard) and ideological (resistance vs collaboration), factors, either alone or combined.54 All of these factors played into Grave’s marginalisation through the weakening and disappearance of his various networks—a process in which the war was a catalyst. In addition to the realignments triggered by the war and the Russian revolution, as well as loss of contact in their chaotic aftermath, generational change often came through the deaths of long-term friends and collaborators: Domela Nieuwenhuis died on 18 November 1919, soon followed by the anarchist veteran and former Temps Nouveaux manager Amédée Denéchère, later that same month.55 And of course, Kropotkin, who had remained in episodic contact with Grave after his departure for Russia in 1917 until his death in February 1921. The paper had reprinted the rumours of his death in January 1919, causing an international stir and  Publications, no. 1, 1920.  Sonn, Sex, Violence and the Avant-Garde, 1–6. 54  Sapiro, “Réseaux, Institution(s) et Champ,” 55. 55  Temps Nouveaux, no. 6, 15 December 1919. 52 53

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prompting a denial from Kropotkin himself.56 When it did happen, Kropotkin’s death was a great personal loss for the Graves, as well as a political one, as attested by the intimate letter sent by Mabel to Sophie Kropotkin in April 1921: “It is my ambition to be to Jean the same sort of wife as you have been to Pierre – your example, the thought of that happy home you made for him, the atmosphere in which he could do his work, will always be an incentive to me to try to do likewise.”57 A full homage issue of the Publications was devoted to Kropotkin (Fig.  7.1). Its first article stated that the two friends had lost touch after Kropotkin’s return to Russia: “Engrossed in work when he arrived, he no longer had the time to correspond with his friends in the West. And soon the Bolshevik coup, by isolating Russia, prevented any correspondence.” Grave had learnt of his death from the press. The issue featured a small piece by Brocher; the longest one was Grave’s own, remembering his friend, the activist and the man, in a personal and political overview spanning five decades, which clearly announced his memoir. True to himself, Grave explained his editorial approach for the benefit of his rare readers, and his words were those of an isolated and uncompromising man. He declared himself determined to avoid at all costs “those eulogies where the tribute of a few sincere friends is always drowned under the streams of eloquence of those only looking for a pedestal” but also stated that, of those who had really known Kropotkin, “I had very few addresses, not knowing what most of them have become.”58 A later issue contained a long letter from Kropotkin, written in July 1920, which Grave had received posthumously, describing life in Russia, his current writings, his satisfaction that the war had ended but also his despair at the state of “Poor dear France! That I love so much!,” signing off “your old friend, your brother.”59 By then, Grave’s contacts remained diverse and sometimes prestigious but were no longer sustained or strong enough to wield any form of influence or significant reach. There was some continuity with his pre-war connections, but their scope was now much narrower and in many cases such contacts were rare and largely tokenistic, while the war schisms cast a long shadow over the discussions. Grave remained in distant contact with former allies who had sided with the opposite camp in the debates over the  Bulletin, no. 13 (Supplement), January 1919.  GARF, Mabel Grave to Sophie Kropotkin, 8 April 1921. 58  Publications, no. 6, 1921, 23–4. 59  Publications, no. 12, 1 April 1921. 56 57

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Fig. 7.1  Cover of the Publications issue commemorating Kropotkin

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war, as shown by cordial letters from Malatesta and a moving episodic correspondence with André Girard as late as 1934.60 Artistic links were unevenly preserved and not immune from the rifts of the war: Signac, who had sided against Grave with the Temps Nouveaux pacifists in 1916, wrote to his old friend, deploring his eviction from Les Temps Nouveaux but also confessing that “one of my greatest sorrows in these horrible times, was caused by your evolution at the start of the war.”61 Nonetheless the friendship endured, and in 1922 letters were still exchanged about the sale of Signac’s work. Grave also corresponded with Adolphe Tabarant, the founder of the Club de l’Art Social in the 1880s, continuing earlier discussions about art and politics, now infused with a shared sense of ostracism.62 There were tense exchanges with Lucien Pissarro about a cheque for 200 francs in support of Grave but involving an unreliable intermediary, much to Pissarro’s aggravation.63 Grave’s writings were also requested for non-anarchist publications, such as the cross-left Le Progrès civique and the prestigious La Grande Revue, whose editor Claude Barjac asked to reprint two chapters from Grave’s memoir.64 In contrast, however, when some of Grave’s landmark works from the 1890s published by Stock went out of print, the publisher was forthright about his lack of interest in reprinting them and his willingness to cede rights altogether.65 Grave also acceded to a degree of official and institutional recognition in his last years, at a time when pre-war anarchism was becoming a subject of academic interest outside the movement’s ranks and some of its former sympathisers were now in positions of influence or indeed part of the establishment. Thus, a certain E.  Daubigny, a Chargé d’Affaires at the French Foreign Office, contacted Grave regarding his research on Brazil’s anarchist colony La Cecilia, which required access to some back issues of his periodicals.66 In 1936, socialist deputy Aristide Jobert invited Grave to write in his paper; Jobert remembered having narrowly avoided military court in 1891 because he carried La Révolte in his bag.67 Such links were

 IFHS, Malatesta to Grave, 22 June 1925; IFHS, Girard to Grave, 29 December 1934.  IFHS, Signac to Grave, n.d. 62  IFHS, Tabarant to Grave, 12 April 1922. 63  IFHS, Pissarro to Grave, 31 March and 8 April 1920. 64  IFHS, Barjac to Grave, 4 February 1933. 65  IFHS, Stock [signatory illeg.] to Grave, 16 December 1922. 66  IFHS, Daubigny to Grave, 23 and 28 January 1935. 67  IFHS, Jobert to Grave, 3 October 1936. 60 61

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a very distant echo of the manifold influence of Grave and his publications before the war as well as of his past status as an intellectual. The First World War had also greatly damaged Grave’s international standing. His work continued to circulate, but older writings far outweighed new production.68 In 1918, he resumed his contributions to La Libre Fédération before it merged with Les Temps Nouveaux, writing about the League of Nations, Cooperation and the Russian revolution.69 In the 1920s, new articles by Grave were published in English in the anarchist periodical The Road to Freedom, edited in New Jersey by the Czech-­ American Hippolyte Havel—himself an internationalist during the war— alongside texts by Magón, Harry Kelly and Emma Goldman, thus bridging the war divide in a rare print display of pre-war unity.70 Grave remained proactive and eclectic in his networking efforts, as evidenced by a 1920 letter written to Mabel by the English poet Edmund Gosse acknowledging receipt of a book.71 Arif Dirlik has also written about Grave’s attempt to weigh in on Chinese anarchists’ debates over collaboration with the Guomindang nationalist party after 1927, by referring to his and Kropotkin’s support of the war as a necessary compromise in 1914 and criticising the anarchists’ inflexibility—only to be told in reply that Chinese anarchists would not support “a nationalist movement that glorified patriotism.”72 Grave also met the Chinese anarchist writer Ba Jin in Paris in 1927, with Paul Reclus—a gathering which is frequently cited in retellings of Ba Jin’s French sojourn, although its details are unknown and it appears to have been an isolated encounter.73 One exception to Grave’s international demise is his sustained contribution, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, to La Revista Blanca. These can be explained by the strength of pre-war bonds but also by the fact that the publication’s editors, Urales/ Montseny and Gustavo/Mañé, were long-term collaborators of Grave and had been in the minority of Spanish anarchists who had sided with him

 A Batalha, 20 December 1919, reproducing an extract from Terre Libre.  La Libre Fédération, 21 July 1918; 15 September 1918, 30 November 1918; 15 December 1918. 70  The Road to Freedom, December 1924, January 1925. 71  IFHS, Gosse to Mabel Grave, 17 June 1920. 72  Arif Dirlik, “The Path Not Taken: The Anarchist Alternative in Chinese Socialism, 1921–1927,” International Review of Social History 34, no. 1 (1989): 26. 73  Angel Pino, “BA Jin,” in Dictionnaire des anarchistes, accessed 21 July 2020, https:// maitron.fr/spip.php?article154721. 68 69

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and Kropotkin over the war.74 This did not prevent an argument over individualism between Grave and Urales to unfold in the pages of the Publications.75 No grudge was borne, and in March 1936, La Revista published a long illustrated homage article to Grave, its “82 year old friend” and “one of the major theorists of anarchism.”76 There were also occasional traces of the high esteem and even affection in which Grave had once been held, not least with the generous donation from Switzerland which Grave received in 1919 on behalf of “Rodolphe Shaerer who, like me, always had a great veneration for you, since our youth, when we were readers of ‘Le Révolté’ which you edited then (in Geneva, I believe). My friend intended for you up to a quarter of everything that he left.”77 Such generosity was testament to the lasting influence of Grave’s writings in many individual trajectories and to the feelings of personal sympathy which, occasionally, he continued to elicit through his selfless dedication to the cause. Until his death, Grave received such individual testimonies of support, affection and admiration—be they from individuals cancelling their subscriptions to Les Temps Nouveaux in protest against Grave’s eviction after “sacrificing his entire life […] to propagate and diffuse these ideas which are dear to me,”78 or from old acquaintances like his former lawyer Saint-Auban, expressing friendship and enduring admiration for “the intellectual probity which is your hallmark.”79

The Post-mortem of the Heroic Period and the War Personal letters written by Mabel allow glimpses of the Graves’ life in 1920s. In friendly and light-hearted exchanges with their neighbours, the Cornelissens, she discussed Grave’s dedicated gardening and occasional trips to the south of France, hinting at a pleasant life without dwelling on lost friendships—a far cry from her husband’s customary remonstrances.80 His writings certainly paint a different picture, in which the war continued to loom large and where attempts at explaining and justifying the views of  Yeoman, “Print culture,” 227.  Publications, no. 37, 30 November 1925. 76  La Revista Blanca, 6 March 1936. 77  IFHS, Charles Kachelhofer to Grave, 25 September 1919. 78  IFHS, Zénon Roland to Administration des Temps Nouveaux, 4 August 1920. 79  IFHS, Saint-Auban to Grave, 6 January 1925. 80  IISG, Christiaan Cornelissen Collection, Mabel Holland Grave to Annie Cornelissen, 21 April, 1925, 10 April 1925, 20 June 1925, 11 February 1926. 74 75

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pro-Entente anarchists remained a key focus, which resurfaced periodically until his death. Grave had been indirectly associated with Guérin and Depré’s 1919 piece, “A propos de notre attitude pendant la guerre,”81 which sought to anchor the pro-war argument in the anarchist tradition, against accusations of betrayal: “We considered that revolutionaries could not remain merely passive, that they had to join the fray […]. This does not mean that we were under any illusions regarding a complete victory of the principles of law and freedom.”82 The statement was backed up by quotations from Proudhon, Reclus, Bakunin and Pelloutier. Much of Grave’s subsequent writing repeated similar arguments. While overall he remained faithful to his earlier positions and perennial attachment to print as a medium for propaganda, his memoir even reassessed how his preference for writing rather than public speaking had impacted the decisive first few days of the war: “To be understood, to be listened to, I should have gone from meeting to meeting, taken to the platform, attended groups. But I was not a public speaker and I had no time to carry out this organising work.”83 After their jagged relationship over the years, Grave’s extended correspondence with Malato at the end of the war brings candid insights into the interpretations of two anarchist veterans, permeated with regret and the awareness of their generational and ideological relegation. Discussing the Manifesto, Malato regretted the elitism implicit in its initial name, Manifeste des anarchistes intellectuels: “This amounted to creating a vain aristocracy who should not parade in a popular movement.”84 The epistolary exchange also looked back on their respective militant styles. Grave’s sadness and resentment can be inferred from Malato’s replies: “I fully understand that, despite your tenacity and strength of character, the sensation of having always been alone must be weighing you down and making you sad. Such is the destiny of those pursuing an elevating ideal, who aim to bring the masses to it […]. Who, among us, was understood?”85 This sense of defeated idealism united both men: “Through all our thunderous discussions there remained a selfless effort towards a lofty ideal.” 81  Temps Nouveaux, no. 2, 15 August 1919; no. 5, 15 November 1919; no. 6, 15 December 1919. 82  Temps Nouveaux, no. 5, 15 November 1919. 83  Grave, Mémoires, 446. 84  IFHS, Malato to Grave, 6 April 1918. 85  Ibid.

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The war and its consequences were central to Grave’s extensive correspondence with Nettlau, which covers a wide range of themes: memorialisation and historiography (examined below), post-war nation creations and, inevitably, the Manifesto.86 These exchanges unfolded in what both men perceived to be “a climate of physical and moral collapse” punctuated by the deaths of comrades.87 Nonetheless, Nettlau remained a collaborator who wrote for Grave’s publications and circulated them internationally, as well as a sparring partner, and possibly Grave’s most sustained contact after 1918 and until 1937. Their disagreement over national independence focused on the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the very principle of national emancipation. As pointed out by Bert Altena, Nettlau did not share the anarchists’ widespread support for the new Slavonic entities, in accordance with his principled hostility to the state but also, implicitly, his “hatred of the Slavonic peoples” and longing for a resurrection of pre-war Germany and Austro-Hungary.88 He described the “undeniable” right to national emancipation as an “illusion” amounting to “an individual monopolising of social wealth” orchestrated by high politics, and therefore at odds with both socialism and anarchism.89 Grave’s own emancipatory nationalism was therefore deeply misguided: “You are flying high and I remain on this unhappy earth.”90 Many of their exchanges returned to the Manifesto, oddly referred to as the “1917 Manifesto”—a mistake in the date which indicates that the Manifesto had not yet been established as the important historical document which it is now. In 1922, after several long exchanges, Grave bluntly wrote to Nettlau: What you cannot forgive me, even though you don’t mention a word of it, is the declaration which a few of us signed in 1917. And this is what you use to saddle me with a patriotism which only ever existed in the imagination of those bringing it up. […] We only considered the regression which the victory of German militarism would have inflicted on all of mankind, on the idea of freedom.91 86  A.  Costes, “Lettres de Max Nettlau à Jean Grave,” L’Actualité de l’Histoire 26 (Jan– March 1959): 1–37. 87  IISG, Nettlau Collection, Grave to Nettlau, 10 June 1922. 88  Bert Altena, “A Networking Historian: The Transnational, the National and the Patriotic in and around Max Nettlau’s Geschichte der Anarchie,” in Reassessing the Transnational Turn, 74–5. 89  IFHS, Nettlau to Grave, 27 June 1923. 90  Ibid. 91  IFHS, Grave to Nettlau, 10 June 1922.

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After a swipe at Nettlau’s own “patriotism” and pro-Germanism, Grave simply concluded: “And if the Declaration which a few of us signed seems to contradict some of my articles, it is because the circumstances turned out to be not as I had imagined them when I wrote those articles.”92 As discussed in our previous chapter, this was at the very least a truthful recognition of Grave’s evolving position between 1914 and 1916.

(Self-)Memorialisation: An Honorary Republican? Commenting on the genre of political biography under the Third Republic, Sylvie Aprile has pointed out that the end of life tends to be neglected by historians, “expedited in a few sentences confined to the terse expression of the reasons leading either to exclusion or to a withdrawal from politics.”93 And yet, as Aprile argues, these are essential years, when activists will assess their militant career and create the image which they intend to leave. Grave provides a case in point; memorialisation was a major focus of his later life, with an emphasis on score-settling, self-­ justification and historiography. It matched a wider trend among post-war anarchists who, as noted by Sonn, “were particularly beholden to the past.”94 Grave had difficulties in finding a publisher for his memoir. In 1925, Eugène Fasquelle turned down his book proposal, commenting that it was of limited interest and unlikely to sell well.95 That same year, Malatesta amicably expressed regret that Grave was struggling to find a publisher, pre-ordering five copies of the book and assuring him that it would be a very interesting and informative read, eventually.96 The years passed; Grave suffered the loss of close family members, with the sudden death in January 1927 of his brother-in-law Isambard Owen, always “such a kind friend.” Owen had collapsed and died within hours while in Paris with his family. Mabel commented soon after that she found Jean “thin and tired too,”97 but on 17 January 1929, it was she who passed away.

 Ibid.  Sylvie Aprile, “Vieillir en politique: Genèse d’un processus,” in Figures du Vieillir, ed. Alain Montandon (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2005), 107. 94  Sonn, Sex, Violence and the Avant-Garde, 10. 95  IFHS, Fasquelle to Grave, 17 February 1925. 96  IFHS, Malatesta to Grave, 22 June 1925. 97  GARF. 92 93

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In the meantime, Grave had found a publisher, most likely through the intervention of René de Marmande, a long-term campaign ally of Les Temps Nouveaux briefly affiliated to communism after the war and a Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (LDH) member. This appears to have been a disappointing outcome for Grave, and Eugène Merle, the editor of the Revue Littéraire, tried to comfort him: “I reiterate that you have written an extraordinarily magnificent book. This book has been published, definitely not by the greatest publisher in Paris, but by the most intelligent one. For you, Crès [Georges Crès, from publishing house Les Œuvres Représentatives] is not a publisher; he’s a friend, and he is a friend who really loves you.”98 The memoir, finally published in 1930 with the title Le Mouvement libertaire sous la Troisième République, was a labour of love—a feeling perceived and echoed by the painter Charles Angrand: “My dear Grave, I will read with the utmost interest your next book, your memoir, in short, ideas and struggles and the courage and faith throughout your life.”99 It was dedicated to Mabel, “the woman who often inspired me and was always my companion and my comfort.” It was also a compilation of anecdotes which, more often than not, reflected poorly on Grave and his various opponents, within an overall narrative which repeatedly dismissed individualism and reasserted Grave’s positions, only occasionally admitting to small errors in judgement. The book was extensively reviewed in the political press and inaugurated a pattern for subsequent discussions of Grave: now ignored or reviled by revolutionaries, particularly individualist anarchists, he and the movement which he embodied were positively reappraised by parliamentary socialists and left-wing republicans. Grave was now a metonym for pre-war anarchist communism: both were unanimously regarded as finished, but open to historical reassessment. Socialists and republicans, most likely reassured by the long-term installation of the Republic in France and mollified by Grave’s support for the Sacred Union during the war, as well as his earlier convergences with socialist causes and campaigns, looked at pre-war anarchist communism quite favourably, as a valuable historical moment which could be selectively integrated into a republican narrative. In contrast, ideological and personal hostility remained rife among revolutionaries. Grave’s idealism and his repeated dismissals of anarchist individualism were two recurring themes on which commentators differed.  IFHS, Merle to Grave, 2 April 1930.  IFHS, Angrand to Grave, 21 July [no year].

98 99

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Both Grave and the memoir received brutal reviews across the revolutionary press. Even Malato was ruthless in his assessment of the autobiography and its author, judging once and for all that he and Grave could never get on durably because their temperaments were so different; the book, “full of often inaccurate, resentful gossip,” was a cruel and unfair hatchet job on many comrades. Grave himself was only redeemed by his perseverance in keeping his paper afloat.100 Another scornful review, in the individualist publication La Revue anarchiste, was commensurate with Grave’s own attacks on the individualists—unsurprisingly so since La Revue’s co-founders, Fernand Fortin and Georges Salanson, had strong connections with the illegalist circles openly abhorred by Grave. The memoir was summarised as “the chatter of an impotent concierge afflicted with jaundice, or the world as understood by Jean Grave.” Grave was accused of distorting facts, “hateful” slander and “speaking in the name of an entire movement, when one only represents a very small part of it.” He was copiously mocked for getting married; overall, the publication of the book was considered as monumental a “gaffe” as the Manifesto of the Sixteen itself.101 L’En dehors, another prominent individualist publication, ridiculed Grave for his life choices, when he did not respect those of the individualists. Levelling accusations of embourgeoisement, the unsigned piece pointed out that Grave only did what he liked best—that is to say propaganda—and had married outside his class: “Madame Grave was a person who belonged to the bourgeoisie, distinguished, an artist”; Grave would “spend his last days in a villa, in the southern suburbs of Paris. He has got by – and was right to do so – like the most vulgar of these individualists whom he is persecuting so hypocritically.”102 The review contained specific references to facts dating back to 1912, pointing to truly divergent interpretations of the movement’s history, although the tone was far from academic: “Reading the book feels like being trapped in a lunatic asylum.”103 Grave was accused of “megalomania” on account of his self-righteousness. Both publications echoed each other, as La Revue anarchiste gloated at L’En Dehors’s Emile Armand “knock[ing] out poor Jean Grave” in an  Le Peuple: organe quotidien du syndicalisme, 25 January 1938.  La Revue anarchiste, June 1930. 102  L’En Dehors, Supplement, March 1930. 103  Ibid. 100 101

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article entitled “a case of senile dementia: M. Jean Grave.”104 Le Libertaire, while advertising the book, delivered a terse but devastating depiction of Grave as a “doddering oldie” who “should just shut up.”105 The Communist review La Critique sociale was similarly critical of Grave, his sectarianism and constant accusations of spying, his refusal to help anyone from the Bonnot gang and his wartime attempts to fraternise with British Labour politician Ramsay McDonald and the UDC; readers were advised to “use speech marks when calling Grave ‘libertaire.’”106 The individualists’ contempt for Grave was expressed on other occasions, although clearly he was no longer worthy of sustained attention: a later article by British anarchist Guy Aldred in La Revue anarchiste summarised tersely that “[i]n 1892, La Révolte, the organ of Jean Grave and Peter Kropotkin, was the paper of idealist anarchism. This idealism did not prevent Grave and Kropotkin from placing themselves, some twenty years later, at the service of the First World War. But it did force them, in 1892, to repudiate Ravachol, the man of propaganda by the deed, and to stigmatise him as a thief and a murderer.”107 At the other end of the political spectrum, there was a degree of glee in the far-right L’Action française, where Charles Maurras cited at length Kropotkin’s letter to Grave urging him to join the war, as an example of a “staggering reversal of opinion.” The paper’s review concluded simply that Grave’s memoir’s “only merit is to show us the failure of anarchist ideas.”108 The contrast with the republican and socialist press was marked. Georges Clemenceau’s L’Homme Libre briefly recounted Grave’s “hard and turbulent life,” dedicated to his ideal, summarising the key causes which he and the movement had served from the Commune to the war, seeing the book as capturing “the idealism of an entire generation” and noting Grave’s “often vehement, never bilious” tone, before concluding: “His Souvenirs, let us read them with attention, and even respect. It’s history.”109 The left-republican Le Petit Provençal spoke favourably of a man who had remained “faithful to an ideal with obviously debatable tendencies.”110 La Liberté derided Grave’s claim that the movement had  L’En dehors, Supplement to issue 179, “Fin mars 1930.”  Le Libertaire, 29 March 1930, 3 January 1931. 106  La Critique sociale, July 1931. 107  La Revue anarchiste, January–March 1935. 108  L’Action française, 16 and 22 April 1930. 109  L’Homme Libre, 20 May 1930. 110  Le Petit Provençal, 13 August 1931. 104 105

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been subverted by individualists and might otherwise have succeeded in its revolutionary aims: “This is so puerile! That a man going on 80 should still entertain such an absurd and delirious chimera, now, beggars belief.” In this instance, however, the jibe was primarily directed at the Communist party, which had “absorbed” anarchist activists.111 These reviews show that the reasons for Grave’s fall from grace exceeded the war and extended to his doctrinal stances, perceived conservatism and relentless hostility to individualist anarchism, confirming that the war was a catalyst rather than the sole cause in his demise. They also hint at the partial absorption of Grave and Belle Epoque anarchism into republican narratives. Five years later, the tributes paid to Grave on his 80th birthday confirmed the evolution suggested by the reception of his memoir: while he was abandoned or indeed rejected by his former associates, socialists looked on him more favourably. The main birthday celebration was a “banquet” held at the restaurant L’Ermitage, in the town of  Plessis-­ Robinson, organised by the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme. This was chaired by Grave’s old collaborators, Ferdinand Herold and René de Marmande, as well as deputy mayor Journoux and local deputy Jean Longuet. As illustrated by the reception of his memoir, Grave symbolised pre-war anarchist communism, so the banquet was also a celebration of this movement, which Longuet described as “an antidote or useful counterweight to the rush towards slavery” of rising authoritarian fascism. It was also a celebration of old partnerships, as Herold “recalled with a great happiness of expression his collaboration to Les Temps Nouveaux, 45 years ago.” It is indeed clear that some of Grave’s links with LDH members were well established and had endured longer than his partnerships with anarchists. Grave was also, oddly, praised for his association with the CGT and participation in the Dreyfus Affair and his faithfulness to the anarchist cause. One article praised the octogenarian’s “vitality, good mood, ardour, and comforting optimism.” He was moved and reaffirmed in his thanks “his unshakable belief in mankind’s complete liberation.”112 Reporting on the event, Le Peuple recounted Grave’s career as told in his memoir and concluded: “The friends of Les Temps Nouveaux, Jean Grave’s friends are now scattered everywhere, some have passed away. But the old libertarian activist remains optimistic. He remains convinced, in his words […]. It is this vigorous optimism, this faithful dedication to the  La Liberté, 5 August 1930.  Le Populaire, 4 February 1935.

111 112

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cause – even if this cause is not ours – that we want to salute here, in homage to the 80 years of Jean Grave.”113 La République’s front-page article “La Société mourante” recounted the banquet, recalling the author’s own interest in Grave and Kropotkin, the 1894 trials, and acknowledging that both Grave and anarchism had more or less sunk into oblivion.114 Grave also received letters from republican representatives for his birthday: the socialist (SFIO) deputy for the Hautes-Alpes constituency, Ernest Lafon, wrote a letter declaring that “[he] would like to join all those who, to this day, have brought the heartfelt homage of their memory to the man, the writer, the militant.”115 Grave almost appeared like a minor socialist grandee, due to the historical legacy of the anarchist communist movement and his own enduring friendships. His old friend Delesalle could not attend the banquet but sent a card from Jersey: “I am happy that your children (for this is how I see Sandrine and Lucien [most likely the Benoît children]) will be by your side to enjoy your triumph – a triumph that is full of justice.”116

The Making of Historical Oblivion Grave died on 8 December 1939, in Vienne-en-Val, in the Loiret region. Maurice Dommanget, a revolutionary syndicalist and an important historian of the French revolutionary tradition, noted in a letter to Delesalle that barely anyone had written about Grave’s passing: “And so, this poor Grave? He is now in his grave. They are all dying, the veterans, one by one! And to think that in Le Popu [Le Populaire], not even Dunois wrote an obituary.”117 There were in fact a few obituaries, which provided another opportunity to assess Grave (once again presented as a writer and sociologist), the nature and evolution of anarchism and the trajectories of those who had once championed it. What Dommanget might have in fact noted was the indifference towards Grave within his former camp, as most obituaries came from the socialist rather than the anarchist press. Announcing the focus on the cultural and intellectual influence of anarchism which was to become an important strand of the movement’s and  Le Peuple, 30 January 1935.  La République, 8 February 1935. 115  IFHS, Ernest Lafon to Grave, 6 February 1935. 116  IFHS, Delesalle to Grave, 7 February 1935. 117  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, 14AS20, Dommanget to “Chers camarades,” 30 December 1939. 113 114

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of Grave scholarship, one obituary remarked that “many of those who now occupy prominent social positions climbed those stairs [at 140 rue Mouffetard], because anarchism held pride of place in intellectual circles around 1890.”118 The extensive list which followed mentioned Barrès’s celebration of Kropotkin in the pages of La Plume, Clemenceau’s support for indicted anarchists in La Justice and, of course, the free illustrations given by now-famous artists. In the intellectual, left-leaning Marianne, Jean Ajalbert, Grave’s former lawyer and literary contributor, now a fellow of the prestigious Académie Goncourt, surveyed the movement’s pre-war history and great influence and paid tribute to his “visionary” friend, with whom he had remained in distant contact.119 Le Midi Socialiste reprinted the obituary from L’Œuvre by the socialist writer, historian and politician Alexandre Zévaès; this balanced (if occasionally erroneous) survey of Grave’s life and views until 1914 stressed his importance as a movement veteran despite his propensity to pomposity as well as the unappealing format but “high theoretical standard” of his publications.120 While Grave’s Publications had stopped in 1936, and he has not left any writings on the run-up to the Second World War, the immediate context elicited comparisons with Nazism in obituaries. Writing in Le Temps, the journalist Jean Lefranc was mournful and nostalgic: “Everything that was honest, sincere, selfless about Jean Grave and his young converts is repudiated by our parvenu wreckers.”121 In contrast, the satirical journalist Clément Vautel was scathing: Jean Grave, who has just died in his eighties, has been well and truly forgotten, and for a long time too. There is nothing as outdated, antiquated and garish as his theories, conceptions and anticipations: he was another prophet who was thoroughly mistaken… While the author of Moribund Society and Anarchy continued to imagine his utopia where everyone would live as they wished, socialism, communism, fascism and Nazism have sacrificed the individual on the altar of the state […]. The book to be written today should be called: Moribund Society and Dictatorship.122

 IISG, Nettlau Collection, Item 3633, “Ceux de l’anarchie.”  Marianne, 27 December 1939. 120  Le Midi Socialiste, 17 December 1939. 121  Le Temps, 14 December 1939, “En marge.” 122  Clément Vautel, “Mon film: l’anarchie, vieille balançoire,” n.d., press cutting in IFHS, Delesalle Archive, 14AS20. 118 119

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The most insightful obituary was Luigi Bertoni’s nuanced and lucid assessment in Le Réveil, which heralded the way Grave is remembered to this day by most sympathetic commentators. Bertoni was lukewarm regarding Grave’s theoretical achievements, which he regarded as “a considerable body of work which is not without value for anarchist propaganda, whilst lacking the inspired breath of pages by a Kropotkin, or the brilliant simplicity and logic of Malatesta.” He was also unequivocally critical of Grave’s “authoritarian” temper. Bertoni stressed the importance of Grave’s publishing contribution (“In this history of our French and even international movement, these papers played a foremost role”) and rightly predicted that “his name will remain bound with the history of anarchism, which he served with courage, dedication and passion – a passion which sometimes blinded him.”123 Despite a few historiographic acknowledgments along the way, it would be several decades before Jean Maitron’s works resurrected Grave, as an important theorist and activist and as a historian of the movement. Maitron’s rehabilitation was largely effected through his 1951 Histoire du mouvement anarchiste, in which he emphasised the organising role of the press and acknowledged Grave’s influence through print and as a theorist before 1914; he also delivered a clinical and rather sympathetic retelling of the war debates in the second volume of his authoritative study. This paved the way for further studies, in France and internationally, exploring Grave’s thought, journalism and artistic connections. It was also a long time before Grave’s contribution as a chronicler and archivist of the movement was fully assessed. Even in his prime, it was a widely held misconception that Grave was a tranquil man without history, steeped in periodical publishing, as stated in the very first lines of this 1908 portrait: “There is not much to say about this man. Like happy peoples, Jean Grave has no history.”124 The discovery of the extended version of his memoir, “Souvenirs d’un révolté” (Memoir of a Rebel), in the Paul Delesalle archive at the Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale, was another turning point; the manuscript was edited and published in 1973, with the title Quarante ans de propagande anarchiste (40 Years of Anarchist Propaganda; reprinted in 2009 with the title Mémoires d’un anarchiste). It is now widely regarded as “a major work for knowledge on the history of the French

 Le Réveil anarchiste, 30 December 1939.  Les Hommes du jour, no. 24, 1908.

123 124

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anarchist movement,” despite all the personal and political biases noted above, as well as many factual errors.125 Archival dispersion was another factor in Grave’s oblivion. He did not have any direct descendants, so upon his death his estate went to his niece on Mabel’s side, Madame Laligant, and his niece and nephew, the Benoît children. His book collection disappeared a few months later; Grave had hoped to save it by selling it to Chinese disciples. The volumes, wrapped and stored in many boxes, disappeared in the chaos of 1940, when civilians left Paris in droves as the German army invaded France. The correspondence, however, remained in the possession of Madame Laligant and her brothers.126 This was a truncated collection, since, almost a decade earlier, Grave had had to part with some of his correspondence: “Kropotkin’s other letters are in the hands of [Kropotkin’s widow] Sophie who, when she came by, asked them for the Museum. Although this was a great sacrifice for me, I did not have the heart to say no to her. Unfortunately, nothing will replace all those which I had to destroy during my troubles with the police.”127 This stands in contrast with Max Nettlau’s admittedly far larger collection, which Nettlau himself sold to the International Institute of Social History (IISH/ IISG) in Amsterdam and which has been professionally curated and publicised, its importance being immediately understood. In contrast, the main two archives of Grave’s correspondence, at the Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale (IFHS) (presumably from the Laligant family) and the State Archive of the Russian Federation (where Grave’s letters to Kropotkin are held) have suffered from multiple relocations and partial disappearance and, to this day, are not easy to access and have not been digitised, unlike much of the IISG’s Nettlau Collection. Nonetheless, Grave was a man of the printed and epistolary word, and his ceaseless liaising work, through his correspondence and publications, made a significant contribution to the creation of several important anarchist collections. The gradual accumulation of documents and historical fact-checking are documented in Grave’s correspondences. Thus, in 1901, the German scholar Paul Eltzbacher sought to purchase a great quantity of material from Grave and requested him to ask his readers if they would be willing to sell him out of print publications, in any language. Eltzbacher made it clear that he was “not a bibliophile or a collector, and that these  Davranche and Maitron, “Jean Grave,” Dictionnaire des anarchistes.  Chambelland and Maitron, “La correspondance de Jean Grave,” 39–46. 127  IISG, Nettlau collection, Grave to Nettlau, 2 September 1930. 125 126

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publications might prove to be of some use in [his] hands.”128 However, despite Eltzbacher’s protests, this is one instance where the search for rare anarchist material became similar to antiquarian networks, which have contributed to building important anarchist collections. Thus, letters from Grave can be found in many of the major IISG anarchist collections, and some of his rarer print material now available at various archival centres appears to have been obtained precisely through these collectors’ networks—for instance, the IISG’s copies of the post-1920 Publications carry the Austrian anarchist Pierre Ramus’s stamp and are likely to have been acquired directly from Grave at the time of their appearance.129 The same observation gives added historical relevance to Grave’s epistolary exchanges with Nettlau, which, from the late 1880s onwards, facilitated two-way circulations of global anarchist literature as well as of primary material, which were then published in Grave’s papers. From the 1880s, Nettlau was an essential intermediary between Grave and various international anarchist groups and individuals; in return, Grave helped his colleague secure anarchist publications for his collection. These exchanges continued well into the 1930s, when Nettlau, discussing his collection process, wrote to Grave: Thank you very much for sending me the Publications for free. I am still missing numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 38, 40. That’s a lot. If you could let me have them while ensuring that there is no mismatch in the collections, I would be delighted. You know my state of complete ruin. I no longer buy anything; I am a sub-proletarian in perpetuity, but always a keeper in the care of old papers and of those still reaching me.130

Both men discussed anarchist history, by locating sources, scrutinising past ideological positions and authoritative texts, going back over specific dates and events—all of which are likely to have fed into the writing of Nettlau’s landmark Geschichte der Anarchie (History of anarchism), published from 1925.131 While Grave’s historiographic work did not have the same scope or indeed reliability as Nettlau’s, “the Herodotus of anarchy,” his was a major, manifold contribution, much of which was embedded in the daily fabric of his editorial work. Through his publications, letters and  IFHS, Eltzbacher to Grave, 24 November 1901.  Publications, no. 12, April 1921. 130  IISG, Nettlau collection, Nettlau to Grave, 15 April 1926. 131  IFHS, Nettlau to Grave, 23 June 1929, 8 October 1930, 29 December 1933. 128 129

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memoirs, he was a historian of his own career, his periodicals and the movement, although his interpretations were partisan and his archival and historiographic contribution was durably tainted by the war and his own unpopularity. He showed a keen awareness of the historical importance of anarchism and his role within it: the manuscript of his memoir contained a heavily annotated passage staking his “claim to make/take part [sic] in history […]. There are facts which, however anecdotal they may seem, need to be noted.”132

Conclusion: Grave’s Many Legacies The Manifesto of the Sixteen and Grave’s wartime position, compounded by his dogmatic approach, however sincere and well intentioned, have made it difficult to rehabilitate him in activist circles. While naming publications and groups after influential figures remains a thriving anarchist tradition, there have only been rare nods to Grave, somehow sealing his post-war public oblivion, if not anathema. The influential anarchist paper Le Monde libertaire defined itself as “heir to the classical Libertaire, a paper to organise, a paper for militants, and of Jean Grave’s Les Temps nouveaux, a paper of culture open to all free minds.”133 Internationally, variations on the name Temps Nouveaux—a reference to Kropotkin and Grave’s publication—were not uncommon in the pre-1914 heyday. As late as July 1939, the Hanoi-based review Ngay Moi, whose title translated into “Les Temps Nouveaux,” was a similar reference, although another local publication judged that it was so far removed from libertarian socialism that Kropotkin, Reclus or Grave would have “screamed in horror” at the nod.134 After 1944, some of Grave’s articles were reprinted in Le Libertaire, as part of their series “Les classiques de l’anarchisme.”135 Grave’s memory and legacy have undoubtedly fared better in academia, where his theoretical influence is widely acknowledged and his remarkable networking, campaigning  IFHS, Fonds Delesalle, “Souvenirs d’un revolté,” n.p., “Avant-propos.”  Maurice Joyeux, “Du ‘Libertaire’ au ‘Monde Libertaire’. Histoire du journal de l’organisation Des Anarchistes,” Volonté anarchiste no. 25 (1984): 13. Accessed 27 July 2020, http://www.antimythes.fr/a_propos_du_mouvement_anarchiste/presse_anarchiste/ jm_monde_libertaire.pdf. 134  Revue Franco-Annamite, 16 July 1939. 135  See list available at http://www.lelibertaire.fr/catalogue/auteur.php?id_auteur=240, accessed 28 July 2020. 132 133

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and artistic contribution continue to be reassessed, with newfound vigour in the last decade or so, as part of the renewed interest in the history of anarchism. These contrasted memorial fortunes, it could be argued, have sealed perceptions of Grave which were already at play in his prime.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion: The Binding Ties of Anarchism

This book was finished in lockdown, in the spring of 2020. Suddenly, the story of Grave, writing away and corresponding with the entire world from the seclusion of his attic, through exhilarating times of revolutionary buoyancy but also repression, war and dereliction, gained poignant resonance, as a reminder that militant, professional and affective networks have long been able to transcend physical boundaries and partly redraw official maps. It seemed worth restating that ideas circulated when individuals would or could not. Part of these transnational networks and circulations belong to a wider narrative of “great acceleration” and intensified communication in this period. However, the extraordinary circulations of print, personnel and ideas which formed the great anarchist diaspora of these years are also a testimony of the resonance of anarchism during the few decades of this heroic period and, as pointed out by Jesse Cohn, of “the power of the radical word to traverse space and time.”1 This, too, found a striking contemporary echo when the Black Lives Matter movement erupted transnationally in June 2020. Grave offers a moving individual and generational story of solidarity and marginalisation, which embraces the history of the Third Republic from the Second Industrial Revolution to the eve of the Second World 1  Jesse Cohn, “Traces of the Revista Única. Appearances and Disappearances of Anarchism in Steubenville, 1909–1973,” in Writing the Revolution, 153.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7_8

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War and espouses the trajectory of the transnational anarchist movement in an era of intense activism and circulation. Historians of internationalism and social movements also have much to glean from Grave’s networked militancy. The networked, multiscalar and intensely relational nature of pre-1914 anarchism and print culture, which formed the working premise of this book, is confirmed by the example of Grave; it also sheds light on two important dimensions. First, the networks of anarchism were global and multidirectional, and ideas circulated and were reinterpreted across a wide range of regional, national and ideological contexts. Grave’s example illustrates not only the remarkable scope of these circulations but also their fluctuating temporalities and spatial dynamics, which were shaped by the networks in which they originated. In brief, the anarchist movement was global—intentionally and proactively so—but some individuals, groups and areas were more connected than others. Thus, in Grave’s case, Frenchand Spanish-language exchanges and solidarities constitute the strongest transnational nexus. However, this is, as always, subject to possible revision: as stated in the introduction, exhaustivity was always a distant hope given the sheer volume of Grave’s print output and his connections in France and internationally. The second conclusion is a strong case for a focus on horizontalism over diffusionism: circulations were so intense and complex during the peak periods, with such a high degree of virality, underpinned by such attention to the specific contexts and efforts to adapt, that emphasising unidirectionality and hierarchical claims is not a very fruitful entry point, even if Grave and his papers did feature prominently in these webs of exchange. Grave might have aspired to a specific role amidst these circulations, and achieved it at some point; however, while he certainly displayed a keen awareness of the importance of his publications, stressing his insistence on doctrinal rectitude and gatekeeping is equally inaccurate, offering a very truncated and somewhat ungenerous interpretation of seven decades of relentless activism. An apocryphal Grave citation stated that “[i]f ever […] the history of this movement is written, if ever it is revealed how the anarchist publications have lived, how they have amassed sou by sou the sums needed for their appearance, the world will be astounded at the proofs of solidarity and devotion which will thus be brought to light. It will appreciate what a force conviction is, especially among the most disinherited.”2 Grave was among those exhibiting this sustained and often selfless dedication to the 2

 Cited by Sanborn, Paris and the Social Revolution, 70.

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cause; in response to the effort to decipher his unique leadership style, what comes through above all is his unrelenting and sincere commitment to anarchist journalism and organisation. Cliched as it may seem, it is unsurprising, but still moving, to find frequent references to the paper as his—and Kropotkin’s—“child,” or “boy.”3 This authenticity pervades his own summary of his calling, and must remain the starting point to understand his life: One can only dare to live this life for as long as one is in ideological communion with those they are addressing. […] As for me, for twenty years, I have given all my goodwill, all my strength, all my work, to make this the paper of an idea, not of a man or a clique. Maybe I was wrong? That I do not know; but, be it as it may, all I ever aimed for was the search for the truth, and to this task I have given myself unrestrictedly.4

3 4

 Publications, no. 6, 1921, 14; Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, 463.  Temps Nouveaux, 7 September 1907.

Bibliography

Archives Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte (AN) F7 12504, 12506, 12518, 13055, 13061. Fonds de Moscou: “Jean Grave” file

Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Pré St Gervais (APP) BA 1403, 1503, 1504, 1505.

Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) Correspondance et papiers de Félix et Paul Nadar, NAF 24990–25006.

Centre d’Histoire Sociale (CHS), Paris Fonds Jean Maitron, 1-JM-1B, 1-JM-1D, 8-JM-A8, 8-JM-A21, A-JM-22, A-JM-23.

Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale, Paris (IFHS) Fonds Jean Grave: 14AS 184a and 184b. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fonds Paul Delesalle: 14AS orig. 1, 17, 20, 158, 159.

International Institut fur Sozial Geschichte, Amsterdam (IISG) Archief Christiaan Cornelissen Jacques Gross Papers Jean Grave Papers Jean Wintsch Papers Joseph Presburg Papers Max Nettlau Collection, file 3336 Paul Eltzbacher Papers Pierre Ramus Papers

State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow (GARF) Стоимость сканирования писем Граба Жака к П.А. Кропоткину (Correspondence of Jacques [sic] Grave with P. A. Kropotkin)

Periodicals Cited L’Action française (Paris, 1908–44) Adelante! (Montevideo, 1909–10) L’Affamé (Marseille, 1884) L’Anarchie (Paris, 1905–14) L’Art social (Paris, 1891–96) L’Attaque (Paris, 1888–90) L’Aurore (Paris, 1897–1914) L’Autonomie Individuelle (Paris, 1887–88) La Bataille syndicaliste (Paris, 1911–15); then becomes La Bataille. Bulletin de l’internationale anarchiste (Liege, 1906–07) Ce Qu’il Faut Dire (Paris, 1916–17) La Critique sociale (Paris, 1931–34) Cronaca Sovversiva (Barre, Vt, US 1903–20) Le Droit Social (Lyon, 1882); then becomes L’Etendard révolutionnaire: organe anarchiste hebdomadaire (Lyon, 1882) L’Echo de Paris (Paris, 1884–1938) L’En dehors (and supplement; Orléans, 1922–39) Freedom (London, 1886–1927)

 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Le Gaulois (Paris, 1868–1929) Germinal (Paterson, NJ, US; 1899–1903 (?)) L’Homme libre (Paris, 1913–39) Les Hommes du jour (Paris, 1908–40) La Huelga General (Barcelona, 1901–03) L’Humanité Nouvelle (Paris, 1897–1903; Gand, 1906) L’Hydre anarchiste (Lyon, 1884); then becomes L’Alarme (Lyon, 1884) L’International (London, 1890–91) L’Intransigeant (Paris, 1880–1948) Le Libertaire (Paris, 1895–1972) La Liberté (Buenos Aires, 1893–94) La Liberté (Paris, 1865–1940) Liberty (New York, 1881–1908) La Libre Fédération (Lausanne, 1915–19) La Libre Parole (Paris, 1892–1924) Marianne (Paris, 1932–40) Le Matin (Paris, 1884–1944) Le Midi socialiste (Toulouse, 1908–44) Mother Earth (New York, 1906–17) Le Père Peinard (Paris, 1889–94; 1896–99; London, 1894–95) Le Petit Provençal (Marseille, 1880–1944) Le Peuple: organe quotidien du syndicalisme (Paris, 1921–39) Le Populaire (Paris, 1916–70) Plus Loin (Paris, 1825–39) Pro Armenia (Paris, 1900–14) A Propaganda Anarchista (Lisbon, 1894–95) La Protesta Humana (Buenos Aires, 1897–1903) Publications de “La Revolte” et “Temps Nouveaux” (Robinson, 1920–36) The Rebel (Boston, 1895–96) La Rebelion (Montevideo, dates unknown) La Revista Blanca (Barcelona, 1898–1905, 1923–36) La Révolte (Algiers, 1906, 1909–10) La Révolte (Paris, 1887–94) Le Révolté (Geneva/ Paris, 1879–85) La Revue anarchiste (Paris, 1929–36) La Revue franco-annamite (Hanoi, 1929–40) Le Réveil/ Il Risveglio (Geneva, 1900–50) The Road to Freedom (New York, 1924–32) Le Temps (Paris, 1861–1942) Les Temps Nouveaux (Paris, 1895–1914; 1919–21) Les Temps Nouveaux. Bulletins. (Paris, 1916–19) Tierra y Libertad (Barcelona, 1902–23)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

La Tribune Libre (Charleroi, PA, US, 1896–1900) La Verdad (Montevideo, 1897–98) La Voix du Peuple (Geneva, 1906–14)

Grave’s Theoretical Writings This is a selective list of key works cited in this book. A comprehensive inventory of Grave’s writings is available at https://cgecaf.ficedl.info/?mot39, accessed 22 July 2020 Les Aventures de Nono. Paris: Stock, 1901. “Ce que nous voulons.” Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1914. “La Colonisation.” Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1900. “Enseignement bourgeois et enseignement libertaire.” Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1900. “L’Entente pour l’action.” Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1911. La Grande Famille: Roman militaire. Paris, Stock, Bibliothèque sociologique n. 10, 1896. L’Individu et la société. Paris: Stock, 1897. “Le Machinisme.” Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1898. Malfaiteurs!, n. l.: Elibron Classics, 2006 (1894). (As Jehan Le Vagre). La Révolution et l’autonomie selon la science. Paris: Imp. Bataille, 1885. “Réformes, révolution.” Paris: Stock, Bibliothèque sociologique n. 41, 1910. La Société au lendemain de la révolution. Paris: Publications du groupe des 5e et 13e arrondissements, 1882. La Société Future et l’anarchie. Paris: Stock, Bibliothèque Sociologique n. 8, 1895. La Société mourante et l’anarchie. Paris: Tresse & Stock, 1893; Moribund Society and Anarchism, translated by Voltairine de Cleyre. San Francisco: A. Isaak, 1899. “Le Syndicalisme dans l’évolution sociale.” Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1908. Terre Libre (Les Pionniers). Paris: Librairie des Temps Nouveaux, 1908.

Printed Primary Sources Bataille, Albert. Causes criminelles et mondaines de 1894. Paris: E. Dentu, 1895. Bertrand, Auguste. “La Vérité sur l’affaire Ferrer.” Paris: Publications des Temps Nouveaux n. 40, 1910.

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Bonneron, Géo. Les Prisons de Paris: notre régime pénitentiaire. Paris: Maison Didot, 1898. Clemenceau, Georges et al. “La Mano Negra.” ill. Hermann-Paul. Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1903. Comité de Défense des Victimes de la répression espagnole. “Un Martyr des Prêtres. Francisco Ferrer. Sa Vie. Son Œuvre.” Paris: Schleicher Frères, 1909. CRRI/ Groupe des Temps Nouveaux. “Deuxième Lettre. Un désaccord. Nos explications.” Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1916. De Saint-Auban, Émile. L’Histoire sociale au Palais de Justice: Plaidoyers Philosophiques. Paris: A. Pedone, 1895. Descaves, Lucien. Souvenirs d’un ours. Paris: Éditions de Paris, 1946. Dubois, Félix. Le Péril anarchiste. Paris: E. Flammarion, 1894. Grave, Jean. Le Mouvement Libertaire sous la IIIe République. Paris: Les Œuvres Représentatives, 1930. ———. Mémoires d’un anarchiste. Paris: Editions du Sextant, 2009. Hamon, Auguste. Psychologie de l’anarchiste-socialiste. Paris: Stock, 1895. Holland-Thomas, Ethel. “My Welsh Heart.” Caernaron: Gwenlyn Evans Ltd, 1969. Kropotkin, Peter. Memoirs of a Revolutionist. London: Swab Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd, 1906. ———. “Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles.” Nineteenth Century. London: New Fellowship Press, 1887. Lombroso, Cesare. “La physiognomie des anarchistes.” In Nouvelle Revue, 15 May 1891, 225–30. Malato, Charles. De la Commune à l’Anarchie. 2nd ed. Paris: Stock, 1894. Mirbeau, Octave. Combats littéraires. Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 2006. Pouget, Émile and Francis de Pressensé. “Les Lois Scélérates de 1893–1894.” Paris: Les Éditions de la Revue Blanche, 1899. Reclus, Elisée. Correspondance, vol. 3. Paris: Alfred Costes, 1905. Retté, Adolphe. La Maison en ordre: comment un révolutionnaire devint royaliste. Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1923. Sanborn, Alvan Francis. Paris and the Social Revolution. Boston: Small Maynard and Co., 1905. Stéphane, Marc. Pour Jean Grave. Paris: Vautier, 1894. Urales, Federico. El castillo maldito. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1992. Introduction by Lucienne Domergue.

Websites Hosting Digitised Anarchist Periodicals, Bibliographic and Biographical Resources Anarchy Archives: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/index.html

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Index1

A Adam, Paul, 58, 84, 94, 100 Ajalbert, Jean, 58, 59, 82, 84, 93, 204 Albert, Charles, 111, 114, 149, 157 See also Daudet, Charles Aldred, Guy, 201 Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, 143, 156 Algeria, 62, 64–66, 128, 137, 181 Algiers, 65, 66, 127, 157, 175, 181 Almereyda, Miguel, 151 Amiens Charter, 107 Amsterdam Congress (1907), 130, 165 Angiolillo, Michele, 142 Angrand, Charles, 152, 199 Anticlerical, 121 Anticolonialism, 36, 126, 127 Anti-imperialism, 36, 126, 161 Antimilitarism/antimilitarist, 8, 22, 33, 64, 86, 110, 143, 145, 146,

151, 155–157, 164, 166, 167, 170, 176 Antisemitism, 51 Archives, 11, 13, 74, 90, 205, 206 Argentina, 63, 78, 111, 121–124, 135, 156, 158, 188, 189 Armand, Emile, 155, 200 Armenia, 125 Art Social, 59, 85, 117, 120 Assassination, 27, 87, 142, 143, 164 Assiette au Beurre, L’, 136, 153 Attentat, 77 See also Assassination; Propaganda by the deed Aurore, L’, 138, 140 Australia, 42 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 197 Avant-garde, 59, 60, 84, 85, 96, 108, 117, 190

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Bantman, Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism, 1854–1939, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66618-7

233

234 

INDEX

B Bakunin, Mikhail, 21, 52, 114, 159, 196 Barcelona, 67, 110, 124, 136, 137, 158 Barrès, Maurice, 81, 97, 100, 204 Bataille, Albert, 52, 91 Bataille, La, 82, 169, 174, 176 Belgium, Belgian, 35, 62, 64, 65, 109, 122, 169–171, 175, 188 Benoît, Charles, 90, 111, 149, 172, 173, 175 Bergerat, Emile, 83 Berkman, Alexander, 174 Bern, 40, 43, 64 Bertoni, Luigi, 170, 190, 205 Bibliothèque des Temps Nouveaux, 112 Biography, vii, viii, 2, 3, 6, 13, 14, 31, 198 Bolshevism, 179, 184 Bonnetain, Paul, 83 Bonnot Gang, 155, 160, 201 Book publishing, 26, 29, 114, 141, 199 Border, 35, 37, 62, 64–66, 121, 143, 155 Boston, 125 Boulangist', 70, 76, 100 Brazil, Brazilian, 66, 121, 124, 151, 159, 193 Breton, Jules Louis, 102 Briess, Edward, 160 Britain, 22, 57, 71, 101, 122, 124, 135–137, 145, 159, 165, 168, 169 Brocher, Gustave, 188, 191 Buenos Aires, 63, 64, 66, 96, 123, 124, 156, 158, 181 Buhr, Max, 103 See also Girard, André Bulot, M. (public prosecutor), 94

C Cafiero, Carlo, 24, 28 Campaign, 4, 6, 15, 67, 82, 96, 103–105, 109, 111, 126, 133, 135–138, 140, 142, 146, 155–158, 160, 162, 168, 188, 199 Canaries, Canarian, 126 Canovás, Antonio, 142 Carnet B, 164, 180 Caserio, Sante Geronimo, 77, 98 Censorship, 9, 34, 87, 92, 164, 170 CGT, 107, 155, 157, 164, 166, 175, 202 Charisma, viii, 12 Châtel, Charles, 97 Chattopadhyaya, Virendranath, 160 Cherkesov, Varlaam, 24, 171, 181, 183, 184 Chicago, 43, 54, 62, 63, 66, 67, 115, 124 Chicago execution/martyrs, 62, 162 Chiericotti, Paul, 99 China/Chinese anarchism, 159 Ching-Chiang, Chang, 160 Cladel, Léon, 59 Clemenceau, Georges, 103, 137, 140, 201, 204 Club de l’art social, 59, 193 Colonialism, 126, 127, 160 Colonisation, 93, 127 Comité de défense de Ferrer, 157 Comité de Défense Sociale (CDS), 157 Comité pour la Reprise des Relations Internationales (CRRI), 173, 175 Commemoration, 63 Commune, 17, 22, 25, 62, 86, 187, 201 Communism, 6–8, 25, 26, 33, 38, 42, 47, 56–60, 68, 71, 75, 98, 145, 165, 179, 183, 190, 199, 202, 204

 INDEX 

Community, communities, v, x, 6, 14, 18, 20, 32, 33, 38, 40–42, 47, 48, 61–65, 108, 128, 189 Conspiracy, 28, 78, 87, 91, 93, 101, 142 Cooperatives, cooperativism, 41, 58 Coppée, François, 103 Cornelissen, Christian, 114, 184, 195 Correspondents, 6, 55, 64, 69, 122, 133, 175, 184, 185, 189 Cosmopolitan/cosmopolitanism, 5, 49 Costa, Emilio, 184 Costa Rica, 151 Courteline, Georges, 81, 82 Craft socialism, 17 Creaghe, Dr John, 122 Crime/criminals/criminality, 1, 52, 53, 72, 77–105, 158 Cronaca Sovversiva, La, 123, 163 Cross, Henri-Edmond, 116, 141 Cross-partisan, 4, 15, 83, 87, 103, 108, 109, 133, 136, 140, 155, 157, 165 Cuba, 67, 136, 151 Czar Alexander II, 27 Czech press and anarchists, 122 D Darnaud, Emile, 21, 68 Daubigny, E., 193 Daudé-Bancel, Achille, 188 Daudet, Alphonse, 58 Dauphin-Meunier, Achille, 188 David-Néel, Alexandra, 74 De Cleyre, Voltairine, 92, 125 De La Salle, Gabriel, 59 De Pressensé, Francis, 104, 137 Defencism, 145 Deherme, Georges, 33, 71 Delaisi, Francis, 149, 151 Delannoy, Aristide, 148, 151, 152

235

Delaw, Georges, 153 Delesalle, Leona, 132 Delesalle, Paul, 111, 128, 132, 143, 149, 203, 205 Delgado, Secundino, 126 Denéchère, Amédée, 190 Derré, Emile, 119 Descaves, Lucien, 51, 59, 84, 86, 97, 137 Deschamps, Léon, 102 Desplanques, Charles, 111, 149, 184 Diffusion, 25, 26, 31, 32, 35, 48, 65, 144 Diffusionism, 159, 212 Distributor, 32, 34, 35, 43, 73 Dommanget, Maurice, 203 Dreyfus Affair, 79, 84, 85, 87, 96, 97, 104, 108, 109, 138, 156, 171, 202 Drumont, Edouard, 83, 96, 100 Dubois, Félix, 53, 69 Duchemin, Edouard, 147, 149, 167 Duchmann, Henri, 131 Dumartheray, François, 25, 26 Dunois, Amédée, 111, 128, 149, 150, 203 Duval, Clément, 72 E Education, 17, 19, 21, 33, 59, 63, 75, 85, 100, 118, 141 Educationalism, 133, 141, 157 Egypt, 125 Elite, elitism, 5, 12, 17, 21, 31, 68, 100, 196 England, 43, 62, 64, 137, 165, 170, 171, 173 Entente (WW1), 87, 167, 171 Epistolary links/connections/ exchanges, 158, 165, 196, 207 Escuela Moderna, 141

236 

INDEX

Esperanto, 161 Etudiants socialistes révolutionnaires internationalistes (ESRI), 53 Exile, 1, 5, 25, 26, 55, 56, 136, 159, 168, 176 F Far-right, 81, 83, 96, 97, 100, 104, 154, 201 Fascism, 189, 202, 204 Faure, Félix, 104 Faure, Sébastien, 91, 99, 101, 107, 127, 138, 140, 140n171, 142, 151, 154, 176 Fédération Communiste Anarchiste Révolutionnaire (FCAR), 166 Feminism, 8, 74–76, 131, 133 Fénéon, Félix, 99 Ferrer, Soledad, 140, 141, 156–158, 162, 170 Ferrer i Guàrdia, Francisco, 133 Fielden, Samuel, 109 First International, 23, 26 First World War, 15, 74, 84, 145, 147, 194, 201 Fischer, Adolph, 62 Fortin, Fernand, 200 France, Anatole, 58, 137, 168 France, Hector, 82, 150 Freedom (London), 38, 57, 97, 125, 136, 137, 167, 173, 174 Freemasons, 109, 157 Freethought, freethinker, 21, 109, 157 See also Libre Pensée, libre penseur Freiheit, 28, 57, 62, 64, 124 Friends/friendship, 1, 2, 7, 9, 13, 14, 19, 27, 30, 34, 35, 39, 44, 45, 55, 56, 72, 75, 76, 78, 81, 85, 86, 97, 100, 109, 110, 147, 149, 152, 154, 157, 164, 175, 186, 190, 191, 193, 195, 199, 202–204

Fundraising, 9, 37, 42, 64, 66, 112, 123, 152, 155, 182, 183, 188 G Galleani, Luigi, 123 Gauche, Henri (Rene Chaughi), 90, 126 Gauguin, Paul, 97 Gégout, Ernest, 89 General strike, 157, 166 Geneva, 14, 25, 27, 29–31, 33, 34, 39, 43–45, 89, 123, 170, 195 Geoffroy, Gustave, 97 Geography/geographical/geographer, 3, 36, 45, 49, 50, 64, 68, 146 Germany, German, vii, 27, 43, 44, 47, 54, 121, 122, 145, 164, 167–175, 183, 189, 197, 206 Gibier, Paul, 83 Gille, Paul, 188 Girard, André, 103, 111, 117, 126, 143, 147, 150, 172, 173, 175, 176, 193 Glasse, Henry, 38, 122 Global South, 126 Goaziou, Louis, 41 Gohier, Urbain, 110, 138 Goldman, Emma, 123, 125, 171, 174, 194 Goldsmith, Maria, 53, 184 Goncourt, M. de, 100 Gonne, Maud, 127 Grandjouan, Jules, 152 Greece, Greek, 122, 125, 127 Gross, Jacques, 34, 114 Groupe de propagande par la brochure, 112, 149 Guadeloupe, 151 Guatemala, 151 Guérin, Jacques, 170, 173, 181 Guérin, Mme, 181–185, 196 Guérineau, Lucien, 55

 INDEX 

Guerre Sociale, La, 154, 155, 157 Guesde, Jules, 31 Guesdist/Guesdism, 36 Gumplowicz, Ludwig, 109 Guomindang Party, 194 Guyana, 107, 151 H Haiti, 151 Hamon, Augustin, 97, 109, 114, 158 Havel, Hippolyte, 194 Henry, Emile, 77, 102, 104 Henry, Fortuné, 102 Henry, George, 57 Hermann-Paul, René Georges, 116, 118, 119, 151, 168 Herold, Ferdinand, 84, 168, 171, 202 Hervé, Gustave, 151 Herzig, Georges, 25, 26 High Treason Incident (Japan), 161 Hispanic America, 124, 155, 158 Historiography, 3, 6, 15, 126, 167, 180, 197, 198 Holland Thomas (later Grave), Mabel, 76, 132 Hong Kong, 151 Hugues, Clovis, 96 Humanité, L, 110, 158, 185 Human Rights, 84, 109, 136–138, 156 Humblot, Jean, 163 Humour, 33, 102, 116 Huot, Marie, 97 Huysmans, J.K., 58 I Identity, 17, 18, 33, 36, 62, 63, 165 Illegalism, 73, 79, 88, 91, 98, 128, 131, 155, 160 Illustrations, 18, 92, 112, 117, 152, 155, 170, 204

237

India, v, 162 Individualism, 93, 100, 108, 128–133, 195, 199 Influence, v, viii, 2, 5–7, 11, 12, 15, 27, 39, 40, 42, 45, 68, 70, 79, 89, 91, 108, 110, 112, 121, 123, 160, 162, 169, 173, 180, 181, 186, 190, 191, 193–195, 203–205, 208 Intellectual, viii, 1, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 17, 21, 23, 26, 32, 50, 52–54, 58, 61, 68, 79, 83–85, 91, 96–100, 102, 105, 108, 110, 112, 114, 116, 127, 130, 132, 136, 140, 146, 152, 160, 169, 186, 194, 195, 203, 204 Intermediary, 91, 124, 162, 193, 207 Internationalism/internationalist, viii, 7, 8, 10, 34, 36, 49, 53, 54, 62–64, 121, 127, 145, 159, 167, 176, 180, 182, 194, 212 International Workers of the World (IWW), 122 International Working Men’s Association (IWMA), 167 Ireland, Irish, 64, 127, 169, 170 Iribe, Paul, 119, 154 Italy/Italian, 27, 37, 42, 43, 52, 54, 62, 66, 71, 72, 77, 89, 98, 107, 122–125, 143, 156, 173, 174, 189, 190 J Japan, 159, 161, 162 Jaurès, Jean, 137, 158, 164 Jourdain, Frantz, 58, 84, 118, 168 Jura Federation, 23–25 K Kahn, Gustave, 97 Keell, Tom, 174

238 

INDEX

Kelly, Harry, 125, 194 Kropotkin, Peter, vii, 1, 2, 8, 9, 13, 15, 20, 21, 25–28, 34, 36–42, 44, 52, 53, 55–58, 73, 92, 93, 101, 102, 104, 107, 109–112, 114–116, 118, 123, 126, 128, 132, 136, 137, 145–147, 150, 151, 154, 159, 160, 162, 165, 167, 170–172, 174, 176, 181–184, 186–188, 190–192, 194, 195, 201, 203–206, 208, 213 Kropotkin, Sophie, 30, 31, 33, 191 Kupka, František, 119–121, 152 L Lafargue, Paul, 80 Lafon, Ernest, 203 Laisant, Charles-Ange, 157, 184 Language, 6, 18, 32n82, 33, 58, 64, 84, 101, 122–124, 161, 173, 206 Latin America, v, 136 Latin Quarter, 23, 49, 53 Le Compte, Marie, 40 Le Vagre, Jehan, 26, 33 League of Nations, 182, 194 Lebasque, Henri, 116 Leconte de Lisle, Charles Marie René, 58 Lefranc, Jean, 204 Lenin, Vladimir, 171 Libertad, Albert, 131, 160 Libertaire, Le, 107, 151, 163, 179, 201, 208 Liberty (Boston), 39–41, 56, 71, 98, 103 Libre Pensée, libre penseur, 100 See also “Freethought, Freethinker” Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (LDH), 84, 136, 137, 155, 158, 168, 171, 199, 202

Literary anarchism, 84, 85 Literary supplement, 43, 59, 66, 81, 109, 114–115, 143, 155, 157 Lois Scélérates, see Wicked Laws Lombroso, Cesare, 52, 89 London, vii, 28, 38, 43, 44, 55, 57, 66, 71, 73, 89, 92, 111, 115, 125, 128, 132, 136, 137, 143, 168, 171, 173, 176, 181 London Revolutionary Socialist Congress (1881), 28 Longuet, Jean, 202 Lorenzo, Anselmo, 110, 141 Loti, Pierre, 58 Luce, Maximilien, 58, 116, 157, 182 Luxemburg, Rosa, 171 Lyon, 24, 26, 28, 29, 35, 37, 43, 49, 98 Lyon Trial (1883), 30, 34 See also Trial of the 66 M Mackay, John, 114 Magón, Ricardo Flores, 163 Maitron, Jean, 63, 74, 128, 132, 175, 179, 205 Malatesta, Errico, 24, 52, 109, 110, 123, 124, 130, 159, 165, 171, 174, 193, 198, 205 Malato, Charles, 7, 31, 69, 80, 89, 107, 110, 136, 151, 159, 162, 171, 175, 179–181, 184, 196, 200 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 58 Mañé Miravet, Teresa, 110, 194 Manifesto of the Sixteen, vii, 8, 15, 145, 164–176, 179, 181, 200, 208 Mann, Tom, 184 Mano Negra, 135, 137, 138 Marmande, René de, 199, 202 Marriage, 76, 132, 147, 150

 INDEX 

Martí, José, 126 Martinique, 151 Masetti, Augusto, 156 Material culture, 9, 14 Matha, Armand, 99, 142 Maupassant, Guy de, 81, 82 Mauricius, 160 Maurin, Charles, 116 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 42 McDonald, Ramsay, 201 Memorialisation, 180, 197, 198 Méreaux, Emile, 44, 66, 90, 93, 102 Merle, Eugène, 199 Mesnil, Jacques, 173 Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), 163 Mexico, 121, 124, 163 Michel, Louise, 59, 114, 119, 136, 154 Migration, 1, 5, 18, 56, 124 Mihal, M., 122 Millerand, Alexandre, 108 Millerandism, 108 Mirbeau, Octave, 21, 55, 58, 60, 81, 82, 85–87, 92, 94, 97, 100, 123, 124, 168, 169 Monatte, Pierre, 114, 128, 130, 149, 165 Montagne, Edouard, 81 Montevideo, 37, 43, 65, 123, 136, 157 Montjuich, 135–137 Montmartre, 49, 59 Montseny, Joan, 135, 194 See also Urales, Federico Moribund Society and Anarchy, 88, 125, 204 Morris, William, 121, 123 Mother Earth, 123, 173 Mouffetard, Rue, 5, 19, 23, 43, 48–56, 204 Mougeot, Auguste, 147

239

Multilingual, multilingualism, 9, 43, 124, 160, 162 Mutual aid, 57, 118 N Nadar, Félix, 84–86, 119, 153 Narodnaya Volya, 27 National emancipation, 36, 127, 197 National independence, 197 See also National emancipation Nationalism, vi, 141, 170, 172, 197 National liberation, 36, 126 Nazism, 204 Neo-Impressionism, 116 Neo-Malthusianism, 130 Netherlands, 66 Nettlau, Max, 11, 13, 122, 128, 151, 159, 180, 184, 188, 197, 198, 206, 207 Networks, vii, viii, 1–6, 8–11, 13–15, 37, 41, 45, 56, 60, 62–68, 74, 79, 85, 92, 108, 110, 114–129, 137, 140, 155, 157–159, 162, 175, 179, 180, 189, 190, 207, 211, 212 New Caledonia, 151 Newspaper, 8, 13, 26, 41, 59–62, 82, 86, 112, 114 New York, 47, 62, 64, 122, 124, 143, 173, 174, 181 Norway, Norwegian, 189 O Organisation, v–vii, 3, 4, 10, 24–28, 33, 53, 56, 58, 63, 64, 66–68, 73, 84, 89, 91, 92, 98, 109, 128, 136, 137, 142–144, 155, 158, 165, 166, 169, 171, 179, 181–183, 185, 213

240 

INDEX

Ortiz, Léon, 99 Owen, Sir Isambard, 168, 198 P Pacifism, 172, 173 Pamphlet, 26, 27, 30, 32, 33, 37, 38, 40, 42, 52, 55, 65–67, 69, 81, 85, 93, 99, 103, 112, 116, 117, 121, 123, 125, 127, 130–132, 137, 141, 142, 149, 150, 155, 157, 159, 174, 176, 180, 186, 187, 189 Panama, 70, 76 Paraguay, 151 Paris, viii, 5, 6, 14, 19–21, 23–32, 34, 37, 43, 44, 47–50, 55, 60, 64–66, 70, 72, 74, 89–91, 93, 132, 137, 143, 147, 154, 156, 158–160, 164, 172, 175, 183, 189, 194, 198–200, 206 Paris Congress (1899), 143 Parmeggiani, Luigi, 66 Parsons, Albert, 109 Patriotism, 167, 179, 194, 197, 198 Pedagogy, 21, 140, 141 Pelloutier, Fernand, 128, 143, 196 Pennsylvania, 41, 42, 67 Père Peinard, Le, 31, 42, 60, 68, 69, 89, 116, 123 Periodicals, 2–6, 8–10, 13, 14, 23–25, 28, 30, 40–43, 69, 76, 104, 123, 124, 126, 127, 155, 162, 165, 186, 189, 193, 194, 205, 208 Peru, 122, 151, 189 Petit, Michel, see Duchemin, Edouard Picavet, Louis, 122 Pierrot, Marc, 9, 53, 128, 170, 173, 179, 182–184 Pini, Vittorio, 53, 72 Pisacane, Carlo, 27 Pissarro, Camille, vii, 59, 116, 118, 119

Pissarro, Lucien, 116, 117, 193 Poland, 36, 122, 184 Police, 13, 28–31, 33–36, 40, 43, 54, 68, 72, 73, 77, 78, 87–90, 92, 93, 137, 142, 143, 156, 180, 206 Political violence, 11, 27, 72, 76, 88, 104 Portet, Lorenzo, 136 Portugal/Portuguese, 92, 124, 125, 137 Pouget, Emile, 31, 42, 59, 60, 69, 89, 105, 107, 125, 128, 136, 143, 151, 175 Pratelle, Aristide, 160, 162, 163 Press laws, 44, 77–78 Pressensé, Francis de, 104, 137 Print activism, 9, 114, 145–177, 180, 185 Print culture, 3, 8–11, 14, 41, 47, 54, 63, 68, 112, 136, 155, 212 Printer/printing press, 43, 48, 73, 118 Print run, 32, 35, 48, 55, 115, 188 Prison, prisoners, 66, 78, 80–87, 91–93, 96, 101, 102, 104, 107, 111, 125, 135, 138, 188 Propaganda by the deed, 17, 24, 28, 41, 47, 70, 73, 77–105, 142, 201 Protest, vi, vii, 35, 45, 62, 66, 78, 86, 87, 96, 97, 103, 105, 114, 133, 135, 137, 140, 141, 146, 156–158, 195, 207 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 98, 196 Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre, 118 R Rachilde, 97 Raffles, 9, 61, 66, 116, 121, 150 Raid, 13, 40, 43, 87, 156 Ramus, Pierre, 207 Ravachol (François Koenigstein, aka), 13, 53, 77, 94, 201

 INDEX 

Reader/readership, x, 21, 29, 32–35, 37, 42, 50, 60–62, 69, 78, 83, 89, 94, 101, 110, 115, 117, 126, 136, 147, 151, 152, 154, 164, 170, 174, 182, 186, 187, 189, 191, 195, 201, 206 Reclus, Elisée, 21, 25, 26, 29–31, 36, 36n97, 40, 41, 53, 55, 58, 88, 94, 97, 102, 109–112, 114, 119, 123, 127, 128, 136, 154, 159, 186, 196, 208 Reclus, Paul, 72, 80, 89, 90, 175, 183, 184, 194 Repression, 1, 4, 8, 9, 15, 17, 23, 25, 28, 30, 33–36, 38, 43, 47, 66, 70, 77, 78, 80, 87, 98, 105, 110, 133, 135, 137, 142–143, 150, 155–157, 161–163, 211 Reprise individuelle, 72 Republican/republicanism, 4, 28, 36, 78, 103, 105, 110, 135, 137, 140, 198–203 Reseller, 24, 27, 43, 61, 67 Retté, Adolphe, 51, 52, 84, 88 Réveil, Le, 123, 170, 190, 205 Revista Blanca, La, 141, 194 Revolutionary tradition, 203 Richard, Philippe, 175, 181, 188 Richepin, Jean, 58, 82, 83, 97 Rizal, José, 114, 126 Robbery, 72, 78, 87, 88, 99, 155 Robin, Paul, 11, 26, 110, 141 Rochefort, Henri de, 100 Rocker, Rudolf, 174 Rodin, Auguste, 59 Romania/Romanian, 37, 38 Roubille, Auguste, 154 Rousset, Emile, 156 Rue de Rohan, 143 Ruskin, John, 121 Russian revolution (1905), 145, 146, 172

241

Russian revolution (1917), 190 Russia, Russian, 27, 29, 43, 121, 125, 143, 146, 147, 167, 176, 184, 187, 188, 190, 191, 194 S Sacred Union, 199 Sadi Carnot, Marie François, 51, 77, 98 Sadier, Jules Alexander, 111, 122, 188 Saint-Auban, Emile de, 79, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 195 Salanson, Georges, 200 Sanshirō , Ishikawa, 175 Savarkar affair, 160 Schapiro, Alexander, 174 Scholl, Aurélien, 82 Schumm, Emma, 39 Schwitzguébel, Adhémar, 26 Second World War, 204, 211–212 Sedentary activist, 1, 48 Séverine (Caroline Rémy), 19, 84, 100, 137, 168, 169 Shih-Tseng, Li, 160 Shoemaking, 19, 20, 30 Shūsui, Kō toku, 161, 162 Siam, 151 Signac, Paul, vii, 58, 97, 116, 117, 152, 175, 182, 193 Smuggling/smuggler, 34, 35 Sociability, 10, 14, 18, 48–56, 63, 97 Socialism, socialist, 10, 17, 22–25, 31, 35, 37, 42, 59–61, 63, 78, 83, 96, 103, 108–111, 126, 135, 137, 143, 151, 157, 158, 161, 162, 164, 165, 169, 170, 172, 173, 180, 181, 184, 193, 197, 199, 201–204, 208 Social space, 11, 14, 64 Société des Gens de Lettres (SGDL), 80–87

242 

INDEX

Soledad Gustavo, see Mañé Miravet, Teresa South Africa, 38, 122, 125 Space, 6, 7, 11, 14, 33, 34, 41, 43, 47, 48, 50, 53–56, 63, 64, 69, 80, 149, 159, 211 Spain, Spanish, 10, 27, 38, 42, 43, 54, 62, 64, 71, 110, 122, 124, 125, 125n103, 133, 135–137, 141, 142, 144, 155, 157, 158, 173, 189, 190, 194 Spanish atrocities, 79, 105, 109, 126, 133, 138, 140 Spanish Atrocities Committee, 136 Spies, August, 109 Spying, spies, 90, 201 Stamps, 56, 100, 151, 188, 207 Steinlen, Théophile, 182 Stepniak, Sergei, 132 Stirner, Max, 114 Stock, Pierre-Victor, 55, 84, 86, 102, 114, 150, 193 Subscription, subscribers, 9, 30, 32, 35, 39, 40, 58, 60–62, 66, 67, 74, 86, 98, 110, 114, 115, 119, 133, 137, 140, 149, 152, 158, 173, 181, 184, 186, 195 Surveillance, 9, 13, 24, 34, 35, 78, 90, 142, 164 Sweden/Swedish, 43, 189 Switzerland, 25, 26, 28, 43, 44, 48, 62, 122, 124, 143, 159, 174, 188, 195 Symbolism, 84 Syndicalism, 5, 107, 108, 110, 120, 126, 128–133, 149, 152, 157

Tarrida Del Mármol, Fernando, 110, 135, 142 Terrorism, 27–29, 72, 73, 78, 84, 88, 90, 101, 160 Terrorist attack, 27, 76–78, 88, 93–94, 143 Third Republic, 4, 70, 108, 141, 198, 211 Tolstoy, Leo, 109 Trade union, v, vi, 41, 67, 83, 107, 128, 130, 143, 149 Tragic Week, 156 Translation/translator, 6, 26, 39, 57, 67, 114, 124, 125, 125n103, 133, 135, 141, 159, 161 Translocal, 65 Transnationalism, viii, 3, 5, 6, 14, 33–36 Trepov, General, 27 Trial of the 66, 28 See also Lyon Trial Trial of the Thirty, 78, 79, 84, 87, 92–104, 107 Tucker, Benjamin, 39, 40, 71, 97, 98 Tunisia, 74, 151

T Tabarant, Adolphe, 59, 193 Tailhade, Laurent, 84, 97

V Vaillant, Auguste, 77, 78, 82, 93 Van Dongen, Kees, 116

U Union of Democratic control (UDC), 165, 169–172, 182, 201 United States (US), 10, 39–43, 62, 92, 115, 122, 123, 125, 135, 151, 181 Universités populaires, 141–142 Urales, Federico, 135, 136, 175, 194, 195 Uruguay, 65, 122, 151, 158

 INDEX 

Van Rysselberghe, Théo, 116 Vautel, Clément, 204 Venezuela, 151 Villafranca, Soledad, 157 Villareal, Antonio, 163 Visual artists, 58, 108, 115, 132 W Waldeck-Rousseau, René, 108, 140 Wedgewood, Josiah, 169 Wicked Laws, 77, 78, 90, 104, 105, 143, 150 Willaume, Georges, 53 Wintsch, Jean, 170, 184 Women, 74–76, 131, 132 Writers, 1, 4, 13, 21, 31, 51, 52, 55, 58–60, 74, 79, 81, 83–86,

243

94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 114, 133, 136, 150, 162, 163, 168, 188, 194, 203, 204 X Xenophobia, 171 Z Zapata, Emiliano, 163 Zasulich, Vera, 27, 104 Zévaès, Alexandre, 204 Zimmerwald conference, 173 Zo d’Axa (Alphonse Gallaud, aka), 86 Zola, Emile, 81, 82, 84, 86, 97, 124, 137, 138, 140, 171