Reclus, Elisée (1830–1905)

The french geographer and anarchist Elisée Reclus wrote extensively but is best remembered for two grandiose works: the Nouvelle Géographie Universelle: La Terre et Les Hommes [New Universal Geography: The Earth and Its Inhabitants], published in 19 volumes between 1876 and 1894, and L'Homme et la Terre [Man and Nature], whose six volumes were published posthumously between 1905 and 1908. His The Earth or Description of the Life Phenomena in the Globe (1867–68) was also probably the first geographic work influenced by Charles Darwin. Reclus's anarchist political orientation motivated his affiliation with the First International, his friendship with Peter Kropotkin (another geographer) and Michael Bakunin, and his participation in the Commune of Paris (1870), after which he had to exile himself from France. He returned in 1879 but left again to take a position as professor in the University of Brussels in 1892.

Reclus's influence was more noticeable in political as opposed to academic circles. In academia, he was virtually ignored until his rediscovery by French radical geographers such as Yves Lacoste and in the [Page 1470]journal Hérodote in the 1960s and 1970s. Lacoste and others emphasized the use of the human environment tradition from a dialectical point of view and introduced class relations as part of geographical analysis.

Like many anarchists and utopian socialists of the 19th century, Reclus was optimistic about the future of the human race and a great enthusiast of science and technology as valid instruments for the establishment of an egalitarian society. In a context in which education and knowledge were fundamental human aspirations, Reclus saw geographical knowledge as the study of the rupture of the equilibrium between the human and the nonhuman worlds. According to his anarchist ideal, the state and the classbased society were responsible for the breakdown of the once-harmonious relationships between humans and their environments—hence the need to return to an original pattern of settlement adapted to local natural conditions. Poverty and hardship were not nature-given (as in the Malthusian view) but the result of the unjust access to resources and a deficient relationship with the environment.

Although in some cases Reclus may be misinterpreted as an environmental determinist (for example, in his description of Corsica or the Greek citystates), he also argued forcefully that humans were active transformers of the natural world. Aware of the importance of education and learning, Reclus also wrote books for children. In them, he traces another view of geography with many parallels to that of George Perkins Marsh—he describes the (perverse) effects of human modifications of the environment. Reclus was therefore one of the first geographers to show not only the environmental but also social consequences of presumed natural hazards. From experiences in the Alps, Reclus described the role of deforestation in inducing devastating floods and landslides. In Histoire d'Une Montagne [History of a Mountain], a book for young readers, he links deforestation to class relations, showing how landowners cut forests for timber without any concern for the landslides aggravated by deforestation that would kill poorer people downstream.