A one-day conference on ‘Transfers of socialism between France and Great Britain, and its popular reception, in the long nineteenth century’ will take place at the University of Tours, France, 8-9 February 2024. The call for papers is now closed. Please note that the conference proceedings are in French.

Programme de la JE
Jeudi 8 février 2024
14h :J.-J. Tatin (U. Tours) : « Les textes utopiques anglais dans la presse révolutionnaire française (en particulier l’hebdomadaire les Révolutions de Paris de Prudhomme). »
14h20 : Koffi Amoussou (U. Tours) : « Dickens, socialiste inconscient ? »
14h40 :Stéphane Guy (U. Lorraine) en visioconférence : « Du positivisme comtien au socialisme britannique : la critique du laissez-faire entre élitisme et démocratie »
15h : échanges + pause
15h30 : Juliette Grange (U. Tours) : « Le St Simonisme bâti sur le libéralisme anglais »
15h50 : Michel Bellet (U. St Etienne) : « L’exploitation du globe et de la nature. Éclaircissements sur le point aveugle des ‘considérations environnementales’ de l’industrialisme saint-simonien »
16h10 : Michael Drolet (U. Oxford) : « De l’idéologie à la communauté des biens. Joseph Rey et l’Owenisme »
16h30 : échanges
Fin vers 17h

Vendredi 9 février
8h30 :Ludovic Frobert (ENS Lyon) : « Jules Leroux critique d’Adam Smith »
8h50 : Ophélie Simeon (U. Sorbonne Nouvelle) : en visioconférence : « Les échanges entre féministes-socialistes françaises et britanniques »
9h10 :Alexandra Sippel (U. Toulouse) : « L’inspiration britannique de Flora Tristan dans l’élaboration de son projet d’Union Ouvrière »
9h30 : échanges et pause
10h : Constance Bantman (U. Surrey) en visioconférence : « Perspectives croisées sur la violence révolutionnaire : Autour de la propagande par le fait anarchiste »
10h20 : Michel Rapoport (U. Tours) : « Jaurès et les socialistes britanniques »
10h40 : Tri Tran (U. Tours) : « Keir Hardie chez les mineurs français avant la Grande Guerre »
11h : échanges + fin de la JE

The conference seeks to encourage exchanges on the diffusion of socialism between France and the United Kingdom during the long nineteenth century. Not only will the project attempt to establish bridges between historians, political scientists, and philosophers who have worked on this subject; but it will also cross-reference French and British sources, insofar as French socialism integrated elements from Great Britain, and vice versa.

It seems to us that our knowledge of the history of socialism in Europe can be supplemented by interdisciplinary work on the circulation of socialist projects between France and the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, and especially on the reception of these ideas by the people in the two countries.

The first aim of this project is to provide an opportunity to take a cross-disciplinary look at different projects, such as Morelly’s utopian socialism, Fourierism, Saint Simonism, and Owenism. The natural relationship between the individual and the community lies at the heart of the collectivist social models proposed by Etienne Gabriel Morelly (Ducange, 629) and Jean Meslier in the 18th century, and the more cooperative models inspired by Robert Owen in the early 19th century.

The violence of unequal social relations that Meslier denounces stems from the inequality resulting from private property, not the other way round. In setting out the advantages of the common sharing of wealth and the communist organisation of society, Meslier also defends the idea that shortages of goods stem, not from nature, but from private appropriation of these same goods. Owen, on the other hand, was an industrialist reknown for his humanist business policy and his desire to provide his workforce, notably where the children he employed were concerned, with better living and working conditions than the average at the time, regarding education particularly (Simeon, 160). New Lanark was the site of a genuine scientific experiment, an educational project that gradually led to the formation of one of the first socialist theories in history: Owenism, which states that man is the product of the social environment in which he lives.

The impossibility for the individual to escape the movement of history, in particular the technical transformations that allow the increase of wealth through work, had already been underlined by St Simon at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He advocated a solid social organisation in the interests of the community, an “industrialism” that aimed to increase existing wealth and provide work and public education for all workers (Ducange, 622). Later, the difficult penetration of Marxism in France was partly achieved through the intermediary of militants who had direct contact with Marx in London (Droz, 143).

This conference also aims to explore the relationship between the people and these different projects, in an attempt to determine the extent to which the individual’s political practices were influenced by the environment, the class consciousness of the community, traditions, and the propaganda for these socialist proposals. This interdisciplinary project on the political practices of the people will explore the relationship between the aims and activities of political theorists and organisations (as seen in their speeches, resolutions, petitions, and newspapers) and the beliefs and aspirations of local communities, through their own political and cultural practices, including their writings, poems and personal narratives (Joyce, 256).

The conference will thus enable fruitful exchanges between philosophers, political scientists and historians.

Conference venue: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Val de Loire, 33 All. Ferdinand de Lesseps, 37200 Tours

Dates : 8-9 February 2024

Conference organisers: Tri Tran and Juliette Grange, laboratoire Interactions Culturelles & Discursives (EA 6297), Université de Tours

Scientific committee: William FINDLAY, Ludovic FROBERT, Juliette GRANGE, Tri TRAN

Submission guidelines:

Each proposal (for a 20-minute presentation), written in English or French (between 300 and 500 words) accompanied by a short biographical note, should be sent to the conference organiser: tri.tran@univ-tours.fr

The deadline for submission is 11 October 2023 and confirmation of participation will be sent before 1 November 2023.

Select bibliography

Primary sources
BLANC Louis, Organisation du travail, Paris, Prevot, 1840.
BOURGEOIS Léon, Solidarité, Presses du Septentrion, 1998.
ELIOTT George, Felix Holt, the Radical, Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1866.
CLAEYS Gregory, The Selected works of Robert Owen, ed. 1993
Fabian Essays in socialism, ed. George Bernard Shaw, London, Fabian Society, 1908.
LEROUX Pierre, De l’Humanité, Paris, Perrotin, 1840.
PECQUEUR Constantin, Théorie nouvelle d’économie sociale et politique, Paris, Capelle, 1842.
OWEN Robert, A new View of Society [1813], ed. 1991
SAND, George, [Romans sociaux] (Le péché de Monsieur Antoine, Jeanne, Le Meunier d’Angilbert)

Secondary sources
ASPINALL Arthur (ed.), The early Trade Unions, 1949.
COLE Margaret, The Story of Fabian Socialism, Stanford UP, 1961.
CHANIAL Philippe, La délicate essence du socialisme, l’association, l’individu et la République, Le Bord de l’eau, 2009.
DUCANGE, Jean-Numa (dir.), Histoire globale des socialismes, XIXe-XXIe siècle, Paris, PUF, 2021.
DROZ, Jacques, Histoire générale du socialisme, vols.1 et 2, Paris, PUF, 1997.
FINDLAY, William, Mouvements ouvriers et comparaisons internationales : images et réalités socio-politiques en France et en Grande-Bretagne, 1880-1914. Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris VIII, 1996, 2095 p.
HARRISON J.F.C., Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America, Routledge, 1969.
HOBSBAWM, Eric, Labouring Men, Studies in the history of labour, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965.
HOBSBAWM, Eric et Terence Ranger (dir.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge UP, 1983.
HOBSBAWM Eric, “ Libéralisme et socialisme. Le cas anglais”, Genèse 9 (9), 1992, p. 44 et suiv.
JONES Gareth Stedman, “Utopian socialism reconsidered”, People’s History and Socialist Theory, 1981.
JOYCE, Patrick, Visions of the People, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1991.
Le Maitron. Dictionnaire biographique. Mouvement ouvrier, mouvement social.
POLLARD, Sidney, Labour History and the Labour Movement in Britain, Routledge, 1999.
SIMÉON Ophélie, Robert Owen’s experiment of New Lanark, from Paternalism to Socialism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
THOMPSON, Edward P., The Making of the English Working Class, London, V. Gollancz, 1964.
WEBB Beatrice, The co-operative movement in Great Britain, 1899.
WINOCK, Michel, Le Socialisme en France et en Europe, XIXe-XXe siècle, Paris, Points, 2018.