Charismatic Leadership and Networks in Anarchism
The Cases of Pietro Gori and Jean Grave

An Introductory Note (Jan Willem Stutje)

The terms “Marxist” and “Marxism” have a problematic history. Their use raised questions as early as the 1870s, when Bakunin coined the terms in his polemic against the supposedly vanity-driven “leader” Karl Marx. By labelling Marx’s supporters “Marxists”, the Russian anarchist created the impression that they were slavishly subjecting themselves to Marx, a painful suggestion that the egalitarian early communists, already mistrustful of the personification of movements, felt even more keenly. Their mistrust illustrated the scepticism engendered by an emphasis on leaders and leadership, even in the early years of the labour movement.

In the historiography of social movements, too, opposition to the idea of researching the role of the individual was both long evident and deep-seated. There was an understandable desire not to succumb to the “great man” theory of history, the course of which was to be explained instead in terms of the relationships and conflicts between social forces. Furthermore, for many years academic theory accepted the ideology of the major traditional mass organizations of the European left. The only leadership to be tolerated was one that within the social struggle still endeavoured to defend bureaucratic forms of organization, so that the sort of centralized leadership examined in that context largely reproduced the development of the organizations themselves. The leadership was as it were the personification of a not especially fertile starting point for it to consider its own specific role and development.

Even when formal centralized mass organizations gave way to more decentralized networks, the degree of interest shown in leadership was scarcely any greater. Charisma and populism were phenomena believed to originate in the irrationality of mainly right-wing radical movements that were out to deceive; Fremdkörper, which, left-wing movements believed, manifested themselves only in the non-Western variants of authoritarian movements operated by the petty middle class and peasants who were attracted to socialism. Charismatic leadership especially, with its promise of redemption, remained suspect; it was an obstacle to self-liberation. In more libertarian circles, that suspicion became a particular hindrance to historians’ theorizing leadership in general and charismatic leadership in particular. It is only over the past fifteen years that progress has been made in the study of charismatic leadership within the labour movement,[1] primarily by substantiating Max Weber’s theory of charismatic leadership by drawing on specific historical examples.[2]

It is gratifying to see that the present issue of the International Review of Social History is perpetuating this still frail tradition with studies on the leadership of two renowned anarchist figures from the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century: the Italian Pietro Gori (1865–1911) and the Frenchman Jean Grave (1854–1939).

Emanuela Minuto, a political scientist at the University of Pisa and a specialist in Italian anarchism, quite rightly emphasizes that charisma is not an objective ahistorical quality of the person concerned. Rather, it is an out-of-the-ordinary quality attributed to him by his followers, making it appear to them that he was “sent by God” or endowed with something “supernatural or superhuman”. The qualities of a natural leader are, in fact, founded in the interaction between leaders and followers,[3] and it is fascinating to see how Minuto operationalizes such an ambiguous concept by emphasizing Gori’s emotional style of communication. Indeed, during an episode of major political and social upheaval in Italy in 1897–1898, Gori created a sense of self-awareness and involvement among a following passionately keen to find a way out of the crisis. His style of communication was actually at its most effective in emergent movements lacking any great deal of central organization. Similar observations have been made elsewhere, too, applied to the cases of Ferdinand Lassalle in Germany, the Dutchman Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, Jean Jaurès in France, and the British socialist James Keir Hardy, among others. Like Gori, they, too, had the religious charisma of the saviour and prophet. They also sought the theatre of the street, in protests and demonstrations, in debates, at funerals, during judicial hearings; situations where no appeal could be made to inherited prestige and where, through their Christian metaphor and symbolism, they could forge a link with popular tradition.

Whereas Gori became famous as the charismatic leader of an organized social anarchist movement through his powerful emotional style of communication, the French anarchist Jean Grave owed his influence to his role as newspaper publisher and editor, especially of Les Temps Nouveaux (1895–1922), successor by turns to Le Révolté (1879–1885) and La Révolte (1887–1894). Unlike Gori, who the repression in Italy often forced into exile – in London, for example (1895), or the US (1895–1896) and Argentina (1898–1901) – the Frenchman seldom left his editorial offices in Rue de Mouffetard in Paris’s Latin Quarter. While in his involvement in the labour struggle and campaigning for civil rights Gori personally sought contact with ordinary, often illiterate people, and managed to win their hearts and minds (andare al popolo), the more retiring Grave used the printed word to disseminate the anarchist message, and, until World War I, the former shoemaker was an influential figure in the international socialist movement, and in the 1890s an ideologue of anarchosyndicalism.

In “Jean Grave and French Anarchism: A Relational Approach (1870s–1914)”, the social historian Constance Bantman, author of a number of academic studies of anarchism, including The French Anarchists in London 1880–1914 (2013), offers the first in-depth analysis of the countless networks and circles (local, national, global) Grave influenced through his publications. In her research into this network, Bantman has aimed with her autobiographical study of Grave to clarify the nature of anarchist activism, within the broad French anarcho-communist tradition, in the interaction between personal and political life, and ultimately in the person of Grave himself. For the first time, the historiographical paradox, by which the figure of Grave himself, who rarely left his birthplace, was ascribed importance largely within the context of France, is unravelled, while many studies of international anarchism recognize the influence of his publications, with Les Temps Nouveaux being regarded as one of the most significant international anarchist periodicals of its time. In her methodological exposé, Bantman also points out that a network approach that considers informal connections can make a major contribution to the conceptualization of anarchism as a social movement.

Pietro Gori’s Anarchism: Politics and Spectacle (1895–1900){1} (Emanuela Minuto)

Abstract

This paper discusses Pietro Gori’s charismatic leadership of the Italian anarchist movement at the turn of the nineteenth century and, in particular, the characteristics of his political communication. After a discussion of the literature on the topic, the first section examines Gramsci’s derogatory observations on the characteristics and success of the communicative style adopted by anarchist activists such as Gori. The second investigates the political project underpinning the kind of “organized anarchism” that Gori championed together with Malatesta. The third section unveils Gori’s communication strategy when promoting this project through those platforms considered by Gramsci as being primary schools of political alphabetization in liberal Italy: trials, funerals, commemorations, and celebrations. Particular attention is devoted to the trials, which effectively demonstrated Gori’s modern political skills. The analysis of Gori’s performance at the trials demonstrates Gramsci’s mistake in identifying Gori simply as one of the champions of political sentimentalism.

He spoke very well, but he spoke the language of the people. And the people flocked in when his name was announced for a rally or for a conference.[4]

INTRODUCTION

In the twenty years between 1890–1911, Pietro Gori was one of the most famous anarchists in Italy and abroad and, long after his death, he continued to be a key figure in the socialist and labour movement of his native country. Like other members of the Italian anarchist movement, above all his friend Errico Malatesta, Gori spent part of the last decade of the nineteenth century abroad, away from the repressive policies enforced in Italy. His long exile between 1894 and 1902 – briefly interrupted between 1896 and 1898 – was at the root of his extraordinary prestige, especially in the United States and Argentina. His stay in the US (1895–1896) established him as one of the most beloved radical leaders in the Italian immigrant communities.[5] During his long residence in Latin America, he became a charismatic player in Argentinian anarchism and in the burgeoning labour movement (1898–1901).[6]

The importance of Gori’s leadership, as well as that of other socialist and anarchist figures of the period, has been underestimated. In the studies on the different forms of socialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the subject of leadership – and especially charismatic leadership – has long been neglected or sidelined from the field of interest of historians. After World War II, Marxist approaches and the perspectives inspired by the Annales led to inadequate attention being paid to the subject of leadership in the political movements of the late nineteenth century. Studies focused largely on the circumstances in which movements and parties are born and develop, the earliest forms of organization, their functioning, practices, and the collective actions of the participants, as well as popular imaginaries and desires.

With the cultural turn that has also begun to influence political historiography, the “great figures” have returned to the centre of several lines of research. Nonetheless, the reinterpretation of the socialist and anarchist world of the late nineteenth century and its exceptional figures has been fairly limited. Indeed, over the past twenty years, it is the research on nationalist movements and on the processes of mobilization and socialization conceived and deployed by the ruling elites that has become increasingly important in studies on mass politics. In short, nationalism and its “heroes” and the nationalization of the masses by the ruling classes of the late nineteenth century have become the focal point of a large number of works devoted to this period of history.[7]

While the literature on the nation and its “architects” is systematic, the dynamics of change in the study of the political traditions tied to the history of the labour movement are not quite so strong. The transformations associated with the cultural turn are of a less organic nature. The widespread approach among scholars of interpreting these traditions in terms of secular religions has resulted in analyses that focus primarily on symbols and the collective rituals of socialisms.[8] Although a small amount of space has been given to “great figures”, there remains a prevailing interest in the aspects relating to the later construction of their cult by the parties and their members attempting to consolidate group identities and political structures.[9]

Several key studies have been conducted, but a thorough and comparative perspective on leadership – particularly in relation to the category of the charismatic – only started to develop in the past fifteen years, as research groups have begun to address the historiographical gaps by taking into account Weber’s categories and by exploring some case studies.[10] In particular, the edited volume Leadership and Social Movements (2001) was one of the first systematic attempts to take stock of existing literature, reinterpret the German sociologist, and analyse several cases.[11] While focusing heavily on the twentieth century, the volume provided major methodological insights that were partly adopted by a recent collective work entitled Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements.[12] Although the cases discussed in this 2012 book relate to a broad timespan, the role and characteristics of charismatic leadership in socialism and anarchism between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries feature prominently.[13] These studies allow us to overcome the conventional approach to the phenomenon as a manifestation of a childhood of the masses and as an obstacle to or danger for the emergence of political awareness, showing that charismatic leadership – while maintaining a somewhat ambiguous nature – is actually an integral part of modern politics that, in certain contexts of transition, can serve to achieve democratic “participation and involvement”.[14] Therefore, the rejection of the common use of the concept of charisma in terms of personality type and of purely manipulative power adheres to an interpretation of Weber’s relational approach stressing the importance of contextual factors. In this regard, the charismatic leadership in the growing socialist and anarchist movements is interpreted as a relationship between leaders and followers often reinforced by an emotional communication style through which participation and consciousness could be stimulated in a context of social crisis and emerging mass parties. Furthermore, as recalled by Te Velde in an earlier article published in 2005, the list of charismatic leaders emerging between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is rather long and includes a prominent presence of “prophets” who could mobilize the masses in all European countries.[15] From this perspective, Italy is no exception. In keeping with this line of research, this essay addresses the case study of the Italian anarchist Pietro Gori, whose popularity shows qualities that seemingly evoke – through a range of aspects – the experience of other leaders, in particular that of the Dutchman Domela Nieuwenhuis.[16]

In Italy, Gori’s popularity had a paradoxical effect. Until the Fascist period, Gori was seen by socialist militants as a precursor of the Italian Socialist Party, despite a political career that would relegate him to the role of a diehard opponent of this party. In 1892, he was one of the protagonists of the battle that took place in Genoa between anarchists and socialists, ending with the definitive separation of the two movements and the founding of the PSI (the Italian Socialist Party).[17] However, both at the outbreak and at the end of World War I, Gori’s image featured in a series of postcards and pictures designed by the PSI’s publishing house and dedicated to its socialist precursors.[18]

Until recently, the significance of Gori’s presence in the Italian socialist pantheon, as well as many aspects of the position he held in the national labour movement, have barely been considered in academic research, and were relegated to mere footnotes. The relevance of Gori as a major player in the Italian context has really only emerged in the last two decades. This “rediscovery” is due to the radical changes in the approach of traditional research towards political movements during the liberal period at the turn of the twentieth century in Italy. The interest in Gori also relates to the emergence in the 1990s of a perspective inspired by the French Annales School and of a culturalist approach pioneered by the historian George Mosse within the field of study of the Italian labour movement. This, in turn, has led to a rereading of the mental make-up, culture, and systems of communication of the period between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[19] Indeed, Gori has emerged from the shadows, mainly as a result of the trends of general historiographical interests in popular sentiments and in the emotional style of “new politics” arising in the late eighteenth century.

This article analyses Gori’s charismatic leadership, shared with Malatesta, of the anarchist movement from 1897–1898, a period that saw one of the largest pre-fascist uprisings in Italy. The aim is to investigate Gori’s political communication in one of the periods with the greatest political and social tension, a time when a new strategy for the anarchist movement was conceived. Gori’s work is analysed within the context of the broader international network, which aimed to develop a political strategy that focused on organizing the anarchist movement beyond its traditional spontaneous components.

THE ANARCHIST LEADERSHIP IN THE ITALIAN CONTEXT

The centrality of the leadership in the Italian socialist and union movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been repeatedly emphasized by various studies since the 1990s. Historians maintain that, from the end of the nineteenth century, in Italy, as well as elsewhere, in both North America and Europe,[20] the charisma of the leaders was crucial in motivating broad political mobilization at the local level. As noted by Carl Levy, Italian anarchism, particularly in periods of tension and protests, relied to a heavy extent on the leaders within a movement that – despite its system of informal networks – was characterized by organizational weakness. In this regard, the case of Malatesta in the Red Biennium (1919–1920) studied by Levy is exemplary of the mobilizing effect of personality, even though Malatesta’s style of communication was, in fact, far from charismatic. Indeed, Levy reconstructs the force of a heroic symbolic transfiguration wrought by the popular classes and the press that had little to do with Malatesta’s personality.[21] As remarked by Maurizio Antonioli, Malatesta’s style rarely made use of specific speech patterns and emotional body language. Instead, it adhered to a rational and well-organized communicational model, which Levy called Socratic, and which may be associated with Mazzini’s educationism.[22] From this point of view, Malatesta is almost the antithesis of his friend Gori. Yet, Gori also stood out from other leaders within the movement, such as Luigi Fabbri, one of his friends who disseminated Malatesta’s views, and Armando Borghi, a key figure in anarchic syndicalism. Reluctant to indulge in an overly literary and emotional dimension of politics, they both adopted and evoked forms of expression that were more akin to Malatesta’s style, focusing on greater political rationality.[23]

In his pioneering study on the Italian myth of Gori, Antonioli identified a clear correlation between Gori’s popular heroic-religious image and what he deliberately attempted to transmit to the public. His contemporaries frequently referred to Gori in terms of a Christ, a visionary, an apostle. Antonioli attributes this – at least in part – to Gori’s powerful emotional style in terms of communication devices and messages. Gori’s oral and visual forms of expression coincided with the popular sentimental universe: singing, theatre, poetry, speeches, and conferences were the fora for intense contact. The power of these instruments was decisively reinforced by Gori’s use of figures and metaphors rooted in tradition and in the lives of multitudes of people, such as his constant references to the experience of emigrants as people who were forced to go in exile.[24]

More recently, Marco Manfredi suggested that the figure of Gori in Italy has become established in popular memory especially thanks to his role as a powerful speaker, addressing his audience in artistic ways even when discussing political issues. He was, therefore, able to create a strong sense of political awareness among his audiences. His skills in using both verbal and body language, which came from literature and social theatre conveyed in language with religious overtones, were at the core of a powerful political discourse.[25] Manfredi highlights that Gori’s return to Italy was linked to a new liberal openness that for anarchists would provide the backdrop for a “media revolution”. In short, the start of the twentieth century was the advent of “a stable and organic political propaganda”[26] for both Gori and Italian anarchism.

These interesting analyses address some of the most intriguing aspects of anarchism and Gori’s work. Nonetheless, albeit with several references to political conferences, both Antonioli and Manfredi investigated Gori’s work primarily as a poet, writer, and playwright. These analyses explored various major communication tools, but did not cover the entire range of political communications used by Gori. Moreover, neither Antonioli, nor Manfredi included the development of anarchist organization in their work and, more broadly, the social and political experiences that occurred during Gori’s activities. Lastly, in contrast to Manfredi, I would argue that Gori’s popularity did not emerge in the early twentieth century when new liberal freedoms were being granted, but earlier, at the time of governmental repression when momentous changes were taking place in the anarchist movement.

GORI AND THE ART OF COMMUNICATION

The new liberal phase certainly provided new communication opportunities, as well as new channels for the development of a solid propaganda project. However, if one examines the direction taken by Gori in Italy in terms of communication techniques, the last decade of the nineteenth century was, in some respects, even more important than the following one. Between 1890 and 1894, during Malatesta’s exile, Gori and Luigi Galleani delivered speeches at dozens of conferences and were considered to be the two most effective propagandists of the time.[27] In the same period, Gori wrote almost all of the poetics of 1 May, as well as dramas including the famous Inno del primo maggio (the anthem of 1 May),[28] all of which were analysed by Antonioli. Most of Gori’s poems on Labour Day immediately circulated among the popular propaganda and were then recited or sung at parties or in small meetings both in Italy and in the communities of Italian emigrants.[29] For the theatrical productions and the Inno, the expat community in the United States was almost always the first to benefit from the performances, and Gori is credited with making 1 May May Day in the US.[30] Emigration networks acted as a channel of communication outside the US. In 1897 in Italy, there were the first representations of the Primo maggio (1 May) sketch in the US version, where the famous anthem soon became one of the best-known and longest-lived pieces of the labour movement.[31]

The Italian circulation of dramas was a piece of propaganda organized by Gori on his return home in late 1896. However, between 1897–1898, Gori’s agenda focused on other activities; primarily his legal profession. At that time, Gori had already built part of his success through the trials – especially those in 1894 in the aftermath of the Sicilian revolts and the insurgencies in the north of Tuscany – that culminated in a harsh crackdown. In a note to the local authorities in May 1894, Prime Minister Francesco Crispi, who was the architect of the repression of the anarchists, tried to put a stop to Gori’s legal practice in north-central Italy, which Gori had been conducting with conferences “in smaller rural centres” where the trials were held.[32] At that same time, Gori’s reputation for being persecuted was being consolidated by the seventeen cases against him in 1893.

As recalled by his friend and collaborator Ezio Bartalini, to prevent the debates from becoming opportunities for political propaganda for Gori the authorities began to occasionally conduct trials behind closed doors under the pretext of public order.[33] Another striking example of the widespread fear of Gori appearing in court, even at an international level, is provided by his expulsion from France in 1894 for fear that he might take on the defence of Sante Caserio, who had assassinated the French President Sadi Carnot.[34] Moreover, the revelation of past relations between him and Caserio fuelled Gori’s notoriety enormously in France, where he was considered to be the instigator of Caserio, or the “Italian Sébastien Faure”.[35]

Back in Italy, Gori and Malatesta used the trials to forge a formidable propaganda strategy. The criminal proceedings, especially the debates in the Courts of Assizes, were some of the greatest spectacles of the time.[36] In the late nineteenth century, democrats, socialists, and anarchists made full use of court oratory for educational purposes and to form a personal and party consensus. This approach renewed and reinforced a tradition that already existed in the internationalism of the 1870s. A good example is the famous trial of 1876 brought against several internationalists accused of undermining internal state security for an attempted insurrection. The defendants also included Andrea Costa, a founding father of Italian socialism. For the socialist leaders Filippo Turati, Leonida Bissolati, Errico Ferri, and Anselmo Marabini, Andrea Costa’s self-defence in court would mark the moment of their entry into politics. Furthermore, Marabini – a fellow countryman of Costa – provided a very interesting testimony in his memoirs about the spectacle of this occasion. According to him, for three months, crowds flocked to the Court of Assizes, people in the square would talk of little else than the hearing, and the citizenry celebrated the defendant’s acquittal. The text of Costa’s self-defence went on to become a true bestseller.[37] More than twenty years later, the judicial arena would continue to be vital for all political forces, but especially for the anarchist movement, as suggested by Antonio Gramsci.

In his Prison Notebooks, assessing the deep roots of “generic libertarianism” in popular traditions in Italy, Gramsci suggested that Gori’s poetry and speeches should be analysed, as they played a key role in fostering a taste for melodrama amongst the people.[38] Reflecting on ways to eradicate this taste, especially in poetry, Gramsci came to perceive “collective oratorical and theatrical events” as one of the causes behind this trend towards melodrama. When discussing oratory skills, Gramsci specified that one should not “only refer to popular meetings”, but also gatherings at funerals, the courts, and popular theatres. In the provinces in particular, the judicial offices were crowded with a “popular” audience and “elements that imprinted in the memory the turns of phrase and the solemn words, they meditate on these words and remember them. Likewise, in the funerals of notables, attended by large crowds, who often only came to hear the speeches”. Ultimately, in order to eradicate such pre-political melodramatic taste, Gramsci advocated “its merciless criticism” and the dissemination of “books of poetry written or translated in ‘unrefined language’, where the sentiments expressed are not rhetorical or melodramatic”. An example of this was the “simple translations, such as those of Togliatti for Whitman and Martinet”,[39] published in the Gramscian journal Ordine Nuovo between 1919 and 1920.[40]

Not only did Gramsci regard the statements in court as powerful, pernicious, educational tools, he also considered the spread of the judicial genre and its political exploitation by the anarchists to be dangerous for the masses. Gramsci wrote in his Notebooks that at the Socialist Party Conference in Livorno in January 1921 – which saw the split that resulted in the founding of the Communist Party – the socialist MP Pietro Abbo “repeated the introduction of the statement of the principles of Etievant” pronounced at the Court of Assizes of Versailles in 1892. Pietro Abbo was a self-taught farmer born in 1894 and, according to Gramsci, Abbo’s source was Luigi Galleani’s collection Faccia a faccia col nemico. Cronache giudiziarie dell’anarchismo militante [Face to face with the enemy: Judicial reports on militant anarchism], published in Boston in 1914. The case was mentioned as an example of how “these men educated themselves” and how “this sort of literature” was “widespread and popular”.[41]

THE POLITICS OF COMMON SENSE

On 1 May 1897, Malatesta wrote: “let’s see trials as an opportunity for greater and noisier propaganda”.[42] His exhortation was part of a broader appeal to use all the spaces of freedom to promote the political project of organized anarchism that had recently been developed by those in exile. Indeed, from 1895, in the international community of exiles in London, a concept of Italian and French organizational anarchism had begun to develop. London was then the crossroads of continental anarchism, which had been hit by a wave of repression triggered by anarchist bombings and rioting.[43] The failure of these bombings and riots, the subsequent governmental repression, the impact of the great European popular mobilizations and trade unionism acted as catalysts for a review of anarchist strategy. The French and Italian groups in London, headed by Malatesta, Pouget, and Pelloutier, were jointly formulating new guidelines for national and international trends based on the idea of internal organization and the strong involvement of anarchists in the labour movement.[44]

Gori was directly involved in this collective gestation of a “labour-oriented” strategy in order to regain contact with the masses. In 1895, he stayed for a few months in London, immersing himself in the life of the international anarchist network until his departure for the United States.[45] These discussions in London provided the background to the direction he was to take in the US. In North America, hundreds of conferences and theatrical performances had the purpose of raising awareness of the kind of anarchism championed by Malatesta and other organizationists.[46]

The end of Gori’s tour of America was linked to the decision taken by the organized branch of anarchists to assert their new tactics to the maximum at the assembly of the international labour movement in London. With the mandate of various Italian trade unions in North America, Gori returned to London to take part in the fourth Congress of the Second International (27 July to 1 August 1896), which witnessed the last heavy battle between the front tied to the German SPD and the “anti-authoritarians” made up of anarchists and various socialist components. The Congress was the most important event for Gori and Malatesta before returning to Italy, where they set out a programme that contrasted individualism, terrorism, and spontaneity with an entry into the world of work and an operational strategy that set aside the revolutionary framework.[47] The main tool to propagate this programme became the weekly L’Agitazione, founded in Ancona in March 1897, in which the voices of Malatesta, Gori, and other organizationists outlined guidelines for a people’s strategy focused on economic campaigns and legal battles for civil liberties based on an agenda modelled on the existing order.

For Malatesta and Gori, these new guidelines were the clearest signs of a strong-felt need to “go to the people”, which had informed previous thoughts and actions. As reconstructed by Davide Turcato, the path taken by Malatesta in the late nineteenth century is marked by a permanent drive for inclusion and flexibility. “Going to the people” was based on participation in labour and civil battles, which could not be traced directly back to anarchism.[48] As mentioned earlier, Gori’s constant penetration of the world of ordinary people was the aspect most referred to by historical studies. In 1897, this resulted in appeals for the use of a language of the soul and in an absolute leadership in defence of civil liberties. In June 1897, Gori announced his resumption of “work” in Italy in the L’Agitazione by launching an appeal to speak to everyone using “the simple words of a good heart” of “common sense” in the name of “human solidarity” and to enter “boldly, without further separating himself, into the labour movement”.[49] A little over a month later, in keeping with the line of L’Agitazione, he outlined a priority action plan for the anarchists: the struggle against a bill “that essentially aimed to include the actual deportation by administrative action in the permanent legislation of the state for political reasons”.[50]

The return of Malatesta and Gori coincided with the discussion on a reform aimed at normalizing the violation of freedom of expression which – in contrast with the fundamentals of liberalism – was implemented by the Italian government as an exceptional measure between 1894 and 1895. A text on domicilio coatto was under discussion, i.e. confinement in a – usually remote – town or in a prison camp, which would make any stable form of organization of dissent and freedom of expression very difficult. Domicilio coatto was used constantly to suppress expressions of opposition to the liberal system.[51] The exceptional measures in 1894, however, made domicilio coatto practically embedded in the rule of law to repress anarchists, socialists, and even republicans.[52] The resulting indictments and convictions were based on the political programme of the Socialist Party and the anarchists. When these temporary measures ceased to be in force, first Crispi, and then his successor Antonio Rudinì, attempted to transpose them into ordinary law.[53] Indeed, in 1897, Rudinì revived the project on the back of political elections that had given the extreme left more than a quarter of the vote.[54] In the version approved by the Senate, the basic substance of the law was essentially the same as in the exceptional measure of 1894.[55] In fact, political programmes, articles, brochures, posters, conferences, or simple cries of “long live anarchy” or socialism, would constitute an offence punishable by domicilio coatto.

Faced with this proposal, Gori saw the need to move in at least three directions. In his article “Per la libertà” [For Freedom], he first urged anarchists to take up their battle through a call to the “partisan government” to act in decency and show “respect for their own statute”. His call also sought to debunk the anarchists’ image as “inhuman haters”, which had been corroborated by the attacks in recent years, by highlighting the recently developed programme of organized anarchists. Secondly, Gori recognized that he had to act together with the other left-wing groups that were already operating in that sphere. Lastly, the campaign had to become a popular movement. Against the laceration of the “few Italian freedoms” that were left, “the people”, Gori wrote, “have a duty, not just a right, which is wholly constitutional: resistance”.[56]

This sort of manifesto came out shortly after the publication of the first of many reports regarding the legal practice Gori conducted in the centre-north of Italy. The anarchist was back in the courtrooms, turning them into a stage for the project promoted by L’Agitazione, which was no less effective than the rallies that were denied to him due to being on parole.[57]

FROM THE PERIPHERY TO THE CENTRE AND BACK AGAIN

Two trials that took place in 1898 can be used as examples to assess the Per la libertà [For Freedom] project alongside Gramsci’s comments. One was a trial of thirty-six citizens of Carrara, the epicentre of the 1894 riots, and the second was the famous proceedings against Malatesta and the editorial staff of L’Agitazione. The first case was triggered by the attack on a public safety officer. Republicans, socialists, and anarchists were charged with unlawful association, the possession and detonation of bombs, and attempted murder. The trial was held in the Assize Court in Casale Monferrato (Piedmont) from the beginning of March until the end of April, and concluded with the acquittal of all the defendants except one. The attack on the public safety officer was interpreted as a manifestation of a subversive plan aimed at abolishing private property by violent means, and was seen as involving all of the popular political forces through the indiscriminate attribution of the markings of anarchism. The prosecution was based mainly on posters celebrating 1 May 1896, on municipal commemorations, and on an 1883 statute of the anarchist “sect” based in Carrara.

From the outset of the proceedings, Gori was present as a member of the defence. In the courtroom, there were journalists from six newspapers, including two from Carrara, two from Turin – Gazzetta del Popolo and the national newspaper La Stampa – and two local papers L’Avvenire and L’Elettrico. There were 260 witnesses, and the doors were always open to the public.[58] The whole trial was reported verbatim by the two Carrara weeklies Lo Svegliarino (the mouthpiece for the Republicans with a circulation of around 1,000 copies) and the moderate democratic L’Eco del Carrione.[59] Gori gave his speech on 13 April before an “unusually crowded” courtroom.[60] The local newspapers noted that Gori had set up “a barricade of books”[61] and L’Eco del Carrione reported at least some of the titles of these books.[62] In some cases, book titles were reported without the name of the author, while in others the titles were inaccurate. Essentially, there were three types of book, some of which were in French and Spanish: political writings on international social anarchism, classic essays, and books that had been extremely successful within the broader context of radicalism, as well as at least two publications by Gori. This “barricade” was, therefore, of a multifaceted nature and could not be attributed solely to the anarchist doctrine. Nevertheless, this range of titles was able to help spread true anarchist ideas and build a bridge with other forces and middle classes, who had long been familiar with the interpretations and radical messages that Gori put forward.

The political writings on social anarchism included books in French by Kropotkin, Paroles d’un révolté, and by the Dutchman Domela Nieuwenhuis, Le socialisme en danger, as well as Spanish works by Mella and the Georgian writer Tcherkesoff. The writings by Mella and Tcherkesoff, Los sucesos de Jerez and Páginas de historia Socialistas, respectively, were some of the titles published or promoted in 1897 by the newly formed Protesta Humana in Buenos Aires, a Spanish-language weekly inspired by the writings of Malatesta, which would soon become the most important anarchist journal in South America. In fact, Gori appeared with at least four books and brochures in Spanish that were in the Protesta Humana catalogue, comprising around ten titles, including Gori’s dramatic sketch Primero de Mayo published in 1897.[63]

Consequently, Gori managed to take into the courtrooms the key works of international social anarchism; some of the authors he had met between 1895 and 1896 in Amsterdam, London (where Russian exiles and Russophiles were often based), and the United States.[64] This propagandist showcase of books was a way to disseminate the ideas of the organized anarchists before the Italian versions of the works by Italian publishers were released. For the occasion, Gori’s barricade also included the minutes of meetings and a copy of the Philadelphia newspaper Il Vesuvio, whose chief editor was the radical socialist Giusto Calvi, with whom Gori had argued in the United States. In response to Calvi’s criticism of the anarchist ideas and practices outlined in the Avanti of Philadelphia, Gori blasted him in the pages of the Italo-American Questione sociale. In his famous long piece entitled “Anarchici e socialisti” [Anarchists and Socialists], Gori criticized electoralism and parliamentarianism and focused on the socialist nature of anarchist economic doctrine.[65] To strengthen the anarchists’ position as the true interpreters of genuine socialism, Gori used instrumentally Auguste Bebel’s brochure The Conquest of Power and drew on the author’s references to the inevitable demise of the State.[66]

This pamphlet, by one of the fathers of social democracy, had been well-known in Italy for years. This notoriety suggested that it was part of the showcase of books for the trial. The pamphlet falls into the second category of books that Gori proposed for the courtroom, including some Italian and European bestsellers on radicalism: Le socialisme contemporain by De Laveleye, The Life of Jesus by Renan, La fine delle guerre [The End of War] by Meale (whose pseudonym was Umano), La sovranità popolare [Popular Sovereignty] by Ellero, La dottrina dei partiti politici [The Doctrine of Political Parties] by Bovio, and La delinquenza settaria [The Sectarian Criminality] by Sighele. These authors made up the cultural background of a generation of speakers from different political affiliations (anarchists, socialists, radicals, republicans), who often shared the experience of having studied law at university.[67]

With regard to his speeches, Gori did not address controversial themes and terms that would have brought to the fore differences between anarchism and other leftist political movements. Gori made absolutely no reference to the charges brought against the accused. Instead, he focused on the nature of anarchism and on the non-prosecutability of this political doctrine. By instigating a sort of counter-trial against the public authorities, he exalted the liberties of England, defended the Italian constitution, and revived the teachings of the liberal law school and social criminal law cultivated by socialism.

At the same time, in defence of anarchism, he made frequent use of the rhetorical and linguistic devices typical of both radical democracy[68] and of socialism and anarchism from the continent. Gori exploited the popular myth of Jesus being a socialist.[69] The essence of anarchism was defined by both the old and most recent transfiguration of Jesus conveyed through democracy and socialism. Indeed, when asked to define anarchism, Gori replied by quoting the Jesus humanized by Renan, while also referring to the Bible.[70] Furthermore, the right to association and speech for anarchists was claimed through the stories of persecutions against Christians conceived by Félicité de Lamennais and later appropriated by the liberal and radical political culture of 1848. Gori argued that anarchism may be “a dream, a utopia”, but for the innocent accused of the crimes, “we [anarchists] demand freedom through the words of a priest, Lamennais, who recommended that his flock should respect all opinions and remember the catacombs where Christians died because of the God they had chosen”. In a similar vein, to further argue in favour of freedom of speech, Gori referred to the Risorgimento myth of the conspirators/martyrs who had died for the freedom enshrined in the Albertine Statute, which was then celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Gori emphatically stated: “I bow to the Statute, the result of the blood of conspirators, of yesterday’s persecutors, and […] freeing the accused you [the jury] will assert this sacrosanct right to freedom”.[71]

The framework, themes, and images of these criminal proceedings were replicated in the trial brought against the editors of the L’Agitazione, who were accused of directing the riots against the high cost of food in Ancona in January 1898. Malatesta and his companions were indicted of the crime of criminal association and criminal apology. The case ended, however, with a conviction for sedition, which was a rather more noble crime for the anarchists than simply being seen as common delinquents.[72] The evidence was found in the publications of L’Agitazione, in Malatesta’s Fra contadini, as well as in Malatesta’s conferences on domicilio coatto and social anarchism. The records of the hearings show the presence of republicans, socialists, and anarchists as defence witnesses, some of whom had previously participated in conferences with Malatesta on the issue of domicilio coatto. Outside the tribunal, a crowd waited patiently hoping to be allowed to take part in the proceedings.[73]

Being fully aware of his theatrical presence, Malatesta turned the questioning and self-defence into a display of anarchist doctrine and of the organizationists’ recent programme, with a renewed focus on becoming closer to the working class. As always, his oratory style was simple, direct, but not without emotional outbursts.[74] The structure and language did not diverge from the first part of the defence conducted by Gori, who was wisely the last of the attorneys to speak before Malatesta’s final self-defence. Gori’s speech can be divided into two parts. In the first half, he read pages from Malatesta’s L’Anarchia (1891), considered by Malatesta to be his best work, to which he added several typical ideas of anarchic socialism, such as freedom from authority, economic and social harmony, and the rejection of violence. Gori saw violence as a by-product of authority, identifying it as something belonging to the bourgeois state, and contrasting it with the image of anarchists who were prophets of a new peaceful and just world.[75]

The second part of his speech, however, was designed to invoke freedom of thought and action for the movement. He therefore harked back to the link between anarchists and Jesus and between anarchism and Christianity. Gori claimed that judges cannot “nail” the anarchist principles of freedom, harmony, and justice to “the cross of those two articles of the criminal law code”. Gori drew an analogy between the anarchists’ crucifixion and that of Jesus: “the cross became the symbol of purity when the gentle Jesus was crucified as a wrongdoer […] who raised his voice against the rich and the powerful of the world in the name of the wretched and the humble”.[76] On this basis, Gori suggested that anarchist humanism represented the highest stage of Christianity.

At the same time, Gori advanced the idea of a lineage of anarchists from the Risorgimento generation who were attempting to reclaim freedom; moreover, he put forward a vision of predestination which, once again, was based on icons and symbols of democracy. Employing a positivist approach, Gori extracted words from Giosuè Carducci’s Satana e Polemiche sataniche [Satan and Satanic Polemics] on the clear direction of history towards socialism as testified by the French insurrection of 10 August 1792, by the Five Days of Milan in 1848, and by the Parisian barricades of June 1848.[77] Gori thereby proposed three interlinked types of prophets/martyrs: the evangelicals, the democratic revolutionaries of the Risorgimento, and the anarchists – all persecuted and betrayed in their ideals, but not defeated.

Simply dismissing these passages from Gori’s oration as being the legacy of a flair for melodrama and a post-Risorgimento romantic-democratic culture would be to misunderstand several fundamental aspects. In actual fact, the language adopted is the manifestation of a more complex strategy. For Gori, Malatesta’s “going to the people” meant primarily speaking in a way that could arouse empathy among an audience that was still largely illiterate. Gori was known by his activist companions and friends as a “true expert of the doctrine” of anarchism, but not as a theorist; he was continually engaged in developing popular forms of communication.[78] According to Luigi Fabbri, the Tuscan anarchist had remarkably solid ideas and was able to “heed the most daring affirmation of the theories and methods of anarchism” in varying contexts.[79] While he was able to win over many different audiences, Fabbri stated, “he also knew how to enthuse his much-loved crowds of ordinary people”.[80] On this note, he wrote: “his eloquence [...], in its beautiful form, was accessible to the hearts and minds of all workers, even those less well-educated. He didn’t show off with unintelligible words [...] he spoke the language of the people”.[81] As such, the language of the people, to which he dedicated his life, went from using simple vocabulary to employing figures and symbols that were deep-felt in popular culture, yet which Gori was able to infuse with new substance. The poor and mistreated Christ was one of the most popular images among the European masses, along with the martyrs and heroes of the European revolutions of 1848, such as Giuseppe Garibaldi, who were true popular icons.[82] People’s widespread familiarity with these traditions is the reason why they are referred to by Gori with an anarchist approach who, in doing so, took the same path as other European leaders such as Domela Nieuwenhuis, operating in contexts with major party-political instability and significant social changes. Between 1885 and 1891, in order to popularize the socialist ideas, Domela Nieuwenhuis very successfully employed a speaking style that had numerous references to the humanized Jesus.[83] As for Gori, the power of this style is confirmed by the testimonies of the local peasants and workers from the anarchist’s place of origin (Elba). In court, the anarchist leader was reported to have “had incredible words” that won people over,[84] “sincere words” that made people like him.[85] The “incredible words” “awoke” people to the idea of “having citizen rights, the rights of men not of beasts”.[86] In popular Tuscan memory, the courtrooms, town squares, theatres, and workplaces were all places where Gori had “sown ideas”,[87] which later gave rise to the establishment of anarchist syndicalism.[88]

As in the case of Domela Nieuwenhuis, the mechanics of interplay with the people were simultaneously reinforced by life practices that were similar to both the Christological model and that of ordinary people.[89] In popular memory, the Italian anarchist leader was remembered as an “angel”, an “exceptionally good” man, “all heart, all heart for everyone”.[90] The “saint”,[91] however, was also depicted as the one who “saw people as his own [...] there was no distance”.[92] According to a farmer from Elba, the “older ones” said that Gori “was always among the people”.[93] The memory of the inhabitants of Elba suggests that, together with this lifestyle, it was his legal defence for common crimes that played an essential role in connecting Gori with the people. The deep empathy felt towards the anarchist stemmed from the fact that he was viewed as the unpaid lawyer of the poor. In many people’s memory, Gori was “fair”,[94] a man of justice, as he defended those who were displaced and exploited without receiving payment, and was almost always successful thanks to his eloquence, which “broke hearts”.[95]

While the model of an anarchist Christ among men – so strongly articulated in advocacy – helped to create an emotive community and “awaken” the people, in the political processes of 1898 his proposition served an even broader purpose. The representations and images used in the courtroom managed to convey anarchists in a light that was the opposite of the image of wrongdoers-destroyers, thereby helping to legitimize the movement as a force that could address the issue of rights and interacting with socialists and democrats.

These forms of communication developed at a time when protests were spreading rapidly across Italy and at the climax of a process of rapprochement between political forces on the left. Gori drew on myths able to consolidate his own political community and to achieve broader political objectives by supporting and strengthening an area of common ground with republicans and socialists. This goal was achieved in autumn 1897 despite persisting tensions between these forces.[96]

Until the eve of the trial, L’Agitazione provided news about anarchist, republican, and socialist conferences and rallies held to defend freedom and joint committees for the abolition of domicilio coatto. Representatives of various popular forces were taking part in all of these initiatives. Especially in central Italy, solidarity and cooperation were expressed in a variety of forms at a local level. In addition to joint committees, there were collective commemorations focusing on the freedom of expression, and funerals for those condemned to domicilio coatto attended by some of the key political figures fighting the proposed new legislation.

Gori did not limit himself to speaking in court, but took advantage of all kinds of public platforms. His numerous defence cases were interspersed, for example, by participating in the funeral of a “victim of domicilio coatto”, and in a huge demonstration in Pisa in honour of Giordano Bruno. Gori attended the funeral along with Luigi De Andreis, a republican member of parliament and member of the central committee for agitation against domicilio coatto, who was later sentenced in 1898 to twelve years in prison by the Milan War Tribunal.[97] Gori and De Andreis therefore transformed the event into a political gesture with highly symbolic content rooted in continuity with a nineteenth-century tradition. Equally important was the commemoration in Pisa of Giordano Bruno who, along with Galileo, was seen by all radicals as the main deity of freedom of thought.[98] The tribute to Bruno included the unveiling of a plaque and a meeting with the three proponents of the battle against domicilio coatto: Gori, the republican Faustino Sighieri, and the socialist Andrea Costa, who had recently been deemed a major contributor to the weakening of the anarchist movement and who had therefore been subject to a harsh campaign of accusations by anarchists.[99]

Another significant opportunity to bring together different political movements was the celebration of the Five Days of Milan, which took place in March 1898 and was organized by republicans, socialists, and anarchists in defence of freedom and against domicilio coatto. At the height of the protests, which coincided with the official celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the Statute, the radical movement recalled the “other 1848” when Milan witnessed a huge mass gathering with the significant presence and influence of democratic elements. In what was one of the main collective rituals of popular movements, violating parole, Gori gave a speech on behalf of the anarchists which – to a great extent – was a revisited version of the famous and enduring Inno di Garibaldi by Luigi Mercantini (1859). Gori developed his address by highlighting the experience of the lower classes and by drawing on some Risorgimento categories, interpreted in a way which was common to radical democrats and socialists.[100] Gori’s rhetoric was centred around three nuclei: the homeland dreamed of by Pisacane, the betrayed homeland, and the homeland finally redeemed. Gori filled his speech with powerful images. He appealed to the 1848 martyrs/patriots who fought and died dreaming of “social justice and freedom”. Despite their sacrifice, he highlighted that “the homeland, mother to all of her sons”, still did not exist. The betrayal of the motherland was demonstrated by the thousands of emigrants – “sons of Italy, wandering around and mocked” – and by the oppression of the political opponents (described as “apostles […] of redemption”). However, in a prophetic style typical of his time, he declared that the spirit of the 1848 Milan patriots would rise again on the final day of “the Nemesis hour”. On this day, people will sing, in Garibaldi’s footsteps, the verses of Mercantini’s Inno: “Italian houses are made for us” and “our martyrs have all risen again”.[101]

As such, Gori described the last victory as the completion of the fathers’ unfinished plan. The redemption took the form of an awakening of the spirit of 1848 against the nuovo straniero (the new oppressor, the bourgeois state). This awakening would inexorably lead to the “final liberation from economic injustice and political tyranny”.[102] The sheer power of this type of rhetoric is highlighted by the fact that, two months later, Gori’s speech appeared in the documents presented by the prosecution at the trial brought against him by the Milan War Tribunal, which ended with an eight-year prison sentence.[103] The sentence was issued when Gori had already left for Argentina, where Protesta Humana had continued to publish Gori’s work. Just before his arrival, the paper had consecrated him as the poetic symbol of May Day.[104] Gori’s landing in Argentina ushered in a period that shared a great deal with his experiences in Italy. Gori embarked on the same range of endeavours and types of speeches. From the outset, he set about denouncing the current situation in Italy in a theatre, but political awareness soon came thanks to the launch of a pamphlet – La anarquìa ante los tribunales: defensa de Pedro Gori en el proceso de los anarquistas de Génova – and the publication of Malatesta’s trial.[105]

CONCLUSION

A turning point for the organizationists of the Italian anarchist movement came only after the liberal breakthrough in 1901, which enabled the anarchists to be protagonists of the foundation and activities of the Camere del Lavoro in the large cities of north and central Italy. From 1902 onwards, this development was supported by Gori, whose patronage was sought given the popularity he had achieved in the previous decade. Gori’s leadership depended to a large extent on his ability to exploit – rather than invent – modern political communication. Like in France, the use of traditional stages for a political show in a repressive phase played a key role in creating an aura of epic quality.[106] Funerals, celebrations, theatrical and poetry events, as well as the courts of law, were the typical paraphernalia of modern politics heralded by the French Revolution,[107] while the repression increased their visibility and fortune.

In these contexts, Gori utilized communicative tools that were criticized by Gramsci, but turned out to be very effective. In the Quaderni, Gramsci expressed several negative comments on Gori’s libertarianism, with reference to his rhetoric, and not to a specific political project. Gori was not a theoretician, but someone with a profound knowledge of the anarchist doctrine – as acknowledged by his comrades – whose goal was primarily that of developing popular forms of communication. Above all, Malatesta’s “going to the people” (andare al popolo) meant, for Gori, the need to conceive a language for the people. In a context characterized by illiteracy, deep popular religious feelings, lack of structured political parties, and state repression of political activism, Gori’s communicative style was able to reach widely into society. As shown by the performances in court, the use of symbols and deep-felt myths served to achieve emotional appeal that opened up the field or could be combined with an attempt to disseminate the anarchist doctrine developed largely by the international community of exiles. In this regard, remembering Gori as a jurist, his friend Bartalini described the court as a place both of “sentimental communion” and “a propaganda conference [...] where the lawyer and clients” could celebrate “a rite of freedom”.[108] More generally, thanks to his emotional-religious style, Gori sustained an image of anarchists very different from that of “human haters”, which was common during that period. At the time of raising political violence, this aspect was crucial in order to legitimize anarchism as a political force able to relate with other political movements and to address the issue of political and social rights.

Jean Grave and French Anarchism: A Relational Approach (1870s–1914){2} (Constance Bantman)

Abstract

This article proposes a biographical approach to the study of anarchist activism, applied to the French journalist, editor, theorist, novelist, educator, and campaigner Jean Grave, one of the most influential figures in the French and international anarchist movement between the late 1870s and World War I. Adopting a relational approach delineating Grave’s formal and informal connections, it focuses on the role of print in Grave’s activism, through the three papers he edited between 1883 and 1914, and highlights his transnational connections and links with progressive circles in France. Due to the central place of both Grave and his publications in the French anarchist movement, this biographical and relational approach provides a basis to reassess the functioning and key strategic orientations of French anarchist communism during its “heroic period” (1870s–1914), by stressing its transnational ramifications and links beyond the anarchist movement.

“Les Temps Nouveaux? It was Grave’s paper, and that’s all one needs to know.”[109]

INTRODUCTION

A randomly selected, four-page issue from 1895, the first year of the weekly Les Temps Nouveaux [110] (the continuation of the earlier Le Révolté and La Révolte), opens with a front-page article entitled “Patriotisme et Cosmopolitisme”, leading to a survey of labour movement news in France, the Netherlands, Romania, and the United States. The brief “Petites correspondances” back-page section addresses individuals and organizations from all over France, Geneva, the Belgian towns of Iseghem and Morlanwelz, Buenos Aires, and, in the United States, New York, Colgate (Wisconsin), and Weir City (Kansas). In a late-1895 issue of the associated (and undated) Supplément Littéraire, readers would have found an article by Russian sociologist Jacques Novicow, Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren’s piece “The Stock Exchange”, an extract from Engels’s The Origins of the Family, and a paragraph on “Harmful intelligence” by the French anthropologist, anatomist, and physiologist Léonce Manouvrier.[111] For a set of publications launched “without capital and without any advance […] only counting on the support of the intellectual public and the goodwill of those who know [them]”,[112] this thematic and geographical scope was extraordinary, yet fully characteristic. It resulted from, and enacted the activist project and skills of the paper’s editor, Jean Grave.

Grave’s contribution to French and international anarchist communism was pivotal, in terms of ideological elaboration as well as dissemination. Until World War I, he was one of the best connected and most influential figures in the international anarchist movement, through the prominence and sheer volume of his contacts, as well as his ability to extend and mobilize them in the context of a clear militant project relying on predominantly informal connections. Grave was the editor of three highly prominent anarchist periodicals, Le Révolté (1879–1885), La Révolte (1887–1894), and Les Temps Nouveaux (1895–1922), which were read and broadcast anarchist ideas on a global scale, with a circulation ranging from 1,500 in their early days to 18,000 copies at their peak,[113] presumably with a much wider readership. In addition, The Presse de la Révolte and the Publications des Temps Nouveaux published dozens of pamphlets by Grave and others, and important books such as Grave’s La Société Mourante et l’Anarchie (1893), L’Anarchie, son but, ses moyens (1899), and Les Aventures de Nono (1901), a children’s book. These publications are considered here within a broader analysis of Grave’s print-based relational activism, which focuses primarily on the periodicals he edited and which were so closely associated with his work and vision.

Grave was born in 1854 into a working-class family in the Puy de Dôme region in Central France. A shoemaker by trade, he became one of the early champions of anarchism when it emerged as a distinct political movement in the late 1870s, in the final years of the First International. Grave, initially drawn to the Marxist-inspired ideas of Jules Guesde, first started attending political meetings in Paris, before moving to Geneva at the end of 1883 to take over the editorship of Le Révolté at the invitation of the anarchist communist theorists Peter Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus.[114] Le Révolté was subsequently relocated to Paris, and was renamed La Révolte in 1886. By the early 1890s, when the ideology of propaganda by the deed swept over France and beyond, Grave, primarily through his publications, had become instrumental in the elaboration and transmission of anarchist communism. He was an important voice in the transnational anarchist debate over the use of political violence and the promotion of trade unionism and the general strike within an anarchist framework. Grave retained this prominent role as the threat of a war loomed ever closer, first as a champion of antimilitarism and pacifism and, in a dramatic ideological U-turn, as a signatory to the interventionist Manifesto of the Sixteen issued in 1916. After the war, his near-complete isolation and loss of influence were both a consequence and a reflection of the demise of the movement as he saw it, because of its internal divisions (including the organizational and ideological collapse of some of its key networks) and the competition from Bolshevism.[115]

Except for a well-researched and insightful brief biography of Grave by Louis Patsouras,[116] little in-depth attention has been paid to this central figure. Existing works focus, understandably, on Grave’s ideas and writings, leaving his wide network of connections largely unexamined. This contribution addresses this gap: it argues that in order to be fully assessed, Grave’s role must be examined through a relational perspective highlighting his participation in many different groups, circles, and networks active on multiple geographical scales ranging from the very local to the global, and underlining his skills in mobilizing these contacts as part of a clearly-defined militant vision and strategy. On a more personal level, this approach brings a corrective to customary portrayals of Grave as “cripplingly shy”[117] but unabashedly doctrinaire, “primitive and uncouth”,[118] afflicted with a stutter which “forced him to conduct his revolutionary activity exclusively through writing or with comrades in informal egalitarian settings, formally organized groups being too stressful and painful”.[119] Examining Grave’s liaising work and the ambitious vision underpinning it underlines his determination, versatility, and achievements as an activist and an organizer; it restores his voice and agency, and sheds light on the deep interlocking of the political and private spheres in his activism. It contradicts contemporary claims that “like happy people, Jean Grave has no history”, while largely confirming that “his story is that of his books, pamphlets, and papers”.[120]

Print was indeed the prime medium for Grave’s network-based activism, making him an exception, as a sedentary yet highly connected anarchist transnationalist who travelled very little at a time of intense anarchist mobility, while reaching audiences on a global scale. This makes him uncharacteristic with respect to the description of typical early twentieth-century transnational anarchist mediators provided by the historian Kirwin Shaffer. Shaffer deploys the notion of “itinerant” activists, who “helped to solidify transnational anarchist networks […] to galvanize fund-raising campaigns, bring a certain international ‘legitimacy’ to their local and national efforts, and resurrected old friendships from previous militant campaigns in other countries”.[121] While Grave matches all the functional attributes of such militants, one crucial aspect is missing: mobility. This is indeed a key, often implicit feature for transnational activists, in a movement where forced and voluntary mobility was so prevalent, and Grave’s sedentary activism contrasts with many of his contemporaries – a reminder that ideological dissemination does not necessarily require personal mobility, just connectors and intermediaries, as stressed by Pierre-Yves Saunier.[122] Grave’s specificity is that his connecting activities were largely mediated by his publications, which, through their extensive circulation, counteracted his own sedentariness. In addition, the fact that Grave did not speak any language other than French was counteracted by his close links with a vast network of international anarchists and occasional translators, who supported the international make-up and diffusion of his publications. Emphasizing the role of print-based activism also explains partly the paradoxical historiographic treatment which Grave has received, as a militant who is mostly discussed within a strictly French context, whereas many studies on global anarchism mention the presence and impact of his successive publications far beyond France, making Les Temps Nouveaux “one of anarchism’s most important and popular journals”.[123] Examining Grave’s print networks explains away this apparent contradiction.

The study of his print activism casts a new light on Grave; given his central role in the movement, it also brings new insights into the broader French anarchist communist tradition. It emphasizes Grave’s significance in connecting French anarchist circles with a wider artistic and literary intelligentsia and a politically progressive front – two sets of connections that have not been examined together and systematically. In terms of methodology, it integrates ongoing research into personal and political networks with the substantial historiography exploring the cultural politics of anarchism, and examines the latter from a political perspective. Grave’s example illustrates the key role of these collaborations as a reputational asset for the movement: they account for its resilience in critical times – for instance the anti-anarchist “Trial of the Thirty” (1894) in which Grave was indicted – as well as its lasting (counter)cultural influence.

Secondly, this relational perspective shows the full extent of Grave’s internationalization – a dimension often overlooked or downplayed in works on both Grave and the wider French anarchist movement.[124] Patsouras’s excellent biography predates the “transnational turn”, which has opened new historiographic perspectives for the anarchist movement and is fully relevant to understand Grave’s life and militancy. Similarly, Jean Maitron’s Histoire du mouvement anarchiste en France (1975), a landmark study on French anarchism that remains fully up to date in all other respects, has an overwhelmingly national focus, as do more recent works, even when exploring new methodologies and themes, such as the role of networks in the movement or terrorism, antimilitarism, and pacifism. This contribution supplements the historiography of French anarchism by stressing the integral importance of international links and ideological inputs to the conception and diffusion of anarchist communism in France at certain times, with Grave and his publications acting as key intermediaries in these multidirectional transfers. In this instance, the biographical angle provides a new understanding of the nature and functioning of the wider movement. This approach converges with the growing body of studies on transnational anarchism, although it adopts a relatively new angle by examining a largely “immobile transnationalist” operating through print journalism, rather than personal mobility as a vector for transnational militancy and ideological exchange. In the context of French anarchism (as in many other national historiographies), the study of exiled and immigrant groups has been the primary lens to stress the movement’s international dimensions, whether it be the international activism of individual militants,[125] immigrant groupings in France[126] (a line of inquiry that remains incomplete, notably with respect to Italian and Spanish anarchists before 1914), or by studying groups of French-speaking anarchists who left the country.[127] Grave’s print-based activism illustrates a related yet different and very effective form of transnationalism. Moreover, it challenges nationally focused and diffusionist accounts, by portraying the French movement as an active participant in international tactical debates and undertakings, and a recipient rather than simply a source of ideological influences: it shows the ideological and organizational centrality of internationalism to French anarchist communism and propaganda, as well as the transnational construction of key anarchist communist ideas promoted by Le Révolté and its successors, in particular through the links with Peter Kropotkin.

This survey provides a more comprehensive and systematic assessment of Grave’s activism, and of the history of French anarchist communism and its functioning as a social movement. Grave’s papers were remarkably long-lived, produced and disseminated by small but complex, very productive, and resilient transnational networks. These were also occasionally connected with non-anarchist circles, groups, and organizations, resulting in added impact and a profound influence in shaping the French anarchist communist tradition. For a movement faced with linguistic heterogeneity, repression, a chronic lack of funds, and considerable internal dissent, in which periodicals appeared and disappeared quickly, this shows great resourcefulness and continuity. Once these conditions were altered, as was the case after 1918 in France, when more formal and stable labour organizations rose in prominence, network-based activism tended to recede in importance. This later period also witnessed the collapse of Grave’s own networks, resulting in his near-complete marginalization.

DEFINING A RELATIONAL APPROACH

The notion of “relational” activism is rooted in social movement theory. Applying it to the study of veganism as a cultural movement, Cherry defines a “relational approach” very precisely, in opposition to “substantialist” approaches “consider[ing] social actors as pre-formed entities who act rationally in specific situations. Relational thought, in contrast, describes aspects and phases of action, without attributing action to outside entities”.[128] The definition used here is more general, and focuses on the identification and depiction of militant connections rather than the transformational processes they induce. It is aligned with the definition formulated 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”.[129] This concept is especially useful to rectify the prevailing, romantic depiction of Grave as a theorist, an intellectual championing a brand of anarchism which “expounded anarchist ideas, but failed to exemplify them”,[130] overlooking his proactive organizing work. It also points to the predominantly informal nature of these links, which were juxtaposed with more stable and formal types of cooperation.

While such a study has never been carried out regarding Grave specifically, examining informal links has emerged as an important trend in anarchist historiography in the last decade, resulting in a great wealth of empirical studies on anarchist transnationalism, emphasizing informal links mediated by individuals, small groups, and their publications. Davide Turcato’s landmark article “Italian anarchism as a transnational movement, 1885–1915” (2007) was one of the earliest exposés of the merits of the transnational angle to study anarchist movements, notably in highlighting a level of militant continuity and coherence in times of crisis that methodological nationalism fails to capture, because of the transnational functioning of Italian anarchism.[131] In sync with and in the wake of this study, there has been great progress towards mapping out local, national, regional, and global anarchist movements and their network-based activism. This collective endeavour has shown the near-global presence of anarchist activism; recent studies have examined, for instance, Japanese-Russian connections,[132] transnationalism in and around New Zealand,[133] as well as diverse colonial and postcolonial contexts.[134] A major point is the great functional versatility of informal connections:[135] transnational networks can be vectors to plot terrorist attacks,[136] the means to organize and disseminate anarchist pedagogical ventures or antimilitarist propaganda,[137] and also the arteries through which money, information, and print – the lifelines of propaganda – circulated.

Different interpretations of the nature and significance of these anarchist networks can be identified: the intensely relational, networked, and predominantly informal nature of anarchist activism impacts the conceptualization of anarchism as a social movement. Academic and even public interest in anarchist networks has been spurred by apparent similarities between anarchist and contemporary terrorist networks – especially so at times when terrorist attacks have prompted a search for historical precedents to the current wave of terrorism, as with 9/11 and the 7/7 attacks in London.[138] As Grave’s example – among many others – shows, this is an extremely reductive interpretation of the movement and the role of informal connections within it. In contrast, social space theory and globalization studies have emerged as productive interpretative frameworks, for instance in the work of Tom Goyens, building on Henri Lefebvre’s theories on the production of space, examining how networks structure social space, and describing them as alternative, countercultural, and oppositional spaces.[139] Goyens’s analysis of the spatial dimensions of counterculture can be transposed to both transnational networks and periodicals as important alternative spaces where anarchist identities and ideas were constructed and deployed.[140] Organizational and ideological convergences between pre-1914 anarchism and contemporary social movements such as the global justice or alter-globalization movements have meant that social movement theories have emerged as possible paradigms to analyse anarchist transnationalism.[141] As “the largest political movement organized from below”[142] in the late nineteenth century, anarchism can certainly claim a special place in the proto-history of global social movements. In this perspective, the term “network” points to similarities with specific forms and traditions of political militancy, notably the “transnational advocacy networks” examined by Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink.[143]

Social movement theories also offer possible theoretical models to comprehend Grave’s role as a network node and organizer. He may be seen as an example of Charles Tilly’s “social movement entrepreneurs deliberately organiz[ing] across international boundaries” in order to “outflank national authorities”, in a phase of internationalization of social movements.[144] He also offers an interesting variation on Tarrow’s “rooted cosmopolitan”, defined by “relational links to their own societies, to other countries, and to international institutions”, activists who “face both inward and outward and combine domestic and transnational activism and advocacy”, in increasingly intertwined societies. Tarrow provides additional criteria to portray these transnational activists: “They are better educated than most of their compatriots, better connected, speak more languages, and travel more often.” They are distinguished by “their ability to shift between levels and take advantage of the expanded nodes of opportunity of a complex international society”.[145] Grave shows both the relevance and limitations of an earlier transposition of this broad archetype, since he fulfilled the roles of a transnational advocate and organizer within the anarchist movement without fully matching the sociological traits and patterns listed by Tarrow. This relative mismatch may derive from the widely different degrees of internationalization between contemporary globalization, as theorized by Tarrow, and the pre-1914 period of the “first globalization”, to which Grave pertains. Moreover, since, like Grave, many anarchists were self-taught and of working-class extraction, the accumulation of the kind of social and cultural capital described by Tarrow was problematic. Indeed, Tarrow, citing Appiah, points out that “transnational activists, for the most part, are better educated than most of their compatriots, better connected, speak more languages, and travel more often”.[146] As discussed above, aside from being well-connected, none of these characteristics applied to Grave, although it is remarkable that they could be found in his personal networks and his publications. This confirms the relevance of Tarrow’s analysis, albeit with a shift from the individual to the network.

This article uses the term “network” in a non-formal acceptation, to describe evolving associations of varying size, intensity, density, and geographical reach. It is especially effective to capture the specificities of anarchist organization and the functioning of the anarchist movement at the international level.[147] It stresses the pivotal agency of individuals and their associations and connections, their variations in shapes and complexity, and – at the looser end of the organizational spectrum – the intermittent nature of such associations. This broad, metaphorical understanding of networks[148] does not preclude quantitative approaches and formal analysis. The anarchist movement has also proven very well-suited to the latter, notably with the use of prosopographical databases or indeed network mapping.[149] Andrew Hoyt has carried out whole-network analyses based on Italian sovversivi networks in the United States, mapping out weak and strong bonds between individuals, collectives, and key publications, connected by arrows representing established connections, collaborations, relationships, and mentions in publications.[150] One of Hoyt’s key conclusions is that such maps display numerous bridges and connections within the movement, whereas purely narrative accounts tend to over-emphasize ideological sectarianism.

While the term “network” does not, of course, appear in the substantial literature on organization generated by nineteenth-century anarchists, it is very commonly used by historians of anarchism,[151] notably to depict what George Woodcock has termed “the loose and flexible affinity group” so fundamental to pre-1914 anarchist organization.[152] It also matches the way in which many communist anarchists, including Grave, conceived of optimal organization in the period before World War I. Tactical organization was a central concern for Grave; he saw groups and individuals as the building blocks of anarchism, and pressed for modes of communication and exchange which are evocative of networks insofar as connections were perceived as an essential requirement which, however, did not require constant and established links. Thus, when he advocated “direct relations between groups, even when we do not share exactly the same views on all points. […] It is necessary to know one another, to exchange ideas, to lend mutual support to the best of our forces”.[153] He aimed for “a strong core of groups and individuals keeping systematic relations. […] It would be urgent to establish the greatest possible number of relations between groups and individuals, as long as these relations are spontaneous, direct, and unmediated”.[154] This is the strategic vision he enacted through his periodicals, using the latter as a medium for these relations.

Despite the importance of informal links, their coexistence with more institutional or binding connections must be emphasized, as well as the close imbrication of the personal and the political. Le Révolté and Grave’s other publications were produced through core collaborations which were stable over time and implied regular (i.e. weekly or monthly, if not daily) contact over several years, for instance with Lucien Guérineau, Paul Delesalle, André Girard, and Dr Pierrot. These individuals formed the “Groupe des Temps Nouveaux”. The use of the term “group” points to very close collaborations, for which terms connoting formal links (for instance group, circle, union, “syndicat”) were deemed more appropriate by the actors themselves. To some extent, this hybrid organization can be extrapolated to the anarchist communist movement, where “loose and flexible” associations were juxtaposed with attempts at formal organization, such as short-lived Internationals, groups coalescing around projected congresses or campaigns, and, at the national level, long-lasting groups and federations.

Grave commanded one of the largest and most durable sets of connections, and was a key intermediary and organizer in pre-war international anarchism. The main sources to identify his contacts are his periodicals and related publications, his memoirs, his correspondence (held at the Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale (IFHS), now hosted by the Archives Nationales in Pierrefitte, and as part of various correspondents’ archives at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam), as well as police sources held in France. However, much remains undocumented, especially since many sources were seized by the police or pre-emptively destroyed by the anarchists themselves. As Grave wrote to Max Nettlau about one of the most eventful years of the heroic period: “There is no letter left from 1893, the times were too complicated and they were all burnt.”[155]

The outline of Grave’s relations below is thematic, aiming to locate key networks and underline the transnational dimensions of his activism, as well as his connections within artistic and intellectual circles. The chronology of the different stages of Grave’s militant evolution, their links with the broader French and international movements, and his networks is aligned with the traditional periodization adopted in most studies on French anarchist communism, namely late 1870s to early 1880s: early days and development of the anarchist movement; early 1890s: era of propaganda by the deed, marked by organizational disruption and ideological division; mid-1895–1914: organization and ideological reorientation and fragmentation, syndicalist, and antimilitarist propaganda in the run up to the World War I; and post-World War I: ideological reconfiguration and generational change.

KEY INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS

“If you need a heart to find sympathy – not the kind that can be replaced but, at least, the one friendship can give – be assured that you already have it. If I was free, I would tell you: come, let’s take a walk, and talk, together – all I can do now is embrace you strongly, very strongly, in thought.”[156] Thus begins the first letter from Kropotkin to Grave held at the IFHS, written in 1885, after the death of Grave’s first wife. It provides a remarkable insight into what, by then, was already a strong friendship (despite the use of the vous form in the French original until 1901), interwoven with a long and thriving militant and intellectual partnership, on an equal footing despite Kropotkin’s towering status in the movement. This collaboration underpinned the production of the papers, from the creation of Le Révolté to World War I. While the papers were closely associated with Paris and the rue Mouffetard where the Temps Nouveaux office was located and Grave lived for many years,[157] their elaboration was transnational, originating in a core set of connections within the milieu of the First International and the Jura Federation. Le Révolté was set up in 1879 in Geneva by Peter Kropotkin, Elisée Reclus, François Dumartheray, and George Herzig, who then asked Grave to take over,[158] his name having been suggested by Kropotkin’s wife Sophie. Grave accepted “straightaway”, even though he had no editorial or typesetting experience at that point.[159] Other leading anarchist communist thinkers and activists – Warlaam Tcherkesoff, Saverio Merlino, Errico Malatesta, Christian Cornelissen, and James Guillaume – contributed frequently and were in regular contact with Grave. New links were then formed, with other figures personally or ideologically connected with the First International (for example, Max Nettlau, Paul Reclus, Jacques Gross).[160] Grave himself and his papers were ideological and organizational nodes of this influential and durable transnational network, which overlapped with other networks, for instance the geographers’ networks centring on Elisée Reclus and Peter Kropotkin.[161]

Of central importance was the editorial partnership with Kropotkin, who was in exile in London from the mid-1880s until the early 1900s, subsequently moving to the south coast of Britain and Italy. In London, between 1886 and the early 1890s, Kropotkin oversaw the publication of Freedom, the “brother-in-arms”[162] of Grave’s own periodicals. Their archived correspondence represents only a fraction of the actual exchanges, with about fifty letters between 1885 and 1920. These letters testify to a close and multifaceted militant and personal relationship, whereby both men exchanged information, opinions, contacts, and texts to be printed in their respective papers. The periodical press was a major outlet for Kropotkin, who published 152 articles in Les Temps Nouveaux between 1895 and 1913. As recently argued by Iain McKay, these represent an important source to chart the evolution of his political thought alongside his essay and pamphlet output, in particular with respect to revolutionary ideas and anarchist engagement with the organized labour movement.[163] For the years 1895–1914 only, McKay has inventoried thirteen translated articles by Kropotkin, which appeared in both Freedom and Les Temps Nouveaux. Kropotkin continued to provide editorial advice to the Freedom group after his formal retirement in the late 1880s, championing links between both publications and translations from the French papers reprinted in their British counterpart.[164] Editorial matters were at the centre of many exchanges, often involving publishing networks which extended beyond the Temps Nouveaux – Freedom connection: “Here is a manuscript. I wrote it for the anniversary issue of Tierra y Libertad of 26 July (which appeared late!). When he returned the original to me, Tarrida told me I should publish it in Les Temps Nouveaux.”[165]

Kropotkin kept Grave abreast of British and international political developments, and advised him on punctual and general strategic matters, often seeking his views too: “I have written a preface for Pouget and Pataud’s book [Syndicalism and the Co-operative Commonwealth]. I have been told this amounts to supporting the bureaucratic trend within trade unions. Is there some truth to this?”[166] Their partnership was central to the theoretical elaboration and promotion of syndicalism from the late 1880s onwards[167] and, a few years later, through Freedom, played a major part in the international campaign against Spanish atrocities. Grave and Kropotkin relied on each other to introduce, be introduced to, or vet new contacts, within or outside anarchist circles.[168] These are instances of network multiplier effects, a system of introductions serving propaganda in many different ways, ranging from ideological elaboration and diffusion to mutual material help and self-protection against spy infiltration.

Within this large transnational anarchist communist network, Grave’s long collaboration with Max Nettlau also stands out. Nettlau, like Grave, engaged in much network-building and network-recording activity,[169] as attested of course by the remarkable collection he sold to the IISH. From the 1880s onwards, he often contributed to Grave’s papers, reported on international movements in “Foreign notes”, and established connections with international groups or individuals, who then sent correspondence about their movement or subscribed to Grave’s papers. After 1895, Nettlau oversaw Freedom’s “Foreign notes”;[170] Grave and he exchanged large quantities of international anarchist literature across the Channel, which were sold on to readers. Nettlau helped Grave set up new international links: “Try to give me the exact address of the Norwegian paper – and that of the Czech paper.”[171] And, of course, both men also coordinated fundraising campaigns, as with the 1912 “P.K.” subscription, which, Nettlau noted, had been very successful in Britain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.[172]

Noteworthy are similar albeit less intensive relations with other mediators in international anarchist movements, notably collectors and antiquarians as well as militants, like the German Paul Eltzbacher and the Swiss Jacques Gross. Grave’s correspondence with Gross evidences sustained mutual assistance in reaching third parties, to secure information, money, and print or disseminate militant literature,[173] showing the multiple functions a personal connection could serve. In all these instances the tone of the exchanges also points to the intersection of the personal (friendship) and militant spheres, in line with the observation that “relational activism intentionally uses the private sphere in a public way, contributing to mid- and longterm change”.[174] These exchanges involved the best-known militants of the time as well as unknown individuals, making them fascinating testimonies about the social history and functioning of the anarchist milieu.

Grave’s international network also comprises the myriad of correspondents and contacts who read the paper and fed into it more or less regularly, and who were “weak ties” with a key role in the diffusion of the papers. They included “J.G. in Madrid”,[175] Edward Greene in Armenia, “F.” in Nouméa,[176] and “N.V. in Sao Paulo”, who arranged for copies of Les Temps Nouveaux to be sent to “J.P., Montevideo”.[177] Even an unsystematic survey highlights the periodicals’ wide reach, in terms of both dissemination and thematic coverage; the map of anarchist activism thus uncovered extends far beyond French borders, across Western and Central Europe, often straddling continents. At the peak of the publications, dozens of messages would be exchanged through every issue – not individually significant, but pieced together, over time, showing the paper’s key organizing role as a “node” or a “hub” for the movement.

RELATIONS AND REPUTATION: GRAVE’S CONNECTIONS WITH ARTISTS AND INTELLECTUALS

The papers’ artistic and literary contributors and supporters form another network, which served different purposes and had transnational ramifications too. Artistic and literary contributors provided an essential lifeline in reputational and financial terms, and gave the movement a decided cultural emphasis, making it a profound and long-lasting countercultural influence.

Les Temps Nouveaux was the most consistent and long-lasting French publication in fostering an anarchist artistic and literary canon. It articulated a political message for and through artistic content, by printing literature and works of visual art alongside straightforward political contents. Grave himself has been described as “the leading figure in socialism to use art to propagate its ideals in the pre-World War I period”.[178] By 1895, when Les Temps Nouveaux was launched, the connection between avant-garde artists and anarchism was well-established: without going as far back as Courbet and Proudhon’s association, it was showcased in contemporary anarchist papers such as Emile Pouget’s Père Peinard and a number of avant-garde literary reviews publishing writers with anarchist leanings.[179] Symbolist reviews were especially receptive to libertarian ideas, due to their shared intellectual and anti-establishment individualism, albeit with different emphases; Les Entretiens politiques et littéraires and La Revue blanche had a more social and political tone than Le Mercure de France and La Plume, for instance. Over the years, the anarchist press published texts and illustrations from a diverse group of contributors. Some had durable anarchist leanings or convictions, such as the writers Octave Mirbeau and Bernard Lazare, and visual artists Lucien Pissarro, Maximilien Luce, Paul Signac, Théo Van Rysselberghe, and Théophile Steinlen. Others had passing affinities or just a sense of solidarity, ranging from the novelist and essayist Emile Zola to the far-right polemicist and novelist Maurice Barrès. These artistic connections sometimes extended transnationally. The British artist Walter Crane drew the frontispiece of Les Temps Nouveaux, while the French painter Pissarro contributed etchings to the London-based anarchist periodical The Torch, which promoted similar conceptions about art and politics. Remarkably, the Temps Nouveaux’s literary and artistic contents were reinvigorated after 1894, at a time when many artists turned their backs on anarchism in the wake of the terrorist period, showing anarchism to have been something of a fad in high society and avant-garde circles.[180] Overall, the paper received contributions from as many as sixty artists, including the near majority of the Neo-Impressionist movement.[181]

The Supplément Littéraire de La Révolte (1888–1894) and Supplément Littéraire des Temps Nouveaux (1895–1914), published with the paper every Saturday, were a key site for international literary anarchism.[182] The first issue of the Temps Nouveaux’s Supplément set an eclectic libertarian tone, characterized by a strong dose of ideological ecumenism, a great diversity of genres, and a somewhat didactic, not quite avant-gardist approach.[183] It featured extracts by Herbert Spencer (on man’s adaptation to a society without government), William Thackeray (“Moral Compression”), Jonathan Swift (“The Art of Political Lying”), symbolist poet Adolphe Retté, the parliamentary politician and erstwhile anarchist Georges Clemenceau (“The Social free-for-all”), alongside those of lesser-known and anonymous figures.[184] Subsequent issues followed the same line, with extracts by Proudhon, Elie Reclus, Joseph Addison, Huysmans, Ernest Renan – among many others.

This fusion of art, literature and politics, and ideological border-crossing have received considerable attention from literary scholars and art historians, but largely from the perspective of the artists drawn to anarchist ideas, and without a close examination of the importance and functioning of these collaborations for the anarchist movement.[185] And yet, this was a two-way propagandist and creative exchange, based on the theory of L’Art Social regarding the relationship between aesthetics, society and politics, and similar social, anti-militarist, and anti-colonialist positions. These collaborations provided another essential set of support networks for Grave’s propaganda. All these aspects are documented in his correspondence with the anarchist writer Bernard Lazare: they exchanged information,[186] contacts,[187] as well as publication material.[188] Artists lent Grave and “the cause” vital financial support, directly and indirectly, by donating material to be auctioned off. As Grave later reminisced, “We could rely on the goodwill of some individuals whose reputation was established: Steinlen, Willette, Roubille, Iribe, Grandjouan, Luce, Signac, Agar, Couturier, Angrand, Delaw, Delannoy, Van Dongen, Lebasque, Jossot, Kupka.”[189] Still in 1900, Camille Pissarro contributed fifty francs to the paper’s campaigns in support of Spanish refugees,[190] and as late as 1920 his grandson Ludovic offered to send Grave two hundred francs.[191]

One striking, lesser-known dimension was the reputational support for both Grave and the wider movement, especially during crises such as the “Trial of the Thirty” and the campaigns against Spanish atrocities. Grave developed occasional contacts and solid friendships with a progressive cross-political front. These links were mobilized on several occasions, and fulfilled an important role in giving the papers and the anarchist movement an aura which, at critical times, proved strategically or even vitally important. The “Trial of the Thirty”, which marked the climax of anti-anarchist persecutions in France during the 1890s’ terrorist wave and in which Grave was indicted, illustrates the reputational impact of personal networks. Following his arrest, a group of prominent intellectuals and figures from a broad ideological spectrum spoke publicly in Grave’s defence, with immediate impact; following interventions from the notorious anti-Semite Edouard Drumont, the Boulangist pamphleteer Henri de Rochefort and the prominent socialists Séverine and Clovis Hugues, his conditions of detention were relaxed.[192] Lazare published a homage entitled “Jean Grave” on the day Grave appeared in court. High-profile figures testified in his defence, including Georges Clemenceau and even Drumont.[193] His four witnesses were Elisée Reclus and three writers, Octave Mirbeau, Paul Adam, and Bernard Lazare. In his statement, Mirbeau acknowledged that he “only knew Grave through his writings, which [he] read with utmost interest”.[194] Grave, like many of those indicted, was acquitted in August 1894 and subsequently released following further public pressure.

This cross-political front, which mobilized for the defence of anarchism in the early 1890s, was reactivated on a larger, transnational scale and in a more institutional way at the time of the Dreyfus Affair and the “Spanish Atrocities” campaigns from the late 1890s to the 1910s.[195] Alongside anarchists, these causes drew support from socialists of different shades, freethinkers, masons, republicans, anti-clericals, and intellectuals. This intellectual solidarity was symptomatic of the political radicalization of literary figures in late nineteenth-century France, for which anarchism provided a catalyst and which saw literary actors engaging in practical militancy.[196] Until the Dreyfus Affair, such mobilizations could include far-right figures (such as Drumont, Adam, or Barrès) drawn to anarchism’s individualism, libertarianism, and radical rejection of the state.[197] In the long term, these associations were vital in protesting against anti-anarchist repression, and in inscribing the movement and its actors (not least Grave) in a broad progressive tradition. Conversely, this solidarity with the anarchists and, for many writers, the engagement with anarchist ideas were important milestones in the emergence of the figure of the French intellectual[198] – the very word intellectuel, revealingly, was used repeatedly during Grave’s trial, several years before the Dreyfus Affair with which it is usually connected.[199]

THE PERIODICALS AS A NETWORKING TOOL

Several conclusions emerge from the survey of Grave’s networks and may be extrapolated to other contemporary anarchist movements. First, they show the effectiveness of print-mediated militancy and the diversity of functions performed by personal networks, as well as their importance in creating and sustaining political activism and a shared culture on a variety of scales. As summarized by James Yeoman, the press “played a decisive role in the cultural construction of anarchism as an identity, an ideology and a movement”.[200] Grave’s newspapers and the associated Publications de la Révolte and Temps Nouveaux functioned as platforms for a wide repertoire of militant activities, and as exchange fora and meeting points for the communities which they structured at least partly. The essential organizing role of anarchist papers in a national context has been stressed by Jean Maitron and Alain Droguet, who identified three key functions for the anarchist press: spreading political views, arguing for revolutionary change and – a less usual role, more specific to anarchism – serving as an organization, a party. Maitron and Droguet counted Les Temps Nouveaux among a handful of pre-1914 widely read and influential papers, which they identified as “a centre for the movement – providing coordination, or even direction”.[201]

First and foremost, the periodicals were a medium for theoretical elaboration and discussion, playing a pivotal role in the development and spread of anarchist communist ideology in the French-speaking world and globally. This was achieved through feature articles, long-running debates and discussions, and through brochures published alongside the papers, usually with stunning illustrations. As noted above, the papers were pivotal for the diffusion of Kropotkin’s ideas and anarchist communism in general. René Bianco has noted that the Révolté team “had no qualms in stepping in to correct what [they] perceived as doctrinal deviations”, while the paper’s successors also functioned as “the ‘doctrinaire’ organ of communist-anarchists”.[202] This stance and the publications’ somewhat dry style partly account for Grave’s infamous nickname, “the Pope of the rue Mouffetard” (after the name of the Parisian street where the periodicals were produced), bestowed upon him by fellow anarchist and occasional collaborator Charles Malato. As stressed by Maitron, the newspapers were informative tools, publicizing news on labour and anarchist activism through “Mouvement Social” sections reporting on militant activities and developments in labour movements in localities both close and remote. Grave stated in his autobiography that he wanted to have a network of international correspondents, but often had to make do with lifting information from foreign papers.[203] Thirdly, the seemingly irrelevant or paratextual sections “Correspondances et Communications” and “Petites Correspondances” provided essential grassroots links between individuals and groups at the local, regional, national, and international levels, thus structuring the anarchist world on a variety of scales. They contained very diverse information: publicity for militant events, coded correspondence notes, magazine subscriptions, and ads for the resale of propaganda material. These notes delineate a social history of anarchist politics, and show the periodicals’ organizing role as platforms for information exchange, publicizing activist undertakings, and building unity.

Tapping into the strength of his networks, Grave also used his papers for campaigning purposes, most notably against political and clerical repression in Spain at the turn of the century. In this instance, Les Temps Nouveaux was involved in awareness-raising activism and network organizing. Such a global project required a linguistic strategy, or at least facilitation. Multilingual militants were instrumental in introducing the paper into and liaising with foreign groups, some of them probably acting as interpreters in the context of group readings. The papers’ production relied on a few multilingual comrades who acted as translators. Esperanto, which anarchists had embraced as part of internationalist ideas, does not appear to have been used. As mentioned above, there is no evidence suggesting that Grave spoke any foreign language, although his second wife, Mabel Holland Thomas, was British.[204]

Another point of note is the implementation of proactive networking strategies and network mobilization, based on a clear propaganda project. Network building was an important focus for Grave, to support his publications as well as specific causes. His constant efforts to seek and diffuse information about foreign movements and make contact with new groups and individuals were integral to the “project for the organization of propaganda which [he] intended to lead through the paper”,[205] as recounted in his autobiography: “The papers were read and had subscribers wherever there were active anarchist groupings in the most unexpected places. Governments in Latin and Central America sent us their own official papers in exchange for Les Temps Nouveaux […]. I was once told that Malatesta, when he visited Tierra del Fuego, found an issue of Le Révolté in the first hut he entered.”[206] Grave evidently had a very clear conception of his publications’ role in a global revolutionary movement, and pursued it actively. As he wrote to Gross: “In my view, publishing a paper must serve propaganda and ‘hook’ readers, and it should not be read only by a closed circle of readers who are already converts […]. Without vanity, […] I think that Les Temps Nouveaux holds a different place in the global anarchist movement.”[207]

Formal and informal links also enabled the circulation of money. Financial assistance travelled in both directions between Kropotkin and Grave, who never shied away from asking for financial help in his publications; auctions and fundraising events were organized, especially in times of difficulty, and all of Grave’s connections and the periodicals’ readers were called upon for financial support. A routine exchange with Jacques Gross provides an insight into such daily multidirectional financial transactions: “I will pass on the 50 francs to those prisoners I can [sic]. I will write to Brussels for Moineau and Tondeur. Also to the Monod and Courtois families, and those whose families I can find. As for the 50 francs for Italy, I will send them to Malatesta. He is the only who will know where to send them.”[208]

CONCLUSION

World War I brought this “heroic period” to a definite close. In August 1914, Grave experienced a dramatic ideological reversal, following Kropotkin in supporting the war effort, after the latter famously castigated him for living “in a world of illusions”, with his advocacy of peace and disarmament, and told him instead to “beat that army, reconquer Belgium […] arm up”, and urge comrades to do the same.[209] Grave followed suit – a momentous yet surprisingly quick decision, which may be explained by his allegiance to Kropotkin and was part of the wide-ranging ideological repositioning of anarchists as a result of the war.[210] Grave later explained his decision to Nettlau in a heated epistolary exchange. Fighting off accusations of patriotism, he focused on his pragmatic response and the gap between theory and practice: “No, no and no, I never reneged on any of my ideas […]. The comrades and I did not follow any idea of patriotism, we considered only the regression which the victory of German militarism would have inflicted upon all of mankind, upon the idea of liberty […]. The circumstances had changed since the time I wrote all these articles”.[211]

Grave went on to spend most of the war in Britain, near Bristol, the area from where his well-connected wife originated.[212] The post-1918 period was a time of generational change and personal and political loss for this generation. Reeling from the war, its ideological divisions, and the marginalization of the anarchist currents they were associated with, Grave and other French historic militants like Faure “barely survived”.[213] Grave was expelled from the Temps Nouveaux group in 1920 and, from then on, published only small irregular brochures. He was also crippled by financial difficulties, as attested by his correspondence with Ramus, where the sale of stamps as a precarious way of collecting funds became a central theme.[214] However, his relational conception of activism remained unchanged in these far less propitious conditions, as evidenced by his attempts to resurrect networks in order to gather information and material for his pamphlets: “May I ask you to send me an article about the situation in Germany, and how liberal people view the occupation of the Ruhr? The papers here are poisoning the population and it would be good, with my limited means, to publicize the opposite positions.”[215] And he still pursued the same connected vision of anarchist militancy: “Our dream would be to help the reorganization of anarchists by making them understand the need to group and keep in contact with one another.”[216]

This poignant epilogue and Grave’s siding with the interventionist anarchists during the war have no doubt contributed to obscuring his long militant career, perhaps compounding his taciturn character and the relative discretion inherent in relying on print as the main medium for his activism. There is indeed much to discover, and rediscover, about Grave and his militancy: his print-based activism highlights his remarkable achievements as an organizer of propaganda, as evidenced, inter alia, by the longevity, scope, and influence of Temps Nouveaux. Ironically, while Grave himself has been partly forgotten or simply overlooked, his efforts to organize anarchism transnationally and his ceaseless promotion of anarchist cultural politics were central to the movement’s legacy and long-term countercultural influence. This investigation has broader implications, highlighting the transnational elaboration and diffusion of French anarchism, and its inclusion in a progressive front, which was important for the movement’s publicity, resilience, and legacy. Examining the proactive strategies underpinning networked activism paves the way for a material history of militancy analysing the practical and financial modalities of the dissemination of propaganda. More research is needed to fully map out Grave’s connections over time and, more specifically, to assess the ideological assumptions often implicit in networked organization, such as the possible dominance of charismatic leaders (including Grave himself), the lack of clear mechanisms of accountability, Western-centric diffusionist assumptions, and the relative lack of scholarly attention paid to the importance of the local due to the current focus on movement and transfers.[217] Grave’s example will also provide an excellent testing ground for these research themes.

[1] See, for example, Levy, Carl, “Charisma and Social Movements: Errico Malatesta and Italian Anarchism”, Modern Italy, 3:2 (1998), pp. 205–217. te Velde, Henk, “Charismatic Leadership, c.1870–1914: A Comparative European Perspective”, in Richard Toye and Julie Gottlieb (eds), Making Reputations: Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics (London and New York, 2005), pp. 42–55. Stutje, Jan Willem (ed.), Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements: The Revolutionary Power of Ordinary Men and Women (New York and Oxford, 2012).

[2] Weber, Max, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Grundriss der Verstehende Soziologie, 4th edn, 2 vols (Tübingen, 1956). Weber, Max, Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building, Selected papers, edited and with an introduction by S.N. Eisenstadt (Chicago, IL, 1968).

[3] Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, p. 140.

[4] Preface of Luigi Fabbri to Gori, Pietro, Conferenze politiche (Milan, 1948), p. 3. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from the Italian are my own.

[5] Bencivenni, Marcella, Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890–1940 (New York, 2014), pp. 15, 54–55, 60, 99–101, 104, 138–139.

[6] Bayer, Osvaldo, “L’influenza dell’immigrazione italiana nel movimento anarchico argentino”, in Bruno Bezza (ed.) Gli italiani fuori d’Italia. Gli emigrati italiani nei movimenti operai dei paesi d’adozione (1880–1940) (Milan, 1983), pp. 541–544; Zaragoza, Gonzalo, Anarquismo argentino (1876–1902) (Madrid, 1996), pp. 240–245.

[7] In the context of national studies, one of the most recent and significant volumes dedicated to charismatic figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is Ibrahim, Vivian and Wunsch, Margit (eds), Political Leadership, Nations and Charisma (London, 2012).

[8] For particularly interesting contributions on the sacralization of socialisms in the systems of the late nineteenth century and the role of ordinary people in these processes, see Augusteijn, Joost, Dassen, Patrick, and Janse, Maartje (eds), Political Religion Beyond Totalitarianism: The Sacralization of Politics in the Age of Democracy (Basingstoke, 2013).

[9] The essays collected in Political Religion Beyond Totalitarianism are in line with this approach.

[10] Research before the year 2000 includes, for example, Levy, Carl, “Charisma and Social Movements: Errico Malatesta and Italian Anarchism”, Modern Italy, 3:2 (1998), pp. 205–217.

[11] Barker, Colin, Johnson, Alan, and Lavalette, Michael (eds), Leadership and Social Movements (Manchester and New York, 2001).

[12] Stutje, Jan Willem (ed.), Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements: The Revolutionary Power of Ordinary Men and Women (New York and Oxford, 2012).

[13] Indeed, the book has essays by Carl Levy and Henk te Velde, who in 2005 published an important piece of research that partially inspired the Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements collection. See te Velde, Henk, “Charismatic Leadership, c.1870–1914: A Comparative European Perspective”, in Richard Toye and Julie Gottlieb (eds), Making Reputations: Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics (London and New York, 2005), pp. 42–55.

[14] te Velde, Henk, “Charismatic Leaders, Political Religion and Social Movements: Western Europe at the End of the Nineteenth Century”, in Stutje, Charismatic Leadership, p. 147.

[15] te Velde, “Charismatic Leadership, c.1870–1914”, p. 43.

[16] Stutje, Jan Willem, “Bearded, Attractive and Beloved: The Charisma of Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis (1846–1919)”, in idem, Charismatic Leadership , pp. 66–83.

[17] Masini, Pier Carlo, Storia degli anarchici italiani da Bakunin a Malatesta (1862–1892) (Milan, 1974), pp. 278–280.

[18] Ridolfi, Maurizio, Il PSI e la nascita del partito di massa, 1892–1922 (Rome and Bari, 1992), pp. 204–205.

[19] See for example Bencivenni, Italian Immigrant Radical Culture, pp. 15, 54–55, 60, 99–101, 104, 138–139.

[20] Gundle, Stephen, “Le origini della spettacolarità nella politica di massa”, in Maurizio Ridolfi (ed.), Propaganda e comunicazione politica. Storia e trasformazioni nell’età contemporanea (Milan, 2004), pp. 3–24.

[21] Levy, “Charisma and Social Movements”, pp. 205–217; idem , “Errico Malatesta and Charismatic Leadership”, in Stutje, Charismatic Leadership, pp. 84–100.

[22] Antonioli, Maurizio, Pietro Gori, il cavaliere errante dell’anarchia (Pisa, 1996), pp. 23–24; Levy, “Charisma and Social Movements”, p. 212.

[23] See Marco Manfredi, Emozioni, cultura popolare e transnazionalismo. Le origini della cultura anarchica in Italia, forthcoming.

[24] Antonioli, Pietro Gori, pp. 15–62; idem, “Pietro Gori. La nascita del mito”, in Maurizio Antonioli, Franco Bertolucci, and Roberto Giulianelli (eds), Nostra patria è il mondo intero. Pietro Gori nel movimento operaio e libertario italiano e internazionale (Pisa, 2012), pp. 19–33.

[25] Manfredi, Marco, “Una cultura politica fortemente emotiva. L’anarchismo italiano agli inizi del Novecento”, in Penelope Morris, Francesco Ricatti, and Mark Seymour (eds), Politica ed emozioni nella storia d’Italia dal 1848 a oggi (Rome, 2011), pp. 91–111; Manfredi, Marco, “Italian Anarchism and Popular Culture: History of a Close Relationship”, in Ilaria Favretto and Xabier Itçaina (eds), Protest, Popular Culture and Tradition in Modern and Contemporary Western Europe (London, 2017), pp. 103–123.

[26] Manfredi, “Una cultura politica”, p. 92.

[27] Masini, Storia degli anarchici italiani, p. 277.

[28] Antonioli, Pietro Gori, pp. 88–89; Catanuto, Santo and Schirone, Franco, “La canzone e il teatro come strumenti di formazione dell’identità anarchica”, in Antonioli, Bertolucci and Giulianelli, Nostra patria è il mondo intero, pp. 240–241.

[29] Antonioli, “Pietro Gori. La nascita del mito”, pp. 21–22.

[30] Vecoli, Rudolph, “‘Primo maggio’ in the United States: An Invented Tradition of the Italian Anarchists”, in Andrea Panaccione (ed.), May Day Celebration (Venice, 1988), p. 59.

[31] Antonioli, Maurizio, “‘Dolce Pasqua dei lavoratori vieni e splendi alla luce del sol’. Un breve viaggio tra le ‘fonti’ poetiche del Primo Maggio”, in Gianni C. Donno (ed.), Storie e Immagini del 1° Maggio. Problemi della storiografia italiana ed internazionale (Manduria, 1990), pp. 51–53.

[32] Antonioli, Maurizio and Bertolucci, Franco, “Pietro Gori. Una vita per l’ideale”, in Maurizio Antonioli and Franco Bertolucci (eds), Pietro Gori. La miseria e i delitti (Pisa, 2011), p. 54.

[33] Bartalini, Ezio, “Gori giurista”, in Comitato cittadino costituitosi per le onoranze a Pietro Gori (ed.), Rosignano a Pietro Gori (Cecina, 1960), pp. 30–31.

[34] Ibid., p. 57.

[35] For a definition of the “Italian Faure”, see “Echos de Paris”, Le Gaulois, 20 May 1895.

[36] Lacchè, Luigi, “Una letteratura alla moda. Opinione pubblica, ‘processi infiniti’ e pubblicità in Italia tra Otto e Novecento”, in Marco Nicola Miletti (ed.), Riti, tecniche, interessi. Il processo penale tra Otto e Novecento (Milan, 2006), pp. 459–513; Lacchè, Luigi, “‘L’opinione pubblica saggiamente rappresentata’. Giurie e Corti d’Assise nei processi celebri tra Otto e Novecento”, in Paolo Marchetti (ed.), Inchiesta penale e pregiudizio. Una riflessione interdisciplinare (Naples, 2007), pp. 89–147; Colao, Floriana et al. (eds), Processo penale e opinione pubblica in Italia tra Otto e Novecento (Bologna, 2008). Concerning the tribunals’ importance for the socialists, see Ridolfi, Il PSI, pp. 162–163; D’Amico, Elisabetta, “Strategie di manipolazione dei giurati: Enrico Ferri e la coscienza popolare”, in Colao, Lacché and Storti, Processo penale e opinione pubblica, pp. 265–290.

[37] For the trials and memoirs of Marabini, Turati, Ferri, and Bissolati, see Papadia, Elena, “I processi come ‘scuole di anarchia’: la propaganda sovversiva nelle aule dei tribunali (1876–1892)”, in Marco Manfredi and Emanuela Minuto (eds), Lo spettacolo della politica. Luoghi, spazi e canali della politica nell’Italia del lungo Ottocento, forthcoming.

[38] Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, vol. 2, Quaderni 6–11 (1930–1933), Valentino Gerratana (ed.) (Turin, 2001), pp. 777–778.

[39] Idem, Quaderni del carcere, vol. 3, Quaderni 12–29 (1932–1935), Valentino Gerratana (ed.) (Turin, 2001), pp. 1676–1677.

[40] For the translations of Whitman and Martinet, see the issues of Ordine Nuovo of 7 June, 12 July, 6–13 December, 27 December 1919 (year I, nos 5, 9, 29, 31, 38, 39, 40, 43), 24-31 January, 21 February, 28 February–6 March, 13 March, 3–10 April, 15 May, and 10 July 1920 (year II, nos 2, 9).

[41] Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, vol. 1, Quaderni 1–5 (1929–1932), Valentino Gerratana (ed.) (Turin, 2001), p. 6.; idem, Quaderni del carcere, vol. 3, pp. 1896–1897.

[42] Errico Malatesta, “In alto i cuori. ‘Agitiamoci per il Socialismo Anarchico’” (1 May 1897), special issue that replaced edition no. 8 of L’Agitazione.

[43] Di Paola, Pietro, The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora (1880–1917) (Liverpool, 2013).

[44] Levy, Carl, “Currents of Italian Syndicalism before 1926”, International Review of Social History, 45:2 (2000), pp. 214–215; Turcato, Davide, Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution, 1889–1900 (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 131–136.

[45] On Gori’s period in London, see Di Paola, The Knights Errant, pp. 32, 60–61.

[46] Antonioli and Bertolucci, “Pietro Gori. Una vita per l’ideale”, pp. 66–83.

[47] Turcato, Making Sense of Anarchism, pp. 136–141, 148.

[48] Ibid., pp. 61–65, 166–167.

[49] Pietro Gori, “All’opera”, L’Agitazione, 4 June 1897.

[50] Idem, “Per la libertà”, L’Agitazione, 16 July 1897.

[51] Domicilio coatto was an administrative measure imposed by the police and its application was particularly far-reaching. For more details, see Brunelli, Giuditta, “Alle origini dei limiti alla libertà di associazione politica. (Giurisprudenza e prassi di fine Ottocento)”, Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno, 18 (1989), pp. 412–413.

[52] Fozzi, Daniela, “Una ‘specialità italiana’. Le colonie coatte nel Regno d’Italia”, in Mario Da Passano (ed.), Le colonie coatte nell’Europa dell’Ottocento (Rome, 2004), p. 218.

[53] Violante, Luciano, “La repressione del dissenso politico nell’Italia liberale. Stati d’assedio e giustizia militare”, Rivista di storia contemporanea, 5 (1976), p. 521.

[54] On the results of the election, see Belardinelli, Mario, Un esperimento liberal-conservatore. I governi di Rudinì (1896–1898) (Rome, 1976), pp. 147–168.

[55] Atti parlamentari, Senato del Regno, Discussioni, Discussioni del disegno di legge. ‘Modificazioni al Capo V della legge di pubblica sicurezza sul domicilio coatto’, Leg. XX, 1ª sessione 1897, tornata del 10 aprile 1897, p. 78. See also Brunelli, “Alle origini dei limiti alla libertà di associazione politica”, pp. 506–517, and Minuto, Emanuela, “Una battaglia per la libertà. Pietro Gori e il domicilio coatto”, in Antonioli, Bertolucci and Giulianelli, Nostra patria è il mondo intero, pp. 162–164.

[56] Gori, “Per la libertà”.

[57] For an analysis of Gori’s trials, see Minuto, “Una battaglia per la libertà”, pp. 166–169.

[58] Lo Svegliarino. Supplemento straordinario. Processo per l’attentato Salsano svoltosi alla Corte d’Assise di Casale Monferrato, 23, 16 March 1898 (Carrara, 1898). For more details on the trial, see Gestri, Lorenzo, Capitalismo e classe operaia in provincia di Massa-Carrara. Dall’Unità d’Italia all’età giolittiana (Florence, 1976), pp. 206–211.

[59] Bertozzi, Massimo, La stampa periodica in provincia Massa Carrara (1860–1970) (Pisa, 1979), pp. 20 and 32.

[60] Supplemento straordinario all’Eco del Carrione, 53, 15 April 1898.

[61] Lo Svegliarino. Supplemento straordinario. Processo per l’attentato Salsano svoltosi alla Corte d’Assise di Casale Monferrato, 53, 15 April 1898.

[62] Supplemento straordinario all’Eco del Carrione, 53, 15 April 1898.

[63] Primero de Mayo appeared in the first issue of the journal under the heading “Libros y Foilletos”, Protesta Humana, a.1, 1, 13 June 1897.

[64] On the network of Russians and Russophiles in London, see Bantman, Constance, The French Anarchists in London, 1880–1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation (Liverpool, 2013), pp. 93–98. Concerning the contacts between Gori, Kropotkin, Domela Nieuwenhuis, and Tcherkesoff, see Antonioli and Bertolucci, “Pietro Gori. Una vita per l’ideale”, pp. 60–63.

[65] Pietro Gori, “Anarchici e socialisti”, Questione Sociale, 30 October 1895.

[66] Bebel, August, Alla conquista del potere (Milan, 1896), pp. 18–21.

[67] On the role of the lawyers and, more generally, of the educated middle classes in the Italian socialist movement, see Levy, Carl, “The People and the Professors: Socialism and the Educated Middle Classes in Italy, 1870–1915”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 6:2 (2001), pp. 195–208.

[68] Mario Sbriccoli remarked how political trials after 1898 represented “the point of coagulation of different trends”, “the culmination of a legal battle (fought ‘within’ the political battle)”, that had seen the participation of socialist and democrat lawyers, and “the starting point for more battles”, in “Il diritto penale sociale, 1883–1912”, Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno, 3–4 (1974–1975), p. 588.

[69] For this popular myth see Nesti, Arnaldo, Gesù socialista. Una tradizione popolare italiana, 1880–1920 (Turin, 1974); Riosa, Alceo, I miti del quarto stato. Tra nostalgia e speranza (Manduria, 1994), pp. 168–174.

[70] Supplemento straordinario all’Eco del Carrione, 53, 15 April 1898; Lo Svegliarino. Supplemento straordinario. Processo per l’attentato Salsano svoltosi alla Corte d’Assise di Casale Monferrato, 53, 15 April 1898.

[71] Ibid.

[72] For the sentence and motivations, see Brunelli, “Alle origini dei limiti alla libertà di associazione politica”, pp. 459–460. For more details on the trial, see Berti, Giampietro, “La sovversione anarchica in Italia e la risposta giudiziaria dello Stato (1874–1900)”, Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno, 38 (2009), pp. 598–599.

[73] Processo Malatesta e Compagni innanzi al tribunale penale di Ancona, with a preface by Pietro Gori (Buenos Aires, 1899), p. 31.

[74] Ibid., pp. 13–17, 97–102.

[75] Ibid., pp. 90–91.

[76] Ibid., p. 93.

[77] Ibid., pp. 95–96.

[78] Molaschi, Carlo, Pietro Gori (Milan, 1959), p. 21.

[79] Preface of Luigi Fabbri to Gori, Conferenze politiche, p. 3.

[80] Ibid., p. 4.

[81] Ibid.

[82] Riall, Lucy, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven, CT, 2007).

[83] Stutje, “Bearded, Attractive and Beloved”, pp. 68–69.

[84] Piscitello, Patrizia and Rossi, Sergio, È tornato Pietro Gori. Frammenti della vita di un anarchico raccontati dalla gente dell’Elba (Portoferraio, 2008), p. 37.

[85] Ibid., p. 51.

[86] Ibid., p. 75.

[87] Ibid., p. 72.

[88] Ibid., p. 77.

[89] For this aspect concerning Domela Nieuwenhuis, see Stutje, “Bearded, Attractive and Beloved”, pp. 67–69.

[90] Piscitello and Rossi, È tornato Pietro Gori, p. 25.

[91] Ibid., p. 27.

[92] Ibid., p. 80.

[93] Ibid., p. 72.

[94] Ibid., p. 36.

[95] Ibid., p. 43.

[96] On the committees of the left for the abolition of domicilio coatto and the anarchists’ willingness to participate, see “Contro il domicilio coatto”, L’Agitazione, 6 August 1897; “Per un azione comune ai vari partiti di progresso”, a firma “alcuni socialisti”, L’Agitazione, 2 September 1897.

[97] L’Agitazione, 16 September 1897. For the sentence passed down on De Andreis, see Canosa, Romano and Santosuosso, Amedeo, Magistrati, anarchici e socialisti alla fine dell’Ottocento in Italia (Milan, 1981), pp. 98–100.

[98] See for example Bertolucci, Franco (ed.), Galilei e Bruno nell’immaginario dei movimenti popolari fra Otto e Novecento (Pisa, 2001).

[99] Regarding the rally, see Antonioli and Bertolucci, “Pietro Gori. Una vita per l’ideale”, p. 91. The rally was also reported in Avanti! on 17 and 20 December 1897.

[100] For a description of the workers’ protests on the eve of the repression of May 1898, see Tilly, Louise A., “I Fatti di Maggio: The Working Class of Milan and the Rebellion of 1898”, in Robert J. Bezucha (ed.), Modern European Social History (Lexington, KY, 1972), pp. 124–158. Regarding the socialists’ propensity to attend the fiftieth anniversary of the five Days of Milan as heirs to the Risorgimento fighters, see Ridolfi, Il PSI, p. 206.

[101] “La Commemorazione delle cinque giornate di Milano”, L’Agitazione, 24 March 1898.

[102] Ibid.

[103] For details of the Chief of Police’s report, see Cordova, Ferdinando, Democrazia e repressione nell’Italia di fine secolo (Rome, 1983), p. 34. Regarding Gori’s departure for Argentina, see Antonioli and Bertolucci, “Pietro Gori. Una vita per l’ideale”, p. 93.

[104] For the announcement of the representation of Gori’s work, see Protesta Humana, a. 2, 34, 1 May 1898.

[105] Pedro Gori en el proceso de los anarquistas de Génova (Buenos Aires, 1898).

[106] Regarding French radicalism, see for example Sonn, Richard D., Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin de Siècle France (Lincoln, NE, 1989), pp. 15–26, 121–122.

[107] See the classic book by Mosse, George L., The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York, 1975).

[108] Bartalini, “Gori giurista”, pp. 29–30.

[109] Davranche, Guillaume, Trop jeunes pour mourir. Ouvriers et révolutionnaires face à la guerre (1909–1914) (Paris, 2014). Unless otherwise stated, all translations from the French are my own.

[110] Les Temps Nouveaux, I, 31, 30 November 1895.

[111] Les Temps Nouveaux, Supplément Littéraire, 34, 1895.

[112] Les Temps Nouveaux, I, 1, 4 May 1895.

[113] Grave, Jean, Le Mouvement Libertaire sous la IIIe République (Paris, 1930), pp. 152–153; René Bianco, “Le Révolté”, 100 ans de presse anarchiste (1987), available at: http://bianco.ficedl.info/; last accessed 12 April 2016; Patsouras, Louis, The Anarchism of Jean Grave (Montreal, 2003), p. 37.

[114] Grave, Le Mouvement Libertaire, pp. 39–46.

[115] Bantman, Constance and Berry, David, “The French Anarchist Movement and the First World War”, in Ruth Kinna and Matthew Adams (eds), Anarchism 1914–18: Internationalism, Anti-Militarism and War (Manchester, 2017), pp. 155–174; Berry, David, A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917–1945 (Oakland, CA, 2009).

[116] Patsouras, The Anarchism of Jean Grave; Jean Thioulouse, “Jean Grave (1854–1939), journaliste et écrivain anarchiste” (PhD, Paris 7 University, 1994).

[117] http://anarlivres.free.fr/pages/biographies/bio_Grave.html; last accessed 9 May 2017.

[118] Les Hommes du Jour, 24 (1908), “Jean Grave”.

[119] Patsouras, The Anarchism of Jean Grave, p. 7.

[120] Les Hommes du Jour, “Jean Grave”.

[121] Shaffer, Kirwin, Black Flag Boricuas: Anarchism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the Left in Puerto Rico, 1897–1921 (Urbana, OH, 2013), p. 11.

[122] Saunier, Pierre-Yves, Transnational History (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 33–57.

[123] McKay, Iain, “Kropotkin, Woodcock and Les Temps Nouveaux”, Anarchist Studies, 23:1 (2015), p. 7. See for instance STIOBHARD, “Armenia”, 27 April 2015, available at: http://raforum.info/spip.php?article3219; last accessed 1 June 2016. Bert Altena notes that “Grave brought anarchism from the whole world to the table of the individual reader […]. Grave’s journals are indispensable for reconstructing the history of Dutch anarchism during the 1830s”. Altena, Bert, “Anarchism as a Social Movement, 1870–1940”, Sozial.Geschichte Online, 18 (2016), pp. 15–62, 50.

[124] Maitron, Jean, Histoire du mouvement anarchiste en France (1880–1914) (Paris, 1955); Bouhey, Vivien, Les Anarchistes contre la République. Contribution à l’histoire des réseaux sous la Troisième République (1880–1914) (Rennes, 2008); Sonn, Richard D., Anarchism & Cultural Politics in Fin de Siècle France (Lincoln, 1989); Davranche, Trop jeunes.

[125] Davranche, Guillaume et al. (eds), Les Anarchistes. Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement libertaire francophone (Paris, 2014); Merriman, John, The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror (Boston, MA and New York, 2009).

[126] René Bianco, “Le mouvement anarchiste à Marseille et dans les Bouches du Rhône (1880–1914)” (PhD, Université de Provence, 1977); Izrine, Jean-Marc, Les Libertaires du Yiddishland (Paris, 2014); Cheptou, Gaël, “Le Club de lecture des sociaux-démocrates allemands de Paris: de l’exil à l’immigration (1877–1914)”, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, 4:84 (2006), pp. 18–25.

[127] Bantman, Constance, The French Anarchists in London: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation (Liverpool, 2013); Bianco, René, Creagh, Ronald, and Riffaut-Perrot, Nicole, Quand le coq rouge chantera. Bibliographie. Anarchistes français et italiens aux Etats-Unis d’Amérique (Montpellier, 1986); Cordillot, Michel, Révolutionnaires du Nouveau Monde. Une brève histoire du mouvement socialiste francophone aux Etats-Unis (1885–1922) (Montreal, 2010).

[128] Cherry, Elizabeth, “Veganism as a Cultural Movement: A Relational Approach”, Social Movement Studies, 5:2 (2006), pp. 155–170, 157.

[129] O’Shaughnessy, Sara and Kennedy, Emily Huddart, “Relational Activism: Reimagining Women’s Environmental Work as Cultural Change”, Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 35:4 (2010), pp. 551–572.

[130] Sonn, Anarchism & Cultural Politics, p. 56.

[131] Turcato, Davide, “Italian Anarchism as a Transnational Movement, 1885–1915”, International Review of Social History, 52:3 (2007), pp. 407–444.

[132] Konishi, Sho, Anarchist Modernity: Cooperatism and Japanese-Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA, 2013).

[133] Davidson, Jared, Sewing Freedom: Philip Josephs, Transnationalism & Early New Zealand Anarchism (Oakland, CA, 2013).

[134] Anderson, Benedict, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (London, 2008); Hirsch, Steven and van der Walt, Lucien (eds), Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution (Leiden, 2010); Maxwell, Barry and Craib, Raymond (eds), No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries: Global Anarchisms (Oakland, CA, 2015).

[135] Berry, David and Bantman, Constance (eds), New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2010); Di Paola, Pietro, The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora (1880–1917) (Liverpool, 2013); de Laforcade, Geoffroy and Shaffer, Kirwin R. (eds), In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History (Gainesville, FL, 2015); Bantman, Constance and Altena, Bert (eds), Reassessing the Transnational Turn: Scales of Analysis in Anarchist and Syndicalist Studies (London, 2015).

[136] See for instance Messer-Kruse, Timothy, The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks (Urbana, OH, 2012); Merriman, Dynamite Club.

[137] See for instance the international liaison papers Bulletin de l’Internationale anarchiste (Liège, 1906–1907), Bulletin de l’Internationale libertaire (London, 1908), and Bulletin International du mouvement syndicaliste (Paris and Amsterdam, 1907–1914).

[138] Tom Armitage, “Commentary”, New Statesman, 8 August 2005; Anon., “For Jihadist, Read Anarchist”, The Economist, 18 August 2005; Collyer, Michael, “Secret Agents: Anarchists, Islamists and Responses to Politically Active Refugees in London”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28:2 (2005), pp. 278–303; Antony Taylor, “London Bombings and Alien Panics”, Chartist, November–December 2005; Burleigh, Michael, Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (London, 2008); Aydinli, Ersel, “Before Jihadists There Were Anarchists”, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 31:10 (2008), pp. 903–923; Jensen, Richard Bach, “The International Campaign against Anarchist Terrorism, 1880–1930s”, Terrorism and Political Violence, 21:1 (2009), pp. 89–109; Merriman, Dynamite Club; Gelvin, James, “Al-Qaeda and Anarchism: A Historian’s Reply to Terrorology”, Terrorism and Political Violence, 20:4 (2008), pp. 563–581, and the ensuing replies: Binder, Leonard, “Comment on Gelvin’s Essay on Al-Qaeda and Anarchism”, Terrorism and Political Violence, 20:4 (2008), pp. 582–588; Jensen, Richard Bach, “Nineteenth Century Anarchist Terrorism: How Comparable to the Terrorism of al-Qaeda?”, Terrorism and Political Violence, 20:4 (2008), pp. 589–596.

[139] Goyens, Tom, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880–1914 (Ithaca, NY, 2007); idem , “Social Space and the Practice of Anarchist History”, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, 13:4 (2009), pp. 439–457.

[140] Actor-network theory has also been mobilized by Kathy Ferguson in studies on anarchist material culture, and, in a non-anarchist context, by Frank Wolff in his studies on the Bundist movement, to examine the construction of transnational political identities in exilic contexts. Wolff, Frank, “Eastern Europe Abroad: Exploring Actor-Networks in Transnational Movements and Migration History, The Case of the Bund”, International Review of Social History, 57:2 (2012), pp. 229–255; Ferguson, Kathy, “Anarchist Printers and Presses: Material Circuits of Politics”, Political Theory, 42:4, (2014), pp. 391–414.

[141] Levy, Carl, “Anarchism and Cosmopolitanism”, Journal of Political Ideologies, 16:3 (2011), pp. 265–278.

[142] Moya, José, “Anarchism”, in Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier (eds), The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (New York, 2008), pp. 39–41, 39.

[143] Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, “Transnational Advocacy Networks in International and Regional Politics” (1999), available at: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic446176.files/Week_7/Keck_and_Sikkink_Transnational_Advocacy.pdf; last accessed 30 May 2016.

[144] Tilly, Charles and Wood, Lesley J., Social Movements 1768–2012 (Abingdon, 2013 [3rd ed.]), p. 63.

[145] Tarrow, Sidney, Strangers at the Gates: Movements and States in Contentious Politics (Cambridge, 2012), p. 186.

[146] Ibid.

[147] Bantman, Constance, “Internationalism Without an International? Cross-Channel Anarchist Networks, 1880–1914”, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 84:4 (2006), pp. 961–981.

[148] For a critique of such metaphorical uses, see Claire Lemercier, “Formal Network Methods in History: Why and How?”, available at: halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00521527v2; last accessed 1 June 2016. Lemercier, Claire, “Analyse de réseaux et histoire”, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 52:2 (2005), pp. 88–112.

[149] See Pietro Di Paola’s research project “Towards a prosopographical history of Italian Anarchists” (Skills Acquisition Award SQ120027, British Academy, 2013).

[150] Hoyt, Andrew, “Methods for Tracing Radical Networks: Mapping the Print Culture and Propagandists of the Sovversivi ”, in Jorell A. Meléndez Badillo and Nathan J. Jun (eds), Without Borders or Limits: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Anarchist Studies (Newcastle, 2013), pp. 75–106.

[151] See, among others, Turcato, Davide, Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution (Basingstoke, 2012); Di Paola, The Knights Errant of Anarchy; Adams, Matthew, “Memory, History, and Homesteading: George Woodcock, Herbert Read and Intellectual Networks”, Anarchist Studies, 23:1 (2015), pp. 86–104; Shaffer, Kirk, “Tropical Libertarians”, in Hirsch and Van der Walt, Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, pp. 273–320. Ferretti, Federico, Elisée Reclus. Pour une géographie nouvelle (Paris, 2014).

[152] Woodcock, George, Anarchism (Harmondsworth, 1970 [2nd ed.]), p. 256.

[153] Grave, Jean, Organisation, Initiative, Cohésion (Paris, 1902), pp. 17–20.

[154] Ibid., pp. 21–29.

[155] Letter dated 8 October 1930, Correspondence with Grave, Max Nettlau Papers, inv. no. 505, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (hereafter, IISH); it is not clear what happened to Grave’s letters to Kropotkin.

[156] Letter from Kropotkin, 7 November 1885, Grave correspondence, Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale, Paris (hereafter, IFHS).

[157] Varias, Alexander, Paris and the Anarchists: Aesthetes and Subversives during the Fin de Siècle (Basingstoke, 1996).

[158] “Comment fut fondé Le Révolté”, Les Temps Nouveaux, 20 February 1904; 27 February 1904; 5 March 1904.

[159] Grave, Le Mouvement Libertaire, p. 39.

[160] Correspondence with Jean Grave, Jacques Gross Papers, inv. no. 47, IISH, c.1885–1888, 1893, 1895–1897, [1900], 1901–1903, [1905], 1915–[1916?], and n.d.

[161] Federico Ferretti, “Anarchism, Geography and Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire”, Paper presented at the ESSHC, Valencia, 30 March–2 April 2016.

[162] Freedom, November 1888.

[163] McKay, “Kropotkin, Woodcock and Les Temps Nouveaux”.

[164] Letters from Kropotkin to Alfred Marsh, 26 April 1895; 22 February 1905; 20 July 1905, Alfred Marsh Papers, inv. nos 16, 106, 112, IISH.

[165] Letter from Kropotkin to Grave, 18 June 1910, Grave correspondence, IFHS. See also, for instance, Letter from Kropotkin to Grave, 12 January 1910 (about an article by Kropotkin in the French anarchist periodical Le Libertaire), Grave correspondence, IFHS.

[166] Letter from Kropotkin, 14 December 1910, Grave correspondence, IFHS. See also letter from Kropotkin to Grave (n.d., 1893) about demonstrations in London for the eight-hour day, Grave correspondence, IFHS, letters dated 3 July 1902 (general discussion of syndicalism and European socialism); 20 August 1911 (about mass demonstrations in Britain).

[167] See Kropotkin’s landmark article “Ce que c’est qu’une grève”, about the London Dock Strike as an exemplar of mutual aid, in La Révolte, 7 September 1889.

[168] Letter from Kropotkin to Grave, 8 February 1908, soliciting an introduction to the writer Anatole France and the human-rights organization Ligue des Droits de l’Homme in order to enlist their support to protest against mass expulsions of Russian exiles from France. Delaunay, Jean-Marc, “La Ligue de défense des droits de l’homme et du citoyen et les affaires espagnoles au début du XXe siècle”, Relations internationales, 131 (2007), pp. 27–38.

[169] See Altena, Bert, “A Networking Historian: The Transnational, the National, and the Patriotic in and around Max Nettlau’s Geschichte der Anarchie ”, in Bantman and Altena, Reassessing the Transnational Turn, pp. 62–79.

[170] Letter from Alfred Marsh, 15 November, 1895, Nettlau Collection, inv. no. 804, IISH.

[171] Correspondence with Jean Grave, 8 October 1889, Nettlau Collection, inv. no. 504, IISH.

[172] Letter from Nettlau to Grave, 22 November 1912, Grave correspondence, IFHS.

[173] See for instance Correspondence with Jean Grave, letter dated 13 January 1902, Jacques Gross Papers, inv. no. 47, IISH: Grave asks Gross to go and see one Jolkovsky, in Geneva, the owner of a Russian press entrusted by Grave with the printing of the Russian translation of his book La Société mourante for 1,000 francs, but who had vanished and seems about to swindle Grave.

[174] O’Shaughnessy and Huddart Kennedy, “Relational Activism”, p. 5.

[175] Les Temps Nouveaux, 9 December 1899, p. 4.

[176] Ibid., 9 July 1904, p. 6 and p. 8 respectively.

[177] Ibid., 21 August 1909, p. 12.

[178] Patsouras, The Anarchism of Jean Grave, p. 94.

[179] Lachasse, Pierre, “Revues littéraires d’avant-garde”, in J. Pluet-Despatin, M. Leymarie, and J.-Y. Mollier (eds), La Belle Époque des revues 1880–1914 (Caen, 2002), pp. 119–143, 124; Granier, Caroline, Les briseurs de formules. Les écrivains anarchistes en France à la fin du XIXe siècle (Cœuvres-et-Valsery, 2008); Halperin, Joan Ungersma, Félix Fénéon: Aesthete and Anarchist in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Yale, CT, 1988); Gaetano Manfredonia, “L’Individualisme anarchiste en France, 1880–1914” (Advanced Dissertation, IEP de Paris, 1984).

[180] See Emile Zola’s parody of mondain anarchism in his novel Paris (1897); Carassus, Ernest, Le Snobisme et les lettres françaises (Paris, 1966), pp. 370–382.

[181] Aline Dardel, “Les illustrateurs des Temps Nouveaux” (2006), available at: http://adiamos-89.wifeo.com/documents/LArt-social--la-Belle-Epoque-LesIllustrateursDesTempsNouveaux--PDF.pdf; last accessed 30 May 2016.

[182] René Bianco, available at: http://bianco.ficedl.info/article2025.html; last accessed 3 June 2016; Dardel, Aline, Les Temps Nouveaux, 1895–1914 (Paris, 1987).

[183] This last point is emphasized by Sonn, who contrasts La Révolte with the more radical and bohemian Père Peinard and L’Endehors. Sonn, Anarchism & Cultural Politics, pp. 15–16.

[184] Supplément Littéraire des Temps Nouveaux, I:1 (1895).

[185] Springer, Annemarie, “Terrorism and Anarchy: Late 19th-Century Images of a Political Phenomenon in France”, Art Journal, 38:4 (1979), pp. 261–266; Roslak, Robyn S., “The Politics of Aesthetic Harmony: Neo-Impressionism, Science, and Anarchism”, The Art Bulletin, 73:3 (1991), pp. 381–390; Leighten, Patricia, Re-Ordering the Universe: Picasso and Anarchism, 1897–1914 (Princeton, NJ, 1989); Sonn, Anarchism & Cultural Politics; Tania Woloshyn, “Colonizing the Côte d’Azur: Neo-Impressionism, Anarcho-Communism and the Tropical Terre Libre of the Maures, c.1892–1908”, RIHA Journal, July (2012); Katherine Brion, “Paul Signac’s Decorative Propaganda of the 1890s”, RIHA Journal, July (2012); Papanikolas, Theresa, Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada (Burlington, VT, 2010); Leighten, Patricia, The Liberation of Painting: Modernism and Anarchism in Avant-Guerre Paris (Chicago, IL, 2013).

[186] In 1899, Lazare asked Grave for information about London’s Jewish working-class areas (“Bricklane and Whitechapel”), the local revolutionary movement, as well as the International Working Men’s Club, and also requested several issues of the local paper The Worker’s Friend [sic]. Oriol, Philippe (ed.), Bernard Lazare. Lettres à Jean Grave (Au Fourneau, 1994), letter IX, pp. 24–25.

[187] In September 1893, he requested the address of an Australian companion, one address in Italy, and two further individual contacts, with a view to creating links with Romanian and Bulgarian comrades. Oriol, Lettres à Jean Grave, letter IV, p. 17.

[188] Lazare offered Grave to reprint his material in his papers, and, in return, to publish Grave’s own writings in his review Les Entretiens. Oriol, Lettres à Jean Grave, letter I, p. 13.

[189] Grave, Jean, Mémoires d’un anarchiste (Paris, 2009), p. 409.

[190] Letter from Camille Pissarro to Grave, 4 May 1900, Grave correspondence, IFHS.

[191] Letter from Ludovic Pissarro to Grave, 21 March 1920, Grave correspondence, IFHS.

[192] Stéphane, Marc, Pour Jean Grave (Paris, December 1894), n.p.

[193] Patsouras, The Anarchism of Jean Grave, p. 51.

[194] Extracts from Emile de Saint-Auban, L’Histoire sociale au Palais de Justice, plaidoyers philosophiques (Paris, 1895), available at: http://kropot.free.fr/Grave1.htm; last accessed 3 June 2016.

[195] Letter from Grave to Lucien Descaves soliciting his help for a single-issue paper and general support for Spanish anarchists (alongside other prominent non-anarchist figures), Lucien Descaves Papers, IISH, “Jean Grave” file, letters dated 9 February 1897, 18 January 1897, 13 June 1897; Grave papers, IISH, Letters from Angiolillo and others to Grave, 1897–1898; Joseph Presburg papers, Correspondence with Jean Grave, inv. no. 26, IISH; Laqua, Daniel, “Freethinkers, Anarchists and Francisco Ferrer: The Making of a Transnational Solidarity Campaign”, European Review of History, 21:4 (2014), pp. 467–484.

[196] Moisan, Justin, “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), para. 19.

[197] Sonn, Anarchism & Cultural Politics, pp. 31–48.

[198] Moisan, Justin, “Octave Mirbeau et la ‘Terreur’ anarchiste” (MA, University of Laval, 2012), pp. 99–102.

[199] Duclert, Vincent, L’Affaire Dreyfus (Paris, 2009), p. 68; Charle, Christophe, Naissance des “intellectuels”, 1880–1900 (Paris, 1990).

[200] James Yeoman, “Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890–1915” (PhD, University of Sheffield, 2016), p. 7.

[201] Maitron, Jean and Droguet, Alain, “La presse anarchiste française de ses origines à nos jours”, Le Mouvement social, 83 (1973), pp. 9–22, 9.

[202] Bianco, “Le Révolté”, n.p.

[203] Grave, Le Mouvement Libertaire, p. 157.

[204] See for instance the letter from Kropotkin dated 3 September 1894, Grave correspondence, IFHS: “I could send you an excellent and easy book to learn English, if you like”.

[205] Letter to Paul Eltzbacher, 16 January 1922, Paul Eltzbacher Papers, IISH.

[206] Grave, Le Mouvement Libertaire, p. 156.

[207] Letter to Jacques Gross, 29 October 1919, Jacques Gross Papers, inv. no. 47, IISH.

[208] Letter from Grave to Jacques Gross, 15 January 1896; letter to Nettlau, 5 May 1912, inv. no. 504, IISH, mentioning “Sir Isambard Owen, my brother in law”.

[209] Letter to Jean Grave, 2 September 1914, Grave correspondence, IFHS.

[210] On this topic, and Kropotkin’s views in particular, see the recently edited volume by Kinna and Adams, Anarchism, 1914–18.

[211] Letter to Max Nettlau, 10 August 1922, Max Nettlau Papers, inv. no. 505, IISH.

[212] Letter to Jacques Gross dated October 1915, Jacques Gross Papers, IISH.

[213] Maitron, Jean and Chambelland, Colette, “La correspondance de Jean Grave. Inventaire et études”, L’Actualité de l’histoire, 24 (1958), pp. 39–46.

[214] Pierre Ramus Papers, inv. no. 57, IISH (correspondence with Jean Grave), letters dated 27 November 1921, 15 June 1924.

[215] Letter from Grave to Paul Eltzbacher, 24 February 1922, Paul Eltzbacher Papers, IISH.

[216] “Publications de la Révolte et des Temps Nouveaux”, 1920, n. 1, Publications du “Groupe de propagande par l’écrit”.

[217] Byrne, Sian and van der Walt, Lucien, “Worlds of Western Anarchism and Syndicalism: Class Struggle, Transnationalism, Violence and Anti-Imperialism, 1870s–1940s”, Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire, 50:1 (2015), pp. 98–123, 109–110; Maxwell, and Craib, No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries, p. 2; Gabaccia, Donna, “Afterword”, Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict, 1 (2015), available at: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-1-afterword; last accessed 30 May 2016.

{1} I wish to express my gratitude to Roberto Belloni, Marco Manfredi, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Needless to say, any remaining errors of fact or interpretation are my own.

{2} I would like to thank Bert Altena for his expert advice on this study.