Constance Bantman. The French Anarchists in London, 1880–1914

Great Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century, as a consequence of her unique commitment to liberalism, had a relatively open door policy to political refugees. As a result, anarchists suffering increased repression during the French Third Republic began migrating to London as early as the 1880s. This trickle of militants would pick up steam in the 1890s as the anti-anarchist crackdown intensified with the passage of the Lois Scélérates in 1893–1894. Many historians of French anarchism have often portrayed the period of exile in Great Britain as a rather unimportant sidenote in the social, political, and ideological development of the movement. Constance Bantman thoughtfully makes the argument for a more thorough examination of this period. With extensive archival research done on both sides of the English Channel, Bantman makes noteworthy arguments for the importance of this experience of exile, for the exiled themselves, their movement, and also for the country that took them in.

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis) · Art · Economic history · Globalization · Ideology · Liberalism · Period (music) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Refugee · Sociology · Transnationalism · Anarchism and Radical Politics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law