How to Live Together

Fourierists - La Réunion



La Réunion, Texas, USA
Fourierist, Utopian Socialist
Single-Family Housing
Joint Stock Company
1855 - 1857

In 1855, the French socialist Victor Considerant, founded La Réunion as a utopian community based on the ideas of Charles Fourier. Considerant believed the phalanstery was the solution to social and economic injustice and envisioned 1,200 people working together to provide food, shelter, clothing, and education. Banished from France for his political views, Considerant believed no European country would tolerate a Phalanstery and turned his efforts westward. Between 1842 and 1858 more than forty phalanxes were established in the USA and only three lasted more than two years. American phalansteries demonstrated a propensity for catastrophic floods and fires. Others like La Reunion fell victim to mundane details: lack of money, lack of experience, and general disorganization.

Considerant established The European Society for the Colonization of Texas, as a joint stock company to attract settlers from Europe and America. Considerant planned to have the first batch of settlers be farmers and frontiersmen who would establish the colony. Instead, 200 colonists, made up of cultural elites from France, Belgium, and Switzerland, descended on La Reunion before the colony was established and chaos reigned. The community they built bore no resemblance to the phalanstery, instead it was made up of small, freestanding buildings without coherence or planning. By 1859 almost all the colonists had left, returning to Europe or settling in nearby Dallas.