Publishing anarchism: Pyotr Kropotkin and British print cultures, 1876–1917

Abstract

This paper addresses the relationship between the famous anarchist geographer PyotrThis paper explores the British publishing networks of the well-known anarchist geographer Pyotr Kropotkin (1842Kropotkin ( -1921, a Russian exile who spent a great part of his life and career in London. It uses primary sources to analyse Kropotkin's work for the British periodical press, in particular the Encyclopaedia Britannica (first published in Edinburgh from 1768), Statesman's Year Book (published in London from 1864), The Nineteenth Century (London, 1877) and Nature (London, 1869). Indeed, although Kropotkin's papers for The Nineteenth Century constituted the bases for some of his most famous books, such as Fields, Factories and Workshops (1898), Mutual Aid (1902), Modern Science and Anarchism (1903), The Great French Revolution (1909) and Ethics (1921), little attention has been paid to the material circumstances of these works' initial production. In order to do so, I analyse Kropotkin's unpublished correspondence with his main editors: James Thomas Knowles (1831Knowles ( -1908 and John Scott Keltie (1840Keltie ( -1927.In recent years historical geographies of science have drawn increasingly on contextual readings, acknowledging the importance of places and material conditions for the production of knowledge through its localisations, circulations and materialistic hermeneutics. In this work scientific and political ideas are understood not as 'conjured out of thin air', but circulating through the world in ways which are conditioned by local situations. Understanding those contexts allows us to better understand how these ideas are different in different places. 2 In this paper I discuss the significance of such local, material conditions of life and work for Kropotkin's scientific and militant activities during his time in Western Europe (and mainly in Britain) from 1876 to 1917. My main argument is that collaboration with the British periodical press presented a set of opportunities to the Russian anarchist: it was simultaneously a way to secure an income, a means to participate in key political and geographical debates (such as those on evolutionism) and a method of spreading anarchist ideas to a wider audience. The collaboration with liberals such as Knowles and Keltie should be Thus, I argue that there is a continuity between Kropotkin as a scientist and Kropotkin as an anarchist, challenging biographies which have described a certain disconnectedness between the 'heroic' first part of Kropotkin's life -as explorer, militant and prisoner -and the second part, starting in 1886, as an intellectual comfortably settled in an English cottage, and therefore of less interest for militant histories. 4 In this sense, the paper contributes to more recent Kropotkin scholarship which tries to address the contexts for his activities more carefully. 5 The materials I analyse explain how more conventional geographical publishing helped him to succeed in being paid to work as a full-time anarchist propag...

The Transnational Life and Death of Peter Kropotkin, 1881-1921: Terrorism, the Anarchist Body, and the Russian Revolution

“…94 At the same time, his scientific and anarchist writings themselves were interconnected endeavours. 95 Appreciation of Kropotkin's views on various topics in publications with both moderate liberal and conservative political leanings indicates the broad appeal he established through these interlinked activities. 96 Kropotkin's 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which had first appeared as a series of articles in The Nineteenth Century, epitomises this weaving of scientific method, historical and sociological analysis.…”

History and philosophy of geography II

“…(Wright, 1963: 2) While some phases of geography's disciplinary history, and some stripes of its philosophy, engender in us shame and demand our atonement, others have the capacity to inspire our admiration and to signal to future possibilities. This much, at least, is the claim of a flurry of recent scholarship -primarily associated with Federico Ferretti (2016aFerretti ( , 2016bFerretti ( , 2016cFerretti ( , 2017aFerretti ( , 2017bFerretti ( , 2017cFerretti ( , 2017d and Simon Springer (2016) -that has sought to more fully document anarchist traditions in geography and to show how the work of anarchist geographers, like Peter Kropotkin and É lie and É lisée Reclus, might inform and enliven current geographical debate. For Springer (2016: 2, 3), anarchismunlike the many more 'unsavoury ideas in geography's disciplinary past' -offers us a pathway towards 'a radical, rhizomatic politics of possibility and freedom'.…”

“…Anarchist geography was as much an exercise in publishing as it was in politics; this much is evident in Federico Ferretti's (2016c, 2017c, 2017d various examinations of the authorship, translation, circulation, and reading of the works of Kropotkin and É lisée Reclus. The significance of these studies lies in what they reveal about the (international) contexts in which anarchist writings took shape and in which they were received.…”

“…In this capacity, Keltie was instrumental in securing Kropotkin commissions and assisting him in navigating the occasionally competing commercial, political, and economic demands of the British periodical press. Notwithstanding these challenges, periodical publishing 'secured a durable public success for Kropotkin's works' and was thus fundamental in the diffusion of anarchist geography (Ferretti, 2017d). For Ferretti (2017d: 26), the significance of this phase of Kropotkin's publishing career lies in its challenge to the 'commonly-held view that anarchist geographers were marginalised'.…”