Sabotaged: Dreams of Utopia in Texas

James Pratt

2020年3月 · U of Nebraska Press

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Alongside the various people moving into and through the nineteenth-century Texas frontier was a group of European intellectuals bent on establishing a socialist utopia near the hamlet of Dallas. Their inspiration, French philosopher Charles Fourier, envisioned a society in which basic human ambitions would be expressed and cultivated, tied together by the bonds of emotion. Fourier’s self-appointed disciple Victor Considerant led the establishment of La Réunion in 1855, organized under a Paris stock company. James Pratt weaves together the dramatic story of this utopia: the complex tale of a diverse group of Europeans who sought a new society but were forced to face the realities of life in nineteenth-century Texas.

Considerant’s followers endured a long ocean voyage with Spanish gunboats following in their Caribbean wake. They brushed blooming magnolias through Buffalo Bayou between Galveston Bay and Houston—so narrow a channel that two ships could not pass simultaneously. They walked for three weeks across barren country, came into conflict with the Texas legislature over land, and had to buy their stolen horses back from Chief Ned, a famous Delaware Indian living in Texas. They were buffeted in the rising political winds of abolition, and droughts ruined their crops. In the end, however, it was their flamboyant leader Victor Considerant who sabotaged their dream.
 

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James Pratt (1927–2018) practiced architecture under various firm names, including James Pratt Architecture and Urban Design. Son of a genealogist librarian and a frontier banker, Pratt was fascinated by the nearly forgotten nineteenth-century La Réunion immigrants who introduced their culture to Dallas, Texas. As founder of the La Réunion research project at the Dallas Historical Society, Pratt traveled extensively to ferret out the story of this failed experiment. He is coauthor of The Prairie’s Yield: Forces Shaping Dallas Architecture from 1840 to 1962 and Environmental Encounter: Experiences in Decision-Making for the Built and Natural Environment.