Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France From Free Love to Algeria [Hardcover]

Saint-Simonians were a group of young engineers and doctors who proposed original solutions to the social and banking crises of the early nineteenth century. Through an examination of the lives, ideals and activities of these men and women, the book analyses the influence of the Saint-Simonians on nineteenth-century French society.Introduction 1. A New Generation Planning for a Golden Age 2. Religion and the Liberation of the Poorest Classes 3. The Cost of Free Love 4. Reconfiguring New Worlds 5. Transnational Reformers 6. Egypt Orientalism and Modernisation 7. Algeria 1830-48: Conquest and Exploration 8. Prol?taires into Propri?taires: The Promised Land, 1848 9. Urbain and the Arab Empire 10. Conclusion: Remembering the Saint-Simonians Bibliography

This monograph is engagingly written, with a good eye for narrative detail, which should make this study accessible to a pretty wide audience. & This is a well-written and interesting book, which will prove useful to students of nineteenth-century proto-socialism and utopian radicalism. (Ambrogio A. Caiani, History - Journal of the Historical Association, December, 2015)

Pamela Pilbeam is Professor Emeritus of French History, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow, 2007-2009. She has published extensively on nineteenth-century European history, including Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxworks (2006, 2nd edition), and French Socialists before Marx: Workers, Women and the Social Question in France (2000). One cannot fault the range of [Pilbeam's] research: not only the Arsenal (where the archives of Saint-Simon and Prosper Enfantin run into 47 volumes, plus the less often exploited Fonds d'Eichthal), but the Archives d'Outre-Mer too. The originality of the book is furthered by her use of primary printed sources by such authors as the hostile Edward Hancock, who was appalled by the Saint-Simonians' 'horrid doings' (91). What Pilbeam shows in her clear, occasionally miló·