Cabet

Cabet, ÉTIENNE, a notable French communist, was born at Dijon in 1788, and educated for the bar, but turned his attention to literature and politics. Under the Restoration, he was one of the leaders of the Carbonari (q.v.), and in 1831 was elected deputy for the department of Côte d'Or. Soon afterwards, he published a History of the July Revolution (1832), started a Radical Sunday paper, Le Populaire (1833), and on account of an article in this paper, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, but escaped to London. After the amnesty, 1839, he returned to Paris, and published a History of the French Revolution (4 vols. 1840), bestowing great praise on the old Jacobins. He attracted far more notice by his Voyage en Icarie (1840), a 'philosophical and social romance,' describing a communistic Utopia. The work obtained great popularity among the working-classes of Paris. Cabet next proceeded to send an 'Icarian colony' to the Red River in Texas, but the colonists who went out in 1848 found Texas anything but a Utopia. Their ill fortune did not deter Cabet from embarking at the head of a second band of colonists. On his arrival he learned that the Mormons had just been expelled from Nauvoo in Illinois, and that their city was left deserted. The Icarians established themselves there in 1850. Cabet's efforts, however, were not successful. He was finally obliged to leave Nauvoo and retire to St. Louis, where he died in 1856. See Nordhoff, Communistic Societies of the United States (1875).