Icarians
| Icarians | |
|---|---|
| Location | Sonoma County |
| Official name: Icaria-Sperenza Commune | |
| Designated | November 22, 1988 |
| Reference no. | 835 |
The Icarians /ɪˈkɛriənz/ were a French-based utopian socialist movement, established by the followers of politician, journalist, and author Étienne Cabet. In an attempt to put his economic and social theories into practice, Cabet led his followers to the United States of America in 1848, where the Icarians established a series of egalitarian communes in the states of Texas, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and California. The movement split several times due to factional disagreements.
The last community of Icarians, located a few miles outside of Corning, Iowa, disbanded voluntarily in 1898. The 46 years of tenure at this location made the Corning Icarian Colony one of the longest-lived non-religious communal living experiments in American history.
Étienne Cabet was born in Dijon, France in 1788 to a middle-class family of artisans. Cabet attended a Roman Catholic secondary school and continued his education, ultimately earning a Doctorate of Law degree in 1812. Cabet was not inclined towards jurisprudence, however, preferring the rough and tumble of politics and journalism. Following the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815, Cabet became active in the struggle against conservative theocratic monarchism, participating in political groups which espoused a constitutional and republican form of government under monarchical leadership.
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