Elise Reclus is a famous French scientist. He is a member of the Paris Geographical Society, which has made a significant contribution to the development of this science. Interestingly, for almost his entire life, he was a convinced vegetarian and held anarchist views.
Craving for wanderings
Elise Reclus was born in 1830. He was born in the French town of Saint-Foix-la-Grand. Geography captivated him in his early youth, then he decided to make a detailed description of the geography of planet Earth.
For these reasons, he begins to actively visit all countries of the world. Then it goes to remote corners of Africa, America and Asia. In his first trips, he went as a child. He always had a craving for new knowledge, his impressions did not allow him to stay in one place for a long time.
The future scientist sought to learn the history of mankind and the geography of the earth in practice. To do this, he traveled a lot around the world, and then in his office worked on geographical guides that were published in the famous Ashet publishing house.
"Earth and people"
The most famous and significant work of Elise Reclus is called "Earth and People." He published 18 volumes of this truly epoch-making work. It took the researcher twenty years to do this. Starting to write in 1873, he finished only in 1893. A huge volume of about 900 pages was published annually. It had many drawings, maps and drawings, which gave an exhaustive idea of a particular area.
Jacques Elise Reclus independently collected all the materials in his continuous travels. The compilation of the final text took all his free time, demanding maximum return from him in order to achieve the final result.
Jean Elise Reclus presents the history of the Earth as a combination of knowledge about its climate, geography, statistics on population, ethnography, nature and people. He was also always interested in what ordinary people do.
At the same time, his biographers have always noted that for all the significance of his figure, Jean-Jacques Elise Reclus was always completely dependent on his wife. She gave him only a few cents a day for pocket money, knowing that he was ready for anything for the sake of science. Because of this, many could abuse his trust and kindness.
Contribution to Science
Contribution to the geography of Elise Reclus was highly appreciated by his contemporaries; many scholars still admire his fundamental research called “Earth and People”.
This is one of the first books in which a complete and comprehensive description of the globe was given. Previously, such works did not exist.
First trip
On his first wanderings, Elise Reclus set off in 1842, when he was only 12 years old. He went on foot to a school in the German city of Neuwied, while he himself lived in the French department of Gironde.
In 1851, Elise Reclus returned to his parents, and again on foot. In Strasbourg, he met with his brother. They had a hard time, spent the night in the open air, often malnourished, on their way to Ortez, where their parents settled with six younger children.
Already in Ortez, they found out that Napoleon III came to power in the country. It was then that the anarchist views of Elise Reclus first appeared, a brief biography of which is in this article. He began to urge others to oppose the monarchy, urged people to protest, and even received an order to arrest him.
The brothers had to flee to England. It was in this country that he finally formed the idea to write a book about the whole Earth. The first thing he went to America.
New World
To get to the United States, Reclus got a cook on a ship that was leaving from Liverpool. Crossing the ocean, he landed in New Orleans. A countryman who lived in America for several years helped him get a job as a teacher of French. Then he managed to get a tutor’s place from a planter in Louisiana.
It was in Louisiana that Reclus began to devote his free time to swimming on the Mississippi River, and traveled to Chicago and other American cities. As a result, he wrote several essays published in local magazines. The most famous of them was called "Mississippi and its shores."
In Louisiana, the Frenchman worked for a year, traveling from there to New Orleans. Boarded the ship to visit the countries of Central and South America. He visited Guiana, Colombia, conquered the Andes.
People's life
Reclus' research work has always been distinguished by the fact that he was interested not only in paintings of tropical nature, but also studied the life of people. In Colombia, he visited small villages in which he became acquainted with the life and customs of the native Indians. For them, he was perhaps the first white person they saw.
It is noteworthy that Reclus sincerely loved the Indians, always feeling completely safe among them. In total, he spent about two years in South America. He returned to Europe only after Napoleon III announced the amnesty of all political emigrants. Reclus legally arrived at home.
Return to France
Reclus settled in Paris, he began to live with the family of his brother, who returned a little earlier. Soon the hero of our article received an enviable order. The well-known Ashet publishing house asked him to draw up a guide to European countries. To collect material, he went to Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Italy, visited all the largest countries of the continent.
The scientist included so many new, interesting and unusual facts in his reference book that he began to compete with the famous German guide Bedecker, who before that had huge popularity. At the same time, Reclus began to collaborate with geographic magazines, he began to pay attention to his work in the scientific world, and soon the Paris Geographical Society accepted him into his ranks.
Milestone in the biography of Elise Reclus was 1868, when he released the first volume of his research called "Earth".
War with Prussia
Scientific research had to be interrupted due to the outbreak of war between Prussia and France. Reclus volunteered to join the National Guard.
He often made sorties to the front line, once was even arrested and sent to Brest for a military field court. While in custody, the hero of our article did not waste time, continuing to write down his impressions of the world around him, which later became the basis of his scientific works.
He spent six months in custody, after which he was sent on a stage to Versailles, where in 1871 he was sentenced to life imprisonment on the island of New Caledonia. European scholars were indignant at this decision, demanding that the French government immediately reverse the sentence. In England, a committee was even convened to defend Reclus, which included Carpenter and Darwin.
The French government eventually succumbed, replacing the link with a ten-year exile from the country. In 1872 he was brought to Switzerland.
Life in Switzerland
Reclus settled in Zurich, and soon moved to Lugano, where he began work on the multivolume work "Earth and People." The first five volumes were devoted to the description of European countries, another five - to Asian states. The eleventh volume includes Australia and numerous Pacific islands. The French geographer devoted four more volumes to Africa, and four to America.
As part of these studies, he visited the Balkan Peninsula, again traveled to Italy, as well as to Hungary and Austria, visited North Africa. Returning to Lake Geneva, he began to devote all his free time to work on Universal Geography. For twelve years he published one volume each year.
Having conceived this project, Reclus wanted to visit all countries of the world personally, but then realized that it was beyond the power of one person. But he always sought to write, based on fresh impressions. For example, not once and without having traveled to Russia, the geographer ordered the anarchist Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin to compile a detailed geography of our country.
In 1889, he went to North Africa for the second time in his life to complete the sixteenth volume of his work, which he devoted entirely to the United States of America. For six months, he drove all the major cities of Canada and the United States.
In 1890, Reclus returned to France, settling not far from Paris. In 1892, while traveling in South America, he finished the nineteenth volume. By that time he was already 62 years old.
By 1905, Reclus was able to declare that he had finished the main work of his life.
The French geographer died in 1905 in the circle of friends and relatives. It is noteworthy that his last words were: "The revolution is coming! The revolution is approaching ...". Then he proved himself to be a true anarchist, remaining throughout his life true to his beliefs.
Reclus was 75 years old. His last refuge was Belgium.