(Ytterligare en recension, fast jag gör det gärna mer som ett referat eftersom
bokens innehåll kanske intresserar mer än mina synpunkter. På engelska då det
gått på utrikiska listor också - det handlar ju mycket om USA. Sprid gärna
dina egna boksynpunkter på denna lista! För du läser väl böcker? Det vore bra
med litet utöver mina och Rickards gnabbande på listan. När du läst en bok
skriv fem rader om den, eller femtio. Roscoe kräver! --AE)
The book Historien om Bishop Hill ("The History o Bishop Hill"), by Olov
Isaksson, (publisher LT Förlag, 1995) tells about the 19th Century Swedish
emigrant utopian settlement Bishop Hill in Illinois. I believe it is an earlier
edition of the same book by that author that has been translated to English as
Bishop Hill: A Utopia on the Prairie (see
http://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm/ref/collection/npu_sahq/id/3662 for a ;
review). The last third of it also covers a number of other 19th century
utopian settlements in the US.
Starting in the 18th century, and through the 19th, there was a big movement
of religious groups - mainly, but also others - founding utopian settlements
and towns in America. The new nation was religiously tolerant and had plenty of
land. If you moved into the middle of nowhere you could found your own society
on any religious and/or political principles and mind your own business.
Erik Jansson (later Eric Janson) was a self-proclaimed prophet of sorts who
came in conflict with the Swedish state church. So he took his followers - a
thousand or so - and after a long and adventurous journey (many died en route
through disease) he founded the colony Bishop Hill - named after the parish of
Biskopskulla in Sweden, in 1846.
The first winter was tough but soon they built a little town, with a big
central building, workshops of different kinds, a mill and began cultivating
the prairie. The book says the colony became quite successful for a while - but
then different disasters struck. Their leader Jansson was murdered (after a
dispute about if someone's wife should be able to leave the colony) and later
the colony was hampered*** by the general economic recession after the Crimean
War. The trustees of the colony had further made unwise investments which threw
them deep into debt and the colony was dissolved after about 15 years. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Hill_Colony
This was the fate of most other utopian colonies which popped up in America
about the same time. They would last a few years, a few decades perhaps, but
reality would soon clash with the idealistic, usually religious ideology that
kept the utopian colonists together.
These utopian colonies had a few common characteristics:
- They'd usually be based on unorthodox religious ideas, their own
interpretation of the Bible, how to live a religious life and things like that.
- Usually (but not always) there was no individual property - everything was
in common ownership. In the book this in called "Bible communism", though the
idea of "communism" and Marx didn't exist yet for many of the early colonies -
and Marx would have liked mixing in the Bible into the mess...
- The legal status of the colony would often be as a registered limited
company, in which the colonists were junior owners - and Marx wouldn't have
liked forming communism through a private company either...
- The utopian colonies were almost always created by a "strong man with a
vision", who attracted followers. This guy would often become very
authoritarian, which of course created dissent and became a factor in the
Utopia failing.
- It was quite common that the colonists lived together in one or several big
buildings, sleeping in bunks in a common room or having small private rooms but
a big communal dining room.
- Everyone chipped in doing the different task, working the fields, etc -
except in many cases the leaders...
- The colonies would have strict sets of rules, which would vary from colony
to colony. There could be bans on alcohol and tobacco, no gaming, free sex or
celibacy (pick your choice), ban on certain clothes, so and so many prayers per
day, etc.
- Many would have common functions, like a theatre, a library, a mill, and so
on.
- They would try to be self-sufficient, but would also trade foodstuff and
products from their own workshops with the outside world.
- The colonies would take names like Communia, Altruria Harmony, Hopedale,
Social Freedom Modern times, Paradise, Jerusalem. It is estimated that at its
height the there were some 100 000 people in the utopian colony movement.
Below about a few of the other utopian colonies from the last third of the
book. The section begins with giving the general background of the utopian
colony movement, the new ideas from the French revolution, the feeling of how
the "old society" was crumbling, and some of the classic utopias in literature
are mentioned as influences too. The French philosopher and author Charles
Fourier (1772-1837, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fourier ;) was
especially influential.
* First we read about how the well-known Swedish author Carl Jonas Love
Almqvist in 1824-26 joined a small colony in the Swedish province of Värmland,
but gave up as the project was "awoken by reality...the coherence of the group
never became what was hoped."
* The Scottish industrialist Robert Owen founded his New Harmony in 1824, in
Indiana. But his rules were so strict that people dissented and his Utopia
failed after only three years...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Harmony,_Indiana
* An important movement was The Shakers, a breakaway group from the Quakers,
which founded dozens of colonies from the east coast to the midwest. They were
called "the Shakers" because their religious ceremonies included a wild
ecstatic, shaking dance. Another thing occupying them were their "vision
songs", where they would sing gibberish and get messages from dead celebrities
like Washington, Jefferson, Napoleon and Alexander the Great. In the mid-1800s
they had 6000 members, but their practice of celibacy was an obstacle for the
colonies to grow... And it probably made life a bit boring too.
* Brook Farm was a small colony south of Boston, starting in 1841. But they
were struck by disaster when their newly built, huge community house caught
fire in 1846. This group has been described by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his novel
The Blithedale Romance (1852). This was a group that didn't believe in common
property, because it would "damage the individual's independence and hamper the
rise of a noble, elevated humanity". The colonists would dance play music, set
up small plays, studied Shakespeare and German philosophers and published their
own magazine. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brook-Farm?
* The Oneida Community, founded by one John Humphrey Noyce, is described as the
economically most successful of these utopias. It was founded in 1848 and
produced gods of various types and good quality, including silverware sold all
over the US. It was also a society of "free sex" and huge group marriages.
Problems were discussed on community meetings and they had a big library where
colonists could read scientific books and magazines. Their main Mansion had
central heating, a print shop, a chemical laboratory, a photo studio, a big
concert hall and a small museum. When the community dissolved in 1881 it
developed into the Oneida Limited silverware company which exists to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community
* Something called the North American Phalanx was founded in 1843, in New
Jersey. They produced fruit and vegetables which were sold in New York City and
existed for twelve years. No alcohol was allowed, and no religious services,
but they had a common library where you could compensate the lack of liquid
stimulation. The Swedish author Fredrika Bremer visited them during a US trip
and has written about them. (She also visited Shaker colonies and described
their strange dances with fascination.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Phalanx?
* George Rapp was a religious dissenter who founded a series of colonies, one
after another. Around 1804 he founded Harmonie in Pennsylvania. It seemed to go
well, so it must be something wrong... So after ten years they moved to
Indiana. In 1824 they once again moved, to Ohio, and founded the colony called
Economy. They seemed to have been very industrious, distilling whisky,
producing silk and wool, and even pumping up some oil from their own oil wells.
They ate five meals per day, with wine on every table (but tobacco was banned).
In 1831 a "false prophet" turned up in their community,causing divisions and
making fifity of the utopists to leave. Though shrinking, this colony existed
for a long time and their limited company, The Harmony Society, wasn't legally
dissolved until 1916. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_Society? and ;
https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Rapp?
* Amana was seven villages founded by German immigrants in 1856 in Iowa. Their
Society of True Inspiration had up to 1800 members. They were self-sufficient
and good craftsmen. Tobacco was allowed, but not gaming or photographies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amana_Colonies?
* The Icarians was an utopian movement from France, inspired by the author
Etienne Cabet and his bestselling utopian novel Voyage en Icarie (1840). He is
said to have had 100 000's of followers in France. Starting in 1848, his
followers founded egalitarian communes first in Texas, and later Illinois,
Iowa, Missouri, and California. Their Utopia was - unlike others -
non-religious but tightly controlled by Cabet, with lots of rules, restrictions
and surveillance (like mail censorship).This caused splits several times and
Cabet himself was finally driven off his own colony. The Colonists had
understandably had grown tired of him. A little fraction of the Icarians
existed until 1898. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarians
* The mormons and Joseph Smith is briefly mentioned. They of course fit into
this picture of forming utopian colonies, but so much has been written about
them already.
There were many more of these colonies, but the movement had practically died
by the year 1900. After trying again and again it finally dawned on people that
founding a society on religious or idealistic principles, claiming they are The
Final Road To Happiness, is a very narrow and one-eyed project doomed to fail.
Utopias fail because since they believe they sit on the Ultimate Truth they
are inflexible, since they are the brainchild of one person (or a very limited
group) they are blind to that individuals are different with different wishes
and aspiration that don't fit. Anyone who has bothered to read history's first
great utopian work, Plato's The Republic, will find that it is pretty ghastly.
Despite this, naive ideas of DIY Utopias made a brief comeback with the
1960/60's hippie movement. They guys and girls smoked something and found out
that it would be a really, really good idea to "go back to nature". They moved
out to some desert on the middle of the woods and began to quarrel who should
do the dishes, who should stencil the anti-Reagan leaflets and who should water
the hemp. Few lasted very long, but according to the book I read there were
3000 (!) such small, collective communities in California alone during this era.
"Utopia" is Greek for "no place" and there is no place for it in real life.
--Ahrvid
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