Reunion

The colony known as La Réunion was located on the south bank of the Trinity River in central Dallas County, just north of Interstate Highway 30 and within the present city limits of Dallas. It was founded by Victor Prosper Considérant, one of the leading democratic socialist figures in France and director of an international movement based on the philosophical and economic teachings of François Marie Charles Fourier. Considérant planned for the colony to be a loosely structured communal experiment administered by a system of direct democracy. The participants would share in the profits according to a formula based on the amount of capital investment and the quantity and quality of labor performed. Considérant traveled across the United States to Northeast Texas in 1852–53 looking for a suitable area for a colony. Impressed by the climate and other features of the region, he returned to France to organize a company and obtain funding for the project. He set forth elaborate and specific plans for the Texas colony in the French publication Au Texas (1854) and in the English publication The Great West (1854). In these two books he called for a joint European-American venture at La Réunion and proposed the eventual establishment of a network of colonies throughout the Southwest, connected by commercial, cultural, and educational ties.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.