The Road to Texas

Victor Prosper Considerant (12 October 1808 – 27 December 1893) was a French utopian socialist philosopher and economist. After a short service in the French army he resigned to devote his energies to popularizing and applying the utopian ideas of Charles Fourier. Because of his participation in the abortive insurrection of June 13, 1849, against Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Considérant was forced to flee to Brussels. There he was contacted by Albert Brisbane, an American Fourierist, who interested him in colonization efforts in Texas. Considérant visited the United States in 1852–53 and accompanied Brisbane on a trek that eventually took him through North and Central Texas. His enthusiasm for the land, climate, and people of Texas induced him to establish the European Society for the Colonization of Texas upon his return to Belgium. When La Réunion collapsed in 1859 due to financial insolvency, Considérant, discouraged but not disillusioned, moved to San Antonio, where he unsuccessfully attempted to raise funds for another commune. Unable to fulfill his dreams in Texas and still under a ban of deportation from France, he became an American citizen and farmed in Bexar County until 1869, when he and his wife returned to Paris. There he lived as a teacher and socialist sage of the Latin Quarter and died on December 27, 1893.

Paola Tettamanzi Buckley has taught foreign languages at SMU since 2003. She is presently associate area chair and advisor for the department of French and Francophone Studies. Paola graduated from Georgetown University with a BA and from New York University with an MA and studied second language acquisition at the University of Maryland College Park. Paola worked at United Nations headquarters in New York and was accredited as both a French and Italian interpreter by the State Department in Washington. She has served as an interpreter at both the White House and the Pentagon.