ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the early links between the 'British world' and the Reclus brothers, Elisee and Elie, who both came to London in 1852 following the coup of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. It considers that the impact of this experience was crucial for the biographies of both men, and in many ways. The commitment of anarchist geographers to evolutionary theory is impossible to understand without considering the importance of 'rational' science as a battlefield between religious traditions and liberal, secular and progressive free thinking. According to George Stocking, some British anthropologists used Darwin's ideas against most conservative and clerical thinkers through declaring, as a principle, the fundamental unity of the human faculties. In terms of politics, London workers had just gathered to protest against czarist repression in Poland, and Reclus strongly commended these social movements 'where an embryonic International can be seen'.
