RECLUS, re-kln', EtAsE (1830-1904). A French geographer. born in the Gironde. He was educated in Rhenish Prussia, and subsequently studied at Montauban and under Karl Ritter at the University of Berlin. His republican principles forced him to leave France after the coup d'tAat of Louis Napoleon in 1851, and he then traveled in Great Britain, the United States, and South America. After his return to France in 1858, he published the results of his travels and geographical studies in several geographical works and in contribu tions to the Revue des Deux ilondes and the Tour du Monde. His repugnance to the Napo leonic reign induced him to join the Interna tionals in 1869, and, arrested as a soldier of the Commune during the siege of Paris in 1871, he was sentenced to transportation for life. Charles Darwin and other distinguished scientists united in a petition to the French Government for his recall, on the ground of the services which lie had rendered to science and popular education. and in 1872 his sentence was commuted into one of banishment. He then established himself in Switzerland until he returned to France under the amnesty of 1379. In 1332, however, he was
condemned with Prince Krapotkin as a leader and organizer of the anarchist movement and again fled to Switzerland. Twelve years later he was sentenced to transportation for twenty years. While in exile in Switzerland he began his masterpiece, Nourelie geographic nniverselle (20 vols., 1374-94). This work, which was pub lished in English under the title The Earth and Its Inhabitants, containing over thirty-five hun dred maps, in addition to numerous engravings, is an evidence of Reclus's remarkable talent for exposition and his extraordinary scientific knowl edge. Of his other geographical works, mention should be made of La terre (1867; 4th ed. 1877; Eng. trans., The Earth, 1871) and Les pheno menes trrrestres, le monde et les meteores (1872). In 1892 he became professor of comparative geography at the University of Brussels. At the outbreak of the Civil War in the United States his articles were of conspicuous value in arousing public sympathy in France for the ad ministration of President Lincoln.