Jura Federation

The Jura Federation (French: Fédération jurassienne) was the federalist and anarchist section of the International Workingmen's Association (also known as the First International), based largely among watch-makers in the Jura mountain range in Switzerland. The Jura federation was founded on October 9, 1870 at a meeting in Saint-Imier of local sections of the IWA. It was expelled from the IWA, along with other anarchist sections, after the Hague Congress (1872).

Anarchists in the Jura federation, like James Guillaume, would play a key role in Peter Kropotkin's conversion to anarchism. In Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin writes that "the egalitarian relations which I found in the Jura Mountains, the independence of thought and expression which I saw developing in the workers, and their unlimited devotion to the cause appealed far more strongly to my feelings; and when I came away from the mountains, after a week's stay with the watchmakers, my views upon socialism were settled. I was an anarchist."

Literature

• Marianne Enckell: La fédération jurassienne, Âge d'Homme, Lausanne, 1971 (reeditions: Canevas Editeur, Saint-Imier 1991, ISBN 2-88382-008-2; Entremonde, Genf, 2012, ISBN 978-2-940426-16-4).

See also

• Anarchist St. Imier International
• Anarchism in France
• International Workers Association
• Mikhail Bakunin
• Paul Brousse