Anarchist Encyclopedia: Augustin Hamon Page (1862-1945), French anarchist, sociologist & later a socialist: A Gallery of Saints & Sinners; Labor, Radical, Poets, Anarchists, Anti-Authoritarians...

Augustin Hamon

Born January 20, 1862, in Nantes. Died December 3, 1945, in Port-Blanc-en-Penvénan.

Became an anarchist along with Fernand Pelloutier, in 1893.
Participated, on July 27, 1896, with Malatesta, Pelloutier, etc, in the International Congress in London, which finishes six days later with the expulsion of the anarchists by the Marxists. Hamon reported these events in Le socialisme et le congrès de Londres.
In March of 1896 Emma Goldman, who had completed medical training in Austria before traveling to Paris, meets the editor Hamon.
In 1900, accompanied by Hippolyte Havel, Emma Goldman visits Paris in preparation for the September International Anti-Parliamentary Congress in Paris. While immersing herself in French culture, Goldman becomes acquainted with the leading figures of the French anarchist movement & other progressive circles, including Victor Dave & Augustin Hamon.
Collaborated on Jean Grave's newspaper, "Les temps nouveaux". As a translator & libertarian teacher, he gave free courses at universities in Paris, London & Brussels.
Hamon later moved away from anarchism, becoming a socialist & member of the SFIO.
Hamon wrote Les hommes et les théories du l'anarchie (1893), Psychologie de l'anarchiste-socialiste (1895), Patrie et Internationalisme (1896), Un Anarchisme, fraction du socialisme (1896).
"Le caractère le plus important de toute mentalité anarchiste est l'Esprit de Révolte. Alors que cette tendance existe, latente, chez tous les hommes et s'atrophie le plus souvent sous l'influence des milieux, chez les anarchistes elle est, dès l'origine, très prononcée. Les milieux ne font que l'exacerber".
— Psychologie de l'anarchiste-socialiste (1895)

Hamon, Augustin Frédéric Adolphe

Sociologist, militant libertarian, later socialist; delegate for the Bourse du Travail of Nantes to the International Socialist Congress in London, 1896; founder of the anarchist magazine L'Humanité nouvelle in 1897 and editor until 1903; secretary of the freemasonry federation in Brittany from 1905; member of the Association Nationale des Libres Penseurs de France; from 1900 together with his wife Henriette the ‘official' translators of G.B. Shaw; during the First World War lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science; remained active as a socialist writer, joined the resistance in the Second World War; briefly joined the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) in 1945.
[International Institute of Social History]