3. The Fourierist communities similarly were due to the Utopian teachings of the Frenchman Charles Fourier (q.v.), introduced into America by his disciple Albert Brisbane (1809-1890), author of The Social Destiny of Man (1840), who was efficiently helped by Horace Greeley, George Ripley and others. The North American Phalanx, in New Jersey, was started in 1843 and lasted till 1855. Brook Farm (q.v.) was started as a Fourierist Phalanx in 1844, after three years’ independent career, and became the centre of Fourierist propaganda, lasting till 1847. The Wisconsin Phalanx, or Ceresco, was organized in 1844, and lasted till 1850. In Pennsylvania seven communities were established between 1843 and 1845, the chief of which were the Sylvania Association, the Peace Union Settlement, the Social Reform Unity, and the Leraysville Phalanx. In New York state the chief were the Clarkson Phalanx, the Sodus Bay Phalanx, the Bloomfield Association, and the Ontario Union. In Ohio the principal were the Trumbull Phalanx, the Ohio Phalanx, the Clermont Phalanx, the Integral Phalanx, and the Columbian Phalanx; and of the remainder the Alphadelphia Phalanx, in Michigan, was the best-known. It is pointed out by Morris Hillquit that while only two Fourierist Phalanxes were established in France, over forty were started in the United States.
4. The Icarian communities were due to the communistic teachings of another Frenchman, Étienne Cabet (q.v.) (1788-1856), the name being derived from his social romance, Voyage en Icarie (1840), sketching the advantages of an imaginary country called Icaria, with a co-operative system, and criticizing the existing social organization. It was his idea, in fact, of a Utopia. Robert Owen advised him to establish his followers, already numerous, in Texas, and thither about 1500 went in 1848. But disappointment resulted, and their numbers dwindled to less than 500 in 1849; some 280 went to Nauvoo, Illinois; after a schism in 1856 some formed a new colony (1858) at Cheltenham, near St Louis; others went to Iowa, others to California. The last branch was dissolved in 1895.
See also the articles [Socialism]; [Owen]; [Saint-Simon]; [Fourier], &c.; and the bibliography to [Socialism]. The whole subject is admirably covered in Morris Hillquit’s work, referred to above; and see also Noyes’s History of American Socialisms (1870); Charles Nordhoff’s Communistic Societies of the United States (1875); and W. A. Hinds’s American Communities (1878; 2nd edition, 1902), a very complete account.
COMMUTATION (from Lat. commutare, to change), a process of exchanging one thing for another, particularly of one method of payment for another, such as payment in money for payment in kind or by service, or of payment of a lump sum for periodical payments; for various kinds of such substitution see [Annuity]; [Copyhold] and [Tithes]. The word is also used similarly of the substitution of a lesser sentence on a criminal for a greater. In electrical engineering, the word is applied to the reversal of the course of an electric current, the contrivance for so doing being known as a “commutator” (see [Dynamo]). In America, a “commutation ticket” on a railway is one which allows a person to travel at a lower rate over a particular route for a certain time or for a certain number of times; the person holding such a ticket is known as a “commuter.”
COMNENUS, the name of a Byzantine family which from 1081 to 1185 occupied the throne of Constantinople. It claimed a Roman origin, but its earliest representatives appear as landed proprietors in the district of Castamon (mod. Kastamuni) in Paphlagonia. Its first member known in Byzantine history is [Manuel Eroticus Comnenus], an able general who rendered great services to Basil II. (976-1025) in the East. At his death he left his two sons Isaac and John in the care of Basil, who gave them a careful education and advanced them to high official positions. The increasing unpopularity of the Macedonian dynasty culminated in a revolt of the nobles and the soldiery of Asia against its feeble representative Michael VI. Stratioticus, who abdicated after a brief resistance. Isaac was declared emperor, and crowned in St Sophia on the 2nd of September 1057. For the rulers of this dynasty see [Roman Empire, Later], and separate articles.
With Andronicus I. (1183-1185) the rule of the Comneni proper at Constantinople came to an end. A younger line of the original house, after the establishment of the Latins at Constantinople in 1204, secured possession of a fragment of the empire in Asia Minor, and founded the empire of Trebizond (q.v.), which lasted till 1461, when David Comnenus, the last emperor, was deposed by Mahommed II.
For a general account of the family and its alleged survivors see article “Komnenen,” by G. F. Hertzberg, in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie, and an anonymous monograph, Précis historique de la maison impériale des Comnènes (Amsterdam, 1784); and, for the history of the period, the works referred to under [Roman Empire, Later].