William Charles Owen (1854–1929) was a British–American anarchist best known for his activism during the

Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...

and English-language translations of Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón.

Early life and career

William C. Owen was born in Danapur, Bihar, India to an aristocratic family in 1854 while his family was stationed in India with the British army. He attended school in England, and studied law in London. Upon completion, he moved to the United States in 1884, whereupon he settled and taught in California, among other jobs. Owen became interested in socialism and translated multiple works by anarchist

Peter Kropotkin Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (; russian: link=no, Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин ; 9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist, socialist, revolutionary, historian, scientist, philosopher, and activis ...

into English. He later met the figure on a visit to England, and their correspondence brought Owen into anarchism. Owen returned to the United States to work in newspapers. He spent two years at the Klondike during its gold rush, which influenced his attitudes towards capitalism and land exploitation. Owen became an activist for anarchist, labor, and prison reform in southern California. He worked as a court reporter and wrote the 1910 ''Crime and Criminals'' against the American jails. With the

in the early 1910s, Owen befriended the Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón and for six years remained close while Owen edited the English-language section of Magón's anarchist newspaper '' Regeneración''. Owen wrote about the Mexican Revolution for other English-language anarchist journals and published both a pamphlet, ''The Mexican Revolution'' (1912), and a newspaper, ''Land and Liberty'' (1914–1915). (" Tierra y Libertad" was a slogan of the Magón Mexican Liberal Party.) Owen fought Magón's arrest from 1912 to 1914, but was himself included in a 1916 warrant. With advance notice and faced with deportation, Owen absconded for England, where he supported Kropotkin's call for

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

support in World War I and wrote for the English anarchist periodical ''

Freedom Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...

'', of which he later became an editor. Owen died in

Worthing, England Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Hov ...

, on June 9, 1929.

Works

Anarchism versus Socialism (1922)

Early life and career

Works

References

Further reading