A map of Shanghai, from ‘La nouvelle géographie universelle’ by Élisée Reclus. Reclus (1830-1905) was a French anarchist and geographer, who was eventually banished in 1872 after the collapse of the Paris Commune. ‘La nouvelle géographie’ was his greatest work, written in exile in Switzerland, examining the way that human society shaped and was shaped by its geographical environment. It won a gold medal from the Paris Geographical Society in 1892.