I can speak to one such utopian society from Texas, La Réunion, founded by Victor Prosper Considérant and populated in 1855.

Around two thousand people had registered to immigrate and participate in the Utopian colony in Texas, but only around 200 actually went through with their plans, sailing to Galveston in 1855 and traveling to Dallas.

A spot near the three forks of the Trinity River in what is now present-day Dallas was selected.

La Réunion failed for a multitude of reasons. Here are the three most often cited:

1.) It was based off a profit-sharing system. The profit sharing system depended on specific types of skilled labor the colonists, even at their height of 350 people, could not attract.

2.) Financial instability. The simplified answer is that those selling the bonds to finance the company couldn’t attract enough investment to forward capital expenditures necessary for the colony to prosper.

3.) They failed at farming. A combination of unexpected climate, drought, and shortage of skilled ag labor caused this in addition to a blizzard in 1856 that destroyed crops. With rising land prices, it was hard to expand land holdings.

Those three items are the traditional historic school of thought/answer given for La Réunion’s demise.

However, James Pratt, in “Sabotaged: Dreams of Utopia in Texas,” places most of the blame on Considérant himself, noting he did raise $16 million dollars and parts of the colony were far more successful and organized than prior generations of historians were led to believe. He cites a great deal of journals and other primary source material in his assessment.

Pratt forwards a reasonably convincing thesis that the colony’s founder itself sabotaged it from the beginning, in a variety of ways including forwarding the the theory that the land they had wasn’t good. It was, according to Pratt, ripe for settlement and the colonists’ activities showed the same.

Eventually, participants left and returned to Europe, moved to other parts of Texas, or elsewhere in the U.S.

La Réunion was formally disbanded in 1857. Some stuck around the area. A home built in 1859 on the site of the colony for one of the colonists after La Réunion disbanded stood for many years in Dallas.

I can’t speak to how similar La Réunion is to similar colonies in the U.S. The agricultural situation may be unique.

Sources:

Bosse, Paula. “Ruin of La Réunion,” Flashback Dallas. ruin of La Réunion

“La Réunion.” Handbook of Texas.

Pratt, James. “Sabotaged: Dreams of Utopia in Texas.”