Christiaan Cornelissen

Who was Christiaan Cornelissen?

Christiaan Gerardus Cornelissen was a Dutch syndicalist writer, economist, and trade unionist.

Cornelissen was the second of five children of Johannes Cornelissen, carpenter in Den Bosch, Noord Brabant, and Mechelina van Wijk. He became a primary school teacher in Middelburg, Zeeland. In the late 1880s he started working for Recht voor Allen, the organ of the Social Democratic League. Next to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, he soon became a leader in the SDB, member of the central committee and head of the international secretariat. He stayed in the SDB, which was renamed to Socialist League, during the breakaway of the Social Democratic Workers' Party. He attended the second congress of the Second International in Brussels, both as a special correspondent of Recht voor Allen and as a delegate of the Dutch railworkers' union contributing to an anti-militarist resolution by the left wing at the congress.

In 1891, he translated the Communist Manifesto to Dutch. In 1893, he was one of the founders of the National Labor Secretariat.