James Guillaume was born in London in February 1844. He became interested in anarchism when he was a student in Zurich, and later as a printer in Neuchatel. He became one of the leading members of the Jura Federation of the First International. Having accepted anarchist beliefs, he associated himself with Bakunin, with whom he was expelled from the International at the Hague Congress in 1872. Later he was active in founding the Anarchist St.-Imier International. He played a decisive role in Kropotkin's conversion to anarchism, and worked with him at anarchist agitation in Switzerland during the later 1870s. Early in the 1880s, Guillaume withdrew from anarchist activity, to become active again twenty years later in the anarcho-syndicalist movement. The four-volume work he wrote during this later period, L'International: Documents et Souvenirs, is the most important source of information from the anarchist point of view relating to the First International. Guillaume also edited Bakunin's Collected Works published in French in 1907.