The Jacobins were the most famous of the political clubs that
fomented the French Revolution. Initially moderate, they are
remembered mainly for instituting the Reign of Terror. Crane
Brinton's The Jacobins was written in the 1930s, itself a decade of
the violent centralization of unchecked political power.
Brinton offers not an account of the actions of major figures,
but an anatomy of Jacobinism, its membership, beliefs and political
platform, the relations between the central Paris club and the
regional groups, and how it evolved from moderation to tyranny.
Brinton argues that when one considers the material facts about the
Jacobins-- their social environment, occupations, and wealth--one
finds evidence of their prosperity to justify predicting for them
quiet, uneventful, conservative, thoroughly normal lives. But when
one studies the records of their proceedings, one finds them
violent, cruel, and intolerant. The Jacobins present a paradox.
Their political being seems inconsistent with their actual
intentions.
The Jacobins presented for a brief time the spectacle of men
acting without apparent regard for their material interests. As the
brilliant new introduction by Howard G. Schneiderman indicates,
this contradiction defines the Jacobins, and perhaps most other
revolutionary movements.
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