A Jacobin is someone who supports a centralized Republic, with power made at the national
level in contemporary usage. At its inception during the French Revolution, the term was
popularly applied to all supporters of left-wing revolutionary opinions. Specifically, it was
used to describe members of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary political movement that had
been the most famous political club of the French Revolution. The club was so called
from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue Saint-Jacques in Paris.
Jacobins in the French Revolution The Jacobin Club was one of several organizations
that grew out of the French Revolution, and it was distinguished for its left-wing, revolutionary
politics. Because of this, the Jacobins, unlike other sects like the Girondins, were closely
allied to the sans-culottes, who were a popular force of working-class Parisians that played
a pivotal role in the development of the revolution. The Jacobins had a significant presence in
the National Convention, and were dubbed 'the Mountain' for their seats in the uppermost
part of the chamber. Eventually, the Revolution coalesced around the Mountain's power, with
the help of the insurrections of the sans-culottes, and, led by Robespierre, the Jacobins established
a revolutionary dictatorship, or the joint domination of the Committee of Public Safety
and Committee of General Security. The Jacobin dictatorship was known for enacting the Reign
of Terror, which targeted speculators, monarchists, left-wing agitators, Hébertists, and traitors,
and led to many beheadings The Jacobins were known for creating a strong
government that could deal with the needs of war, economic chaos, and internal rebellion.
The Jacobins supported the rights of property, but represented a much more middle-class position
than the government which succeeded them in Thermidor. Their economic policy established
the General maximum, in order to control prices and create stability both for the workers
and poor and the revolution. They favored free trade and a liberal economy much like
the Girondists, but their relationship to the people made them more willing to adapt
interventionist economic policies. United Kingdom
In England, the word was also popularized in George Canning's paper, The Anti-Jacobin,
which criticized the English Radicals, of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The English who supported the French Revolution during its early stages were early known as
Jacobins. These included the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and
others prior to their disillusionment with the outbreak of the Reign of Terror. Others,
such as William Hazlitt and Thomas Paine, remained idealistic about the Revolution.
Much detail on English Jacobinism can be found in E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English
Working Class. Welsh Jacobins include William Jones, a radical patriot who was a keen disciple
of Voltaire. Rather than preaching revolution, Jones believed that an exodus from Wales was
required and that a new Welsh colony should be founded in the United States.
Austria In the correspondence of Metternich and other
leaders of the repressive policies that followed the second fall of Napoleon in 1815, Jacobin
is the term commonly applied to anyone with liberal tendencies, such as the emperor Alexander
I of Russia. United States
Early Federalist-leaning American newspapers during the French Revolution referred to the
Democratic-Republican party as the "Jacobin Party". The most notable examples are the
Gazette of the United States, published in Philadelphia, and the Delaware and Eastern
Shore Advertiser, published in Wilmington, during the elections of 1798.
In modern American politics, the term Jacobin is often used to describe extremists of any
party who demand ideological purity. For instance, in the lead-up to the 1964 Republican National
Convention, the press referred to supporters of the insurgent Arizona conservative Barry
Goldwater as "Cactus Jacobins" in their effort to unseat the moderate East Coast branch of
the party. L. Brent Bozell, Jr. has written in Goldwater's seminal The Conscience of a
Conservative that "Throughout history, true Conservatism has been at war equally with
autocrats and with 'democratic' Jacobins." In 2010 a progressive American publication,
Jacobin, was founded. Tea Party
The term was employed in 2009–2010, in reference to the advent of the Tea Party movement. For
example, Eve Fairbanks described right-wing opponents of moderate Republican Congressman
Wayne Gilchrest as "Jacobin conservatives" in The New Republic. In the 27 May 2010, issue
of The New York Review of Books, Columbia professor Mark Lilla analyzed five recent
books dealing with American political party discontent in a review titled, "The Tea Party
Jacobins". Allegorical usage
The conventionalized scrawny, French revolutionary sans-culottes Jacobin, was developed from
about 1790 by British satirical artists James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank.
It was commonly contrasted with the stolid stocky conservative and well-meaning John
Bull, dressed like an English country squire. C. L. R. James also used the term to refer
to revolutionaries during the Haitian Revolution in his book The Black Jacobins.
See also Polish Jacobins
References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh,
ed.. Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press.