Jacobin (politics)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This page describes the political term "Jacobin." For discussion of the political organization of the French Revolution era, see Jacobin Club. Jacobinism is unrelated to Jacobitism or the English Jacobean period.
In the context of the French Revolution, a Jacobin originally meant a member of the Jacobin Club (1789-1794), but even at that time, the term Jacobins had been popularly applied to all promulgators of extreme revolutionary opinions: for example, "Jacobin democracy" is synonymous with totalitarian democracy. In contemporary France this term refers to the concept of a centralised Republic, with power concentrated in the national government, at the expense of local or regional governments. Similarly, Jacobinist educational policy, which influenced modern France well into the 20th Century, sought to stamp out French minority languages that it considered reactionary, such as Breton, Basque, Catalan, Provençal, Alsatian and Flemish.
Contents |
[edit] Historical meaning
In the sense of "promulgator of extreme revolutionary opinion", the word "Jacobin" passed beyond the borders of France and long survived the Revolution.
[edit] United Kingdom
Canning's paper, The Anti-Jacobin, directed against the English Radicals, of the 18th-19th Century, consecrated its use in England.
The English who supported the French Revolution during its early stages (or even throughout), 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 Terror. Others, such as William Hazlitt and Thomas Paine remained idealistic about the Revolution. Much detail on English Jacobinism is to be found in E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class.
The Anti-Jacobin was planned by Canning when he was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He secured the collaboration of George Ellis, John Hookham Frere, William Gifford, and some others. William Gifford was appointed working editor. The first number appeared on November 20, 1797, with a notice that "the publication would be continued every Monday during the sitting of Parliament". A volume of the best pieces, entitled The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, was published in 1800. It is almost impossible to apportion accurately the various pieces to their respective authors, though more than one attempt has been made to do so.
[edit] 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, even to so august a personage as the emperor Alexander I of Russia.
[edit] United States
Some contemporary political theorists, including Thomas J. DiLorenzo, have criticized Neoconservatism for "Jacobinist" tendencies.
[edit] 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.
[edit] See also
- Helvetia
- Germania
- Marianne
- Uncle Sam
- John Bull
- Johnny Canuck
- Johnny Reb
- Deutscher Michel
- Aura the Finnish Maiden
- Polish Jacobins
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
