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Michael L. Kennedy, The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 1793-1795 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books 2000)
THIS BOOK is the final instalment of Kennedy's three-volume history of the Jacobin clubs in the French Revolution. The tumultuous period between the Federalist Revolt and the Thermidorian Reaction forms the basis of this study, as Kennedy convincingly argues that the clubs were in the forefront of constructing a nation out of war and revolution. The life of the clubs during the Terror takes center stage here, and the author uses sources such as club minutes to allow the reader to enter the Jacobin world, which was far from being a monolithic political phenomenon. On the contrary, these organizations were deeply fragmented along political, social, local, regional, and in some places, religious lines.
The clubs are portrayed in the book as representative of the authoritarian nature of the republican experiment. By the spring of 1793, 5,332 communes in France had a club. Radicalized by "representants en mission," who were charged with the levy of 300,000 men in March 1793 in response to the Vendee uprising and Dumouriez's treason, the clubs quickly took upon themselves the dominant role in relation to the local governments of the communes. The informant culture that existed in France during this period was due in great part to the rivalries within the clubs themselves, and club meetings provided a forum for grievances and denunciations of "enemies of the Revolution" to be aired. The clubs were also part of the state-sponsored information campaign carried out by the Revolutionary Government, and therefore shaped public opinion by disseminating news in newspapers and journals sanctioned by...