Terrorism and revolutionary violence: the emergence of terrorism in the French Revolution

Abstract

Accounts of terrorism, which locate the emergence of the concept in the French Revolution, tend to accept two premises. First, they assume that the concept of terrorism names a particular form of violence. Second, they regard Robespierre as the first practitioner of terrorism, thus suggesting an understanding of the term as state violence. While this article substantiates the second premise by way of a discussion of the first systematic articulation of terrorism by Tallien in 1794, it problematises the first premise through an examination of archival evidence from the period between 1794 and 1797. By identifying a variety of conceptual uses of terrorism as a form of government, political philosophy and political identity, I argue for an expansion of the conceptual space within which terrorism is primarily understood as a form of violent action.

Keywords:

• terror
• terrorism
• French Revolution
• Tallien
• Babeuf
• Russian revolutionaries

Notes

1. Such synonymous use of terror and terrorism not only fails to account for how the Jacobins understood their own actions but also obfuscates the particular meaning given to terrorism as well as the way in which it functioned in political discourse. This lack of attention to actual practices results in a rewriting of history according to which, in the words of Audrey Kurth Cronin, “ironically, Robespierre’s tactics during the Reign of Terror would not be included in [Cronin’s] definition of terrorism, because it was state terror” (Cronin 2003, 34; my emphasis).

2. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the French are mine.

3. A notable exception is Baczko’s (1994) close reading of Tallien’s speech as a philosophical reflection on the Terror as a system of power.

4. Both van den Heuvel and Thorup suggest that the neologism terrorism was first used in 1794 by Tallien (Thorup 2010, 95; Heuvel 1985, 124). However, an even earlier use of the term terrorism can be found in Immanuel Kant’s The Contest of Faculties (2009), to which Kant first referred in a letter to Johann Gottfried Kiesewetter in December 1793 (see Giordanetti 2005). Kant gives the name moral terrorism to a view of history that sees humanity as continual regression and deterioration, and he rejects this “terroristic conception of human history” for it cannot go on infinitely (Kant 2009, 178–179).

5. See also La Queue de Robespierre (Robespierre’s Tail), a pamphlet directed against Thermidorian Montagnards, whom the author denounced as seeking to continue Robespierre’s Terror (Méhée de La Touche 1794).

6. The liberal political theorist and politician Benjamin Constant (1797) advanced the same argument.

7. Baczko refers to this conceptual use of terrorism as a “mode of thought” (Baczko 1994, 110).

8. The same argument is offered by a number of other revolutionaries, who credited terrorism with the capacity to target the real enemies of the people. Tarnovski, for instance, regarded terrorism as a form of collective self-defence of the people and as direct action “against the real perpetrators of evil” (Tarnovski 2004, 85).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Verena Erlenbusch

Verena Erlenbusch is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political philosophy, the philosophy of law and continental philosophy. Specifically, she brings to bear Foucault’s genealogical method on the discourses and practices of terrorism. She is the author of several articles on the work of Foucault as well as on terrorism, violence and sovereignty, which have been published in The Journal of Global Ethics, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy Compass and Critical Horizons.