The Historiography of (T)terror in the French Revolution

From the Classical Perspective to Critical Revision (1794–2024)

Abstract

This article explores a dual hypothesis. First, with regard to (T)error, it argues that the historiography of the French Revolution – encompassing both Jacobin-Marxist and liberal-revisionist traditions – has long been dominated by a specific paradigm established in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth centuries by authors such as Tallien, Constant, Maistre, Hegel, and Marx. This paradigm conceptualizes terror simultaneously as a system and as a clearly delimited historical period. Second, the article contends that over the past decade historiography – led by authors still relatively unknown in Brazil, including Annie Joudan, Carla Hesse, Colin Jones, Côme Simien, Jean-Clément Martin, Marisa Linton, and Michel Biard – has sought to move beyond this paradigm, offering new approaches to the years 1793 and 1794. Taken together, these works signal the emergence of a new interpretative framework. To achieve these objectives, the article outlines the main historiographical currents on revolutionary terror, which also requires a brief analysis of key revolutionary events. In doing so, it aims to provide a critical synthesis, made necessary by the complexity and breadth of this historiography.