Who were the Jacobins and what are Jacobinism's implications for today? In a book based on national and local studies - on Marseilles, Nimes, Lyons, Paris, and many smaller towns - one of the leading scholars of the Revolution reconceptualizes Jacobin politics and philosophy and rescues them from recent postmodernist condescension. By considering the most retrograde and the most admirable features of Jacobinism. Patrice Higonnet balances revisionist interest in ideology with a social historical emphasis on institutional change. In these pages the Terror becomes a singular tragedy rather than the whole of Jacobinism, which retains value today as an influential variety of modern politics.