Un écho de la Révolution française : la mobilisation de la référence aux jacobins et au jacobinisme en Suisse lors des événements de 1847-1848

Abstract

The terms Jacobin and Jacobinism in political discourse never exclusively refer to the members of the French revolutionary club, or to the often contradictory and changing ideas that were debated there. They have been used over time to designate, often in a derogatory way, some political figures and intellectual currents that sometimes bear only a vague relationship to French revolutionary thought. The political events that marked Switzerland in the years 1847-1848 offer a perfect illustration of the way such terms were constituted as political categories and transposed in the Swiss context as remote echoes of the French Revolution. Still today, the events of the years 1847-1848 are often analysed by scholars or by the public using such categories. This tendency fuels a historiography often tainted with ideological preconceptions. Now, this historiography takes up again, sometimes without hindsight, the terms used by the staunchest contemporary opponents to a Helvetic federal construction who did not hesitate to draw a parallel with the bloodiest episodes of the French Revolution, of which the Jacobins were supposed to be the main protagonists. The use of the terms Jacobin and Jacobinism therefore pertains to a mechanistic and repetitive conception of history and serves to disqualify political actors and currents that stand poles apart from the French revolutionary ideals.

Keywords

• social history of political ideas
• Jacobinism
• political categories
• political history of Switzerland
• political representations
• Enlightenment