Interpreting the Terror

This essay focuses primarily on Arno Mayer’s treatment of the French Revolution. The author expresses his agreement with many aspects of Mayer’s interpretation, but he picks out four selected themes for more careful critical consideration: (1) the problem of the origins of the dialectic of violence and the long gestation of the Terror; (2) the complex and “nonlinear” development of the breakdown in authority during the early years of the Revolution; (3) the importance of fear, as much as vengeance, as a motor force in the dialectic of violence; and (4) the inadequacy of Mayer’s analysis of the Vendee rebellion, as based on the simple dichotomy between an urban “fanaticism of anti-religion” and a rural fanaticism of “primitive Catholicism.” The essay ends with reflections on necessity and contingency in the genesis of the French Terror.