François Furet

The rule of Maximilien Robespierre and other members of the radical Jacobin party is best remembered for the Terror, when more than thirty thousand people were executed in France between 1793 and 1794. In the following viewpoint François Furet criticizes the Terror and disputes the arguments made by scholars wishing to defend the revolutionaries. Furet asserts that the Terror was not necessary to ensure public safety but was conducted to silence counterrevolutionaries and others who threatened Jacobin rule. He also argues that the Terror exacerbated the civil war that beset France in 1783. Furet was a professor at the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of the French Revolution whose works include Interpreting the French Revolution and A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution.

The legacy of the Terror...