The social and economic history of the French Revolution has been receiving a poor press in recent years and it may appear foolhardy to propose a new interpretation of Jacobin egalitarianism at a time when it has come under fire as extremist, dangerously utopian and inherently violent. Yet the central question at issue has been left unanswered by historians for whom intolerance and terror appear integral to the entire revolutionary project. How, in practice as well as in the legislative texts, were the egalitarian principles proclaimed by the Jacobins put into effect? What, in the context of a Revolution dedicated to liberalism and to individualism, could be achieved by democrats whose prime purpose was not to impose equality, but to reduce inequality?

While the language of redistribution has several registers, some quite threatening, the prevailing one is altogether less strident and seems to indicate that the various tendencies at play in mainstream Jacobinism favoured the emergence of a broad-based consensus where matters of fundamental principle were involved. Commitment to social justice did not necessarily entail adherence to a single rigid ideology, or imply a willingness to resort to force.