ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 addresses the question of what the term “Jacobin” might have meant to British radicals accused by loyalists and government during the 1790s of harboring Jacobin beliefs. Once the French Revolution turned violence upon itself, particularly with the execution of leading Girondists with whom many British supporters of the Revolution identified, democratically inclined reformers were deeply conflicted about their attachment to the Revolution. As Britain went to war with revolutionary France in February 1793, earlier confidence placed in feelings of cosmopolitan brotherhood and universal benevolence was called into question. This was the context in which the stigma of the Jacobin label gained force. There were, in fact, those who defended the Revolution, found mainly in the ranks of the LCS and other popular societies, as well as in a seditious plebeian underworld. The chapter explores the role of performance, regarding the enactment of political desires as supplementary to formal statements of political beliefs. Acts gestured toward a horizon of possibility. The prohibitions that the government placed on the movement and the importance accorded to seditious posturing – to jokes, toasts, songs, satirical handbills, winks, and nods – encouraged Jacobin playfulness; as the authorities took play seriously, play became seriously charged.
