Analysis
According to Sally Waller, part of the sans-culottes mantra was "permanent anticipation of betrayal and treachery". The members of the sans-culottes were constantly on edge and fearing betrayal, which can be attributed to their violent and radical rebellion tactics. Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm observes that the sans-culottes were a 'shapeless, mostly urban movement of the labouring poor, small craftsmen, shopkeepers, artisans, tiny entrepreneurs and the like'. He further notes they were organised notably in the local political clubs of Paris and "provided the main striking-force of the revolution". Hobsbawm writes that these were the actual demonstrators, rioters and the constructors of barricades. However, he also argues that sans-culottism provided no real alternative to the bourgeois radicalism of the Jacobins. From Hobsbawm's perspective, the ideal of the sans-culottes, which sought to express the interests of the 'little men' who existed between the poles of the bourgeois and the proletarian, was contradictory and ultimately unrealisable.
- French Revolution
- Enragés
- Hébertists
- Descamisado
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