The role of the Jacobins during the French Revolution had much to do with the political struggles that took place and shaped the course of the post-revolutionary period. Historians have taken differing views of the role of the Jacobins, of their influence, and of the nature of their actions during and after the Revolution. These differing views reflect an evolving view of history, differing interests on the part of the historians, and different sources for their information, reflecting both alternative data and alternative methods of analysis. Some see the Jacobins as a positive force, at least most of the time, and see it as well as one of the truly revolutionary groups involved in the post-Revolutionary period, while others see it as an organization rife with the possibility of excess and moral corruption.
Kennedy (1989) approaches the French Revolution from a cultural perspective, and he discusses the Jacobins as one of a number of clubs and garrisons embodying revolutionary ideas of education, encompassing theaters as well as schools and garrisons as well as clubs. Education was also seen as more ideological and political. The Masonic lodges were one group of clubs that had established the principle of free association for the pursuit of knowledge, virtue, and fraternity on the grounds of commonly shared beliefs. The Jacobin societies followed suit. Kennedy sees the Jacobins as a society that contributed to the Revolution by developing political education among Frenchmen who were unaccustomed to participating in government. They were democratizing influences, says Kennedy, preparing the people to challenge government as they had never done before and also to see themselves as the proper repositories of political power:
Committees were the essence of the democratic experience. In them Jacobins learned to assume special responsibilities, such as sending a deputation on visits. . . and to prevail on those visited to...