Jean Jaurès was one of the great figures of French socialism, a brilliant orator and propagandist who helped found the unified French Socialist Party in 1905. Long an enemy of militarism and the role of the military in French society, his final battle, against the oncoming war, led to his assassination on July 31, 1914 by a right-wing fanatic.

Jaurès believed that it was the French Revolution of 1789 that established the foundations of the socialist movement and the future socialist society, and amid his political activities he wrote his masterpiece, A Socialist History of the French Revolution, a work that laid the groundwork for all of the subsequent histories that placed working people at the heart of the revolution.

The work was intended as a guide to action. As Jaurès wrote: “We want to recount the events that occurred between 1789 and the end of the nineteenth century from the socialist point of view for the benefit of the common people, workers, and peasants.”