Jean Jaurès (1859–1914)

A representative of reformism in the French and international socialist movement; one of the chief leaders of the French Socialist Party and the socialist movement.

Jean Jaurès was born on September 3, 1859, in Castres, Tarn, France, into a merchant’s family. In July 1878, he was enrolled in the Faculty of Greek Literature and Philosophy of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and graduated from the university in July 1881 with the title of teacher of philosophy. In 1883, he went to the University of Toulouse as a lecturer. In 1885, he was elected deputy in the Chamber. In 1898, at the invitation of Éditions Rouff, Jaurès served as the editor-in-chief of the Histoire socialiste (History of Socialism), and he personally wrote the first four volumes of the Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française (Socialist History of the French Revolution), published from 1900 to 1903. This work emphasized the study of the economic and social history of the Revolution, cited a wealth of materials, pioneered the study of the social foundations of the French Revolution, and put forward the thesis that socialism was the successor and the realizer of the French Revolution, thus establishing Jaurès’ status as a historian. In January 1903, Jaurès was elected was elected vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies. In April 1904, he founded the newspaper L’Humanité, which later became the central organ of the French Socialist Party. When a unified French Socialist Party (the French Section of the Workers’ International) was founded in April 1905, Jaurès became its main leader. In the French socialist movement and the Second International, Jaurès held a reformist stance.

An international pacifist, Jaurès opposed the imperialist aggression and colonial expansion policies, condemned the French invasion of Madagascar and Morocco, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, the British war against the Boers as well as the barbaric invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance, and spoke highly of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen. Because of his opposition to World War I, militarism and colonialism, he was murdered by chauvinists on July 31, 1914.