Jean Jaurès
full name Auguste Marie Joseph Jean Léon
Jaurès (3 September 1859 – 31 July 1914) was a French Socialist leader. Initially
an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats,
becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed
Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. The two parties merged
in 1905 in
the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). An antimilitarist,
Jaurès was assassinated at the outbreak of World War I, and remains one of the
main historical figures of the French Left.
