Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I

dropped everything to learn more about Etienne Cabay after he and his utopian experiments came up in the Narsis Monterreal episode,

which was the last thing I worked on before this one.

I'm not exaggerating. I had a whole

different plan for what I was going to work on next, which I threw out the

window and said Etienne Cabay. And so here we are. That's today's

episode.

Dant-Dun. Etienne Cabay was born on January 1st, 1788 in Dijon, France.

His father, Claude, was a Cooper, and his mother's name was Francoise.

Various sources describe Claude as a radical, including being a member of the Jacobin Club

and the follower of Maximilian Robespierre during the French Revolution.

These sources are not entirely clear on whether Claude's support of Robespierre continued

throughout the reign of terror, but Etienne was definitely raised in a household that was passionately

anti-monarchy and unafraid to take a stand against real or perceived injustice.

Etienne got an education as a boy and he spent some time studying medicine

before eventually earning a law degree in 1812.

Unlike Narciss Montaurial, he definitely became a lawyer and he practiced law.

A lot of his work focused on defending or advocating for people who were socially or politically

oppressed or making things harder for the people or the entities

that were doing that oppressing. He developed a reputation for being both eloquent and skilled,

but his ongoing activism and political views led to him

...