French Citizenship and the Algerian Jews: Disgracing the Protected. 1870-1940

Abstract

French anti-Semitic literature unquestionably does not confine solely to Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s Pamphlets and Honoré de Balzac’s Human Comedy, to name a few. In Algeria, a similar literature can be found in Victor Trenga’s Sur les psychoses chez les juifs d’Algérie (On Psychosis of Algerian Jews); George Meynié’s Les juifs en Algérie (Jews in Algeria), Guy De Maupassant’s Au Soleil etc. However, unlike in France, where this literature targeted the Jew because of so-called ill-gotten wealth, in Algeria it was rather his new status that stood central. The Crémieux Executive Order, which imposed citizenship on Algerian Jews, meant making presumably inferior and disloyal people equal to the superior European. This article draws on this literature and argues that it had been detrimental. It broke the harmony that existed between Arabs/Moslems and Jews; deprived ahl edhimma (protected people) of the protection they enjoyed before colonization; paved the way to declaring them non-citizens and non grata in 1940, and in all probability, stands aloof in the background of contemporary anti-Semitism.

Keywords

• history
• anti-semitism
• algeria
• politics
• political studies
• sociology
• citizenship