In the early 1890s, Europe was faced with an economic depression, and some prominent Jewish entrepreneurs who had tried to replicate the success of the Suez Canal project had failed to do so in Panama and had embezzled monies raised through loans from the citizenry of France. While these measures restored some sense of stability, they did not stem the tide of virulent ideology and political division within France. 4) and suppressive measures were put into place to maintain law and order. So serious was the disruption by the anarchists that the government outlawed anarchism (Burns, p. Competing ideologies soon leaped into the fray to gain center stage of French politics and that included not just the socialists but also nationalists, the militarists, and the anarchists. A change in the political system was bound to produce turmoil, that followed and uneven economic development in the decade after 1870 increased the number of socialists (Burns, p. In 1875, a republican constitution was born that sounded the death knell for the monarchy. The Commune failed to install an egalitarian society but its ideology continued to burn deeply in scores of French citizens. However, social and political forces in that year produced a lethal mix of proletarian revolution and protests against German occupation in Paris that led to a civil war in which over twenty thousand revolting Parisians collectively known as the ‘Commune’ were put to death. 1) was preceded by economic prosperity that continued through the period of the republic. The proclamation of the Third Republic in 1870 (Burns, 1999, p. This essay examines the Dreyfus affair and its implications for the prevalence of Anti-Semitism in France primarily through the works of Michael Burns’s seminal work France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Documentary History. However, this image took a severe beating when France involved itself in the persecution and the prosecution of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a loyal French army officer of Jewish origin, an event that unraveled the larger unknown and untold story of anti-Semitism that existed in France at that time and indeed finds certain echoes in the modern French Republic in its dealings with its minorities. That France holds human values above all was a known clarion call to humanists the world over. French refinement extended to every field of human endeavor which included developing egalitarian principles and socialist values that served to inspire nations and generations of people across the world. Anti-Semitism in France: The Dreyfus Affair in Perspectiveįrance, since ancient times, has always held itself to be the center of European culture, arts, and philosophical thought. The effects of the Dreyfus affairs forced the government to initiate wide-ranging reforms of recognizing Jewish religion, official recognition, and the separation of the Church and the state. It also analyses that the effects of this persecution made the Jews think anew for their homeland and set the stage for new Zionism that finally fructified in the formation of the state of Israel. The essay then analyses how the Dreyfus affair split the French public into two opposing camps. Leaks of this information in the media released a tidal wave of criticism amongst the French polity that ultimately led to his exoneration. A subsequent investigation by a new French intelligence chief revealed that Dreyfus was innocent but was silenced by the Army. Thus when, the French intelligence agency suspected some officer in the General Staff of passing information to their enemies, the Germans, Dreyfus, a Jewish officer was made the convenient scapegoat and was court-martialled and imprisoned. This perception spread to the French Army which had its share of anti-Semites. The essay first examines the social and economic conditions that prevailed in France in the 1870s to explain that economic downturn, competing ideologies of proletarian revolution, monarchism, anarchism, nationalism all produced a volatile mix where old prejudices against the Jews surfaced and was quickly taken up by the media that fed the belief that Jews were untrustworthy and corrupt.
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