Citizenship and Antisemitism in French Colonial Algeria, 1870–1962

Professor Roberts examines the relationship between antisemitism and the practices of citizenship in a colonial context. She focuses on the experience of Algerian Jews and their evolving identity as citizens as they competed with the other populations in the colony, including newly naturalised non-French settlers and Algerian Muslims, for control over the scarce resources of the colonial state. The author argues that this resulted in antisemitic violence and hotly contested debates over the nature of French identity and rights of citizenship. Tracing the ambiguities and tensions that Algerian Jews faced, the book shows that antisemitism was not coherent or stable but changed in response to influences within Algeria, and from metropolitan France, Europe and the Middle East. Written for a wide audience, this title contributes to several fields including Jewish history, colonial and empire studies, antisemitism within municipal politics, and citizenship, and adds to current debates on transnationalism and globalization.

Introduction; 1. Competing for Rights and identity: citizenship and antisemitism in fin-de-siècle Algeria; 2. Watering the tree of liberties with Jewish blood: Max Régis, Néos, and the explosion of antisemitism in Algeria, 1898; 3. Navigating multiple identities and evolving French patriotism; 4. The politics of status anxieties and unequal rights in interwar Colonial Algeria: Jewish-Muslim conflicts and the 1934 Constantine 'pogrom'; 5. The popular front, Algerian nationalism, and evolving institutional antisemitism, 1935–1940; 6. Rupture: Vichy, state antisemitism, and the Crémieux Decree; 7. Broken identities: post World War II and the Algerian War.

Sophie B. Roberts is the Zantker Assistant Professor of Jewish History and Jewish Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. She received her Ph.D. in History and Jewish Studies from the University of Toronto, Canada, and has previously served as a visiting assistant professor at Stanford University. Proficient in French and Hebrew, she has received several awards and fellowships, including the 2012–2013 Sosland Foundation Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.