From the French Revolution to the Dreyfus Affair

Prof. Pierre Birnbaum

The end of the 19th century was marked by one of the most infamous episodes in the history of antisemitism in the Modern Era – the Dreyfus Affair.

How could the Dreyfuss Affair take place in a country created on the French Revolution’s ideals of civil equality for all?

References

• Birnbaum, Pierre, The Anti-Semitic Moment: A Tour of France in 1898, trans. by Jane Marie Todd (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003).

• Cohen, Richard I., “Recurrent Images in French Antisemitism in the Third Republic,” in Robert Wistrich, ed., Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia (Amsterdam: Published for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, by Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999), pp. 183 – 195.