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- Title
The Quality of Being French versus the Quality of Being Jewish: Defining the Israelite in French Courts in Algeria and the Metropole.
- Authors
Rabinovitch, Simon
- Abstract
As the nineteenth-century French state expanded its borders in North Africa and incorporated what came to be Algeria into France, French King Louis-Phillipe, President and then Emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, and various ministers of war, governors general for Algeria, and other advisors and government officials all faced the question of how and if to naturalize the territory's inhabitants as French citizens. Recent literature on the French use of law to classify and control populations in Africa has focused on the French colonial administration. This article emphasizes instead the role courts played in sorting out the legal contradictions created by French colonialism, by using the Jews in Algeria as an example. The existing precedent of the Jews' forced de-corporation and naturalization in France made their collective religious rights in Algeria particularly problematic, and cases in the Algerian and French courts highlighting the anomalous legal status of Algerian Jews eventually led to Jewish, but not Muslim, naturalization by decree in 1870. This new interpretation of Jewish naturalization in French Algeria highlights the philosophical problem that Jewish collective rights forced the French courts and French state to confront, and the barriers to resolving it.
- Subjects
FRENCH Algeria; LEGAL status of Jews; FRENCH Jews; NATURALIZATION; GROUP rights; ADMINISTRATION of French colonies; LEGAL status of Muslims
- Publication
Law & History Review, 2018, Vol 36, Issue 4, p811
- ISSN
0738-2480
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0738248018000408