1848 and Beyond: Jews in the National and International Politics of Secularism and Revolution

Abstract

This chapter argues that the presence of Jewish politicians in positions of public authority during the revolutions of 1848 cemented the synergy between Jewish and liberal causes. Reframing emancipation as one facet of a secularizing liberal attack on the old order was thus a precondition for the emergence of the Alliance Israelite in 1860, and for an international liberal moment in which Jewish rights became a focus for both transnational liberal activism and humanitarian mobilisation. Even Jewish 1848ers who re-entered mainstream politics in the 1860s and 1870s who resisted being seen as narrowly Jewish politicians at a national level were consequently able to embrace Jewish rights as an international cause. The careers of Luigi Luzzatti, Herbert Samuel and Oskar Strauss suggest that these conventions remained well into the twentieth century. Despite competition from Zionists and socialists, the synergy between liberal and Jewish causes remained a precondition of international Jewish activism.