Les affaires Dreyfus

Abstract

The Dreyfus affairs, Michel Winock Two types of conflict divided the French throughout the 19th century : the class struggle inherited from the industrial revolution and the opposition between right and left, stemming from the debate around the Old Regime and the Revolution. The Dreyfus affair, at the dawn of our own century, did not fit into either of these two readings of history. It seemed to introduce a new kind of conflict pitting against each other two of antagonistic value systems. The first feeds a nationalism attached above all to social preservation and to authority, and the second is served by a new clergy, the universalist intellectuels, devoted to justice and truth. Although the Affair was clearly unique, could not be used as a historical paradigm, and provide a different reading of the jolts of 20th century France ? There is a homology between it and the French crisis of the 1930s, during which left wing intellectuals and « nationalists » fought each other, as well as the Vichy regime, which in a way gave power to the « anti-Dreyfusards » and finally the Algerian conflict, which once more opposed the clerics and the army.