The Antisemitic Riots of 1898 in France

Abstract

Historians are only just beginning to take the study of what Georges Sorel called ‘la révolution dreyfusienne’ beyond the courtroom and the newspaper, and thus, despite the volume of literature devoted to ‘the Affair’, many of its main features as a socio-historical phenomenon have remained shrouded in the clouds of metaphysical drama. A prime example of diis conspiracy of silence is provided by die antisemitic riots of 1898. The historian Jules Isaac, himself the son of a Jewish army officer like Dreyfus, had reason to remember that year when, he recollected in old age,’ …la France semblait revenue au temps des guerres de religion; la possibilité d'une nouvelle Saint-Barthélémy - contre les Juifs et Protestants, bon gré mal gre associés dans la tourmente - n'était pas exclue’. However, if one turns to general histories of die period and of ‘ die Affair’, one finds litde or no mention of what was the main popular movement of the time in diis direction, indeed die high-point of active popular involvement, in the whole Dreyfus Affair: die riots of January and February 1898. From die administrative and police reports it is possible to redress die balance, and to establish how serious and how widespread diese riots really were, and to place diem in die wider perspective, not only of French antisemitism, but also of popular emeutes in general in nineteendi-century France. First it will be necessary to analyse die riots diemselves in some detail