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ZAKHORIUM
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Date

1845CE

1845–1906

From anticapitalist criticism to the Dreyfus Affair, France tested the Republic against anti-Jewish hatred.

Antisemitism and persecutionPolitical history48.8544°N 2.3462°E
1800
1850
1900
The Politics of Being Jewish: each bar is an event of the period; this one is in coral.

Sourced narrative

Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.

11 statements

01Evidence and context

03

In France, antisemitic traditions arose from both the clerical right and the anticapitalist left.

04

Charles Fourier cast Jews as symbols of predatory commerce and rejected their emancipation.

05

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon combined anticapitalism, religious hostility, and exterminatory language.

06

Alphonse Toussenel depicted Jewish financiers as a new economic nobility.

07

Édouard Drumont's Jewish France (La France juive) became a major antisemitic publishing success.

08

In 1889 Adolphe Willette campaigned for a Paris legislative seat on an antisemitic platform.

02

In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of espionage through forged documents.

09

Dreyfus was publicly degraded and sentenced to life on Devil's Island.

10

In 1898, Emile Zola denounced the military cover-up in J'accuse.

11

Dreyfus received a pardon in 1899 and full exoneration only in 1906.

01

The Dreyfus Affair tested the Republic and helped bring separation of church and state.

Context

05

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon combined anticapitalism, religious hostility, and exterminatory language.

06

Alphonse Toussenel depicted Jewish financiers as a new economic nobility.

07

Édouard Drumont's Jewish France (La France juive) became a major antisemitic publishing success.

§ 01Geography

Where it happened

Gazetteer coordinates (Pleiades for ancient places; Natural Earth and Wikidata for modern ones) over modern physical geography (Natural Earth). Coastlines and the Dead Sea have changed since antiquity.
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§ 02Museum

Objects and images

Each item states whether it is an ancient object, a modern photograph or a later artistic interpretation.

§ 03Historiography

What scholars debate

Positions shown side by side, unranked, as the source reports them. The source’s own assessment appears separately.

Scholarly debate · 01

What was at stake in the Dreyfus Affair?

2 positions · no single answer · take a seat →

  1. A

    Alleged Jewish treason

    Anti-Dreyfusards

    The conviction was presented as proof of collective disloyalty.

  2. B

    Defense of the Republic

    Dreyfusards

    Dreyfus was an innocent victim of a conservative conspiracy.

The source’s assessmentThe authors add that the affair tested the strength of republican France.

§ 04Network

Connections

    § 05Bibliography

    Further reading

    • Shmuel Almog, Nationalism & Antisemitism in Europe, 1815-1945 (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990).

      Nationalism and antisemitism · recommended in Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 376

    § 06Apparatus

    Sources on this page

    1. 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 348inspect
    2. 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 347inspect
    3. 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 346inspect
    4. 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 346inspect
    5. 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 347inspect
    6. 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 347inspect
    7. 07Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 347inspect
    8. 08Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 349inspect
    9. 09Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 347inspect
    10. 10Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 348inspect
    11. 11Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 348inspect
    • Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
    • Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
    • Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
    • Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
    • Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.