70-26,265 CLARY, Norman James, 1934- FRENCH ANTISEMITISM DURING THE YEARS OF DRUMONT AND DREYFUS, 1886-1906. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1970 History, modern j University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan © Copyright by Norman James Clary I 1971 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FRENCH ANTISEMITISM DURING TME YEARS OF DRUMONT AND DREYFUS, 1886-1906 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Norman James Clary, B,A., M.A, ft ft ft ft ft * it The Ohio State University 1970 Approved by ri Advifcer1 jepBrtmenn of History ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The subject for this dissertation was suggested to me by Pro­ fessor Harvey Goldberg, a member of the History Department of the Ohio State University until 1963, now at The University of Wisconsin. Professor Peter Larmour, now at The University of Iowa, served as my adviser and read the first draft of the dissertation. I am very grateful to him for his criticism and suggestions. I thank Professor Sydney N. Fisher, chairman of the examining committee, who gave me direction in the final preparation of the manuscript for evaluation. I appreciate the kindness and helpfulness of the staffs of The Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, The Cleveland Public Library, Ritter Library of Baldwin-Wallace College, The Library of the Catholic University of America, The Houghton Library of Harvard University, and The Ohio State University Library. I value highly the patience and cheerfulness of my typist, Mrs. Mary Anne Kohl. I shall always remember with much gratitude the friendship and encouragement of Professor and Mrs. Charles Smith, Professor and Mrs. Donald Watts, Dr. and Mrs. David Gitlin, and Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Sheerer of Cleveland. I owe more than can be expressed to my Mother, Lois Clary, 1912-1966, and my Father, Omar L. Clary. Above all, I thank my wife, Carol, for a decade of joy and agony, suffering and sacrifice, love and courage. ii VITA May 12( 1934. ....... Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan 1956 B.A. degree in English literature from The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1958. ...... M.A. degree in history from The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1958-1961 ......... Graduate Assistant, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1963-1970 ......... Assistant Professor, Department of History, Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field; European History European history, 1789-1870. Professor Lowell Ragatz European history since 1870. Professor Harvey Goldberg History of Great Britain since 1763. Professor Phillip Poirier Political and social history of the United States, 1850-1900. Professor Mary E„ Young Political and social history of the United States since 1900. Professor William Weisenburger iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii VITA iii i Chapter I. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 1 II. EDOUARD DRUMONT AND FRENCH ANTISEMITISM, 1086 to 1897 .. 75 III. ANTISEMITISM AMONG CATHOLICS BEFORE THE DREYFUS AFFAIR 165 IV. ANTISEMITISM IN ALGERIA BEFORE THE DREYFUS AFFAIR 200 V. ANTISEMITISM DURING THE DREYFUS AFFAIR, 1897 to 1900 212 VI. CONCLUSION 311 BIBLIOGRAPHY 324 xv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND France in the Nineteenth Century went through a great deal of political, economic, and social modernization. The Third Republic, in particular, achieved by the 1880's a large measure of political equality, democracy, and secularism. This aroused the enmity of many traditionalist groups toward the Republic and especially toward the major political group in the Republican leadership, the "Oppor­ tunist" Republicans. These traditionalist groups, whether of the Right or of a pseudo-Leftist social radicalism, constituted the major elements in the antisemitism during the Dreyfus Affair. The continued growth of a modern, capitalist economy, while it did not eliminate the traditionalist groups, was rapid enough to disrupt and threaten the traditional social structures, causing con­ tinued antagonism toward modernization, and toward the Republic, and toward Jews. I hope to show that organized antisemitism grew in large part out of this antagonism toward the social, political, and economic modernization of the Nineteenth Century. Modern French antisemitism did not originate in the Dreyfus period, 1891-1900; it appeared early in the Nineteenth Century, par­ ticularly among some of the early communal Socialists who were 1 deeply hostile to modern social change, and who can be traced from Charles Fourier, to Proudhon, to some of the Socialists and social radicals of the Third Republic. Edouard Drumont, the leading anti- semitic figure in France from 1886 until about 1910, saw himself as a thinker in this earlier social radical tradition. His anti- semitism may not have been caused by the earlier antisemites but he was influenced by them, and his antisemitism developed out of comparable responses to social change in France. Therefore, in this introduction, I shall survey the primary social radical antisemites of France in the Nineteenth Century, up to Drumont, in order to place Drumont and his antisemitic associates in some historical perspective. Since my main purpose is to discuss the period of Drumont and the Dreyfus Affair, I shall in this intro­ duction rely in part on authors who have already examined the earlier period of antisemitism in France. In the second chapter, I shall examine Drumont's antisemitism up to the Dreyfus Affair of 1898-1899. In the third chapter, I shall deal with antisemitism among French Catholics, primarily in the newspaper, La Croix, which was the most prominent exponent of antisemitism among French Catholics in the 1880's and 1890's. In the fourth chapter, I shall examine the growth of antisemitism in Algeria, before the Dreyfus Affair, because Drumont was closely associated with Algerian anti­ semitism during the Dreyfus Affair, and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Algiers in 1898. In the fifth chapter I shall examine the role of the antisemites during the Dreyfus Affair, and 3 their decline following the Affair. Finally, I shall offer some conclusions about the nature of French antisemitism in the late Nineteenth Century. Charles Fourier (1772-1837) was the first and most influential of the Utopian Socialist thinkers, and the first and one of the most influential antisemitic Socialist thinkers. Zosa Szajkowski assigns to Fourier and the Fourierists the responsibility for introducing Socialism into antisemitism and antisemitism into Socialism.^ Fourier rejected much of the character of modern life, especially industrialization and urbanization, and he almost completely ignored the social pressure of these two developments in modern history. Thus, he hoped to change society by moral suasion from its develop­ ing modern character of city and factory to rural communities in which there would be cooperation and sharing of work and a closeness of man to nature. The work would consist of horticulture and the raising of small livestock. Fourier, a man "of remarkable unworldliness," was hostile also to rationalist, humanistic, philosophy. He "was never tired of denouncing the tradition of European philosophy, in the light of ^-Zosa Szajkowski, Antisemitism in the French Labor Movement, From the Fourierist Movement until the Closing of the Dreyfus Case: 1845-1906 (New York: By the Author, 1948), p. 156. A Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station. Anchor Books (Garden City, New York: Doubleday £ Company, Inc., 1940), p. 87. whose guidance humanity had 'bathed itself in blood for twenty-three O scientific centuries.1" He was equally hostile to revolution, and "believed that he had repudiated the philosophy of the Revolution" of 1789.H Fourier presented his attitude toward Jews in several books, Theorie des quatre mouvements et des destinees generales (1808), Theorie de 1'unite universelle (1822), Le Nouveau monde industriel et societaire (1829), and La Fausse industrie (1835-36).^ Fourier wrote in 1804, in regard to Jews, "I know whereof I speak, for 1 have lived long with them," apparently in Lyons.6 And yet, Fourier's knowledge of Jews was "quite rudimentary," says Silberner, judging from what Hubert Bourgin, Fourier's biographer wrote (Fourier, Paris, 1905). Fourier had no more than a "mediocre" secondary education. Fourier's main point of opposition to the Jews was his hatred of commerce, with which he identified the Jews. Fourier claimed that he had vowed an eternal hatred for commerce from the age of seven. Yet, he was forced by circumstances to be engaged in commerce on a low, trivial, level. Although he had 1 wanted to become a military engineer, he became a merchant under 3Ibid.. p. 86. **Ibid.. p. 89. ^Edmund Silberner, "Charles Fourier on the Jewish Question," Jewish Social Studies, VIII (October, 1946), p. 245. 6Ibid., p. 246. 7Ibid., p. 246. parental pressure. He worked as a traveling salesman, then a cashier, bookkeeper, shipper, commercial correspondent, and broker. "He led the monotonous and restricted life of a man whose ideas and tastes were above his material position and who, according to his own testimony, was reduced to 'trivial jobs* incompatible with study, for which he yearned," As he passed from job to job, his hatred for commerce grew, and he vowed to expose it. "Trade," he wrote, is nothing but "a method of exchange in which the seller has the right to cheat with impunity." It stimulates a "general egoism" and sacrifices collective interest to "individual greed. The Jews were for him not a religious community, but a patri­ archal society, and therefore uncivilized. Because they were uncivilized, their suffering could not ennoble them as it had the early Christians, who had a corporate rather than a patriarchal spirit.^-® In their economic activities, Fourier believed the Jews to be thieves, cheaters, spies.^ They avoided agriculture in order to avoid taxation. Instead, they turned to commerce, banking and usury, especially usury, which, were it not for the small number of Jews in France, would have led to a Jewish takeover in France.