Constantine before the riots of August 1934: civil status, anti-Semitism, and the politics of assimilation in interwar French Algeria

Abstract

The anti-Semitic riots of 3–5 August 1934 in Constantine should be understood both as a long-term result of the colonial order's civic exclusions, and against the background of shifts in local politics following the 1919 reforms of the electoral process. After these reforms, Jewish citizens and Muslim colonial subjects found that the terms of their inclusion in the political process drove them into different alliances with the colonial state and its local representatives, exacerbating tensions between Muslims and Jews in the city. The article compares two moments of anti-Semitic agitation in which agitators from the settler population attempted to provoke violence against Jews by Muslims: a brief episode in 1920–21, which failed; and a more concerted effort between 1928 and 1933, which came very close to provoking a violent outburst against the city's Jews in the summer of 1933.