Anti-Semitism and municipal government in interwar French colonial Algeria

Abstract

This paper examines the role of anti-Semitic municipal governments and their political practices in French colonial Algeria during the interwar period. It traces the developments in anti-Semitic politics in elections for municipal governments in the 1920s and 1930s. In this time, anti-Semitic politics experienced a renaissance and surge in power in the colony. Voters in Algeria fell prey to the rhetoric of anti-Semitic politicians who promised to remove Jewish competition from their lives and eliminate Jews from politics. Furthermore, anti-Semitic municipal governments reverted back to the methods of their late nineteenth century forebears who used the power of municipal government to remove Jewish voters from elections and thereby eliminating their electoral competition. The increase in power of these anti-Semitic municipal governments coincided with the development of the Popular Front in France and reflected the growing anti-Semitism of the electorate in France and her colonies...