Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria / Sarah Abrevaya Stein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Abrevaya Stein, Sarah, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews--Algeria--History.

Jews.

Mzab (Algeria)--History.

Mzab (Algeria).

France--Colonies--Africa.

France.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (278 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The history of Algerian Jews has thus far been viewed from the perspective of communities on the northern coast, who became, to some extent, beneficiaries of colonialism. But to the south, in the Sahara, Jews faced a harsher colonial treatment. In Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria, Sarah Abrevaya Stein asks why the Jews of Algeria's south were marginalized by French authorities, how they negotiated the sometimes brutal results, and what the reverberations have been in the postcolonial era. Drawing on materials from thirty archives across six countries, Stein tells the story of colonial imposition on a desert community that had lived and traveled in the Sahara for centuries. She paints an intriguing historical picture-of an ancient community, trans-Saharan commerce, desert labor camps during World War II, anthropologist spies, battles over oil, and the struggle for Algerian sovereignty. Writing colonialism and decolonization into Jewish history and Jews into the French Saharan one, Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria is a fascinating exploration not of Jewish exceptionalism but of colonial power and its religious and cultural differentiations, which have indelibly shaped the modern world.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Note on Translation and Transliteration

Prologue: The Lost Archive

Introduction: Inventing Indigeneity

1. Anthropology and the Ghost of the Colonial Past

2. Jews Northern and Southern: The French Annexation of the Mzab and the Boundaries of Colonial Law

3. Governing Typologies: From the Conquest of the Mzab to the Touggourt/Dreyfus Affair

4. Contested Access: Conscription, Public Health, and Education from the Fin de Siècle through the Interwar Period

5. Saharan Battlegrounds: From the Vichy Regime to a Postwar World

6. Oil, the Algerian War of Independence, and Competing Stories of Departure

Conclusion: Colonial Shadows

Epilogue: Dark Matter

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations of Archival and Library Collections

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226123882

022612388X

OCLC:

880877938