Colonial Algeria and the politics of citizenship / Avner Ofrath.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ofrath, Avner, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (209 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

London, England ; New York, New York ; Dublin, Ireland : Bloomsbury Academic, [2023]

Summary:

This book explores citizenship politics in colonial Algeria, which became a key battlefield for struggles over participation of the body politic and the reach of universal promise in 1789. In examining these struggles, Avner Ofrath shows how colonialism dissolved the political community as a frame of participation and negotiation, first in the colonies and ultimately in the metropole. Revealing the racialization of citizenship from the late 19th century onwards, this book shows how lawmakers under the Third French Republic construed colonial subjugation around rigid ethnic-religious criteria in order to protect settler privileges and exclude Algerian Muslims. Portraying Islam as oppressive and unmodern, the exclusion and othering of Muslims led to a concept of citizenship that was deeply hostile to religious difference. Despite this, Colonial Algeria and the Politics of Citizenship shows how Algeria witnessed some of the most powerful contestations of racialized citizenship seen in a colony. From a successful Jewish campaign for full political rights in the 1860s, to Muslims' demand for reform in the 1930s, Algerians insisted on Maghribi languages, religions and history as indispensable dimensions of political life. Tracing intellectual and political networks throughout the Maghrib, the Mashriq, and across the Mediterranean, Avner Ofrath weaves Algeria into a global history of citizenship in the age of empire.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781350260047

1350260045

9781350260030

1350260037