European History in Perspective
1 total work
The Dreyfus Affair comprises attempted assassinations, suicides, perjury, forgeries, invective, stunning reversals and abortive "coups d'etat", involving the honour and destiny of an individual and of France. It is also a mystery tale that reveals the preoccupations and divisions of France and Europe at the turn of the 19th century. At its centre is the unjust imprisonment upon Devil's Island of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew convicted of a crime he did not commit, who was in part the victim of an ancient prejudice. As the gravest crisis of the Third Republic, the Dreyfus Affair transformed French politics as a crucial episode in the history of racial nationalism. It marked the transition from traditional to racial anti-semitism and, as an explosive struggle for human rights and judicial equity, it engaged academics, writers and artists as self-conscious "intellectuals" in French politics. This work explores how the trial of one man became "l'affaire", with all its consequences.