La France juive

Jewish France

Édouard Drumont
Author Édouard Drumont
Original title La France juive
Country France
Language French
Publisher Flammarion
Publication date
 1886

La France juive ("Jewish France"), subtitled Essay on Contemporary History, was an antisemitic tract published by Édouard Drumont in 1886.[1][2]

Publication and Success

A work of 1,200 pages, released in two volumes, it ran to 140 printings during the two years following its initial publication. In 1888 an abridged version of one volume was published. The book was reissued by the publisher Flammarion in 1938, then by Éditions du Trident in 1986. In 2012, it was reissued by the publishing house KontreKulture, run by the nationalist Equality and Reconciliation political group.

La France juive became a major success and achieved great fame. Its success was due in part to the inclusion of a list of names of famous people against whom the author made accusations in the book. Many buyers were inspired by curiosity to see if anyone they knew appeared on the list.

Themes

La France juive developed three strands of antisemitism. One was racial, proposing an opposition between non-Jewish ”Aryans” and Jewish ”Semites”. Another was financial. The author argued that finance and capitalism were controlled by the Jews. A third was religious, referring to the Jews supposed complicity in the death of Jesus.

Context

The book appeared in France during a period of turmoil that followed the country's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The years after the war saw a religious crisis, as the Third Republic followed a policy of secularisation. The emergence of economic liberalism during this period led to malaise and social tension. The crash of the Catholic Union General bank occurred in 1882, and Drumont blamed the disaster on the Rothschild family.

See also

References

Notes
  1. ↑ William Brustein Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust – 2003 p119 "By 1914, La France Juive had gone into its two hundredth edition. Additionally, the widely circulated French newspaper daily Le Petit Journal published Drumont's book in installments. The first volume entails Drumont's depiction of the ..."
  2. ↑ Michael Curtis Verdict on Vichy: power and prejudice in the Vichy France regime 2002 p39 "The most widely read of the three writers was Drumont (1844–1917), Catholic and royalist, who in 1886 published his vitriolic La France Juive, arguing that Jews had virtually conquered France. As a premature national-socialist appealing to ..."
Bibliography