Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-n7pht Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-11T22:59:21.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘LESSER BREEDS WITHOUT THE LAW’: THE BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT AND THE DREYFUS AFFAIR, 1894–1899

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 1998

ROBERT TOMBS
ROBERT TOMBS
Affiliation:
St John's College, Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Queen Victoria, her court, the embassy in Paris, the prime minister, and the press, led by The Times, were early and impassioned sympathizers with Alfred Dreyfus and bitter critics of his persecutors. This article traces the development of their views and the information available to them, analyses the principal themes as they saw them, and attempts to explain how and why they formed their opinions. It considers why the Dreyfusard position was so congenial to them. It argues that their own principles and prejudices – conservative, patriotic, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant – were confirmed by a critique of French political culture, seen as corrupted by a combined heritage of absolutism, revolution, Catholicism, and demagoguery. This appears to be confirmed by contrast with the few dissenting voices in Britain, on one hand Catholic and Irish, on the other, anti-Semitic socialist, who showed little sympathy with the Dreyfusards, and even less with the views of their British supporters.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 495 - 510
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Documents from the Royal Archives, Windsor, are quoted by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen. References to published editions are given where appropriate. I am grateful to Lady de Bellaigue for her valuable assistance, and to several colleagues who kindly offered advice, especially George Watson, and also David Feldman, Douglas Johnson, and John Keiger. The present article is based on a paper given at a conference on the Dreyfus affair, 1894–1994, held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in November 1994.