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The Quality of Being French versus the Quality of Being Jewish: Defining the Israelite in French Courts in Algeria and the Metropole

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2018

Simon Rabinovitch
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Abstract

As the nineteenth-century French state expanded its borders in North Africa and incorporated what came to be Algeria into France, French King Louis-Phillipe, President and then Emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, and various ministers of war, governors general for Algeria, and other advisors and government officials all faced the question of how and if to naturalize the territory's inhabitants as French citizens. Recent literature on the French use of law to classify and control populations in Africa has focused on the French colonial administration. This article emphasizes instead the role courts played in sorting out the legal contradictions created by French colonialism, by using the Jews in Algeria as an example. The existing precedent of the Jews' forced de-corporation and naturalization in France made their collective religious rights in Algeria particularly problematic, and cases in the Algerian and French courts highlighting the anomalous legal status of Algerian Jews eventually led to Jewish, but not Muslim, naturalization by decree in 1870. This new interpretation of Jewish naturalization in French Algeria highlights the philosophical problem that Jewish collective rights forced the French courts and French state to confront, and the barriers to resolving it.

Type
Original Article
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , November 2018 , pp. 811 - 846
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2018 

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References

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17. Ministry of War documents on naturalization of foreigners in Algeria, March  9, 1847. Archives Nationales d'Outre Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France (hereafter ANOM), F80 1675, documents 285 and 286.

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20. The debt originated with grain supplied by Jacob Bacri and his partner Nephtali Busnach to the French revolutionary armies. When the French did not pay, Bacri and Busnach managed to convince the dey to treat the debt as his own in order to clear the debts Bacri and Busnach owed to the dey. In the course of an argument in 1827 over the matter between Dey Hussein Pacha and the French consul in Algiers, the dey hit the consul in the face several times with the handle of his fly-whisk (and hence the diplomatic spat came to be known as the “Fly-Whisk Affair”). See in particular Julien, Charles-André, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine. La conquête et les débuts de la colonisation (1827–1871) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1964), 20–63Google Scholar, and also Hirschberg, Haim Z., A History of the Jews in North Africa, 2nd rev. ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1981), II:30–48Google Scholar; Godley, “‘Almost Finished Frenchmen,’” 14–18; and Stora, Benjamin, Histoire de l'Algérie Coloniale: 1830–1954 (Paris: La Découverte, 1991), 15–17Google Scholar.

21. Jennifer Sessions suggests that although supporters of Charles X “conflated the defense of Christian monarchy abroad with the defense of the Bourbon regime at home… the monarchy opened the expedition to an alternative interpretation as part of a revolutionary confrontation between liberty and despotism” that could be turned against the king by his domestic opponents. By Sword and Plow, 28.

22. Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, 7, 14–15, 25–26, 33, 45–47; and Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith, 14–15.

23. See two excellent recent studies: Schreier, Joshua, The Merchants of Oran: A Jewish Port at the Dawn of Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Stein, Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria. See also an assessment by Susan Slymovics and Sarah Abrevaya Stein of the historiographical shift away from elite-oriented scholarship on Algerian Jews shaped by colonial literature, toward scholarship that acknowledges the diversity of Jewish communities in Algeria, in “Jews and French Colonialism in Algeria: An Introduction,” in The Journal of North African Studies 17 (2012): 749–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. On the structure of Jewish communal organization generally in the Ottoman Empire (although focusing on the eastern Ottoman Empire in Anatolia and southeastern Europe), see Yosef R. Hacker, “Ha-irgun ha-kehilti ba-kehilot ha-imperiya ha-ot'manit (1453–1676)” and Ben-Na‘eh, Yaron, “Irgun ha-kahal ha-yehudi ve-hanhagto ba-imperiya ha-ot'manit ba-me‘ot ha-17—ha-19,” in Kehal Yisrael: Ha-Shilton ha-ʻatsmi ha-Yehudi le-dorotav, vol. 2, eds. Grossman, Avraham and Kaplan, Yosef (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2004), 287–399Google Scholar, 341–67. On the communal structure of the Jews of Algiers before the French conquest, see Schwarzfuchs, Simon, Les Juifs d'Algérie et la France: 1830–1855 (Jerusalem: Institut Ben-Zvi, 1981), 13–20Google Scholar.

25. Ben-Na‘eh, “Irgun ha-kahal ha-yehudi,” 351.

26. Many of the documents discussed in this article are written from this perspective. See also Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith, 11–12.

27. Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, 35–41.

28. Julien, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 114–15. Ageron, Charles-Robert, Modern Algeria: A History from 1830 to the Present, trans. Brett, Michael (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1991), 9Google Scholar; and Blais, Hélène, “Pourquoi la France a-t-elle conquis l'Algérie?” in Histoire de l'Algérie à La Période Coloniale, 1830–1962, eds. Bouchène, Abderrahmane, Peyroulou, Jean-Pierre, Tengour, Ounassa Siari, and Thénault, Sylvie (Paris; Alger: La Découverte; Barzakh, 2012), 55Google Scholar.

29. On the French conquest and the integration of Algeria into France, see Julien, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine and Sessions, By Sword and Plow, passim; Shepard, Todd, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 20–39Google Scholar; and Stora, Benjamin, Algeria, 1830–2000: A Short History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 3–8Google Scholar.

30. See the applications for naturalization by migrants from other parts of North Africa and Muslim and Jewish interpreters for the French military in ANOM F80 125. In one interesting case, a Moroccan Jewish merchant named Abudarham, who was living in Nemours (today Ghazaouet in Algeria's Tlemcen Province), sought naturalization but was turned down because, as one official commented in 1857, “it is not the right time to submit this request to the government as the issue, now under study, of the nationality of the Muslim and Israelite indigènes has not been definitively resolved.” Secrétariat-Général, Gouvernement-Général de l'Algérie to Général Commandant, Division d'Oran, October 24, 1857. ANOM F80 125. See also the “Anonymous note on naturalization relating to Joseph Amar's application for naturalization” that has been helpfully translated in Godley, “‘Almost-Finished Frenchmen,’” 295–96.

31. See Berkovitz, Jay R., The Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth Century France (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 39–84Google Scholar; Schwarzfuchs, Simon, Napoleon, the Jews and the Sanhedrin (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 45–114Google Scholar; and Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World, 148–59.

32. Schreier, Joshua, “Napoléon's Long Shadow: Morality, Civilization, and Jews in France and Algeria, 1808–1870,” French Historical Studies 30 (2007): 81–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Emphasis added. “The Emancipation of the Jews of France (September 28, 1791),” 127.

34. The classic comparative study of legal pluralism in colonial settings, especially in Africa and Asia, is Hooker, M. B., Legal Pluralism: An Introduction to Colonial and Neo-Colonial Laws (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1975)Google Scholar. It is worth noting that several major recent studies that highlight aspects of legal pluralism in French imperialism in Africa focus on a later period and territories that, unlike Algeria, were never directly incorporated into France. See, for example, Conklin, Mission to Civilize; Lewis, Divided Rule; and Marglin, Across Legal Lines.

35. Bacri v. Directeur des Domaines, 1 Jurisprudence algérienne de 1830 à 1876 8 (Cour de Justice d'Alger 1833).

36. Ibid.

37. Nathan Bacri v. Bacri others, 1 Jurisprudence algérienne de 1830 à 1876 3 (France Cour de Paris 3e Ch. 1839).

38. See Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity, 127–37.

39. In Morocco in comparison, which became a French protectorate in 1912, Jewish and Islamic courts were left largely in place. Marglin, Jessica M., “Mediterranean Modernity through Jewish Eyes: The Transimperial Life of Abraham Ankawa,” Jewish Social Studies 20 (2014): 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Morocco, Jews remained dhimmi—protected but in an inferior status—de facto until 1912 and de jure until independence in 1956. Marglin, Across Legal Lines, 6.

40. See Szajkowski, Zosa, “The Struggle for Jewish Emancipation in Algeria after the French Occupation,” Historia Judaica 18 (1956): 27–40Google Scholar.

41. Julien, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 118–19.

42. Godley, “‘Almost-Finished Frenchmen,’” 90–91, 93–98, 114; and Szajkowski, “The Struggle for Jewish Emancipation in Algeria after the French Occupation,” 35.

43. Extract of a confidential letter from October 28, 1843, from the governor general of Algeria to the minister of war. ANOM F80 1675, docs. 118 and 119.

44. See Hannoum, Violent Modernity, 18–31.

45. Ministry of War, Oran Division, Minutes Extract (February 12, 1844) Administrative Division of Oran. ANOM F80 1631.

46. All three of these ingredients are present in a report by the director of the interior in Algiers, April 2, 1844, in which, while considering how to replace the existing militia system with the National Guard, he also wonders how one can give arms to a “nation” (the Jews) “with no courage and no energy.” ANOM F80 1631.

47. See Schwarzfuchs, Les Juifs d'Algérie et la France, 42–52.  The full report (entitled “Rapport sur l’état moral et politique des Israélites de l'Algérie et des moyens de l'améliorer” [“Report on the moral and political state of the Jews in Algeria and the means for their amelioration”]) is reproduced in ibid., 67–201. On Altaras and Cohen see Assan, Valérie, Les consistoires israélites d'Algérie au XIXe siècle: l'alliance de la civilisation et de la religion (Paris: Colin, 2012), 86–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Samuels, Maurice, The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 77–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 88, 92–94; Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith, 51–54; and Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity, 130–33.

48. Joshua Schreier has pointed out the unity of mind between the Ministry of War and Altaras and Cohen on the need to end the practices of polygamy and divorce as a prerequisite for Jewish civil equality. As Schreier states, “personal-status laws represented a colonial manifestation of similar anxieties expressed in Napoléon's Jewish policy.” Schreier, “Napoléon's Long Shadow,” 91–92. See also Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith, 156–63.

49. “Rapport sur l’état moral et politique des Israélites de l'Algérie,” in Schwarzfuchs, Les Juifs d'Algérie et la France, 118–19.

50. For an assessment of French attitudes to Muslim legal pluralism in Algeria and a comparison of the French state's efforts to legally integrate Muslims with its efforts to legally integrate Jews into French law, see Brett, Michael, “Legislating for Inequality in Algeria: The Senatus-Consulte of 14 July 1865,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 51 (1988): 440–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51. For an overview, see Assan, Les consistoires israélites d'Algérie au XIXe siècle, 79–86.

52. Altaras and Cohen were, in this regard, following the work of Adolphe Crémieux, who as a young man won a case at the Court of Appeals in Nîmes in 1827 that ended the coerced use of the oath more judaico in the south of France. Ibid., 80, 82. Jews in the north and east of France—Metz, Nancy, Strasbourg, and Alsace-Lorraine—continued to fight the oath until the late 1840s. Phyllis Albert points out that France never abolished the use of the more judaico, even though the Ministry of Justice could have done so easily, but rather the courts repeatedly ruled against individuals being coerced to take the oath (or rabbis to administer it). See Albert, Phyllis Cohen, “The Jewish Oath in Nineteenth-Century France,” Spiegel Lectures in European Jewish History 3 (Tel Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, 1982)Google Scholar.

53. Notes from “Audience de 4 Septembre 1844” by the attorney general (Procureur Général), and letter from Procureur Général to Ministère de la Guerre, June 25, 1845. ANOM 1615 (serment more judaico).

54. Assan, Les consistoires israélites d'Algérie au XIXe siècle, 83–86.

55. Sadia Chich Pacifico v. Mezguich, 1 Jurisprudence Algérienne de 1830 à 1876 9 (Cour d'Alger 1845), 10.

56. As stated, “justement un hommage rendu à la liberté du culte par le legislateur…” in Sadia Chich Pacifico v. Mezguich, 1 Jurisprudence Algérienne de 1830 à 1876 9 (Cour d'Alger 1845).

57. Ibid., 10

58. Letter from Procureur Général to Ministère de la Guerre, June 25, 1845. ANOM 1615 (serment more judaico). The attorney general was among the figures who commissioned Altaras and Cohen for the information mission to report on the Jews of Algeria that led them to recommend introducing the consistory. Schwarzfuchs, Les Juifs d'Algérie et la France, 43.

59. See the previously mentioned works by Leff, Schwarzfuchs, Assan, Schreier, and Godley.

60. Godley, “‘Almost-Finished Frenchmen,’” 115.

61. Compare ANOM F80 1675 docs. 48–49 and 75 to “Ordonnance: Portant organization du culte israélite en Algérie. 9 novembre 1845,” in Estoublon, Robert and Lefébure, Adolphe, eds., Code de l'Algérie annoté (Algiers: A. Jourdan, 1896), 83Google Scholar.

62. Compare as in note 61.

63. The final version focused mainly on the organizational structure of the new Jewish consistory and educational system. “Ordonnance: Portant organization du culte israélite en Algérie. 9 novembre 1845,” in Code de l'Algérie annoté, 82–83.

64. Letter from Ministre Secrétaire d'Etat de la Guerre to Maréchal Bugeaud, December  22, 1845. ANOM F80 1748.

65. Ministère de la Guerre, “Projet de Rapport au Roi,” September 7, 1846. ANOM F80 1675 doc. 288.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid. And indeed, Jews did of course continue to submit themselves voluntarily to the jurisdiction of rabbis and of religious courts.

68. “Constitution de [4 novembre] 1848, Ile République. ” http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/francais/la-constitution/les-constitutions-de-la-france/constitution-de-1848-iie-republique.5106.html (accessed October 10, 2018).

69. The February 1848 Revolution in France marked the beginning of Jews entering into the highest echelons of government, with Adolphe Crémieux becoming minister of justice and Michel Goudchaux becoming minister of finance in the first post-Revolution cabinet. See Baron, Salo W., “The Impact of the Revolution of 1848 on Jewish Emancipation,” Jewish Social Studies 11 (1949): 212Google Scholar.

70. The short summary came from Le Moniteur (Universel) and was republished in L'Univers israélites 12 (1858): 560, and Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, July 25, 1858, 2.

71. Enos (audience solenelle [formal hearing]), 4 Journal de la jurisprudence de la Cour impériale d'Alger 86 (France Cour d'appel [Alger] 1862). See the text of the decision made by the Council of the Bar Association (le conseil de l'ordre des avocats) for the Imperial Court of Algiers, November  28, 1861, 87–90.

72. Enos (audience solenelle), 87.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid. France defined citizenship according to both jus soli (right according to place of birth or residence) and jus sanguinis (right according to descent), although foreign-born men seeking citizenship based on residency in France had to apply for naturalization. See Weil, How to be French, 30–53.

75. Bell argues (Cult of the Nation, 29, 272–73) that since 1789, the law presumed that French women, children, and passive citizens possessed the qualité de Français, which entitled them to basic civil rights and membership in the state, but not to participation as citizens, whereas Weil suggests (How to be French, 32) that the quality of being French and the quality of French citizenship were in fact synonymous in the nineteenth century.

76. Enos (audience solenelle), 88.

77. Ibid., 89.

78. Ibid., 93.

79. President of the Bar Association of Algiers (Bâtonnier de l'ordre des avocats d'Alger) v. Enos, 1864 Jurisprudence générale 67 (France Cour de Cassation [Paris] 1864).

80. Dme. Courshiya v. Courshiya made its way through the Civil Tribunal of Oran (1858, ruling against annulment), the Court of Algiers (1858, ruling in favor of the annulment and ordering a return of the dowry), the Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation of Aix (1862, ruling against the annulment), and finally, the Imperial Court of Aix (1864—a few months after the conclusion of the Enos case—upholding the decision of the Court of Cassation not to annul the divorce). Dme. Courshiya v. Courshiya, Bulletin des arrêts de la Cour impériale d'Aix 252 (France Cour impériale [Aix] 1864). Joshua Schreir has uncovered a number of letters written in 1857 and 1858 by government officials who, because of the Courshiya Affair, sought legislative clarity on the matter from higher officials. Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith, 160, n. 218. The attorney general of the Paris Court of Cassation and the governor general also corresponded about the appeal in January 1862. ANOM F80 1722 and discussed in the Conclusion section of this article.

81. Bar Association v. Enos, 68.

82. Ibid.

83. Ibid., 68.

84. Ibid., 69. Given the judgement of the case up to that point (and after), which privileged the authority of French civil law over Jewish religious law, Larnac's position is rather more convincing than that of Aubin.

85. Ibid., 69.

86. Ibid.

87. Ibid., 70.

88. Non-French European colons in 1861 made up roughly 40% of the total European population (80,517 compared with 112,229 French citizens). See the population chart in Abi-Mershed, Osama, Apostles of Modernity: Saint-Simonians and the Civilizing Mission in Algeria (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. Frégier, Casimir, Les Juifs algériens, leur passé, leur présent, leur avenir juridique, leur naturalisation collective (Paris: Michel-Lévy frères, 1865), xlix, 43Google Scholar.

90. Ibid., 43. Frégier favored collectively naturalizing both Muslims and Jews, but argued that to do so required fully assimilating the groups into French law as individuals, as had been done with the Jews in metropolitan France. He believed as such that conditions were more favorable to collectively naturalizing Algeria's Jews first. See his introduction in ibid., in particular xii–xiv.

91. See the two major studies of Urbain and his work by Levallois, Michel: Ismaÿl Urbain (1812–1884): une autre conquête de l'Algérie (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2001)Google Scholar and Ismaÿl Urbain: royaume arabe ou Algérie franco-musulmane: 1848–1870 (Paris: Riveneuve, 2012), or, the synthesis of Urbain's biography and career in Abi-Mershed, Apostles of Modernity, 14–16.

92. Abi-Mershed, Apostles of Modernity, 32. The Saint-Simonians, or followers of the political philosopher Henri de Saint Simon (1760–1825), were early socialists who believed in the role of state bureaucracy in directing industry to bring about modernity, progress (especially in science), and the protection of workers from competition and the emerging capitalist economy. Murray-Miller, Cult of the Modern, 66–68.

93. Rachel Schley, “Tyranny of Tolerance,” 255–88. I am grateful that Dr. Schley presented a paper entitled “The Abandoned Muslim Consistory: Religion, Rule, and Legal Identity in French Algeria” at a Boston University Jewish Studies Research Forum in April 2016, as it is through this paper that I first learned about the Enos trial.

94. Abi-Mershed, Apostles of Modernity, 161–62.

95. Murray-Miller, Cult of the Modern, 95–96. In his study of the political culture of the Second French Empire, Sudhir Hazareesingh argues that debates about the nature of French citizenship and the French polity during the 1860s established a political consensus that was later adopted during the Third Republic, and thereafter. A lively debate about centralization and self-government, combined with universal male suffrage and urbanization, led eventually to agreement on the need for a unified state with the commune as the primary site of political interaction. See Hazareesingh, Sudhir, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

96. Voisin, Georges [Ismaÿl Urbain], L'Algérie pour les Algériens (Paris: M. Lévy frères, 1861)Google Scholar and Anonymous [Ismaÿl Urbain], L'Algérie française: indigènes et immigrants (Paris: Jouaust et fils, 1862)Google Scholar. Both are conveniently accessible through Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (http://gallica.bnf.fr).

97. Urbain wrote to Frédéric Lacroix that the Enos case inspired him to pick up where he left off after completing his first work, L'Algérie pour les Algériens, as he saw that there were “so many things left to say about personal status! It is enough to read the ruling of the Court of Algiers in the Enos trial (the Moniteur Universel reproduced it) to see how incomplete my treatment of the subject was.” Letter from Ismaÿl Urbain to Frédéric Lacroix, March 29, 1862. ANOM, 31 MI 2.

98. Urbain references the case directly, see L'Algérie française, 5. For the perspective of other scholars who have noted the significance of the Enos case in influencing Urbain or shaping Napoleon III's legislation see Schley, “Tyranny of Tolerance,” 257–83; Urban, L'Indigène dans le droit colonial français, 75–86; Blévis, Laure, “Naturalisation ou citoyenneté: les ambiguïtés du sénatus-consulte de 1865,” in Les saint-simoniens dans l'Algérie du XIXe siècle: le combat du Français musulman Ismaÿl Urbain, eds. Levallois, Michel and Régnier, Philippe (Paris: Riveneuve éditions, 2016), 275–86Google Scholar; Levallois, Ismaÿl Urbain, 302–19; Brett, “Legislating for Inequality in Algeria.”

99. Letter from Frédéric Lacroix to Ismaÿl Urbain, March 1, 1862. ANOM, 31 MI 3. For a brief explanation of the context of Urbain and Lacroix's correspondence during this period see Lucile Rodriguez, “La correspondance Urbain-Lacroix (1861–1863),” in Les saint-simoniens dans l'Algérie du XIXe siècle, 103–7.

100. Urbain wrote Lacroix after the initial decision of the Court in Algiers, “I wish to now see a Muslim lawyer, but the Jews have an energy and worldly activity that Muslims lack.” Urbain added, with a dose of Orientalism, that Muslims “are warriors, that is something, but it is not everything.” Letter from Ismaÿl Urbain to Frédéric Lacroix, February 29, 1862. ANOM, 31 MI 1.

101. Patricia Lorcin provides a helpful overview of French policies and the administrative battle between the “arabophile” and “arabophobe” factions during the period of the royaume arabe in Imperial Identities, 76–96. Lorcin calls 1860–1870 “a paradoxical decade, in which policies instigated for the benefit of the indigenous population turned out in the end to be harmful to them.” Ibid., 77.

102. Abi-Mershed, Apostles of Modernity, 16, 87, 167, 174.

103. Letter from Frédéric Lacroix to Ismaÿl Urbain, January 9, 1862. ANOM, 31 MI 3.

104. Michael Brett suggests that arguments by colon jurists about the consistency or necessity of legal pluralism in Algeria, were always, however technical, ultimately made out of political expediency. Brett, “Legislating for Inequality in Algeria,” 440.

105. The case was settled in 1864 by the Court of Cassation in Aix-en-Provence (see note 81). I do not know why the case moved between these two courts.

106. Letter from le Procureur Général près la Cour de Cassation, Paris to the Ministère de la Guerre, December 1, 1862. ANOM F80 1722.

107. Letter from Gouvernement Général de l'Algérie, Algiers, le Général de Division (Sous-Gouverneur) to Ministère de la Guerre, January 23, 1862. ANOM F80 1722.

108. Ibid.

109. Ibid.

110. Lorcin, Imperial Identities, 61, 64–67.

111. “Sénatus-consulte. Sur l’état des personnes et la naturalisation en Algérie,” July 14, 1865, in Code de l'Algérie annoté, 302–3.

112. Between 1866 and 1870, only 137 Jews were naturalized as French citizens in Algeria. Blévis, Laure, “En marge du décret Crémieux. Les Juifs naturalisés français en Algérie (1865–1919),” Archives juives 45 (2012): 51–53Google Scholar. This was despite a campaign by the consistories to encourage Jews to volunteer themselves for naturalization “by requesting the dignity of a citizen.” As quoted in Younsi, “Caught in a Colonial Triangle,” 61.

113. Letter from Ismaÿl Urbain to Frédéric Lacroix, January 21, 1862. ANOM, 31 MI 1.

114. Petition du Consistoire Israélite d'Alger à l'Effet de solliciter de l. M. l'Empereur l’émancipation compléte et obligatoire des Israélites Indigènes de l'Algérie, October 1869. Algeria Consistoire Records, The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, Archive 8 (Box 1, folder 1).

115. Ibid.

116. Ibid. After a long discussion by the Constantine consistory considering the petition, the majority of its members chose to join the demand of the Algiers consistory for collective naturalization, although three members expressed concern that Jews would be forced to transgress their religious laws and traditions. Consistoire Israélite de la Province de Constántine, Séance Extraordinaire du 24 Octobre 1869. Algeria Consistoire Records, The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, Archive 8 (Box 1, folder 16).

117. Minister of Justice Émile Ollivier had transmitted such a text for consideration by the Council of State. Stora, Benjamin, “The Crémieux Decree,” in A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations, eds. Stora, Benjamin and Meddeb, Abdelwahab (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 289Google Scholar.

118. Weil, How to be French, 209–12;

119. Marglin, “Mediterranean Modernity,” 55; Schreier, Merchants of Oran, 142–43.

120. Stein, Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria, 42–45.

121. Ibid., 46–47. The state did, however, extend the 1865 laws to the newly annexed territory, which placed southern Algerian Jews (itself a new category) after 1882 in approximately the same legal condition as northern Algerian Jews had been between 1865 and 1870.