The Crémieux Decrees of 1870 conferred French citizenship on Algerian Jews

Evidence

Comprising approximately one-fifth of the non-Muslim population, they — rather like the unhappy Asians of East Africa — tended to find themselves in the tragic position of being caught between two fires: between the European and the Muslim world. Many could trace back their antecedents to the expulsions from sixteenth-century Spain; some even claimed them to pre-date the invaders who had surged out of the Arabian peninsula during the eleventh century. Thus they could argue that only relatively were they later arrivals than the Muslims. However, by 1830 the Algerian Jews had become an under-privileged community, fallen into backward squalor, and the advent of the French gave them an opportunity to improve their status. The Crémieux Decrees of 1870, conferring automatic French citizenship, attracted more prosperous Jews from outside Algeria; while at the same time they provoked a sense of unfair prejudice among Muslims. However, it was not the Muslims but the Catholic Maltese, Spanish and Italian pieds noirs who, at the turn of the century, launched a minor pogrom against the Jews, smashing up their shops in protest against the competition of this new class of petits commerçants. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 171

Categorization

• XREF: The Crémieux Decrees echo the French Revolution’s citizenship-for-all logic applied colonially—directly relevant to the reader’s core theme of how revolutionary doctrine translated (and distorted) in Algeria. — connects to: The Crémieux Decrees granted Jews citizenship while denying it to Muslims; Three-quarters of Algerian Jews were Arabized natives who considered themselves Algerians — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 502; Colonialism deliberately fostered division between Algerian Jews and Moslems — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 517 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the Crémieux Decrees as the mechanism creating a Jewish class caught between two fires.

Related

• The Crémieux Decrees granted Jews citizenship while denying it to Muslims (similarity 0.93)
• French laws granted Jews citizenship while imposing alien judicial structures on Kabyles (similarity 0.85)
• French colonial rule replaced religious with national categories dividing Algerian Jews and Muslims (similarity 0.85)
• Three-quarters of Algerian Jews were Arabized natives who considered themselves Algerians (similarity 0.84)
• Colonialism deliberately fostered division between Algerian Jews and Moslems (similarity 0.83)
• Algerian Jews were indigenous North Africans, not European settlers (similarity 0.81)
• Racist colonial hierarchy led some Jews to humiliate Algerians to gain standing. (similarity 0.79)