The nation-state needed Jewish credit and so preserved Jews as a separate group

Evidence

The breakdown of the feudal order had given rise to the new revolutionary concept of equality, according to which a “nation within the nation” could no longer be tolerated. Jewish restrictions and privileges had to be abolished together with all other special rights and liberties. This growth of equality, however, depended largely upon the growth of an independent state machine which, either as an enlightened despotism or as a constitutional government above all classes and parties, could, in splendid isolation, function, rule, and represent the interests of the nation as a whole. Therefore, beginning with the late seventeenth century, an unprecedented need arose for state credit and a new expansion of the state’s sphere of economic and business interest, while no group among the European populations was prepared to grant credit to the state or take an active part in the development of state business. It was only natural that the Jews, with their age-old experience as moneylenders and their connections with European nobility—to whom they frequently owed local protection and for whom they used to handle financial matters—would be called upon for help; it was clearly in the interest of the new state business to grant the Jews certain privileges and to treat them as a separate group. Under no circumstances could the state afford to see them wholly assimilated into the rest of the population, which refused credit to the state, was reluctant to enter and to develop businesses owned by the state, and followed the routine pattern of private capitalistic enterprise. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 86

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Establishes the mechanism by which the revolutionary equality concept coexisted with preserving Jews as a distinct group — the state’s credit needs forced separate treatment.
• XREF: Connects to later Islamophobia readings on how state interests construct and maintain minority groups as separate rather than assimilated.

Related

• Growing national credit pools displaced the Jews’ exclusive financial role (similarity 0.86)
• A stable state’s need for them kept Jews a separate protected group (similarity 0.81)
• The nation-state’s protection and Jewish self-preservation interests coincided to prevent assimilation. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• A stable state’s need for them kept Jews a separate protected group #corroborates (0.95) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 294