The Springtime of Peoples and the Beginnings of the Alliance Israélite Universelle

• In Event: Negotiating Jewish Rights Between International Ideals and National Constraints, 1848-1968

Abstract

After its creation in 1860 and until the 1878 Congress of Berlin, one of the major tasks undertaken by the Alliance Israélite Universelle was to campaign for the civil and political equality of Jews in the Balkans. The French Jewish leadership of the Alliance repeatedly described this fight as both a duty for Europe and a defence of European values and principles. This can be quite surprising. The nineteenth century is generally seen as the age of nation-states and nationalism. Scholars have traditionally studied Jewish history, and in particular that of the Jews in France, in that century through the national lens. Thus, the emergence of the Alliance has been analysed so far as mainly inspired by French Jews’ own experience of emancipation and assimilation since 1789 as well as triggered by ‘disruptive’ events on this path - such as the 1840 Damascus and 1858 Mortara affairs.
In contrast, this paper contextualises the ideology that inspired French Jewish international advocacy by analysing it within the broader European context of the time. It examines how the work of the early Alliance leadership was grounded in left-wing activists’ experience during the wave of revolutions in Europe in 1848 – both in the ideals they embraced as well as in practice, in the networks they tried to mobilise across Europe in the campaign on behalf of Balkan Jews. This paper argues that the French Jewish leadership of the Alliance proactively tried to implement its own vision of Europe through this campaign. It therefore questions the view of early international Jewish advocacy as mainly ‘reactive’ and prompted by events affecting the Jewish world.  

Author

• Noëmie Duhaut, Central European University