Reviews for The Jews of Modern France

The average rating for The Jews of Modern France based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-11-26 00:00:00 Worth Mizell Colonial Citizens: The Thompson-Leacock Approach to the Levant A flaw within the approach of any account of a culture lies within the fallibility of the juror. Elizabeth Thompson realized such a flaw within the historical accounts already available to her by her predecessors in the area of her study - the Levant. She found such accounts lacking as they did not represent the voice of the marginalized within the Arabian and Islamic culture, and it was Thompson's hope that by writing this book, the reader would better understand that Arabic culture and Islam are not inherently gender biased. Instead Thompson argues that "gender pacts struck by the French and then reaffirmed by the independent nationalist governments may be understood as an attempt to mitigate the rivalry among the [male citizens] and assure loyalty to the state."1 Thompson develops her argument by a historical recount of Syria and Lebanon with special emphasis between the years of the First and Second World War. Thompson believes these interwar years are more critical than other historians have formally given them credit for, and she believes that it was during these years that the "common political legacy," of perpetuating, "Islamic laws that accentuate inequality between men's and women's personal status"2 was created. It is Thompson's hope that through her research, she would "redress [the inherent] weakness in previous studies"3 by fully delving into the psyche of the marginalized in this area and explore the particular reforms created during the interwar period while France acted as a paternalistic ruler to guide these people to an eventual self-government. Thompson proposes that the interwar years were "seminal in laying the foundations of postcolonial states and citizenships," and that the "experience of war, economic dislocation, and rapid change in urban social life had as profound an effect on politics as the particular strategies of [the] elite political actors"4. Of particular interest to the student would be the various revolts led by the marginalized against their new paternalistic government 5. These revolts inevitably failed, since a common binding agent besides oppression was unable to fuse the marginalized groups together. Such division between the marginalized therefore only "infused the civic order with a new style of political bargaining,"6 between the subalterns and helped perpetuate the growing inequalities of the system. Within the realm of Thompson's work, the research methods used to create her argument are flawless. Utilizing foreign ministry records left by the French during their occupation, French and Arabic periodicals, military, legal and missionary archives from this period, as well as interviews with various indigents of the area she encapsulates the essence of this people into an innovative historical accounting. Overall, Thompson made a compelling argument for the necessary revision to historical approaches in the subject of Arabic and Islamic culture. This Leacockian7 approach to history was useful to those within the study of Middle Eastern and specifically Syrian and Lebanon studies, and colonial imperialism in general. Unfortunately I found Thompson's approach a little lacking. A comparison between Syria and Lebanon to other countries in the Middle East which did not undergo a period of republicanism, or other countries which were able to break free of their ties to paternalism and create more lasting personal status reforms, would have proved both interesting and provided a greater understanding to the reader. Furthermore, a more elaborate account of elite nationalist movements would have added substantially to the historical account of this era. Additionally, I feel that the relative socialist undertones throughout the presentation of this historical account are rather short sighted although they do provide a thoughtful framework for the author's argument. As it stands, Colonial Citizens is more than a historical recount of the role French imperialism in the Levant. It is a call to fellow historians to delve deeper into the interim periods of history, to delve deeper into the intricate lives of the citizens there and seek a greater understanding of such moments upon history. Rather than seeking to supplant previous historical works regarding the Levant, Thompson hopes to further accentuate the historical intricacy of how "states and their citizens are constructed under colonialism and then bequeathed to their postcolonial successors," not as a "unilateral system of rule," but as a, "constant negotiation of power relationships and identities."8 Thompson's work as a tool to reconceptualize the essence of colonial rule through understanding the role of paternalism upon gender and the struggle for a solid civic order is a deft masterpiece. The pace of the book progresses slowly due to the intricate nature of her argument, but as a whole I believe it to be a superior work of literature for this genre. Notes: 1. Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 287. 2. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 9. 3. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 12. 4. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 3. 5. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 110. 6. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 111. 7. This is pertaining to the work of anthropologist Eleanor Burke Leacock, who held that the subordination of women was a product of history and not a universal condition - a theory which she felt was over looked by male predecessors who failed to create accurate ethnographic accounts due to their personal biases as capitalist or imperial citizens. Furthermore it should be noted that Thompson and Leacock both attended Columbia University - an important factor when considering schools and the continuation of feminist ideology, especially since Thompson received her MIA only two years after Leacock's death. 8. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 1.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-11 00:00:00 Michael J Looft An important, groundbreaking work, and Thompson should be congratulated for tackling such a loaded topic and in Arabic too(!) I could have used a little more gender and a lot less politicking, but I suppose that's the nature of the beast. Her point was well taken, however, that the matter of gender relations, particularly the power hierarchy existing therein, was always the source and endpoint of both cultural and political power struggles. Her argument that the colonial experience exacerbated and even, to some degree, caused the stark gender inequalities in Syria and Lebanon is a plausible and appealing claim, but I still came away feeling a lack of much hard evidence.