Was the Dreyfus affair a victory or a defeat for the Third Republic? - publié le 08/02/2013

Résumé du document

On the 15 October 1894, the French Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus was arrested and accused of giving capital secret intelligence to the Germans. He was unanimously declared guilty of treason by the senior Paris court martial the 22 December 1894, and sentenced to deportation for life in the famous prison of Devil's Island, the French penal colony. However, it appeared actually that Dreyfus was innocent, and that the true culprit was the major Esterhazy.

Dreyfus was finally rehabilitated in 1906. Described in this way, this case could be seen as a simple miscarriage of justice. However, Dreyfus affair is actually considered as one of the Third Republic's turning point. According to Mayeur and Reberioux "the Affair bears comparison with the greatest crises that French society has experienced". Indeed the Dreyfus affair triggered a huge reaction in the French society, dividing France between two opposite sides, the pro-Dreyfus and the anti-Dreyfus. They were sharply ideologically opposed, and the victory of one of them would inevitably influence the future path of the Third Republic.

The affair could actually had such a dramatic consequence for the Republic because this one was actually weak when the time came to face the affair. Confidently proclaimed the 4 September 1870 from the balcony of Paris City Hall, the Republic had to face the opposition of a majority of monarchists (the Legitimists and the Orleanists), and mainly owed its survival to their incapacity to unite on the choice of a King. Moreover, the recent context of the fin de siecle France was tensed: the Third Republic had to face the phylloxera crisis which weakened it, economically speaking.

Extraits

[...] Was the Dreyfus affair a victory or a defeat for the Third Republic? On the 15 October 1894, the French Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus was arrested and accused of giving capital secret intelligence to the Germans. He was unanimously declared guilty of treason by the senior Paris court martial the 22 December 1894, and sentenced to deportation for life in the famous prison of Devil's Island, the French penal colony. However, it appeared actually that Dreyfus was innocent, and that the true culprit was the major Esterhazy. [...]

[...] Yet, the previous analysis has to be nuanced at the light of future events. The Dreyfus affair led to the apparition of some myths, and strengthened others. The pardon of Dreyfus was not an act of justice but rather of humanity[11]. The nationalist anti-Dreyfusism actually carried ideas way stronger than it could have been perceived at this time. Barrès's idea of the culte de la terre et des morts was not so different of the Nazi idea of “blood and soil”. [...]

[...] They were sharply ideologically opposed, and the victory of one of them would inevitably influence the future path of the Third Republic. The affair could actually have had such dramatic consequences for the Republic because this one was actually weak when the time came to face the affair. Confidently proclaimed the 4 September 1870 from the balcony of Paris City Hall, the Republic had to face the opposition of a majority of monarchists (the Legitimists and the Orleanists), and mainly owed its survival to their incapacity to unite on the choice of a King. [...]

[...] Therefore the Dreyfus affair gave to the Third Republic a whole new class of intellectuals which helped to spread the Republican values. Moreover, the old literary establishment being compromised, the Republic dismissed the Ancien Regime's intellectual class. Furthermore, at the end of the Dreyfus affair, anti- Semitism was rejected, and ceased to be perceived as a banal fact. The individual overcame the supremacy of the nation. So the values of the Republic triumphed of intellectual's fight, and France became united around the Republican values. [...]

[...] We could eventually see in such slogans a good summary of the consequences of the Dreyfus affair. It led to the birth of a new republican intellectual class, to a new political deal, and to a reinforcement of the Republic. The Dreyfus affair actually was a victory for the Third Republic and for the Republican values. It can be seen as one of the Republicans founding myths. Even though this was not a total victory, it cannot be questioned that the Republic grew stronger from the Dreyfus affair. [...]