num_pages: 272
description: The history of Algerian Jews has thus far been viewed from the perspective of communities on the northern coast who became to some extent beneficiaries of colonialism. But to the south in the Sahara Jews faced a harsher colonial treatment. In Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria  Sarah Abrevaya Stein asks why the Jews of Algerias south were marginalized by French authorities how they negotiated the sometimes brutal results and what the reverberations have been in the postcolonial era. Drawing on materials from thirty archives across six countries Stein tells the story of colonial imposition on a desert community that had lived and traveled in the Sahara for centuries. She paints an intriguing historical pictureof an ancient community trans-Saharan commerce desert labor camps during World War II anthropologist spies battles over oil and the struggle for Algerian sovereignty. Writing colonialism and decolonization into Jewish history and Jews into the French Saharan one Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria is a fascinating exploration not of Jewish exceptionalism but of colonial power and its religious and cultural differentiations which have indelibly shaped the modern world. 
language: English
title: Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria
publisher: University of Chicago Press