Sarah Stein, UCLA professor of history, has published a new book, “Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria” (The University of Chicago Press, 2014).
Drawing on materials from 30 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. 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,” Stein asks why the Jews of Algeria’s south were marginalized by French authorities, how they negotiated the sometimes brutal results and what the reverberations have been in the postcolonial era.
For more information, visit UCLA History.