Online talk by Noëmie Duhaut in association with the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies

Adolphe Crémieux (1796-1880) belonged to the first generation of emancipated French Jewish men and established himself as a trailblazer in terms of Jewish participation in national and international politics. He was one of the first Jewish lawyers in France, became the first Jewish minister in Europe in 1848 and presided over the international Jewish organisation the Alliance Israélite Universelle for much of the 1860s and 1870s. Today, he is mostly remembered for passing a decree that made Jews in colonial Algeria French citizens. This talk will examine how Crémieux’s activities as an international business lawyer intersected with Jewish politics and how this professional career enabled him to become a central figure of Jewish internationalism.
Noëmie Duhaut is Lecturer in Modern European Jewish History at the University of Southampton. Her work has appeared in French Historical Studies, European History Yearbook and Archives Juives. She has held research and teaching fellowships at the Leibniz Institute of European History, the German Historical Institute in Paris, the Hebrew University, the Central European University, Dartmouth College, the University of Graz, and the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. She is currently finishing a book on Jewish internationalism in the context of post-Ottoman state-building in the Balkans in the nineteenth century and working on a biography of the French Jewish lawyer, politician, and internationalist Adolphe Crémieux.