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Through the end of the Third Republic, only tiny numbers of West African students managed to study at France's universities. Barriers to higher education began to fall after World War II, especially after African populations collectively gained citizenship. Higher education became a high-stakes policy area, as French officials and West African students and politicians vied to influence the parameters and possibilities of the postwar order. Amid escalating concerns about West African student migrations to the metropole, French officials eventually opened an Institute of Higher Studies in Dakar. However, this inchoate institution ended up highlighting the fundamental ambiguities of overseas citizenship. As West African students turned increasingly to anti-colonial activism, French authorities finally committed to establishing a full university in Dakar. Paradoxically, the construction and consolidation of this French university took place during the period of active decolonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses an 1881 revolt by settler students at the normal school of Algiers to explore issues of settler identity formation, anticlericalism, and racism. It argues that in the early Third Republic, settlers began to see the public school as a key site for creating a distinctly "Algerian" identity, one that excluded both Algerian Muslims and even new arrivals from the metropole. In this effort, settlers sought to implement radical versions of French republicanism and anticlericalism that were in reality highly restrictive, as they combined both metropolitan disdain for Catholicism and colonial scorn towards Islam. The investigations precipitated by the revolt reveal a colony and metropole whose fundamental concepts took shape in circuit between France and Algeria. The version of republicanism that emerged in Algeria served as an important precursor for the exclusive republicanism and its prohibitions on the public expression of faith in the ascendency in France today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early Third Republic, southern wine producers in the Aude confronted a new competitor: Algerian wine. This article explores Audois efforts to curtail Algerian wine production in the aftermath of phylloxera, the wine crisis, and the 1907 strikes. Focusing on the actions of the Confédération générale des vignerons, this article shows how local winegrowers transformed the Algerian wine industry into a symbol of industrial, profit-driven agriculture and global integration. Cast as a civilizational struggle that pitted "French" traditions and cultural practices against the unsavory and immoral habits of colonial competitors, the fight against Algerian wine provided southern wine growers with a way to distinguish and add value to their own wines. The result was a new myth of southern viticulture that, despite hybridized vines and industrial production methods, recast the Midi as the guardian of true "French" agricultural production and a rural culture based on age-old traditions and a moral economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When shipping companies first experimented with transporting wine in steel containers in the 1930s they promised to revolutionize the way French Algeria sent its most important export to metropolitan France. What capitalists saw as a rational and efficient use of new technology, however, dockworkers and barrelmakers saw as a dire threat to their livelihoods in a time of intense economic hardship. This article traces the social conflict that followed the introduction of the wine tanker and the declining use of wine barrels in port cities in both Algeria and France. In doing so it illustrates the wide range of people and places that held a direct stake in economic activity arising from France's colonization of Algeria, from the rural environments in which wine was produced all the way to distant urban spaces such as Rouen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the epistemological and cultural evolution of nostalgia in nineteenth-century France, focusing on the crucial period (1850-1914) when the concept lost its medical meaning and embraced new cultural scenarios created by the rise of a modern nationalism and the perception of national territory. The analysis examines two major scientific discourses on nostalgia, medical and geographical, recognizing that these representational systems broadly exceed the limits of scientific logic and function as heterogeneous genres that include political, philosophical, and literary concerns of the period. By tracing the genealogy of the concept of nostalgia, the article establishes a relationship between the medical thesis and the work of Paul Vidal de la Blache, who is considered the founder of the discipline of modern geography in France. The article delves into the cultures of sensibility and explores the politics of feelings--areas of research that are quite relevant for our own nostalgic era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 1939, there were an estimated 150,000 immigrant Jews in Paris: half the entire Jewish population of France. More than seventy-five percent of them came from Eastern Europe. Scholarship on the immigrant Jewish community in Paris primarily focuses on the role that the Yiddish-language immigrant press played in demarcating political affiliation. Less explored, however, are the roles that the Yiddish press played in creating a Jewish community rooted in both French and Jewish cultural norms. This article analyzes Naye prese through its use of culture and gender constructs to understand more fully the larger implications of the Yiddish press in Paris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an assessment of notes generated by France's surveillance of African and Afro-Caribbean migrants during the interwar years to analyze how black men made use of racial terms such as nègre and mulâtre. It is suggested that this racial language was infused with new political, social, and cultural meaning after World War I. How workers and intellectuals developed a race awareness that was both a response to colonialism and as a reaction against those who did not appear anti-imperial enough in their politics is discussed. It is argued that racial language expressed the nuances of black political and ideological stances with respect to the French Empire. The meanings granted to race are traced through organizations such as the Union des Travailleurs Nègres.

This section presents abstracts of articles in this issue, many of which discuss French historian Eugene Weber's work. Articles include "André Siegfried and the Complexities of French Anti-Americanism," by Sean Kennedy, "Black in France: The Language and Politics of Race in the Late Third Republic," by Jennifer Boittin, and "Rethinking the Nation at the Periphery," by Laird Boswell.

The article focuses on the proposition of a hygienic reform concerning the lifestyle of French people by doctors during a period called the Belle Époque, from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of World War I, in reaction to industrial and urban development and its effect on health. According to the article, naturopathy enthusiasts and vegetarians agreed with this program and shared the idea that a lifestyle far from the laws of nature was the main cause of diseases. The Société Végétarienne de France, the French society of vegetarianism, is mentioned as a key player in the promotion of this reform.