Nationalism and the Case of Anti-Jingoism Anti-Semitism: Britain, 1884-1902.

Nationalism has often been found to promote ethnic prejudice against outgroups. But this study of the relationship between jingoist nationalism and anti-Semitism in late-19th-century Britain uncovers a surprising pattern. It was not jingoist Conservative forces that espoused anti-Semitic rhetoric but rather the anti-war left that espoused a distinctly "anti-jingoist anti-Semitism." This finding is based on an examination of political discourse about Jews from the period, including from two right-wing and two left-wing newspapers during the critical discourse moments of the Anglo-Sudan War of 1884 and the onset of the Boer War in 1899. We argue that the sometimesvirulent anti-jingoist anti-Semitism of the radical and socialistic left was rooted in existing leftwing stereotypes of Jews as agents of the ills of capitalism - but also depended crucially on the relative absence of anti-Semitism on the Conservative right of the period. This relative absence can in turn be explained by the nature of British right-wing nationalism, which was imperialist and outward-turning rather than focused on the domestic consolidation of the nation, as in France and Germany. This study illustrates how the stigmatization of outgroups can be complicated and politically-contingent, and it contributes to our understanding of the conditions under which nationalism can in fact be benign, with regard to the promotion of ethnic prejudice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]