Description
Book SynopsisPresents a magisterial history of French nationality law from 1789. Focusing on the political and legal confrontations that policies governing French nationality have evoked and the laws that have resulted, this work teases out the rationales of jurists and lawmakers.
Trade Review“
How to Be French is a pioneering study of the fabrication of official ‘Frenchness’ since the Revolution of 1789, marshaling a plethora of fresh evidence and rereading more familiar sources in the service of an original, thoughtful, and provocative analysis. Patrick Weil is the most knowledgeable and insightful student of the institutional and judicial character of the French social tissue—of the political construction of cohesion in a land of immigration. He reminds the French of certain jagged truths they would prefer to forget; soberly, he draws lessons of great pertinence to other societies struggling to make multiplicity and heterogeneity work.”—
Steven Laurence Kaplan, Goldwin Smith Professor of European History, Cornell University
“
How to be French is a critical history of nationality law and politics that illuminates decisive moments in the making of French nationality while making new and sophisticated theoretical claims about the articulations of nationality, the state, and history itself. This is a stupendous achievement by one of the most important French scholars and public intellectuals writing today.”—
Peter Sahlins, author of
Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old Regime and After“This remarkable, award-winning book is sure to be extremely well received by English-language audiences. It provides a detailed, rigorous, chronologically wide, broadly comparative, and fascinating history of French nationality.
How to Be French profoundly revises previous knowledge on the topic, and its comparative framework makes it essential reading not only to scholars of France but also to those interested in Germany, the United States, Algeria, and beyond.”—
Eric T. Jennings, author of
Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial SpasTable of ContentsAcronyms and Abbreviations vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Part One. The Construction of Modern Nationality Law in France
1. From the Old Regime to the Civil Code: The Two Revolutions in French Nationality 11
2. The Triumph of Jus Soli (1803-1889) 30
3. Naturalization Comes to the Aid of the Nation (1889-1940) 54
Part Two. Ethnic Crises in French Nationality
4. Vichy: A Racist and Anti-Semitic Nationality Policy 87
5. The Difficult Reestablishment of Republican Legislation 125
6. The Algerian Crisis in French Nationality 152
Conclusion to Parts One and Two 168
Part Three. Nationality in Comparison and In Practice
7. Jus Soli versus Jus Sanguinis: The False Opposition between French and German Law 173
8. Discrimination within Nationality Law 194
9. How Does One Become or Remain French? French Nationality in Practice 228
Conclusion 250
Glossary 255
Notes 263
Maps and Documents 375
Bibliography 409
Index 427
