Arthur Asseraf
Biographic Data
| ID | 264016 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Arthur Asseraf |
| GIVEN NAMES | Arthur |
| FAMILY NAME | Asseraf |
| SIGNATURE | ASSERAF A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 26 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Colonisations
The collected volume Colonisations: notre histoire (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2023) is a landmark publication that offers a critical assessment of France’s fraught role in global history, ranging from the precolonial era to the present. It makes a powerful case for the continuing relevance of the complex history of colonialism in France and the world today. This roundtable features reflections on the volume by four historians working on different…
L’historien n’est pas un romancier ? Discussion avec Arthur Asseraf, auteur du Désinformateur (2022)
Fragment de la couverture de l’ouvrage Le Désinformateur. Sur les traces de Messaoud Djebari, Algérien dans un monde colonial « Ce spahi fait l’admiration des Parisiens (devant les Magasins réunis, place de la République, à l’angle de la rue du Faubourg du Temple) »Photographie par Charles Lansiaux, 1914.Arthur Asseraf est ici l’invité d’Isabelle Grangaud, dans le cadre de son séminaire « Histoire ethnographique des sociétés du Maghreb (XVI-XIXes…
Joseph W. Peterson. Sacred Rivals
Return to Orléans
How did it become possible to think of a racism without racists? This article tackles this question by looking at the contested interpretation of a racist incident in France. In 1969, Jewish shop owners in Orléans were baselessly accused of kidnapping women in fitting rooms and trafficking them into sexual slavery. This antisemitic agitation rapidly attracted the attention of local authorities, national media, and social scientists, led by sociol…
Los mecanismos de la imaginación
40 años de Comunidades Imaginadas. Vidas y sobrevidas de un clásico
Roundtable
Mass Media and the Colonial Informant
The nineteenth century saw an explosion of mass media as well as an expansion of colonial states. These two processes mutually influenced each other, and at the intersection lay a thin layer of individuals who could gain inordinate power to influence global information flows. This article follows the career of one such individual, Messaoud Djebari, an Algerian man who generated several controversies by fabricating information first in Tunisia in …
Pierre Schill, Réveiller l'archive d'une guerre coloniale
Reviewed by: Réveiller l'archive d'une guerre coloniale: Photographies et écrits de Gaston Chérau, correspondant de guerre lors du conflit italoturc pour la Libye (1911–1912) by Pierre Schill Arthur Asseraf Pierre Schill. Réveiller l'archive d'une guerre coloniale: Photographies et écrits de Gaston Chérau, correspondant de guerre lors du conflit italoturc pour la Libye (1911–1912). Paris: Créaphis, 2018. 480 pp. €35. ISBN: 978-2354281410. In 2008…
Le monde comme adjectif
Lethal Provocation
In August 1934, riots erupted in the city of Constantine in French Algeria, leaving a trail of destruction and twenty-eight people dead. Of these, twenty-five were Jewish. The riots immediately generated a huge controversy in the midst of a tense local political context and rising global antisemitism. Who were the culprits? Was it a nameless Muslim mob who had in a moment of frenzy, massacred their Jewish neighbours? Or did this mob hide an even …
Copyright Page
Palestine the Martyr
This chapter looks at how debating news of distant events shaped the development of Algerian nationalism. Distance gave Algerians a means to reconsider their own problems on a different scale, to zoom out and reconsider their relationships with each other. It considers two case studies. First, Algerians observed keenly the Italian takeover of neighbouring Libya from 1911 to 1919, and used it to experiment with new forms of political mobilization.…
Maps
Subject Modern History (1700 to 1945) Social and Cultural History Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Epilogue
The epilogue extends the story to the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) and beyond to the role of news in independent Algeria and post-1962 France. It summarizes the findings of the previous chapters and ties them together by reconsidering the writings of Frantz Fanon on radio and the development of television in the last years of colonial rule. While nationalists hoped that independence would bring uniformity between the media and the peopl…
Notes on Illustrations and Transcription
Maps were produced by Sébastien Herman. I am thankful to the Glycines, the ANOM, and the BNF for giving permission to reproduce works as illustrations. For one of the illustrations, a poster by the algérois artist Charles Brouty, I have been unable to find the claimants to his estate, but I encourage them to get in touch. All translations are my own unless specified. Any work of North African history has to struggle between different spelling nor…
Wartime
Did people in a colonial society live at the same time? This chapter tests this by looking at different forms of news that circulated around a single event: the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Prophetic manuscripts, rumours, and songs emplotted the same events within different temporalities. A historical manuscript connected to an insurrection in western Algeria used the beginning of war to promise the end of French rule. By contrast, th…
Old Waves
This chapter considers how the news ecosystem could change with the introduction of new technologies, particularly the cinema and the radio. What was unfolding was not a replacement of old forms of media but a superposition of waves upon waves of information in a variety that proved bewildering. The first section explains the development of newsreels in cinemas and radio as new forms of visual and aural news. The technical constraints of the radi…
Magical Printing
This chapter gives a brief history of newspapers in colonial Algeria, showing how beliefs about newspapers contrasted with their actual usage. The men who conquered Algeria believed that the printing press could bring modernity. This belief can be described as a form of magical thinking. In practice, newspapers behaved in unexpected ways as they interacted with the rest of the news ecosystem. In the summer of 1881, the French Parliament passed tw…
Arab Telephone
The telegraph was introduced to connect Algeria to France. Yet the effects of the telegraph cables were double: they brought European Algerians closer to France at the same time as they brought Algerian Muslims closer to other Muslims around the world. Through the example of an incident in the town of Rébeval in Kabylia during the Greek–Ottoman War in 1897, we see how telegraphic news inserted itself into existing networks and allowed people in A…
Electric News in Colonial Algeria
How do the things which connect us divide us at the same time? This book tells a different history of globalization by tracing how news circulated in a divided society: Algeria under French rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The years between 1881 and 1940 were those of maximum colonial power in North Africa, a period of intense technological revolution, global high imperialism, and the expansion of settler colonialism. Al…
L'Algérie à gauche (1900-1962)
Can there be such a thing as a leftist coloniser? Claire Marynower’s book looks into this question by focusing on socialists in the departement of Oran during the interwar period. This study is a h
Fast media, slow media
A New Israel”
In 1960–62 French officials considered partitioning Algeria between European- and Muslim-majority areas, much later and more seriously than the existing historiography shows. Even supporters of partition, however, remained ambivalent, regarding it as a “foreign” approach to decolonization opposed to French principles of territorial unity and racial equality. Thus they discussed partition by comparing Algeria to foreign models, in particular the p…
La société coloniale face à l'actualité internationale
Loin d'être coupée du monde, la société coloniale algérienne suit avec attention les événements internationaux, s'intéressant en particulier à son entourage maghrébin, africain et méditerranéen. Cet article examine l'impact des actualités internationales dans l'Algérie de la fin du XIX e siècle, en prenant en considération quatre cas successifs : l'invasion de la Tunisie en 1881, la rébellion mahdiste au Soudan égyptien, la guerre gréco-turque de…
Fanny Colonna
Electric News in Colonial Algeria
How do the things which connect us divide us at the same time? This book tells a different history of globalization by tracing how news circulated in a divided society: Algeria under French rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The years between 1881 and 1940 were those of maximum colonial power in North Africa, a period of intense technological revolution, global high imperialism, and the expansion of settler colonialism. Al…
A New Israel”
In 1960–62 French officials considered partitioning Algeria between European- and Muslim-majority areas, much later and more seriously than the existing historiography shows. Even supporters of partition, however, remained ambivalent, regarding it as a “foreign” approach to decolonization opposed to French principles of territorial unity and racial equality. Thus they discussed partition by comparing Algeria to foreign models, in particular the p…
Mass Media and the Colonial Informant
The nineteenth century saw an explosion of mass media as well as an expansion of colonial states. These two processes mutually influenced each other, and at the intersection lay a thin layer of individuals who could gain inordinate power to influence global information flows. This article follows the career of one such individual, Messaoud Djebari, an Algerian man who generated several controversies by fabricating information first in Tunisia in …
La société coloniale face à l'actualité internationale
Loin d'être coupée du monde, la société coloniale algérienne suit avec attention les événements internationaux, s'intéressant en particulier à son entourage maghrébin, africain et méditerranéen. Cet article examine l'impact des actualités internationales dans l'Algérie de la fin du XIX e siècle, en prenant en considération quatre cas successifs : l'invasion de la Tunisie en 1881, la rébellion mahdiste au Soudan égyptien, la guerre gréco-turque de…
Muslims and Jews in France
The ‘rise of Muslim antisemitism’ and the ‘importation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict’ frequently make French headlines. Writing a book on such a loaded topic is not easy, and Maud Mandel’s Muslims and Jews in France offers some much-needed historical subtlety, wisely steering away from narratives of either total conflict or total harmony between the two communities. While the title ‘history of a conflict’ might raise suspicion for the prosp…
La société coloniale face à l'actualité internationale
Loin d'être coupée du monde, la société coloniale algérienne suit avec attention les événements internationaux, s'intéressant en particulier à son entourage maghrébin, africain et méditerranéen. Cet article examine l'impact des actualités internationales dans l'Algérie de la fin du XIX e siècle, en prenant en considération quatre cas successifs : l'invasion de la Tunisie en 1881, la rébellion mahdiste au Soudan égyptien, la guerre gréco-turque de…
Fanny Colonna
Fast media, slow media
A New Israel”
In 1960–62 French officials considered partitioning Algeria between European- and Muslim-majority areas, much later and more seriously than the existing historiography shows. Even supporters of partition, however, remained ambivalent, regarding it as a “foreign” approach to decolonization opposed to French principles of territorial unity and racial equality. Thus they discussed partition by comparing Algeria to foreign models, in particular the p…
Copyright Page
Palestine the Martyr
This chapter looks at how debating news of distant events shaped the development of Algerian nationalism. Distance gave Algerians a means to reconsider their own problems on a different scale, to zoom out and reconsider their relationships with each other. It considers two case studies. First, Algerians observed keenly the Italian takeover of neighbouring Libya from 1911 to 1919, and used it to experiment with new forms of political mobilization.…
Maps
Subject Modern History (1700 to 1945) Social and Cultural History Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Epilogue
The epilogue extends the story to the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) and beyond to the role of news in independent Algeria and post-1962 France. It summarizes the findings of the previous chapters and ties them together by reconsidering the writings of Frantz Fanon on radio and the development of television in the last years of colonial rule. While nationalists hoped that independence would bring uniformity between the media and the peopl…
Notes on Illustrations and Transcription
Maps were produced by Sébastien Herman. I am thankful to the Glycines, the ANOM, and the BNF for giving permission to reproduce works as illustrations. For one of the illustrations, a poster by the algérois artist Charles Brouty, I have been unable to find the claimants to his estate, but I encourage them to get in touch. All translations are my own unless specified. Any work of North African history has to struggle between different spelling nor…
Wartime
Did people in a colonial society live at the same time? This chapter tests this by looking at different forms of news that circulated around a single event: the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Prophetic manuscripts, rumours, and songs emplotted the same events within different temporalities. A historical manuscript connected to an insurrection in western Algeria used the beginning of war to promise the end of French rule. By contrast, th…
Old Waves
This chapter considers how the news ecosystem could change with the introduction of new technologies, particularly the cinema and the radio. What was unfolding was not a replacement of old forms of media but a superposition of waves upon waves of information in a variety that proved bewildering. The first section explains the development of newsreels in cinemas and radio as new forms of visual and aural news. The technical constraints of the radi…
Magical Printing
This chapter gives a brief history of newspapers in colonial Algeria, showing how beliefs about newspapers contrasted with their actual usage. The men who conquered Algeria believed that the printing press could bring modernity. This belief can be described as a form of magical thinking. In practice, newspapers behaved in unexpected ways as they interacted with the rest of the news ecosystem. In the summer of 1881, the French Parliament passed tw…
Arab Telephone
The telegraph was introduced to connect Algeria to France. Yet the effects of the telegraph cables were double: they brought European Algerians closer to France at the same time as they brought Algerian Muslims closer to other Muslims around the world. Through the example of an incident in the town of Rébeval in Kabylia during the Greek–Ottoman War in 1897, we see how telegraphic news inserted itself into existing networks and allowed people in A…
Electric News in Colonial Algeria
How do the things which connect us divide us at the same time? This book tells a different history of globalization by tracing how news circulated in a divided society: Algeria under French rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The years between 1881 and 1940 were those of maximum colonial power in North Africa, a period of intense technological revolution, global high imperialism, and the expansion of settler colonialism. Al…
L'Algérie à gauche (1900-1962)
Can there be such a thing as a leftist coloniser? Claire Marynower’s book looks into this question by focusing on socialists in the departement of Oran during the interwar period. This study is a h
Lethal Provocation
In August 1934, riots erupted in the city of Constantine in French Algeria, leaving a trail of destruction and twenty-eight people dead. Of these, twenty-five were Jewish. The riots immediately generated a huge controversy in the midst of a tense local political context and rising global antisemitism. Who were the culprits? Was it a nameless Muslim mob who had in a moment of frenzy, massacred their Jewish neighbours? Or did this mob hide an even …
Pierre Schill, Réveiller l'archive d'une guerre coloniale
Reviewed by: Réveiller l'archive d'une guerre coloniale: Photographies et écrits de Gaston Chérau, correspondant de guerre lors du conflit italoturc pour la Libye (1911–1912) by Pierre Schill Arthur Asseraf Pierre Schill. Réveiller l'archive d'une guerre coloniale: Photographies et écrits de Gaston Chérau, correspondant de guerre lors du conflit italoturc pour la Libye (1911–1912). Paris: Créaphis, 2018. 480 pp. €35. ISBN: 978-2354281410. In 2008…
Le monde comme adjectif
Roundtable
Mass Media and the Colonial Informant
The nineteenth century saw an explosion of mass media as well as an expansion of colonial states. These two processes mutually influenced each other, and at the intersection lay a thin layer of individuals who could gain inordinate power to influence global information flows. This article follows the career of one such individual, Messaoud Djebari, an Algerian man who generated several controversies by fabricating information first in Tunisia in …
Los mecanismos de la imaginación
40 años de Comunidades Imaginadas. Vidas y sobrevidas de un clásico
L’historien n’est pas un romancier ? Discussion avec Arthur Asseraf, auteur du Désinformateur (2022)
Fragment de la couverture de l’ouvrage Le Désinformateur. Sur les traces de Messaoud Djebari, Algérien dans un monde colonial « Ce spahi fait l’admiration des Parisiens (devant les Magasins réunis, place de la République, à l’angle de la rue du Faubourg du Temple) »Photographie par Charles Lansiaux, 1914.Arthur Asseraf est ici l’invité d’Isabelle Grangaud, dans le cadre de son séminaire « Histoire ethnographique des sociétés du Maghreb (XVI-XIXes…
Joseph W. Peterson. Sacred Rivals
Return to Orléans
How did it become possible to think of a racism without racists? This article tackles this question by looking at the contested interpretation of a racist incident in France. In 1969, Jewish shop owners in Orléans were baselessly accused of kidnapping women in fitting rooms and trafficking them into sexual slavery. This antisemitic agitation rapidly attracted the attention of local authorities, national media, and social scientists, led by sociol…
History (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · African history and culture studies (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Art (10 works) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Media studies (9 works) · North African History and Literature (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works)