What Was At Stake In The Dreyfus Affair? Who Were The Winners And Losers?
In order to fully address these questions one must differentiate between the Dreyfus case; the arrest, prosecution and sentence of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, and the subsequent Affair which grew out of the case. In answering the questions posed, one will discuss the effects of both the case and the resulting affair on Dreyfus and those immediately involved with the case. One will also discuss the effects of the Dreyfus case and the Affair on French society at the time which split into two opposing factions, the Dreyfusards and the anti-Dreyfusards. The case was simple: in December 1894 Dreyfus, a Jewish officer serving in the French artillery, was found guilty of spying for the Germans and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a French penal colony in French Guiana. The Affair came about when, over the next few years, discovery of new evidence led a number of the French people to realise that a…… Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
