In the 1930s, the French Third Republic prohibited naturalized citizens from pursuing a career in law and medicine for up to ten years after acquiring French citizenship. In 1940, the Vichy regime definitively expelled all lawyers and doctors born to foreign fathers and imposed a 2% quota on Jews in both professions. On the basis of extensive archival research, Julie Fette shows in Exclusions that doctors and lawyers themselves, despite their claim to embody republican virtues, convinced the French state to enact this law of exclusion. At the intersection of knowledge and power, lawyers and doctors have long been dominant forces in French society: they ran hospitals and courts, acted as university professors, held positions in parliament and government, and administered justice and public health for the nation. Their social and political influence has contributed decisively to spreading xenophobic attitudes and making them more socially acceptable in France. The origins of this professional protectionism date back to the late nineteenth century, when the democratization of higher education triggered efforts by doctors and lawyers to close ranks against women and the lower classes in addition to foreigners. The legal deadlines on the right to exercise the right to law and medicine remained in force until the 1970s, and it was not until 1997 that French lawyers and doctors officially acknowledged their complicity in the anti-Semitic policies of the Vichy regime. Fette`s book is a powerful contribution to the argument that French public opinion advocated exclusionary measures in the final years of the Third Republic and during the Holocaust. Julie Fette argues in this article that health and legal professionals helped set the stage for the Holocaust through generations of systematic efforts to restrict professional competition by gradually reducing the definition of the right to practice.

Efforts to protect professional monopolies are as old as the professions themselves, but a consequence of the time and circumstances that became fatal in Europe in the years leading up to World War II. „Julie Fette`s comparative research on anti-Semitism and xenophobia among French legal and medical professionals from the late nineteenth century to the post-World War II period is truly revolutionary. In this masterfully argued book, she shows how the majority of lawyers, doctors, and bourgeois students pressured the faltering republican state to adopt a hierarchy of legal exclusions based on a distinction between French nationals and „others,“ which paved the way for the more malevolent policies of Vichy. Their bottom-up approach allows us to hear in frightening detail the voices of the major actors themselves, calling for restrictions against foreigners (especially Jews), newly naturalized citizens, women, and the elderly. A bold argument for the continuity of exclusive practices across political regimes is nonetheless measured: before the Depression and after World War II, more progressive republican values mitigated traditional forms of prejudice – not eliminated them. Exclusions are essential to understanding contemporary struggles in France for national identity. » Frequent short expressions: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200 P.O. Box 851, 1001 Lausanne 1 Switzerland, Switzerland Download the free Kindle app and read Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer, no Kindle device required.