ABSTRACT
The Dreyfus affair accelerated political transformations that had begun with Boulanger, and it affected much of French politics and intellectual life well into the twentieth century. Many of the intellectual and cultural currents of the 1890s played a role in shaping the spectacular crisis that dominated French public opinion at the end of the decade the Dreyfus affair. One consequence of the wave of anti-Semitism unleashed by the Dreyfus affair was the creation of the modern Zionist movement. The Waldeck-Rousseau government was determined to face down anti-republican forces that had surfaced during the Dreyfus affair. Subsequent events were to prove that the separation enacted in 1905, rather than damaging the church, freed it from constant involvement in political controversy. The government of republican defense was the instrument through which Jaurs hoped to demonstrate the possibility of effective cooperation between socialists and republicans.
