“Vichy and the Jews of Morocco”
Professional Background
Dr. Daniel J. Schroeter is professor and the Amos S. Deinard Memorial Chair in Jewish History, Department of History, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He earned his PhD in Near Eastern Studies from The University of Manchester (United Kingdom) in 1984. While in residence at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Dr. Schroeter conducted research on his project, “Vichy and the Jews of Morocco.”
Professor Schroeter is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of Morocco and the Jews of the Islamic world. His books include The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (2002; Arabic translation, published in Rabat, Morocco in 2011); Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa, co-edited with Emily Gottreich (2011); and Merchants of Essaouira: Urban Society and Imperialism in Southwestern Morocco, 1844-1886 (1988). The Arabic translation of this title (1997) received the Moulay Rachid National Book Prize for best translated book of the year. Recent articles include “Identity and Nation: Jewish Migration and Inter-Community Relations in the Colonial Maghreb,” in La bienvenue et l’adieu: Migrants juifs et musulmans au Maghreb, XVe-XXe siècle (2012); “In Search of Jewish Farmers: Jews, Agriculture, and the Land in Rural Morocco,” in The Divergence of Judaism and Islam: Interdependence, Modernity, and Political Turmoil (2011); "The Shifting Boundaries of Moroccan Jewish Identities,” in Jewish Social Studies (2008); and seventeen articles in the Encylopedia of the Jews in the Islamic World (2010), of which he was also an editor.
His recent lectures and presentations include “Interpreting the Emigration of Moroccan Jews” (Yale University, 2013); “The Changing Landscape of Muslim-Jewish Relations in the Modern Middle East and North Africa” (Leiden University, Netherlands, 2013); “Amazigh, Sephardi, and Arab: On the Origins, History, and Culture of the Jews of Southern Morocco” (Rabat, Morocco, 2013); “Muslim-Jewish Relations, From Iraq to Morocco: History and the Politics of Memory” (University of Central Florida, 2012); and “Vichy in Morocco: The Résidence, Mohammed V, and His Indigenous Jewish Subjects” (Brown University, 2012).
Fellowship Research
During his time as the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar, Dr. Schroeter researched the position of the Jewish communities in the French and Spanish protectorates of Morocco during World War II after the establishment of the Vichy regime and the enactment of its anti-Jewish policies in the French colonies in North Africa. Legally classified as indigenous subjects of the sultan, a ruler whose power was limited by the French authorities, the Jews of Morocco were caught between the competing interests in the colonial power structure and the Muslim population of the country. Dr. Schroeter examined how the Vichy-instigated Jewish laws challenged the colonial hierarchy, anticipating the emergence of the sultan as national leader and the decolonization of Morocco in the years following the war.
Dr. Daniel Schroeter was in residence at the Mandel Center from September 1, 2014 to May 31, 2015.