The Dreyfus Affair had as its origin a judicial sentence of clear anti-Semitic style in which the victim was Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), of Jewish-Alsatian origin, and which for twelve years, from 1894 to 1906, shocked the French society of the time, marking a milestone in the history of anti-Semitism.
The revelation of the scandal in "I accuse" (J'accuse), an article by Emile Zola of 1898, provoked a succession of unprecedented political and social crises in France that, at the time of its apogee in 1899, revealed the pronounced fractures that underlay the Third French Republic. It deeply and durably divided the French into two opposing camps, the dreyfusards (supporters of Dreyfus) and the antidreyfusards (opponents of Dreyfus). It also revealed the existence in French society of a core of violent nationalism and anti-Semitism spread by a highly influential press. The case became a modern and universal symbol of iniquity in the name of reason of State.