French Third Republic - Panama and Dreyfus Scandals

Panama and Dreyfus Scandals

There were two major scandals that rocked the Third Republic during the 1890s. One entailed the Panama scandals in 1892. Due to disease, inefficiency, widespread corruption, the Panama Canal Company handling the massive project went bankrupt, with millions in losses.

The Dreyfus Affair had a much more profound impact on France, arousing intense antagonisms over religion and culture. In 1894, a Jewish artillery officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was arrested on charges of conspiracy and espionage. Allegedly, Dreyfus had handed over important military documents discussing the designs of a new French artillery piece to a German military attaché; he was convicted and sentenced to Devil's Island, a Penal Colony in French Guiana. In 1898, writer Émile Zola published an article entitled J'Accuse...! (I accuse...!). The article alleged an anti-Semitic conspiracy in the highest ranks of the military to scapegoat Dreyfus, tacitly supported by the government and the Catholic Church. The real culprit was found two years later to be a high-ranking military officer and aristocrat, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, but only in 1906 was Dreyfus given a formal pardon and freed after serving twelve years in prison.