Part murder mystery, part social history of political violence, Lethal Provocation is a forensic examination of the deadliest peacetime episode of anti-Jewish violence in modern French history. Joshua Cole reconstructs the 1934 riots in Constantine, Algeria, in which tensions between Muslims and Jews were aggravated by right-wing extremists, resulting in the deaths of twenty-eight people. Animating the unrest was Mohamed El Maadi, a soldier in the French army. Later a member of a notorious French nationalist group that threatened insurrection in the late 1930s, El Maadi became an enthusiastic supporter of France's Vichy regime in World War II, and finished his career in the German SS. Cole cracks the "cold case" of El Maadi's participation in the events, revealing both his presence at the scene and his motives in provoking violence at a moment when the French government was debating the rights of Muslims in Algeria. Local police and authorities came to know about the role of provocation in the unrest and killings and purposely hid the truth during the investigation that followed. Cole's sensitive history brings into high relief the cruelty of social relations in the decades before the war for Algerian independence. Winner of the 2019 Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy, a National Jewish Book Award from the Jewish Book Council. - Winner of the 2020 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize from the French Colonial History Society. - Winner of the 2020 J. Russell Major Book Prize from the American Historical Association. Majestic. Cole's powerful narrative of the tragic events of 1934 compels historians of empire to rethink categories, approaches, and methodologies. His deep research into, and reflection on, 'French' North Africa sets a new standard for Colonial Studies. -- Julia Clancy-Smith, University of Arizona, author of Mediterraneans "This is a very impressive book. Joshua Cole's research, argumentation and prose are all exceptional. His achievement should not be understated: Lethal Provocation will stand as the definitive history of a key event in Algeria's colonial era for generations to come." Benjamin Claude Brower, University of Texas at Austin, author of A Desert Named Peace . - " Lethal Provocation is a tour de force. Here, at last, is a book worthy of the importance and complexity of the Constantine riots of 1934: a major and long misunderstood event of modern French, Algerian, and Jewish history. Carefully researched and brilliantly contextualized, it deserves a wide audience." Ethan B. Katz, University of California Berkeley, author of The Burdens of Brotherhood . - "Majestic. Cole's powerful narrative of the tragic events of 1934 compels historians of empire to rethink categories, approaches, and methodologies. His deep research into, and reflection on, 'French' North Africa set a new standard for colonial studies." Julia Clancy-Smith, University of Arizona, author of Mediterraneans. Joshua Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991 and his B.A. from Brown University in 1983. His research and teaching deal primarily with the social and cultural history of France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and he has published work on gender and the history of the population sciences, colonial violence, and the politics of memory in France, Algeria, and Germany.   He is the author of  The Power of Large Numbers:  Population, Politics and Gender in Nineteenth-Century France  (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000) and  Lethal Provocation:  The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria  (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 2019).  He is also co-author with Carol Symes of W.W. Norton's widely used textbook, Western Civilizations .