Gabriel Alapetite

Gabriel Ferdinand Alapetite was a French senior civil servant and diplomat. From 1879 to 1906 he was sub-prefect or prefect of various departments of France. For eleven years from 1906 to 1918 he was Resident-General of France in Tunisia, where he initiated various administrative improvements. He considered that the Tunisian Muslims had an utterly different mentality from French people, and could never become citizens of France. He was violently antisemitic, and opposed recruiting Tunisian Jews during World War I (1914–18). After the war he was briefly French Ambassador in Madrid, then for four years administered Alsace-Lorraine, which had been returned from Germany to France.