This thesis provides an overview of Moritz Daniel Oppenheim's portraits of the Rothschild family with attention paid to the artist's training and personal artistic pursuits, as well as participation in Gentile and Jewish discourses. Oppenheim's knowledge of art history and use of style in creating the identities of his Rothschild subjects are the focus of this study. Oppenheim's methods and use of art historical styles are discussed with deference to the public or private nature of the portraits, and the resulting works' engagement of both German and Jewish issues. Methodologies used include the history of style and identity theory.

La plupart des études modernes tendent à analyser l’histoire de la société libyenne selon un schéma qui réduit la vie sociale et économique de la Libye au nomadisme et aux rapports tribaux ou bien à la pratique de l’agriculture pastorale et au commerce du transit ; à cela se rajoute une activité corsaire exercée dans les villes côtières. Par conséquent, cette vision de l’histoire du pays est réduite à deux interprétations. Tandis que la première se rapporte strictement à l’histoire interne, la deuxième est liée aux facteurs externes ; toutefois les deux ne sont que très rarement liés. En revanche, l’objectif de notre thèse vise à prendre en compte l’ensemble des facteurs tant internes qu’externes de l’histoire de la ville de Tripoli et de ses arrière-pays sans oublier qu’il s’inscrit dans l’histoire méditerranéenne et ottomane afin d’étudier tous les aspects de l’histoire sociale et économique de la Tripolitaine via la classe marchande de l’Iyālat Ṭarābulus al-Gharb. Les sources locales tels les registres des tribunaux sharî‘a à Tripoli, le journal du commerçant Ḥasan al-Faqīh Ḥasan mais aussi européennes, notamment, les rapports des consuls français et livournais nous dévoilent les détails d’unesynergie des réseaux économiques et sociaux, nous donnant tout un autre aspect de l’histoire libyenne. / Most studies on the modern history of Libya and its society tend to limit their scope to a schema that reduces the social and economic life of Libya to nomadic and tribal relations or to the practice of pastoral agriculture and transit trade; corsair activity exercised on the coastal cities is also a focus. Consequently, this vision of the country’s history is reduced to twointerpretations. While the first relates strictly to the internal history of the area, the second refers exclusively to the external factor; only rarely are both aspects analyzed together. Keeping this in mind, our dissertation takes into account both internal and external elements related to the history of the city of Tripoli and its hinterlands as well as the fact that it is partand parcel of Mediterranean and Ottoman history, aiming thereby to study all the aspects which compose the social and economic history of the Tripolitain via the merchant class of Iyālat Ṭarābulus al-Gharb. Local sources such as the registers from the Tripoli Ottoman-era sharî‘a court along with entries from the journal of the Tripoli businessman Ḥasan al-FaqīhḤasan in addition to European consular reports, in particular, those from the French consuls as well as the Livorno consular reports reveal a synergy of economic and social networks which show an entirely new aspect of Libyan history.