DR. ANDREW BELLISARI
Andrew Bellisari is an Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University. Previously he served as a founding faculty member at Fulbright University Vietnam. His work focuses on the history of modern France and French colonialism in North Africa and Southeast Asia.
Photo: Anastasia Sokyrka Photography
RESEARCH
THE LOOSE ENDS OF EMPIRE: THE LOGIC AND LOGISTICs of decolonization IN ALGERIA
Minutes from a meeting of the Joint Ceasefire Commission held between members of the French Army and the Front de Libération National in Oran, June 1962
Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes
The phenomenon of decolonization profoundly reshaped the twentieth century. But how do the processes of decolonization actually function on the ground? Nowhere was the fight for independence fiercer than in French Algeria, but once the fighting was over the real challenge, for both France and a newly independent Algeria, was in managing the transition.
FIGHTING AGAINST FREEDOM?
COLONIAL SUBJECTS IN THE FIRST WAR OF DECOLONIZATION - INDOCHINA (1945-1954)
Algerian soldiers wait to be airlifted during the First Indochina War, May 1950
Harrison Forman, American Geographical Society Library
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries
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Nearly a quarter of the men sent by France to fight against independence in Indochina were colonial subjects. While much has been written about the participation of colonial conscripts in the First and Second World Wars, far less is known about those colonial subjects from the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia itself who were mobilized to fight other colonial subjects in the first major war of modern decolonization.