ANDREW H. BELLISARI

I am an Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University. Previously, I was a founding faculty member at Fulbright University Vietnam in Hồ Chí Minh City and a Vietnam Program Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. I specialize in the history of modern France and its colonial empire and my work addresses questions related to warfare, state- and nation-building, and civil society. My research explores the political, social, and cultural dimensions of decolonization, particularly in Algeria and Vietnam.

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Between 2018 and 2024, I helped establish Fulbright University Vietnam, a joint initiative of both the Vietnamese and United States governments to create Vietnam’s first independent, non-profit liberal arts college. As part of the inaugural founding faculty, I worked alongside colleagues in other fields to craft Fulbright's innovative, trans-disciplinary curriculum. I also developed the university's first history major program and served as the program's first coordinator.

 

My current book, The Loose Ends of Empire: The Logic and Logistics of Decolonization in Algeria, analyzes the everyday logistics of decolonization to understand how wars end and transfers of power operate. Scholars and policymakers have long studied the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) for insights into insurgency and counter-insurgency. This book moves beyond this conventional focus by deeply considering the nuts-and-bolts processes of colonial disentanglement that occurred after the war—the tireless work of commissions and committees to keep the peace, transfer infrastructure, and sort through colonial-era patrimony to ensure a transition to independence that was once unthinkable to both the French and the Algerians. In short, the book asks: how do countries turn independence on paper into independence in practice?

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While in Vietnam, I began researching my current research project, which explores the complex networks and personal stories of French colonial subjects from across the Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia who fought in the French Far East Expeditionary Corps against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the First Indochina War (1945-1954). Underscoring how both French military officials and Vietnamese Communists employed psychological warfare to either maintain or win over the loyalty of France’s non-white soldiers, this work highlights issues related to race, morale, loyalty, and propaganda that remain pertinent to our modern understanding of conflict. 

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I received my Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 2018. I also hold a bachelor’s in History and French from Rutgers University and studied at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris as a Fulbright scholar. Over the past decade my research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Krupp Foundation, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.