Research

My current research project,"Brazzaville's Diaspora: Colonial Development, Racial Violence, and the Struggle for Self-Determination," examines the relationship between colonial reform and mass violence during the revolutionary independence struggles in Indochina (1945-1954), Madagascar (1947-48), and Algeria (1954-1962). I argue that French and their local allies harnessed the vocabulary of self-determination and development to justify and perpetuate campaigns of unprecedented brutality wherever their rule was threatened.

This project makes two central contributions to the study of decolonization and state violence. First, it challenges the prevailing consensus that attributes the extreme brutality of French colonial conflicts to "fascistic" officers and European settler communities. Instead, it illuminates the crucial enabling roles of colonial liberals, reformers, and anti-fascists in repressive campaigns responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. I argue that the forms and norms of violence that the French army deployed overseas were inseparable from the liberal civilizational project of the postwar French Republic. Second, I demonstrate how the aspirations of imperial reformers gave way to a trans-imperial doctrine of counterinsurgency warfare – one whose influence I trace across decades from colonial Vietnam and Algeria to urban policing in Paris and U.S. nation-building operations in Afghanistan. The entangled histories of race, reform, and violence that I study continue to shape the terrain of struggle upon which revolutionary movements – and their counterinsurgent opponents – do battle today.

Montagnard petition for protection from "Annamites," April, 1946

A "plebiscite" for the Montagnards - Petition for French protection signed by notables of Di Linh Province, reproduced with permission courtesy of the estate of Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu

Publications and Works-in-Progress

Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications

“From Brazzaville to ‘Race Hatred:’ Colonial Reform and Mass Violence in Madagascar, 1943-1948,” French Historical Studies. (Under Review)

Invited Publications

"Erasing Revolution in Ihosy: Racial Politics and the Archives of Madagascar’s 'Insurrection,' 1947-48," Post-Colonial Archives: Commemoration, Preservation, and Erasure (forthcoming 2025)

Book Reviews

MacMaster, Neil. War in the Mountains: Peasant Society and Counterinsurgency in Rural Algeria, 1918-1958. In Agricultural History (2022) 96 (3): 455–457
Reed, John Scott. The U.S. Volunteers in the Southern Philippines: Counterinsurgency, Pacification, Collaboration. In The Journal of Military History 85, No. 1 (January 2021)

Trade Journal Publications

“From Counter-Insurgents to Right Wing Terrorists: French Military Politicization in Algeria, 1955-1961,” The Small Wars Journal 12, No. 8 (August 2016)

Oral Histories and Archives

Oral Histories

France
Madagascar

Fellowships and Awards

Fellowships:

Graduate Research Fellow in Identity Politics and Conflict, Weatherhead Center, 2023-2024
Junior Scholar, Carnegie International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network (IPSCON), 2023
Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy, Belfer Center for Science and Intl. Affairs, 2022-2024
Hans J. Morgenthau Grand Strategy Fellow, Notre Dame International Security Center, 2021-2022
Summer Seminar in History & Statecraft, Clements Center for National Security, UT Austin, 2021

Awards:

Institute for Humane Studies Research Fellowship, 2024
Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, 2021
Fulbright U.S. Student Program (France), Institute of International Education, 2020
Farrar Memorial Fellowship, Society for French Historical Studies, 2020
Allan R. Millett Research Fellowship, Society for Military History, 2020
Chateaubriand Fellowship, Ambassade de France aux États-Unis (declined), 2020
Multi-Site Research Fellowship, Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC), 2020
Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Grant in Arabic, Harvard University, 2018

Intelligence reports, Mỹ Tho Sector. Service Historique de la Défense (Paris)

Research Presentations

Invited Talks

"Protecting the Cochinchinese Mosaic: Colonial Reform and Race War in Southern Vietnam, 1945-1947," Entangled trajectories: Global connections and legacies of Europe’s 'Age of Civil Wars,' University College Dublin Centre for War Studies and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (October 2024)
“Rogue State-Builders: Partner Warfare and Ethnic Violence during France’s Retreat from Empire, 1941-1958,” New Faces Conference, Triangle Institute for Security Studies (September 2023)
"Free France, Colonial Reform, and the Birth of Cold War Counterinsurgency,” Jean Monnet Lecture Series on European Security & Defense, Boston University Center for the Study of Europe (March 2023):

“Madagascar 1947,” as Guest Lecture in HIST 127A, “History of the French Empire,” taught by Manuel Covo at University of California, Santa Barbara (March 2022)

Conference Presentations

“‘Traditional’ Society, Historical Sociology, and the Geopolitics of France’s guerre révolutionnaire, 1941-1958,” International Studies Association Annual Meeting (April 2024)
“Recovering the Malagasy Revolution: Pierre Boiteau, the Prose of Counterinsurgency, and the ‘Revolt’ of 1947,” Society for French Historical Studies Annual Meeting (March 2023)
“Civilian Reformers, Religious Paramilitaries, and a New Model of Counterinsurgency in South Vietnam, 1944-1947,” Society for Military History Annual Conference (March 2023), panel co-organizer with Kelly Wood
“From Brazzaville to guerre civile: Federalism, Race-Making, and Colonial Violence in Madagascar, 1943-1948,” Western Society for French Historical Studies Annual Meeting (November 2022)
“Civil War in the French Union: Colonial Paramilitaries and Transnational Decolonization, 1945-1962,” Society for Military History Annual Conference (May 2021)
“The Other Armée de Libération nationale: Understanding the Algerian War as a Civil War, 1955-1958,” London School of Economics International History Seminar (February 2021)
“The Contre-Maquisards of Algiers: Colonial Reformism and Indigenous Auxiliaries in the Algerian War,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting (January 2019)
“Making the OAS: Ideology and the Figure of the ‘Indigenous Loyalist’ in French Military Insurrectionism, 1955-1961,” Trahison/Betrayal, New York University Institute for French Studies (October 2019)
“The War in the Crowd: France’s Revolutionary Warfare on the Frontlines of the Cold War,” Cold War Power: A Conference, Columbia University (March 2016)
“America’s Global Vision: TIME, Luce, and Cold War Geopolitics,” Cold War Public Diplomacy: the Power of Culture, Columbia University (December 2015)