BENJAMIN BROWER | France’s Colonial Violence in the Algerian Sahara | Conversations

The afikra Podcast

Colonial violence, resistance movements and French-colonial Algeria. Professor Benjamin Brower explains the ways in which violence is conceptualized, treating it as a historic lens to understand colonial events in the past and what is happening right now in Palestine.

This conversation is key for anyone who wants a detailed history of the French presence in Algeria and their mechanisms for colonial expansion and control, and to have a critical base of knowledge around colonialism and violence that can inform our understanding of what we’re witnessing in Palestine.

Benjamin Brower is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a historian of colonial-era Algeria (1830-1962) whose research focuses on social and political questions, which he approaches through critical and literary theories, and postcolonial studies.

His first book, A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of French Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902 (2009) tells the story of colonial violence in nineteenth-century Algeria, and it won two major book prizes.

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