Research Seminar Series, School of History, UCC
Paper by Dr Dónal Hassett, Department of French, UCC

Thursday 12 November 2020, 16.00-17.00 (4-5 PM) (online event, MS TEAMS)

The paper will be delivered through MS TEAMS Please, contact Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel (School of History, UCC) to obtain a Teams link: j.aandewiel@ucc.ie

Paper In 1961, the seventh year of the long and bloody Algerian War of Independence, prominent nationalist Laroussi Khelifa published his Manual for the Algerian Activist. In the section dedicated to ‘revolutionary doctrine,’ pride of place was given not to Marx nor to Fanon but rather to ‘the particularly significant example of valiant little Ireland’. Khelifa was just the latest in a long line of Algerian nationalists to draw inspiration from Ireland’s revolutionary struggle. In this paper, I will explore how and why Algerian nationalists evoked the Irish precedent, asking what it tells us about the global reach of the Irish Revolution and the internal politics of Algerian nationalism. Dr Dónal Hassett is a Lecturer in the French Department in University College Cork, specialising in colonial history. He holds a doctorate in history from the European University Institute. His first book, Mobilising Memory: The Great War and the Language of Politics in Colonial Algeria, 1918-1939 appeared with Oxford University Press in 2019. He currently holds an Irish Research Council New Foundations grant for a project on Decolonising Irish Public Heritage. His research explores issues of commemoration, memory and veterancy in colonial contexts, as well as links between Ireland and Algeria.