Algeria, French Empire, and Postwar Europe’s Integration

Mere months after Algeria won its independence from France in 1962, a French official argued that it was “juridically possible not to consider Algeria” a third-party state in relation to integrated European institutions. This talk examines how and why Algeria, both before and after its independence, could be understood as a part of Europe, or at the least, not not a part of Europe. The surprising history of integrated Europe’s long reach into Algeria, which begins with French demands at a negotiating table in Brussels and echoes in EU migration policies today, invites a rethinking of Europe’s postwar borders and a challenge to received wisdom about who may freely cross them.

Join the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and hear from the winner of the 2025 Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies, Megan Brown. Megan Brown is associate professor of history at Swarthmore College and author of the prize-winning book The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022).

During this evening event, Professor Brown will deliver a public lecture and receive the Laura Shannon Prize. One of the preeminent prizes in European studies, and carrying an award of $10,000, the Laura Shannon Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best book in European studies that transcends a focus on any one country, state, or people to stimulate new ways of thinking about contemporary Europe as a whole.

Join us on Thursday, November 20, 2025, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET.

Speaker:
Megan Brown, associate professor of history, Swarthmore College.

Megan Brown is a historian of Modern Europe with a focus on twentieth-century France, European integration, empire, and scandal. Her teaching and research interests include post-World War II politics, decolonization, and questions of citizenship. Her book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), interrogates the role of empire in the formation of integrated post-1945 European institutions (European Coal and Steel Community; European Economic Community; and more). It examines how and why current notions of “Europe” and European identity emerged and what other possible forms of integration were debated and planned following World War II, particularly as France’s empire began to shrink.

She is currently researching the Ballets Roses affair, a scandal that gripped late-1950s Paris. Those implicated in the scandal included a high-ranking politician, a suspected collaborator, and multiple police officers. As part of this project, Professor Brown is examining the wider landscape of postwar France, including shifting understandings of morals, unresolved conflicts from the war years, and political intrigue that marked the transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Republics.

Professor Brown received her PhD in History from the Graduate Center, CUNY. At Swarthmore, she teaches surveys of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and a variety of courses on topics including postwar Western Europe, French-Algerian relations, nationalism, and internationalism. Professor Brown is a former Fulbright Scholar to France and her writing has been published in Modern & Contemporary France and French Politics, Culture & Society.

For more information visit the event website.