Matthew Connelly

PRIZES

George Louis Beer Book Prize for European international history since 1895, American Historical Association, 2003

Paul Birdsall Book Prize for European military and strategic history since 1870, American Historical Association, 2003

Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, 2003

Edgar S. Furniss Book Award in National and International Security, The Mershon Center, Ohio State University, 2004

Akira Irye International Book Award, Foundation for Pacific Quest, 2004

REVIEWS

"Matthew Connelly's examination of the Algerian war for independence is a work of remarkably wide-ranging scholarship. Through an examination of the Algerians' use of great power rivalries, international media, changing standards of human rights, new concepts of national sovereignty, and the application of the different sensibilities of international relations history, social science methodology, and cultural criticism to traditional multi-archival research on three continents, this study may well serve as a model for future studies in international history."
— Prize Committee,
George Louis Beer Prize

"This outstanding study, based on an impressive array of international sources, shows that the Algerian war of independence was far more than a colonial war, but a new kind of struggle, one waged on a global battlefield using communications and media, the institutions of the United Nations, an emerging international discourse about human rights, all tied together by an effective diplomatic strategy that exploited fractures in the Cold War order."
— Prize Committee, Paul Birdsall Prize

"An ambitious book that succeeds admirably in its argument.... In scope, and persuasiveness, A Diplomatic Revolution is unlikely to be surpassed as the best book about the Algerian revolution for many years to come."
— Prosser Gifford, Journal of Cold War Studies

"Connelly's book is not a comprehensive history of the Algerian war, but a meticulous reconstruction of the global environment in which it occurred. By recasting the Algerian revolution as a contest between competing 'transnational systems' he has shined a welcome new light on a struggle that has long been treated, for practical purposes, as an episode in the history of France and its empire, without sufficient reference to the rest of the world, whose interests were most decidedly in play."
—Daniel Moran, Strategic Insights

"A brilliant volume of analysis, careful research, elegant writing, and the sensitive inclusion of multiple source materials ranging from demographic statistics to propaganda films."
—Frederick Quinn, International Journal of African Historical Studies

"Thoroughly researched and gracefully written. Connelly has given us an impressive and important study, one that crosses the boundaries of both geography and discipline and which provides new insights about questions of significance not only for the Algerian war but also for politics and diplomacy during the Cold War more generally."
— Mark Tessler, Comparative Studies in Society and History

"A. J.P. Taylor observed that historians 'talk so much about profound forces in order to avoid doing the detailed work.' Connelly is not one of them. His multiarchival research is impressive, especially his pioneering work in the recently available Algerian records. Above all, he has taken an innovative analytical approach, an engaging alternative to traditional diplomatic historiography."
— Phillip Naylor, The International History Review

A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence
and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era

Oxford University Press, 2002
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Algeria sits at the crossroads of the Atlantic, European, Arab, and African worlds. Yet, unlike the wars in Korea and Vietnam, Algeria’s fight for independence has rarely been viewed as an international conflict. Even forty years later, it is remembered as the scene of a national drama that culminated with Charles de Gaulle’s decision to “grant” Algerians their independence despite assassination attempts, mutinies, and settler insurrection.

Yet the war the Algerians fought occupied a world stage, one in which the U.S. and the USSR, Israel and Egypt, Great Britain, Germany, and China all played key roles. Recognizing the futility of confronting France in a purely military struggle, the Front de Liberation Nationale instead sought to exploit the Cold War competition and regional rivalries, the spread of mass communications and emigrant communities, and the proliferation of international and non-governmental organizations. By harnessing the forces of nascent globalization they divided France internally and isolated it from the world community. And, by winning rights and recognition as Algeria's legitimate rulers without actually liberating the national territory, they rewrote the rules of international relations.

Based on research spanning three continents and including, for the first time, the rebels' own archives, this study offers a landmark reevaluation of one of the great anti-colonial struggles as well as a model of the new international history.

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