Governing Sex, Governing War: The French Military Brothels and the Wars of Decolonization in Vietnam and Algeria (c. 1945-1962).

The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention, along with Stephen Sawyer (The Center for Critical Democracy Studies), warmly welcomes back AUP alumni Marie Robin to give a lecture on "Governing Sex, Governing War."

This lecture will focus on the French wars of decolonization in Vietnam and Algeria (c. 1946–1962). During this time, the military brothel system (Bordel Militaire de Campagne, BMC) became an important yet largely overlooked institution of colonial warfare. How and why did the French military seek to regulate sexuality as part of the management of soldiers and the effective conduct of the war? At the same time, what did the system look like au ras du sol, to borrow Giovanni Levi’s expression? The experiences and perspectives of the thousands of Moroccan, Algerian, and Vietnamese women and girls who found themselves in the BMCs, often not of their own free will, raise questions about how they lived within, navigated, and understood their position in an institution that sought to control their bodies and mobility. The BMCs also occupied a contested place within the politics of decolonization. The lecture considers how nationalist movements politicized the system, and how the dominant narratives of both colonialism and national liberation ultimately relegated the BMCs and the women within them to the margins of postwar historical memory.

Marie Robin is a historian of war and violence in the French Empire and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Her first book project examines French military brothels and sexual violence during France’s two major wars of decolonization —Vietnam and Algeria (c. 1940-1960s). Her research has been supported by the American Historical Association and the Journal of Women’s History, among others. Robin completed her Ph.D. in History at Columbia University in 2026. She received her M.A. in history at Durham University, and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in history from the American University of Paris.