I am a French journalist and author of several books on France's colonial past. My book Immigrants by Force, Indochinese Workers in France (Actes Sud, 2009) sheds light on a completely ignored episode in French history: in September 1939, the French government forcibly recruited 20,000 Vietnamese peasants to send them to work in the armaments factories of mainland France. Seventy years later, I traveled through Vietnam to collect the accounts of the last surviving witnesses. Other books followed on the same subject, then films, an exhibition and a comic strip. I am currently working on a major book, exhibition, film and memorial project focusing on the 'Indochinese Workers' sent to the Dordogne region between 1940 and 1948.
Algeria is my second field of research, with two main subjects: the Pieds-Noirs and the Harkis. In Neither Suitcase nor Coffin (Actes Sud, 2012), I set out in search of the 200,000 French Algerians who decided, at the time of independence, not to leave their country. In the preface, the historian Benjamin Stora points out that 'no in-depth study had until now been undertaken on the fate of the Europeans and Jews who remained in Algeria after 1962', and that 'Pierre Daum's book is a major first'. It also challenges the dominant narrative that all the Pieds-Noirs left Algeria in 1962, that they had no choice, that it was 'the suitcase or the coffin'.
After this long investigation, I returned to Algeria with an even more sensitive subject: the fate of the 'Harkis' at independence. Contrary to the idea that the Algerian auxiliaries of the French army were 'massacred' in 1962, I demonstrate in The Last Taboo, the 'Harkis' who remained in Algeria after independence (Actes Sud 2015), that the vast majority of them returned to their village without being killed.
I am also a journalist, a regular contributor to Le Monde diplomatique.
For several years, I have been speaking in middle and high schools to describe, based on my work, the complex relationships between the history written by historians and the memories of those who experienced colonization. I am also asked as a journalist to talk about my profession and its challenges (freedom of the press, fake news, objectivity, etc.).
I also speak on these subjects in various media outlets, and give numerous conferences.