Partisans, Prosthetics, and Decolonisation: War, Disability, and Yugoslav Medical Internationalism in Algeria

Abstract The article investigates the medical dimension of Yugoslav assistance to the Front de libération nationale ( fln ) during and after the Algerian War of Independence, focusing on care for wounded and disabled soldiers and veterans. The article observes Yugoslav socialist medical internationalism as having had immediate and long-term goals, stemming from the experience of the Second World War and the post-war development of disability care, and based on the understanding of the Algerian wartime and post-colonial context as similar to the situation in Yugoslavia. The similarities in the conditions, challenges, and shortages during the Algerian liberation struggle shaped medical assistance, but Yugoslavia also had a very recent experience of building military medicine and institutions of disability care. This article brings together the fields of study of war and medicine, veterans and disability care, and socialist internationalism during decolonisation.