René Pélissier was born on 24 October 1935 in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris. His family, originally from Auvergne in central France, had settled in the Paris region from the 1900s onwards, joining the large Auvergnat community that had been "migrating" en masse to the French capital since the second half of the 19th century.

Despite his modest social origins and the loss of his father at the age of 14, René Pélissier excelled in his secondary education. He then enrolled at the Sorbonne, where he graduated in English Studies. Simultaneously, he had the opportunity to attend Union College in New York during the 1955–1956 academic year, under the status of a Fulbright student. In 1955, he also made his first trip to Lisbon as an interpreter for a senior Swedish official. It was during this period—following his initial studies on the Spanish Empire—that his interest in the history of the Portuguese Empire emerged. It was, therefore, within this context that he began to conduct significant scientific research on the Portuguese colonies in Africa. From 1965 onwards, René Pélissier became an associate researcher at the prestigious Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), where he would later serve as a Directeur de recherche [Director of Research]. Thanks to an invitation from the Junta de Investigações do Ultramar [Board for Overseas Research], he was able to conduct extended visits to Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe in 1966. Subsequently, under the supervision of Henri Brunschwig—a renowned specialist in French West Africa—he began his doctoral thesis, focusing on the Portuguese campaigns of occupation and pacification in Angola, a subject never before studied at a French university.

His extensive doctoral thesis, entitled Résistance et révoltes en Angola (1845-1941) was defended at the Sorbonne in 1975 and later became the basis for his first two books, published in 1978 and 1979: Les Guerres Grises . Résistance et Révoltes en Angola (1845-1941) and La Colonie du Minotaure. Nationalismes et Révoltes en Angola (1926-1961) . The first of these won the Prix Kastner- Boursault from the Académie Française in 1978. Establishing himself as a tireless researcher of Portuguese campaigns of pacification and colonisation in the 19th and 20th centuries in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, and Timor, René Pélissier published several books in subsequent years, including Naissance du Mozambique. Résistance et Révoltes Anticoloniales (1854-1918) , Timor en Guerre. Le Crocodile et les Portugais (1847-1913) , Naissance de la Guiné . Portugais et Africains en Sénégambie (1841-1936) , and the more concise Les Campagnes Coloniales du Portugal (1841-1941) . This extensive body of work has been fully translated into Portuguese (in 1986, 1987, 1989, 2006, and 2007) and, in most cases, has been reprinted several times.

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