Most of the overseas territories colonized by France during the 19th and 20th c. [see colonization] gained their independence between 1945 and 1962. A similar process of decolonization occurred at about the same time in the overseas empires of the other European powers. It resulted from a combination of developments both within the colonies and in the wider international environment. During the early decades of the 20th c. Western-educated native élites became increasingly articulate in their political demands. World War II weakened the colonial powers, and persuaded many that it was time to divest themselves of their overseas possessions.
While decolonization was in this sense part of a general historical trend, it proved in many ways a more difficult experience for France than for other colonial powers such as Great Britain. Because of the humiliation suffered by France during the German Occupation of 1940-4, leading politicians generally resisted decolonization, seeing in the overseas empire a means of reasserting the country's status as a great power. Writers and intellectuals were also slow to embrace the trend towards decolonization. While many, such as the liberal and leftist Christians grouped around the review Esprit, criticized the excesses of colonialism, few wished to see the end of empire as such. Contributors to Sartre's Les Temps modernes were relatively isolated in calling for the outright independence of colonial territories. Although independence was eventually granted to most sub-Saharan colonies with relatively little bloodshed, the French relinquished Indo-China and Algeria only after long and bitter wars.
The conferring of independence was not in the logic of French colonial traditions. The instincts of most policy-makers were heavily conditioned by the concept of assimilation, which, far from preparing for separation, envisaged an ever-closer affiliation between France and her overseas possessions. Assimilation, which promised the wholesale diffusion of French civilization, was initially accepted as an ideal by many among the French-educated élites which gradually emerged from among the native peoples overseas. There was impatience, however, over the flagrant inequalities which persisted between colonizers and colonized, and this would later turn to distrust over the sincerity of French promises. The denigration of native cultures implicit in the idea of assimilation was also challenged by increasing numbers of non-Europeans, giving rise to the négritude movement among black African and Caribbean intellectuals during the 1930s. The anti-colonial aspects of Marxist ideology influenced those who, like the Vietnamese nationalist Nguyen Ai Quoc (later known as Ho Chi-Minh), visited the Soviet Union between the wars.
The success of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 had established for the first time a significant power prepared to back anti-colonial struggles. Though initially weak and compelled to moderate its stance when threatened by the rise of fascism, the Soviet Union helped to render the international climate less conducive to colonialism, as did the anti-colonial rhetoric voiced by leading American politicians. World War II greatly accelerated the forces leading towards decolonization. Defeated and occupied by Nazi Germany, France was shown to be far more vulnerable than many in the colonies had previously thought. The dwarfing of the European powers by the victorious American and Soviet allies placed further international constraints on the colonial system.
In 1936 Syria and Lebanon, over which France had gained control in 1920 under a League of Nations mandate already conditioned by American misgivings over colonialism, were promised independence within three years. Although this was delayed, initially by internal disturbances and later by the course of the war, in 1945 the two countries became the first to gain their independence from France. Yet
During the war French authority in Indo-China, which had remained loyal to the collaborationist Vichy government, had been weakened by Japanese expansionism. In 1945 the nationalist Viet-Minh, led by Ho Chi-Minh, seized control of Vietnam and declared the country independent. De Gaulle refused to recognize these claims. When he left office the following year the seeds were sown for the Indo-China War (1946-54), during which France unsuccessfully attempted to reimpose her authority by military means.
Conscious of the growing criticisms aroused by the colonial system, in 1946 the constitution-makers of the Fourth Republic renamed the empire the Union Française. Three main groups of territories were distinguished. Long-established colonies such as Martinique and Reunion, together with Algeria, were declared to be départements d'outre-mer (DOM). In sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar, the colonies were officially termed territoires d'outre-mer (TOM). Protectorates such as those in Indo-China, Morocco, and Tunisia were called états associés. These changes did little to stem the tide of pro-independence movements. In 1946 black Africans campaigning for independence set up the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain under the leadership of Félix Houphouët-Biogny. An insurrection in Madagascar was crushed in 1947, but in Indo-China, despite a huge military effort, the French were forced to concede independence after being defeated at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954.
The eight-year-long Algerian War, which began in November 1954, brought France to the brink of political collapse and finally persuaded a significant part of the intelligentsia that the colonial system could no longer be justified. By weakening France, the conflict in Algeria also hastened the pace of decolonization elsewhere. Morocco and Tunisia became independent in 1956, and under a loi-cadre introduced the same year a measure of autonomy was granted to sub-Saharan Africa, where Houphouët-Boigny and other black African leaders such as Senghor had adopted a relatively moderate stance. Under the new constitution established by de Gaulle on his return to power in 1958, the Union Française was replaced by La Communauté, a much looser form of association under which most of the remaining overseas territories were given the right to independence at a later stage. Guinea alone voted to reject this arrangement, preferring instead to become independent immediately. Only two years later all the other sub-Saharan territories, together with Madagascar, opted for complete independence. From the former federations of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, II new states were thus created in 1960: Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Upper Volta (subsequently Burkina Faso), Niger, Ivory Coast, Dahomey (subsequently Benin), Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, and Chad. Cameroon and Togo, sub-Saharan territories mandated to France by the League of Nations after World War I, also became independent at this time. With Algerian independence in 1962 French decolonization was virtually complete, except for a few small territories scattered around the globe [see Dom-Tom].
Under a policy known as coopération, France instituted economic and cultural aid programmes with most of the ex-colonial territories. She also concluded defence agreements with the majority of newly independent states in sub-Saharan Africa. Tiers-mondistes, i.e. supporters of Third World countries, have criticized these arrangements on the grounds that they smack of neo-colonialism. Culturally, the most significant legacy of colonization and its aftermath is la francophonie. The continuing use of the French language by political and cultural élites in ex-colonial territories has been the seedbed from which a rapidly expanding body of literature in French has emerged outside France during the second half of the 20th c. .
— Alec Hargreaves
Bibliography
- X. Yacono, Les Étapes de la décolonisation française (1971)
- P. C. Sorum, Intellectuals and Decolonization in France (1977)
- A. Ruscio, La Décolonisation tragique: une histoire de la décolonisation française, 1945-1962 (1987)
