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The French Colonial Service and the Issues of Reform, 1944–8

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

James I. Lewis
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The problems of decolonisation in post-Second World War France have attracted renewed attention in recent years. A new generation of historians and political scientists has focused on why it was so difficult for the country's political and intellectual élites to accept the end of empire. This attention to the subjectivity of policy and opinion-makers has added a novel dimension to understanding how and why the end of the colonial era occurred with such difficulty and bloodshed for the French. This new orientation has largely displaced the old ‘Gaullist’ explanation for the failing of France's post-war regime, the Fourth Republic, in colonial policy. The older notion, articulated by General Charles de Gaulle himself during his twelve-year exile from political power between 1946 and 1958, blamed the unstable parliamentary coalitions and governing political parties of the era for the series of crises and disasters in colonial policy faced by a deeply fractured legislative regime. The rapid rise and fall of governments, the turnover of ministers, the constant governmental disputes on a range of questions, it was alleged, was the cause of inconsistent and weak policies incapable of meeting the succession of crises. The newer research, however, has demonstrated that the institutional problems of the Fourth Republic were not the key issue and that the essential problem lay with an inability of élites to recognise, accept and adapt to decolonisation worldwide. It has been shown that, far from having inconsistent or weak policies, the governing cadres of the Fourth Republic shared fundamentally similar concepts and goals in their determination to maintain the integrity of the French Empire. Yet this same historiography has focused on the political parties, pressure groups and shifting political landscape of French colonial policy while largely overlooking an important, though less obvious, player.

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Articles
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Contemporary European History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , July 1995 , pp. 153 - 188
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Among them are Sorum, Paul Clay, Intellectuals and Decolonization in France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977);Google ScholarSmith, Tony, The French Stake in Algeria, 1945–1962 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978);Google ScholarKahler, Miles, Decolonization in Britain and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, to name but a few.

2 An archetypal example of this is Andrews, William G., French Politics and Algeria, 1945–1962 (New York: Meredith Press, 1962).Google Scholar

3 Persell, Stuart Michael, The French Colonial Lobby, 1889–1938 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1983).Google Scholar

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7 von Albertini, Rudolf, Decolonization: The Administration and Future of the Colonies, 1919–1960 (thereafter Albertini, Decolonization), transl. Gravie, Francisca (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1971), 364.Google Scholar

8 The core of the French Empire in this period was the colonial territories of black Africa. These included Dahomey, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Sudan, Niger, Senegal and Upper Volta, grouped together as the federation of French West Africa (founded 1904) with its capital at Dakar, Senegal. French Equatorial Africa (founded 1910) was centred in Brazzaville and grouped the territories of Chad, the French Congo, Gabon and Oubangui-Chari. The League of Nations mandates of Togo and the Cameroons also formed part of this system. Each federation was presided over by a governor-general with overall authority over the individual territorial governors and responsible directly to Paris.

9 Archives Nationale/Section d'Outre-mer. Affaires Politiques, Carton 1070, Université d'Aixen-Provence (thereafter AN/SOM AP C), telegram from Governor H. Carras, Doula, to the Commissioner of the Colonies, Algiers, 26 June 1944Google Scholar. This exchange was part of an early discussion within the ministry on how to incorporate native colonial representatives in French institutions. One idea, which was eventually abandoned, was for partial elections for overseas representatives to the Provisional Consultative Assembly then sitting in Algiers. Debate on this proposition was the context in which Carras and others elaborated their opinions about political rights for colonial subjects.

10 Ibid., telegram from Governor-general Bayardelle, Brazzaville, to the Commissioner of the Colonies, Algiers, 2 Aug. 1944.

11 ibid., Provisional Government of the French Republic. Permanent Commission of the Council of State. Ordinance fixing the representation to the Constituent National Assembly of the overseas territories. Text approved by the council, 17 Aug. 1945.

12 AN/SOM, AP C215, Arrêt du 26 mars 1945 créant une commission d'étude de la représentation d'Outre-mer à l'assemblée constituante; ibid., Rapport de la Commission de l'étude de la représentation des territoires d'Outre-mer à la future assemblée constituante, 5 juillet 1945.

13 Senghor of Senegal soon became deputy from that territory and a member of the Socialist Party. Apithy became an independent deputy from Guinea allied with the Socialists in the French parliament. Lozeray was a Communist deputy from Paris, a member of the party's central committee and its principal spokesman on colonial affairs. Ralaimihoatra was a historian who, years, later, wrote a study of the Malagasy Insurrection of 1947. Professor Nguyen Quoc Dinh of the University of Paris Law Faculty, Nguyen Huu Khuong, a chemical engineer and Phan Nhuan of the Ecole Polytechnique, eventually produced a Minority Report criticising the commissions's recommendations for the representation of Indochina in a constitutional or legislative chamber as woefully inadequate to the region's population, importance and history.

14 AN/SOM, AP C215, Commission de l'étude de la représentation des territoires d'outre-mer à l'Assemblée Constituante, numéro 25 (undated). The document is a summary of the commission's proceedings and conclusions between 3 May and 8 June 1945.

15 Among those antinomies were a dramatic devolution of authority from Paris to the colonies that would have amounted to a form of home-rule even while these colonies continued to be represented in the French parliament; the Law of 9 May 1946 which extended French nationality to colonial subjects while stipulating that the exercise of political rights is afforded would be governed by exceptional laws; little specificity on exactly what institutions would unify the union and many more.

16 AN/SOM, AP C216, Dossier 1, Note: Organization des assemblées locales, 12 juin 1946. The entire colonial regime created by the first Constituent Assembly was linked to the election system defined in its constitutional project. The colonial administration concluded that when that project was rejected by the French electorate, all the legislation as well as the constitutional articles defining the French Union was suspended and had to be re-established by the second Constituent Assembly.

17 The defeated constitutional projects' stipulations on the French Union are generally referred to as the Constitution Senghor after the Senegalese deputy who was charged with reporting them to the National Assembly. I am using the term rather broadly to include the legislative acts that were to implement those constitutional articles.

18 AN/SOM, AP C212. Circular 533, Marius Moutet to Tananarive, Dakar, Brazzaville, Djibouti, 25 May 1946. AN/SOM, AP C216, Dossier 1, Note: Organization des assemblées locales. This document is undated but clearly was produced after 5 May and before 16 July.

19 AN/SOM, AP C486, Dossier 2, Telegram from Governor Digo, Dakar, to Minister Marius Moutet, Paris, 6 May 1946. Article 7 of the Constitutional Law of 2 Nov. 1945 stipulated that in the event of the rejection of the constitutional project by the voters, a new constitutional assembly would be elected according to the same specifications as the original one within six weeks.Google Scholar This made illegal any amendment to the government's decree of August 1945 organising overseas elections.

20 Ibid., telegram from Governor Delavignette, Doula, to Marius Moutet, Paris, 7 May 1946.

21 AN/SOM, AP C216, Dossier 1, Conclusion d'ordre politique de la Conference des Hauts-Commissionaires. This particular copy of the report is not dated. The conference, however, opened on 16 July 1946.

22 No significant disputes on colonial policy or the Constitution Senghor as such emerged during the first Constituent National Assembly between the Socialists, Communists or Popular Republicans in the assembly itself or between ministers in the government. The one apparent exception was an initiative by the MRP in February 1946 to invest an envisaged advisory Council of the French Union with substantial legislative power as a second house of parliament. The MRP submitted four propositions to the Constituent Assembly's Constitution Commission that would have allowed this chamber elected from the whole union to participate in the election of the president of the Republic and amend and delay legislation. The Council of the French Union would thus have played the same role as the Senate under the Third Republic as a check on the power of the lower house of parliament. The MRP was then leading the effort to block a unicameral, legislative regime modelled on the revolutionary Convention of the First Republic that was then being prepared by the Communist and Socialist parties. Fear of Communist Party hegemony in such a system animated this dispute in which the institutions of the French Union were merely pawns in a purely metropolitan political struggle. The proposals were turned back by the SFIO and PCF, who together controlled slightly more than fifty per cent of the votes in the assembly and on its various commissions. The Popular Republicans’; amendments and the responses to them can be found in the Journal Officiel de la République Française (thereafter Journal Officiel), Assemblée Nationale Constituante-I, Commission de la constitution, 10 Feb. 1946, 686–8.

23 Ibid., 2–3. For a discussion of the situation on Madagascar at the time and de Coppet's attempt to contain it, see Ralaimihoatra, Edouard, Histoire de Madagascar, 2nd ed. (Tananarive: Hachette Madagascar, 1969)Google Scholar, and Tronchon, Jacques, L'Insurrection malgache de 1947: essai d'interprétation historique (Paris: François Maspero, 1974).Google Scholar

24 AN/SOM, AP C486, Dossier 3, Governement-Général de l'A.O.F. Rapport sur le reféréndum et les élections (5 mai-2 juin 1946) en A.O.F., 6 août 1946.

25 Conclusion d'ordre politique de la Conference des Hauts-Commissionaires, 5.

26 AN/SOM, AP C1009, Dossier 2, Ministère de la France d'outre-mer. Direction des affaires politiques. Note pour le Ministre, 21 juillet 1947.

27 Laurentie, Henri, ‘Notes sur une philosophie de la politique coloniale française’, Renaissances: Revue de la Pensée Politique Française, special no., 2nd ed. (10 1944), 9–15.Google Scholar

28 Cohen, William B., Rulers of Empire: the French Colonial Service in Africa (thereafter Cohen, Rulers of Empire) (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1971), 159.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 158–60. Cohen points out that Boisson did use his new powers over the administrative corps to dismiss 140 individuals with long-standing records of incompetence or abuse of power over the native population, individuals whose positions had been protected by political connections in Paris or the Third Republic's strong civil service protection laws despite their unfitness. Cohen also reports that the exactions of the colonial regime in AOF under Vichy were intensified. Yet this, too, was a question of degree rather than a fundamental change in policy or ideology.

30 Ibid., 161–2.

31 Albertini, , Decolonization, 269–72.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 149.

33 AN/SOM, AP C216, Dossiers 1, Note: organization des assemblées locales, 12 juin 1946.

34 Cohen, Rulers of Empire, 148–9.

35 AN/SOM, AP C1009, Dossier 2, Ministère de la France d'outre-mer. Direction du contrôle, de la compatibilité et du contentieux. Note pour la Direction des affaires politiques, 12 mai 1947.

36 Ageron, Charles-Robert, Politiques coloniales au maghreb (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972), 166–9.Google Scholar

37 Albertini, Decolonization, 323.

38 AN/SOM, AP C486, Dossier 3, telegram from Moutet to Dakar, Doula, Brazzaville, Basse Terre, Fort de France, Cayenne, St Denis, Djibouti, Pondichery, Nouma, Lomé, St Pierre, 8 May 1946. Ibid., telegram from Moutet to the above-mentioned territories, 18 may 1946.

39 AN/SOM, AP C216, Dossiers 1, Note: Organization des assemblées locales, 12 juin 1946.

40 AN/SOM, AP C216, Dossier 2, Ministère de la France d'Outre-mer. Direction des Affaires Politiques. Note pour le Conseil des ministres, 23 août 1946. Assemblée Nationale Constituante-II, Commission de la constitution, 11 sept. 1946, 463–505. Moutet's testimony of 11 Sept. repeats word for word much of Laurentie's memorandum of 23 Aug. The governor also warned of dire consequences if the government did not intervene immediately on the issue of the French Union. As will be shown, these warnings were coming from various divisions of the colonial ministry, not just from the Political Affairs section.

41 AN/SOM, AP C216, Dossier 2, Comité Interministériel pour le statut de l'Union française.Google Scholar Note résumant les conclusions auxquelles à abouté le comité dans sa séance du 22 juillet 1946.

42 Ibid., Ministère de la France d'Outre-mer. Le Jurisconsulte. Note pour le Ministre, no. 129, 20 juillet 1946.

43 Ibid., Dossier 4, Rapport du Groupe d'études du Statut de l'Union française à M. le Ministre du Groupe d'études de politique etrangère. This particular copy of the Study Group's final report is not dated. It refers to the fact that the Constitution Senghor was invalidated, placing the report after 5 May 1946. The Inter-ministerial Commission the Group advocated in this document was formed by government decree on 18 July 1946. This indicates that the most important period of the panel's work fell within this two-and-a-half month period. In asserting that no leftist representatives were a part of the body, I am referring to the exclusion of Socialist and Communist party representatives.

44 Ibid., 5–8.

45 The Constitution Commission of the second Constituent National Assembly was completely deadlocked by late Aug. 1946 on the status of the French Union (Article VIII of the constitutional project). Deputies from the Communist, Socialist and Algerian nationalist parties on the commission insisted on a liberal Title VIII that would have devolved considerable power from Paris to the colonies and recognised a right to self-determination. The MRP and the parties of the Centre and Right rejected these principles and advocated strong metropolitan control over the affairs of the union. Each faction held 21 of the 42 seats on the commission and voted as a highly disciplined block on colonial issues. Paralysis on virtually all aspects of Title VIII was the result. The issue was addressed by the Bidault Government during the course of four Cabinet meetings on Title VIII and related issues in early Sept. 1946. Bidault and the MRP, generally supported by Marius Moutet and Under-secretary of State Alexander Varenne, insisted that the government as a whole accept the elaboration of an ‘official’ position on the French Union and that the recommendations of the Varenne Commission be that position (see the MRP daily L'Aube, 4 Sept. 1946, 1, 4). Immediately after this development, the MRP publicly announced that it would oppose any substantial modification of the Varenne Commission's stipulations for the French Union. The Constitution Commission itself, meanwhile, had failed to resolve the disputes on colonial issues during the course of special negotiations undertaken by the majority's parties between 4 and 9 Sept. at the request of National Assembly President Vincent Auriol (see the Journal Officiel, Assemblée Nationale Constituante-II, 3 Sept. 1946, 409–24). It was only then, on 11 Sept., that Moutet and Varenne appeared before the commission to insist that it embrace the Varenne Commission's programme as its own and to announce that the government as a whole had in fact done so. This unexpected announcement provoked open hostility and resistance from overseas and Communist deputies in particular, but the commission did act on the government's demand. The Title VIII that was reported to the full assembly on 18 Sept. was an amended version of the Varenne proposals (see Ibid., 11 Sept. 1946, 477–88). Yet this still proved objectionable to Bidault and his supporters. The premier demanded that Title VIII be sent back to the commission once again and be accepted by it without amendment. Continued resistance to this in the course of the evening and on 19 Sept. provoked him to make the issue a matter of confidence and threaten resignation and new elections if he did not get his way. Only then did the whole plan devised by the Interministerial Commission on the French Union become Title VIII of the constitutional project (see Le Monde, 21 Sept. 1946, 3, 4; Ibid., 22/23 Sept. 1946, 1, 4; Ibid., 24 Sept. 1946, 3). Bidault eventually agreed to drop the requirement that the dual electoral college be included in Title VIII, but this was his only concession.

46 Marshall, D. Bruce, The French Colonial Myth and Constitution-making in the Fourth Republic (thereafter Marshall, French Colonial Myth) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

47 Lascaux, Fabien, La S.F.I.O. et la décolonisation française de 1945 à 1951, 2 vols (University de Maine, France, Doctorat d'état, 1986).Google Scholar

48 Ibid., i. 63–5; 131–7.

49 Ibid., i. 145–6.

50 This is not to say that the MRP had no ideas about colonial policy at all. Marshall's discussion of pre-Second World War colonial ideologies in French Colonial Myth, 47–9, identifies many concepts and principles that have clear parallels in later Popular Republican policy, a fact suggesting that the MRP drew upon long-established notions about the empire in devising its own policy towards the French Union.

51 The MRP's preoccupation with containing the influence of the Communist Party and how this shaped its policy on the French Union in the first constituent is discussed in Le Monde, 4 April 1946, 1; Ibid., 5 April 1946, 8.

52 Jean Teitgen, ‘Decidé à creér l'Union française, le MRP s'opposera à tout amendment qui tendrait à dénaturer le projet du statut proposé solidairement par tous les membres du gouvernement,’ L'Aube, 14 Sept. 1946.

53 The Political Autobiography of Georges Bidault, transl Sinclair, Marianne (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965), 120.Google Scholar

54 Werth, Alexander, France, 1940–1944, (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1956).Google Scholar See in particular Werth's assessment of the Resistance groups and his chapters on Morocco and Indochina.

55 Aujoulat, Louis-Paul, ‘Les grands principes d'une nouvelle politique coloniale’, 2ème Congrès du MRP, compte-rendu, Paris, 13–16 sept. 1945, 1047–1203.Google Scholar Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, documentation sur les partis politiques français. 27 rue St.-Guillaume, Paris 7.

56 See for examples Craipeau, Yvan, La Libération confisquée, 1944–1947 (Paris: Editions Savelli/Editions Syros, 1978)Google Scholar; Montassier, Valerie-Ann, Les Années d'après-guerre, 1944–1949 (Paris: Fayard, 1980)Google Scholar; Adereth, M., The French Communist Party: A Critical History (1920–1980) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Rice-Maximin, Edward, Accommodation and Resistance: The French Left, Indochina and the Cold War (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1986).Google Scholar

57 AN/SOM, AP C998, Note pour le conseil des ministres (undated).

58 AN/SOM, AP C2170, Le Ministre de la France d'outre-mer à M. le Vice-President du conseil d'état. Projets de décrets portant création d'assemblée locale dite assemblées générales en Afrique Occidental Française et Afrique Equatorial Française, 12 déc. 1946.

59 AN/SOM, AP C998, Le Ministre de la France d'outre-mer à M. le Vice-President du Conseil d'état, 30 jan. 1947.Google Scholar

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid., Conseil d'état, Section de finances, extrait du registre des délibérations, 6 fév. 1947.

62 Ibid., Ministre de la France d'outre-mer, Section des affaires politiques. Rapport au President du conseil des ministres (undated).

63 In French political terminology of the era, the Radical Party and UDSR were Centrist while the Peasants’ Group was conservative. The Radicals’ role in the opposition to liberal and devolutionary colonial reforms after the Second World War is well documented. The UDSR was affiliated with the Radical Party in the National Assembly during the First Legislature. The Peasants’ Group was a small conservative party based in the Massif Central. It returned only a half-dozen deputies in Nov. 1946, but its affiliation with the MRP gained it a share of power and a seat in Ramadier's Cabinet. See Part II of Williams's, Philip M.Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic, 3rd ed. (Hamden, CN: Archon Books, 1964)Google Scholar, for a detailed description of French political parties in this period.

64 Political parties opposed to devolution and radical democratisation of the colonial regime in the second Constituent Assembly formed an informal coalition led by the MRP. These parties generally voted together on colonial issues on the Constitution Commission, the Overseas Territories Commission and in the assembly itself. This fact was not overlooked by the Ministry of Overseas France. It produced an analysis of the colonial articles of the constitutional projects of the MRP, the Radicals and the UDSR during the second constituent which pointed out the similarities between the three. This analysis also emphasised that the propositions of the MRP were most like the recommendations of the ministry itself. AN/SOM, AP C216, Dossier 4, Comparaison des trois projets de constitution de l'Union française Radical-Socialiste, UDR, MRP.

65 While vice-premier, Thorez favoured expanding the pool of potential candidates to the Grand Councils by making unsuccessful candidates for local assemblies eligible for the regional bodies. The Communist leader argued that this would allow Africans to select some Europeans as representatives to the federal councils, facilitating co-operation between the two communities and maximising the chances of European representation without recourse to the dual college. He emphasised, however, that this support was contingent on a system of proportional representation by lists in one turn. AN/SOM, AP C2170. République Française, Vice-President du Conseil. M. Maurice Thorez à M. Le Ministre de la France d'Outre-mer, 27 fév. 1947.

Although the Communists were out of government in Aug. 1947, two factors gave them continued influence on legislation. They were still behaving as a ‘governmental’ party and acting as a ‘constructive’ opposition. This gave them influence on parliamentary commissions and was the source of considerable pressure on Ramadier from within the SFIO to reach a compromise with them. The marginalisation resulting from the hyper-revolutionary line imposed by the Cominform did not occur until Oct. Secondly, the Communist proposals for the voting system for Grand Councils amounted to a small concession to more liberal proposals and did not challenge the Colonial Ministry's scheme for essentially advisory bodies under the governors-general's control.

66 AN/SOM, AP C1009, Note pour le ministre, 29 juillet 1947. Rapport de M. Lamine-Guèye au nom de la Commission des territoires d'outre-mer sur les projets et proposition de loi relatifs aux Grands Conseils de l'AOF et l'AEF, 7–8.

67 This and the other legislative projects discussed here are in the Documents Parlementaires collection of the Journal Officiel. They are respectively 47–623 (Communist Party); 47–952 (SFIO); 47–1308 (MRP); 47–1424/1425 (government project) and 47–1882 (Radical/UDSR).

68 AN/SOM, AP C985. telegram, Yacine Diallo, Conakry to Marius Moutet, Paris, 19 Nov. 1946; telegram, Marius Moutet, Paris to Yacine Diallo, Conakry, 21 Nov. 1946; telegram, Marius Moutet, Paris, to Governor-general Barthes, Dakar, 22 Nov. 1946; telegram, Yacine Diallo, Conakry to Marius Moutet, Paris, 22 Nov. 1946.

69 AN/SOM, AP C1009, Dossier 2, Note pour le ministre. Objet: assemblées locales dans les territoires d'outre-mer, 3 mai 1947.

70 Journal Officiel. Annexe au procès-verbal, Rapport 2245 par M. Houphouet-Boïgny au nom de la Commission des territoires d'Outre-mer, 5 août 1947. The fact that Houphouet-Boïgny was selected reporter for this legislation despite the fact that he was allied with a group that was now the largest opposition party demonstrates the political situation discussed in n. 65.

71 Deschamps, Herbert, Union française: histoire, institutions, réalités (Paris: Editions Berger-Legrault, 1952), 123–4.Google Scholar

72 AN/SOM, AP C1009, Dossier 1. Ministère de la France d'outre-mer. Direction des affaires politiques, section d'études. Note pour le Ministre. Objet: Avis de l'Assemblée de l'Union française sur les projets de loi instituant des assemblées locales représentatives territoires, 25 nov. 1948.

73 Ibid.

74 Borella, François, L'Evolution politique et juridique de l'Union française depuis 1946 (Paris: Librairie Générale de droit et jurisprudence, 1958), 186–8.Google Scholar