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| Title: | Quelques Satisfactions d'Amour-Propre: African Elite Integration, the Loi-Cadre, and Involuntary Decolonisation in French Tropical Africa |
| Author: | Keese, Alexander |
| Year: | 2003 |
| Periodical: | Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History |
| Volume: | 27 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 33-57 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | French-speaking Africa Subsaharan Africa France |
| Subjects: | decolonization colonialism History and Exploration Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations |
| Abstract: | On 21 March 1956, the French Overseas Minister, Gaston Defferre, addressed the Assemblée Nationale, presenting a project with especially far-reaching implications. A loi-cadre was planned in order to enable a greater degree of participation by the indigenous populations in the overseas territories in sub-Saharan Africa. On the occasion of two ballots, Defferre's bill passed with a comfortable majority. The present paper argues that French overseas officials were astonishingly optimistic - even in 1955 - about the nature of the factors menacing the French presence in black Africa. They did not take seriously the possibility that nationalist movements could challenge their position. From the administrators' point of view, the sub-Saharan African territories harboured a constellation of only two constituents: notorious communist agitators docile to Moscow and educated native évolués greedy for influence who could be lured by communist slogans. So it was rather unintended by most that a surprisingly far-reaching solution was chosen, as a result of a personal configuration in the French Overseas Ministry and the disinterest of large parts of the Assemblée Nationale at the time of the vote. The consequences of the arrangement were completely unexpected from the point of view of the French officials. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
