The French Colonial Mind, Volume 1: Mental Maps of Empire and Colonial Encounters

12 Friend or Foe? Competing Visions of Empirein French West Africa in the Run-up to Independence

275 12 Friend or Foe? Competing Visions of Empire in French West Africa in the Run-up to Independence tony chafer It is generally accepted that French decolonization in Africa south of the Sahara was, from the French point of view at least, largely successful. Unlike in Madagascar, Indochina, and Algeria, there was no war of decolonization or widespread loss of life. The transition to independence was relatively smooth and peaceful. I have argued elsewhere that this “successful decolonization” was not the product of any grand plan and that the narrative of France’s “successful decolonization” in French West Africa is essentially a post hoc construction, promoted among others by those French and African political leaders involved in the process.1 In 1994, for example, at his last Franco-African summit in Biarritz, François Mitterrand claimed that “France and its African partners succeeded in organizing a peaceful decolonisation,” and he then went on to explain: “if we have been able to overcome the obstacles, it is because we have never lacked the will.”2 It is a view that has also, implicitly if not explicitly, underpinned the approach of many analysts of French decolonization.3 In recent years a number of historians have challenged this orthodoxy. For example, Martin Thomas has usefully reminded us that “the French colonial system was broken apart by external pressure, by internal dissent among rulers and ruled, and uniquely in the French case, by the rivalries of competing colonial elites.”4 Thus, if we accept that the process of decolonization was indeed largely “successful” from the French point of view, in Administrators and the Colonial Mind after WWII 276 the sense that the transition was for the most part relatively smooth and peaceful, and if we also accept that it was not the product of some “grand plan,” this then begs the question: how did the successful transition come about? If we are not to dismiss it as simply a “happy accident,” how are we to explain it? Who were the political actors and what was the specific set of historical conditions that brought about this outcome? It is not possible to offer a comprehensive explanation of this “success ” in a short chapter such as this. I therefore focus on one specific factor which, I would like to suggest, can add an extra dimension to our understanding of the specificity of the decolonization process in French West Africa. Essentially, I argue here that the competing visions and policy agendas of different colonial elites played a significant role in both shaping the pattern of decolonization in French West Africa and laying the foundation for France’s continuing “special relationship” with Africa after independence.5 I also argue that the French Communist Party (pcf) played a significant role in strengthening the ties between France and French-educated African elites during the politically important period 1944–47. This diversity of visions and policy agendas among France’s governing elites inevitably led to a degree of policy confusion, yet I think it can be argued that this very confusion in some sense actually served French interests in the run-up to independence and may provide part of the explanation for France’s “successful decolonization” in French West Africa. However in arguing this it is important to understand that this diversity was underpinned after the Second World War by shared assumptions about the importance of retaining empire as a means of restoring French global power status after the debacle of 1940.6 Thus, even as we study the different imperial visions of competing colonial elites, we need to bear in mind that the visions—or mental maps—of those responsible for colonial policymaking were built on, and rooted in, an imperial mind-set that traversed the political spectrum from left to right and that, at least until the late 1950s, attached overriding importance to the maintenance of empire. New Policymaking Context at the End of the War The transformation of the colonial political landscape resulting from the experience of war hardly needs underlining. The French imperial Friend or Foe? 277 position had been dramatically weakened by defeat and occupation. The African empire was for part of the war divided against itself, with French Equatorial Africa declaring for De Gaulle in 1940, while French West Africa and North Africa declared for Vichy. Following the Allied landings in North Africa in late 1942, all...