The Centrifugal "Empire"
Charles de Gaulle was fully aware that decolonization was inevitable. It is all said in his Memoires de guerre:
"
If overseas territories were to cut themselves off from Metropolitan France, or if our forces were to be engaged in
those territories, what would our position be in Europe? Conversely, if those territories remained associated with us,
we would have every
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opportunity for action on the continent! The age-old destiny of France!
Yet after what had happened
on the soil of our African and Asian possessions, any attempt to maintain our Empire there as it had been would be
perilous, particularly when new nationalist movements were springing up all over the world with Russia and America
competing for their adherence. If the peoples for whom we were responsible were to remain with France tomorrow, we had
to take the initiative and transform a relation which at present was merely one of dependency for them. On condition, of
course, that we remained firm, like a nation that knows what it wants, not going back on its word, but insisting on
loyalty to the word given it as well."
De Gaulle was not only the man of "circumstances": he was also the man who had "a certain idea of France". He was a
realist, but he also had a powerful sense of national unity and sovereignty. This conflict between a dominating
temperament nourished on a history of conquest and an intelligence alert to contemporan realities was constantly to give
a tragic character to de Gaulle's treatment of the crises and convulsions that now beset the Empire from the Far East to
West Africa, not forgetting the Levant, which, for four years, was the focus of some of his worst trials and tribulations.
Of Indo-China, de Gaulle knew only two things: that by defining it as a "balcony over the Pacific", his friend Paul Reynaud
had eloquently indicated its strategic interest, and that his "hostile ally" Roosevelt seemed determined to expel the
exploiting French, who, in any case, were incapable of guaranteeing its protection. 'Military imperatives and
anti-American defiance were to help to lock in a policy which, though illuminated by that dazzling intelligence,
seemed animated only by a concern to restore to the French nation an inheritance that was all the more precious in
that it was far away and symbolized the world-Ride character of the collection of lands and peoples grouped under the
tricolour flag.
On entering the Rue Saint-Dominique in 1944, de Gaulle already had an lndo-Chinese past. By the time of the appeal of
June 1940, he had in a sense put Indo-China in brackets as he suggests in the Memoires tie guerre: "To me, sailing a
very small boat on the ocean of war, Indo-China then seemed to me like a big disabled ship that I could not help until
at last I had gathered together all the means of rescue. Seeing it disappear in the mist, I swore to myself to bring it
back one day."
The "means of rescue" soon appeared. They were men. At Chungking, where Chiang Kai-shek had moved his government,
while continuing to fight the Japanese, a small Free French mission had been set up, consisting of Dr Bechamp and
the explorer Guibaut, who was soon to be relieved by Professor Escarra; at Calcutta, the French Governor kept up contact
with the British authorities. A rubber manufacturer, Francois de Langlade, had made contact with two planters from
Malaysia, Mario Bogret and William Baze, hostile to the Vichy government. In Chinese Yunnan, two information officers,
Major Tuttenges and Captain Milon, set up one of the best networks in the region, while the diplomatic counsellor
of the pro-Vichy Governor-General Decoux, Claude de Boisanger, sent an emissary called Franqois to de Gaulle. Thus,
little by little, the foundations were laid for a concerted effort.
From summer 1943, then, de Gaulle was able to draw up an Indo-Chinese strategy. The principles of this strategy were
expressed in a declaration to the peoples of Indo-China, delivered in Algiers on 8 December 1943, which, while
reaffirming the principle of French sovereignty in the peninsula, opened up prospects of collective development, in
the form of a "tree and close association between France and the Indo-Chinese peoples".
The military means were beginning to be brought together in India, under the direction of General Blaizot, head of
the "expeditionary corps", whose task it now was to bring Indo-China back to the Free French side. Then, in August 1944,
de Gaulle sent a close confidant to Indo-China, Francois de Langlade, whose mission was to contact Admiral Decoux,
the High Commissioner appointed by Petain. But, when the Free French envoy proposed that Indo-China should be brought
over to the side of the Allies, Decoux replied that if Indo-China were to be brought back into the French orbit
it would be better employed improving their relations with Japan, which had no hostile intentions and hoped in the long
term to use the French to negotiate with the Americans and British.
By trying to come to an agreement with Decoux, the General was in fact breaking with what had seemed to be an article
of faith with him: the men of Vichy were all the same, they would pay any price to keep their jobs. For once, he tried
to compromise and failed pitifully.
On 9 March 1945, in the late afternoon, an event occurred that de Gaulle had foreseen, but which nevertheless
upset his military and political plans: the Japanese took over all forms of power in the Indo-Chinese peninsula,
interning French civil servants and soldiers and massacring all those who tried to resist. The French presence in
Indo-China being thus reduced to nothing, the Japanese set up in the various capitals (Hue, Phnom Penh, Luang Prabang)
governments declared to be "independent" and which were, in fact, more so than has often been said.
Extract from “DE GAULLE The Ruler: 1945-1970”, Written by Jean Lacouture. Hartnolls Limited, Bodmin, Cornwall. Great Britain, 1991.
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