Decolonization of the French Empire

Decolonization of the French Empire

When France was conquered by the Germans in 1940, it had a profound effect on France's global empire. French colonies were split between the Vichy government, based in France, and the Free French under the leadership of Charles DeGaulle. When the war was won and Europe liberated by the Allies, French colonies, like many others around the globe, sought to be free of their European overlords. France, however, wanted to re-establish its power over its colonial empire; leading to a number of violent conflicts. Unlike the British, who's decolonization process was somewhat orderly, the French fought tooth and nail to retain their overseas colonies. But after military an intervention in Indochina ended in a humiliating defeat, the French were split over whether to keep fighting to retain their overseas colonies, or simply accept the inevitable and grant them independence. This issue became the source of a nation crisis in France when its colony of Algeria also sought to be independent; with France nearly erupting in a full-blown civil war. In the end, those who wished to maintain their empire at any cost were defeated by the more liberal French under the leadership of DeGaulle; and France abandoned its imperial past. The process of decolonization of the French Empire was extremely difficult and had a profound effect on the national psyche of France. France as a nation transformed from a traditionally oppressive empire into a modern democracy that respects the rights of other nations around the globe; and the French people stopped viewing themselves as superior and their former colonial subjects as inferior.

Unlike the British Empire, the French did not a strong centralized administration for their colonial territories and as a result, the colonies were administered inefficiently and ineffectually. In French Indochina, the incompetence of the French colonial administrators gave rise to an independence movement that ultimately defeated their French masters in 1954 at a place called Dien Bien Phu. The disastrous defeat of the "superior" French at the hands of their "inferior" subjects had a tremendous impact, not only of the French themselves, but many of their other subject peoples as well. For instance, Algerians saw the defeat of the French as a means to their own independence.

When the French were defeated by the Vietminh, the French were so humiliated and embarrassed in the eyes of the world that they decided to stiffen their resistance to others seeking independence. This led to a decade long war in Algeria which the French were resolved not to lose. Unlike Indochina, there were large numbers of native French living in Algeria, and the French viewed it as an integral part of France. But the French no longer had the military resources to maintain their Algerian colony by force, and the French people were forced to accept Algerian independence. In fact, more than 90% of the French public had grown tired of the war, and the atrocities that were being carried out in the name of France, and favored independence for Algeria. But there was still a minority of people who favored the past and held on to the idea of empire long after the reality had disappeared. When President DeGaulle formally declared Algerian independence in 1962, these dissidents formed the OAS and began a violent war of terror against DeGaulle and the French government. But their violent actions, particularly against DeGaulle and the French people, only drove the French to support a more liberal, modern world view. The violence of the OAS was something that, in the minds of the French people, belonged in the past when France tortured and killed as a means of maintaining an illegitimate empire that exploited people around the world. DeGaulle and Algerian independence represented a new, more fair and decent future. In the end the future won out and the past faded away into memory; France no longer retains an empire by force and the French people no longer suffer the effects of maintaining an overseas empire through immoral means. There has been a remarkable change in the French psyche from the late 1940's, when the French sought to re-establish their empire, to the 1960's, when they recognized the futility of maintaining an empire through torture and oppression and the immorality of subjugating people as "inferior."