PC: French African decolonization delayed until 1975

Can we plausibly extend lifespan of French African colonial Empire to 1975?

  • Yes

    Votes: 57 72.2%
  • No

    Votes: 22 27.8%

  • Total voters
    79
Perhaps allow local tribes a voice in colonial parliaments. They could dissapate their frustrations yelling at each other instead of blaming a colonial empire.
France would still manage defence and foreign affairs, but recruit local soldiers for internal policing.
A tax union with the metropol would be one way to encourage locality to European France.
Also consider re-drawing colonial borders to reflect traditional tribal lands. That get complex in places like South Sudan where African plowmen occaissionally granted temporary, seasonal grazing rights to Arab herders. That gave both tribes claim to the same piece of land!!!!!!!!
Sort of like the way native land claims exceed 300 percent of the surface area of the Province of British Columbia.
A related matter is figuring out a more honest way to draw borders across deserts that are too dry even for grazing (e.g. Syria/Iraq border.
Finally, how do you resolve tribal frictions in urbanized colonies like Lebanon that had 4 or more tribes (Maronite Christians, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholic Christians, Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Druze Muslims, a handful of Jews, etc.) all living in the same village.
One solution would be to grant them seats in a colonial parliament based on the last census .... more honest than the Lebanese constitution which failed in the 1970s as Muslim population grew to exceed Christian, but the Christian Phallangist Party refused to relinquish power.
 
This. didn't. helped. At. all. From this day up, French Algeria was toast. Forget it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sétif_and_Guelma_massacre

Similarly, this 1946 event made French Indochina toast
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiphong_incident

Yup. Just two out of a long string of such actions (on greater or lesser scale) committed by the colonial Powers during their "tutorship" of the natives.

I'm not saying the colonial Powers were uniquely evil; but the romanticized notion exemplified by "They'd be killing each other with sticks and rocks if not for our fatherly tutelage" is... not looking too good.

Dress up colonialism however you want, it's still conquest and exploitation.

IMHO.
 
For the person who doesn't know, PC is plausibility check.
Pre-war suppression of the Code de l'Indigénat still would help a lot IMO if combined with easier citizenship grants in wartime (Français par le sang versé)
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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This. didn't. helped. At. all. From this day up, French Algeria was toast. Forget it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sétif_and_Guelma_massacre

Similarly, this 1946 event made French Indochina toast
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiphong_incident

yes haiphong was awful for the french reputation in indochina. that is part of why my OP explicitly heads off the incident by making the PoD 18 months earlier significantly changing the politics that led to the event.

however my pod does nothing in particular to stop the setif massacre. is it your opinion archibald that the setif massacre of 1945 means that an armed insurgency is inevitable within ten years regardless of how strong or weak france looks internationally for example regardless of what happens in indochina?
 

raharris1973

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Yup. Just two out of a long string of such actions (on greater or lesser scale) committed by the colonial Powers during their "tutorship" of the natives.

I'm not saying the colonial Powers were uniquely evil; but the romanticized notion exemplified by "They'd be killing each other with sticks and rocks if not for our fatherly tutelage" is... not looking too good.

Dress up colonialism however you want, it's still conquest and exploitation.

IMHO.

agreed. by the way my intent with the op was not to glorify french or any other colonialism. it was exploratory ((i have also been posting scenarios where the french never colonize places like algeria or vietnam.

some of the effects i was looking for were to seee the effects of amore drawn out independence process in africa and possibly a development of vietnam without its twenty years of war and possibly without communism in power.

speaking of southeast asia in this scenario which do yall think is more likely? a) the vietminh remaining the leading independence force in indochina or b) other changes in society and politics over the decade or two after 1945m mean that by the time the french leave the communists are no longer the vanguard of independence? while scenario b requires more imagination and speculation i think it could be interesting. i think scenario a is relatively simple to sketch out.

in scenario a the viet minh remain a force in being in the northern jungle regions of vietnam next to china. from 1945 to 1949 they have little success spreadimg guerrilla warfare further south or in establishing robust ssupporr networks in the cities. however from 1950 on with active chinese and soviet sponsorship they grow militarily and adminsistratively more capable. they spread their guerrilla warfare gradually southward and into the cities and provke french reprisals that backfire. because te viet minh spread takes so much longer however the are unable to defeat or tire out the french by 1954. instead it takes until 1958 or 1960 for this atl's geneva conference or dien bien phu to come around. a knock on effect from that is that there is no vietnam war for the americans in the 1960s but there could easily be one that spans the 1970s.
 

ben0628

Banned
As previously said, France could hold onto into colonies into 1975 if it wanted to. Just prepare yourselves for multiple colonial wars like Portugal.

A more peaceful solution requires a pod immediately after WW1
 
The exercise appears to be to better understand our history by exploring ways it might not have been, in other words to dispel the easy argument that it was all simply inevitable. For those generations who only know the past as pictures or description in book, who did not live through it, I feel the exploration of "what-ifs" gives insight into why another generation fought and what was at stake if they had failed or acted differently. One can argue the colonial system might have become a utopia of prosperity, equality and diversity, or a dystopia of genocide, slavery and tyranny, but the paths share certain guideposts for us to chose from. As to Indochina I suspect that without a Communist China the Viet Minh are defeated as the FLN was because it could not get enough supplies, a lesson the French learned and adapted strategy to from the war in Indochina, but the populace still wants free so the military victory is illusory at bottom. South Africa shows us that even after many years of oppressive government and cause to want to settle the grievances, they can heal very deep wounds and build forward. The questions I ponder are how does a divergent France bridge itself over treating this as rebellion to be quashed to something else that gets us either healthier states upon independence or former colonies finding a place at the table with the former colonial head? It appears the map will be a patch work of successes and failures. The issue is relevant because we still live with these countries and all this history looms over their futures as they sink or swim as independent countries.
 

Archibald

Banned
yes haiphong was awful for the french reputation in indochina. that is part of why my OP explicitly heads off the incident by making the PoD 18 months earlier significantly changing the politics that led to the event.

however my pod does nothing in particular to stop the setif massacre. is it your opinion archibald that the setif massacre of 1945 means that an armed insurgency is inevitable within ten years regardless of how strong or weak france looks internationally for example regardless of what happens in indochina?

Yes, absolutely. Setif was a major turning point.

Vichy weakness and cowardice was a major factor in both Algeria and Indochina fate. You'll need a POd before May 10, 1940 to change that *cough a blunted sickle * cough cough "France fights on " cough
 
Yes, absolutely. Setif was a major turning point.

Vichy weakness and cowardice was a major factor in both Algeria and Indochina fate. You'll need a POd before May 10, 1940 to change that *cough a blunted sickle * cough cough "France fights on " cough

I would argue that precisely because of Vichy, you don't need a pre-WWII PoD. The Fall of Vichy offers a blank slate, a possible refondation of the Empire.
For exemple, in Indochina, you can get much better relations up to 1954. Not part of the Empire, not even a protectorate but very possible an associated state, similar to how Ireland stayed a Dominion until 1939.
Indochina was and always would have been the odd child of the Empire. Very wealthy, but very far away and very deadly because of diseases. Moreover, the culture is both very strong and very different from France.
In the African colonies, the culture and the state were not as strong and could be pushed over. In Maghreb, the culture was strong but close enough to France so it could be understood, thanks to spatial proximity and centuries of warfare. As such, some form could be blended, to form a sort of common identity, possibly around a Mediterranean theme.

The issue is relevant because we still live with these countries and all this history looms over their futures as they sink or swim as independent countries.
Thank you for this! I would add that understanding colonisation and decolonisation is EXTREMELY important these days in modern countries, especially Western European ones and especially France.

There is a big issue with identity of post-colonial populations and, what I hope are, growing pains in the formation of a new, multi-ethnic (but not multi-cultural) identity in France. A lot of the white population chooses to either ignore it and wonder why we are now multi-ethnic while the other chooses the guilt trip approach. If we took the time to approach it and try to understand the point of view at the time, how it was advocated, how it was fought, what the goals were, it would help a lot. We have to understand that a lot of people are in France not because they come to leech off but because we actively conquered them and brought them back. [/rant]
 
Why should the French bother keeping those West African states, the OTL independence and interdependence model suits them much better, they baisically control the monetary policy of the new states through CAF/WAF, and have advantageous deal for important resources (Uranium in Niger, Oil in Gabon etc.)
It's worth noting that even the most anti-french states Guinea and Congo-Brazzavile eventually.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Why should the French bother keeping those West African states, the OTL independence and interdependence model suits them much better, they baisically control the monetary policy of the new states through CAF/WAF, and have advantageous deal for important resources (Uranium in Niger, Oil in Gabon etc.)
It's worth noting that even the most anti-french states Guinea and Congo-Brazzavile eventually.

Fair point [and I think you also might have had something left to say]. I would note however that France could have done such arrangements with local West African rulers any time from 1919 onward, but did not, so clearly a paradigm shift occurred and I suspect it wasn't simply based on a decision in a vacuum that "oops, formally separate sovereignty is actually more convenient"

You could be totally right that the current model is higher benefit, lower-cost for France, but for decolonization to happen, Paris needs to come to that conclusion for itself.
 

raharris1973

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To archive it on this board, here's a TL that I posted on the old board and on SHWI with the same PoD as my OP for this thread.

The thread is more focused on Vietnam (& US foreign policy globally) than Africa, and it also only postpones the independence of Algeria and French Africa by 4 years rather than 15 years:

upload_2016-8-15_22-46-53.png

12/21/00
The AH challenge:
Have Vietnam take an alternate approach to independence
Remove Ho Chi Minh and Marxism as a decisive factor in Vietnamese
history, without the
usual cheap shot of having him killed at a
convenient moment:
How? Prevent the short-lived Viet Minh takeover of Vietnam in Sept.
1945, and the prior
period since March 1945, where the Viet Minh had been the principal
resistance force in
Vietnam.
Basically, Paris orders its Indochina forces to not provoke the
Japanese. In OTL, the Japanese deposed the French in
Indochina in March 1945 when
they caught wind of preparations for a French uprising in Indochina.
After that, they put in a
puppet regime, but then did not have the resources to administer the
interior, which left a
power vacuum that the Viet Minh started to fill. Also, the Allies were
forced to rely on the
Viet Minh for intelligence and assistance in rescuing pilots, which
they had gotten before
from the French.

So, remove the French uprising plot, and the Japanese reaction to it,
and you have a whole
different situation at the end of the war. There is continuous French
authority throughout
Indochina, under Japanese supervision, until the end of the war. The
Viet Minh remain a
marginal force along the China-Vietnam border region. They are unable
to take over the
whole country and do a proclamation of independence as they did in
OTL's Sept. 1945.

The French disarm the Japanese after the surrender. FDR may still be
tempted to have
other powers disarm the Japanese, but the British have no reason to get
involved and the
Chinese don't have that much more. At most the French can prevent
China from
intervening by bribing Chinese generals with the equivalent of whatever
loot they had been
expecting, maybe a share of that year's opium crop.

This scenario assumes that the last 6 months of the war, when they had
some US support,
really gave the Viet Minh a leg up that they otherwise wouldn't have
had. Beyond that, the
year and a half between Sept. 1945 and about March 46, when they had
almost complete
control of northern Vietnam, and most Japanese weapons, without French
interference
probably gave them an even bigger leg up. In that time they also
released food stockpiles
to the public, in this TL, the French would. Without this window of
opportunity, a Viet Minh
victory by 1954 is very, very unlikely.

Impact: Between 1945 and 1950 the French manage to contain the Viet
Minh and other
assorted nationalist groups or political factions. In this TL, Ho Chi
Minh is not able to
eliminate or co-opt most nationalist groups.
In 1947, the Indian
independence movement
may inspire some imitators in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The Chinese
Communist
victory of 1949 gives Ho Chi Minh a much needed material boost and
secure rear base, but
the French and Ho's nationalist competition use his dependence on
support of the hated
Chinese against him.
During the 50s Vietnam experiences some economic
growth that it
did not in our timeline because there is no major war there, and the
French economy is
recovering. Vietnam gets some benefit from the Korean War boom and
manufacturing
grows some, although its not like the French have any kind of
progressive development policy.
In the 50s, Ho Chi Minh sticks with
what he knows best,
rural insurgency, even if by the end of the decade he would be better
off using more of the
urban guerrilla techniques pioneered in Latin America in the 1960s and
70s. Taiwan may
support anti-French schemes by some Vietnamese nationalists in
Vietnam's cities.

China may invest more in the Burmese communists, but probably backs off
once it
becomes clear that this is bothering India, that the Burmese Reds
bicker among
themselves, and the Burmese government is willing to accommodate
China's interests in
its foreign policy. The Malayan and Philippine insurgency peter out in
the 50s with little to
show for it.

The Algerian war for independence does not begin in November 1954.
it
begins later. I
don't think the outbreak of that war the same year as Dien Bien Phu was
simple
coincidence. However, it does break out, a year and a half later, in
part because the
French settlers preemptive measures against a potential rebellion are
so high-handed, but
also Nasser has emerged as an inspiring figure in Egypt by 1955, buying
arms from the
Soviets and becoming a player in the non-aligned movement. The
Algerian revolt begins in
1957.

The Suez war still happens and Nasser gets an even bigger reputation
after that.

In OTL, France gave Morocco and Tunisia independence in 1956, Guinea
independence in
1958 and most of West Africa and Madagascar independence in 1960. I
think that the
Algerian war spurred French departure from other colonies, so I think
this whole process
takes longer.

[The alternative to this is the postponement of much African
independence into the 1970s]

The French have more resiliency in Algeria because they didn't fight in
Indochina, but they
also don't have the counterinsurgency experience. The French grant
Morocco, Tunisia and
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia independence no later than 1959 or 1960.

Not only is the
Algeria spurring the loosening of the French grip, but Malaysian
independence, granted in
1957, makes the French Indochina colony, under any reformist guise, too
much of an
anachronism in the Southeast Asian region. By 1960, Burma and the
Philippines and
Indonesia would have been
independent for over 10 years. Especially when Malaysia becomes
independent, I don't see how French Indochina would
remain politically viable as a French
colony.


On the ground, the pre-eminent Vietnamese nationalist leader of the
1950s is Buddhist
monk, Thich Tri Quang, who gave Ngo Dinh Diem so much trouble in OTL.
He leads a
nonviolent resistance movement partially inspired by Gandhi, Tunisian
leader Habib
Bourguiba and the Dalai Lama. Their most serious protest tactic is
self-immolation by
monks in front of French administrative offices. By the late 1950s the
French are no longer
the hardened colonialists they were a decade earlier, and they respond
to Thich Tri Quang
as they did to Habib Bourguiba, with a dialogue leading to
independence.


French West African colonies are made independent in 1964, after De
Gaulle takes over.
France gets out of Algeria in 1966, having won the war militarily but
not politically.
Media
coverage of Algerian women and kids throwing rocks at the French,
locally called the
intifadeh, is decisive.


The Vietnamese National Congress, an umbrella group led by the
Buddhists, is the dominant party in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh is very out
of style, like the
Colombian FARC has been for most of its existence
. When the Chinese
cut off support to
his group, the remnants need to rely on heroin trafficking to support
themselves, a la the
FARC.
Although still part of the French Union at independence, Vietnam
leaves the
organization within a year of the last French troops leaving, 1960. In
the first all Vietnamese
elections, Ho Chi Minh fares poorly and dies disappointed soon
thereafter.
Independent
Vietnam follows a
'non-aligned' foreign policy course, having decent relations with
France and India. It does
not become an outpost for anticommunist alliances.


US Presidential politics can be unpredictably affected, but they might
be the same, and we
may get to see what happens when Lyndon Johnson does not have to deal
with the
Vietnam War, and gets to focus on the Great Society Agenda.


Will the US be drawn into another military engagement with communist
forces on the
periphery, quite possibly.
Perhaps without Indochina occupying their attention, both superpowers
play more
aggressively when the Congo gains independence in 1963 or 1964
, and
prevent the UN
peacekeeping mission. If that's the case the US has the logistical
edge and can probably
impose its desired solution before public patience runs out. Any
opponents we face in Latin
America or Africa will not have the logistical advantages that the
VC-NVA did.

Possibly the US intervenes in South Yemen after the British leave, if
the British give us a
chance to get in.
Again, if we have troop intervention, the Marxists
are limited in their
response by logistics, none of the neighboring countries, Oman, Saudi
Arabia or North
Yemen, are pro-Communist.

When the Portuguese Empire folds, probably still in 1975, the US moves
to ensure that no
perceived pro-Soviet faction comes to power. The Soviets probably
don't dare send the
Cubans in without the Vietnam War weakening us,
and we resist them by
supporting local
factions we favor, or our own troops if need be.
These 'brushfire wars' may upset certain liberal constituencies,
Fulbright may hold
hearings, some folks may march on Washington, but they are never costly
enough to make
the US accept a negative outcome.

Without the Vietnam war the US can be more attentive to the Middle East
in the 1960s.

When Nasser asks UNEF to leave and blockades the Straits of Tiran, the
United States,
Britain and France may do a 're-flagging' or escort mission of Israeli
ships thru the strait,
reminiscent from our POV of the 're-flagging' of Kuwaiti tankers during
the Iran-Iraq war
.
We may have some fighter engagements with Egypt. This takes away
Israeli justification
for a pre-emptive strike, and forces Nasser to account for US naval
forces when
contemplating moves against Israel. The only reason we might not do
this would be if we
were involved in some other intense, but probably short, third world
conflict. If prospects for
conventional war in the Middle East are constrained, the struggle
continues more through
guerrilla warfare and infiltration. At least in the near-term, most
Arab states increase their
ties with the USSR in anger about overt US protection for Israel. Egypt
may remain a
Soviet client thru the 70s or 80s.
If Sadat still has an inclination
to tilt towards the US, even
without the need for its help in getting back Sinai, he may make
diplomatic moves towards
the US, but will not engage in any peace process with the Israelis, the
maximum he will
accept will be the restoration of UNEF.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
Its possible if there is some kind of partition agreement early on before Algeria becomes a full blown war. Oran and the European Part of Algiers stay French, while the rest of the country gets devolved out of being a French Department and more like a French Commonwealth that gradually severs ties.

The rest of French Africa can be delayed really as long as they want. The French did not need to pull out of West Africa the way they did in the 60s (or more like the way they pretended to in the 60s, as OTL has shown). France probably could prolong independence until '75 somewhat easily. The challenge is getting the UN to back off.
 
Thank you for this! I would add that understanding colonisation and decolonisation is EXTREMELY important these days in modern countries, especially Western European ones and especially France.

There is a big issue with identity of post-colonial populations and, what I hope are, growing pains in the formation of a new, multi-ethnic (but not multi-cultural) identity in France. A lot of the white population chooses to either ignore it and wonder why we are now multi-ethnic while the other chooses the guilt trip approach. If we took the time to approach it and try to understand the point of view at the time, how it was advocated, how it was fought, what the goals were, it would help a lot. We have to understand that a lot of people are in France not because they come to leech off but because we actively conquered them and brought them back. [/rant]

You are welcome. My understanding is that France still struggles with its colonial past, much like the United States, both have not fully took to heart just what was done under the flags of our peoples. A multi-ethnic paradigm is at once where we are headed as a species on this rock whilst facing so much continued desire to pull ourselves out by the roots. We parse ourselves by so many criteria and wage bloody violence over it, and so much in the name of nationalism, an idea championed by the Europeans who drew lines and named countries the peoples now take very seriously. France, like most former Empires, has all the unwanted people at once assimilated yet still foreign, people trapped between two realms, neither fish nor fowl, and until their place is found they should be restive. Hopefully through the exploration of "what-if" some understanding of this tough topic comes, that is a really good beginning.
 
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