I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Lehrman Institute and the German Marshall Fund of the United States in the completion of this essay. An earlier version was presented at the Lehrman Institute in December 1975.

¹ In this essay, the word ‘colony’ will be used to refer to the variety of overseas possessions called, according to their status in international law, protectorates, trusteeships, and condominiums as well as colonies.

² For a discussion of the conference, see Marshall, D. Bruce, The French Colonial Myth and Constitution-Making in the Fourth Republic (Yale, 1973), pp. 102–15.Google Scholar

³ Brazzaville: 30 janvier-8 fevrier 1944, published by the Ministere des Colonies, 1944, p. 32.Google Scholar

⁴ Smith, Tony, ‘The French Colonial Consensus and People's War, 1945–1958’, The Journal of Contemporary History, October 1974.Google Scholar

⁵ See Deschamps, Hubert, ‘French Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa between the Two World Wars’, Cohen, William, ‘The French Colonial Service in West Africa’, and Thompson, Leonard, ‘France and Britain in Africa: a Perspective’, in Gifford, Prosser (ed.), France and Britain in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (Yale, 1971).Google Scholar

⁶ Cited in Kolko, Gabriel, The Politics of War: the World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945 (Random House, 1968), p. 83.Google Scholar

⁷ DePorte, A. W., De Gaulle's Foreign Policy, 1944–1946 (Harvard, 1968),CrossRefGoogle Scholar chaps. 2 and 3. Also ibid., chap. 4.

⁸ de Gaulle, Charles, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle (Simon and Schuster, 1967), p. 574.Google Scholar

⁹ Anti-Americanism flared in France each time the dependent role became evident: over the Marshall Plan, the E.D.C., the ‘nuclear shield’, and American funds for the Indochinese War. See, among others, Elgey, Georgette, La ré'publique des illusions (Fayard, 1965), pp. 101, 133, 139–41, 248;Google Scholar and Grosser, Alfred, La politique exté’rieure de la V^e République (Seuil, 1965), pp. 17, 47 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Beloff, Max, ‘The Special Relationship: an Anglo-American Myth’, in Gilbert, Martin, ed., A Century of Conflict, 1850–1950: Essays for A. J. P. Taylor (Hamish Hamilton Ltd., 1966), p. 156.Google Scholar

¹¹ Eden, Anthony, Full Circle (Houghton-Mifflin, 1960), chap. 9.Google Scholar

¹² Epstein, Leon D., British Politics in thé Suez Crisis (University of Illinois, 1964).Google Scholar

¹³ Goldsworthy, David, Colonial Issues in British Politics, 1945–1961 (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar

¹⁴ This point is made with particular clarity by Kahler, Miles, ‘End of Empire: Decolonization in the Politics of Britain and France’, unpublished paper, Harvard University.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Goldsworthy, , op.cit., pp. 166 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Keatley, Patrick, The Politics of Partnership (Penguin, 1963), pp. 393 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid., part 5; Goldsworthy, , op. cit., chap. 8 and pp. 352 ff;Google ScholarAlbertini, Rudolph von, Decolonization (Doubleday, 1971), pp. 245–7.Google Scholar

¹⁸ de Gaulle, Charles, La France sera la France (F. Bouchy et Fils, 1951), p. 193.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The following comments are drawn from Smith, op. cit.

²⁰ Williams, Philip, Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic (Anchor, 1966);Google ScholarHoffman, Stanley (ed.), In Search of France (Harper and Row, 1965);Google ScholarAron, Raymond, Immuable et changeante: de la IV^e à la V^e République (Paris, 1959);Google ScholarCrozier, Michel, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago, 1964);Google ScholarMacRae, D., Parliament, Parties and Society in France, 1946–1958 (St. Martin's Press, 1967);Google ScholarBarale, Jean, La Constitution de la IV^e République à l'épreuve de la guerre (Librarie Générate de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1963);Google ScholarWahl, Nicholas, ‘The French Political System’, in Beer, Samuel and Ulam, Adam (eds.), Patterns of Government (Random House, 1962);Google ScholarLeites, Nathan, On the Game of Politics in France (Stanford, 1959).Google Scholar

²¹ Dalton, Hugh, High Tide and After: Memoirs 1945–1960 (Frederick Muller Ltd., 1962), p. 211.Google Scholar

²² For the very different attitudes of Prime Ministers Attlee and Ramadier, see the excerpts of parliamentary debates of 1946–7 reprinted in Smith, Tony, The End of European Empire: Decolonization after World War II (D. C. Heath, 1975).Google Scholar

²³ Morgenthau, Ruth S., Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa (Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 181.Google Scholar

²⁴ Zolberg, Aristide, One Party Rule in the Ivory Coast (Princeton, 1969), p. 163.Google Scholar

²⁵ Marshall, , op. cit., chaps. 5, 7, 8;Google ScholarMorgenthau, , op. cit., chaps. 2, 3.Google Scholar

²⁶ Zolberg, , op. cit., pp. 131 ff;Google ScholarMorgenthau, , op. cit., pp. 188 ff.Google Scholar

²⁷ Zolberg, , op. cit., pp. 143, 237;Google ScholarMorgenthau, , op. cit., pp. 207 ff.Google Scholar

²⁸ Cited in Zolberg, , op. cit., p. 151. Tribal cultivators are, of course, very different from peasants so that for reasons of social structure they may be more difficult to mobilize in revolution.Google Scholar

²⁹ Berg, Elliot J., ‘The Economic Basis of Political Choice in French West Africa’, American Political Science Review, LIV (1960), p. 290;Google ScholarZolberg, , op. cit., p. 165.Google Scholar

³⁰ In 1944 there were 40,000 of these farms. By 1956 there were 120,000, while the population total was under 3 million: Zolberg, , op. cit., p. 27.Google Scholar

³¹ Computed from figures provided by Zolberg, , op. cit., pp. 159 ff.Google Scholar

³² This judgment is shared by Morgenthau, Zolberg, Michael Crowder and Pierre Gonidec, among others.

³³ Colin Leys argues that the British effectively created such an elite in Kenya in the few years before their departure. See his Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of Neo-Colonialism, 1964–1971 (University of California, 1974).Google Scholar

³⁴ This suggests that Elliot Berg's influential analysis of the economic limits on political choice in French West Africa after 1945 (article, op. cit.) is too narrow since it fails to distinguish the political and social variables of poverty. Were he correct, were economic need so decisive politically, Algeria would never have had its revolution.

³⁵ Smith, Tony, The French Stake in Algeria, 1945–1962 (Cornell University Press, forthcoming, 1978).Google Scholar

³⁶ Kahin, George M. and Lewis, John W., The United States in Vietnam (Dial Press, 1967), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

³⁷ McAlister, John T. Jr, Viet Nam: The Origins of Revolution (Knopf, 1969),Google Scholar chap. 6; and Buttinger, Joseph, Vietnam: a Political History (Praeger, 1968) chap. 9.Google Scholar

³⁹ I have been unable to find a comparative study of Communist organization in Indonesian and Vietnamese villages.

³⁸ George Kahin estimates that by 1925, perhaps half the families on Java and Madura (together accounting for two-thirds of the country's population) were landless and that this percentage increased during the 1930s. Franchise Cayrac-Blanchard puts the landless there at 60 percent of the population in the early 1970s. Apparently a combination of communal mutual aid, strong patron-client relations, and the existence of two opposed tendencies of Islam combined to discourage class conflict at the village level. See Kahin, , Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Cornell 1952), pp. 17 ff;Google ScholarCayrac-Blanchard, , Le parti communiste indonesien (Colin, 1973) pp. 33–4;Google ScholarGeertz, Clifford, The Religion of Java (Chicago, 1960), pp. 127 ff;Google Scholar Ruth McVey, ‘The Social Roots of Indonesian Communism’ (speech published by the Centre d'Etude du Sud-Est Asiatique et de l'Extrème-Orient, l'Université Libre de Bruxelles); and Mortimer, Rex, ‘Class, Social Cleavage, and Indonesian Communism’, Indonesia, no. 8, October 1969 (Cornell).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The significance this alliance for the political development of India is given central importance by Moore, Barrington Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Beacon, 1966), pp. 370 ff.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Maddison, Angus, Class Structure and Economic Growth: India and Pakistan since the Moghuls (George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1971), chap. 3.Google Scholar

⁴² Moore, , op. cit., pp. 373 ff.Google Scholar

⁴³ See, among others, Hutchins, Francis, India's Revolution; Gandhi and the Quit India Movement (Harvard, 1973).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Maddison, , op. cit., p. 106;Google ScholarMoore, , op. cit., pp. 368 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Maddison, , op. cit., p. 89;Google ScholarMoore, , op. cit., pp. 385 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Leys, Colin, op. cit.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Eden, Anthony, op. cit., p. 230.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ibid., pp. 474, 481.

⁴⁹ Monroe, Elizabeth, Britain's Moment in the Middle East, 1914–1956 (Johns Hopkins, 1963)Google Scholar chap. 4; Macmillan, Harold, Riding the Storm: 1956–1959 (Macmillan, 1971), chap. 16.Google Scholar