Une nationalité superposée: Being French and African in 1959

1 This chapter is based on a book I am currently completing on citizenship in France and French West Africa between 1945 and 1960, and the episode described here appears toward the end of that much fuller account. For an early overview of the project, see Frederick Cooper (2009).

2 Abbreviations used in archival references are as follows : ANF – Archives Nationales de France (fonds FPU and FPR, papers of Jacques Foccart) ; AS – Archives du Sénégal (fonds VP, Vice-Présidence, and FM, Fédération du Mali) ; CADN – Centre des Archives Diplomatiques, Nantes ; and CAC – Centre d'Archives Contemporaines, Fontainebleau.

3 That French subjects overseas had French nationality had been clear since the 1860s. The 1946 Constitution (and the related "loi Lamine Guèye" of 7 May 1946) brought nationality and citizenship together, extending the "quality" of the citizen to "nationaux et ressortissants" of the territoires d'outre-mer.

4 Lest anyone think that a state that was both strongly organized and egalitarian would mean Africans would outvote and therefore dominate France – the problem famously signaled by Edouard Herriot in the constitutional debates of 1946 – Houphouët-Boigny felt the need to reassure: "personne parmi nous ne souhaite que la France puisse être la colonie de ses anciennes colonies. Mais personne non plus n’est prêt à admettre que nos États redeviennent des colonies françaises" (id.).

5 This issue had been discussed within the Senegalese government, including in a paper within Dia's office (AS, 1959b) ; Mamadou Dia's statement to the Haut Commissaire drew on this discussion.

6 French officials noted that Pierre-François Gonidec had himself changed his mind, having argued in November 1958 that there was only one nationality (ANF, 1959f).

7 There was also the question of Member States’ relations with their non-Community neighbors. Senegal, for one, wanted to have direct relationships, but the absence of international status made that technically impossible (AS, 1959g ; 1959d). At Tananarive, the Conseil exécutif agreed that while France would have exclusive control over representation in international organizations "de caractère technique", Member States could participate directly in some "organisations de caractère technique". The Foreign Ministry noted that such participation could be expensive for Member States (CADN, 1959a).

8 The political dimension also appears in Note pour M. Le Président de la Communauté (ANF, 1959l). This document says the goal is to create a "large" French nationality, and states could choose within its "évantail" what suited them, although the Republic’s Justice Minister would have recourse against state courts in some circumstances.

9 The expulsion argument came about after the Haut Commissaire in Chad wrote the President (ANF, 1959q) about the presence of 30,000 non-Chadians, some from French territories, some not; he wanted to be able to naturalize some of them and get rid of the rest. The argument suggests that sovereignty is far from a clearly understood and agreed upon concept.

10 Despite the agreement on the attribution of nationality, there remained potential tension over its significance in international circles, since the notion of multiple nationalities within the Community did not permit Member States to represent their own national interests abroad – that is to have a "personnalité internationale". This issue was raised sometime in 1959 in an internal Senegalese document (AS, 1959h).

11 See the "Comité des experts" report and also the PV, dated 16 and 19 November, of the discussions leading to these conclusions, (ANF, 1959o). Much of the discussion concerned the fact that the multiple nationalities were internal to the Community. Lucien-Herbert pointed out that the Community as such had no international existence, and Plantey replied that this was why the Republic "sert vis à vis l’étranger de support juridique à la Communauté" (November 16). In this reasoning, neither the Member States nor the Community had sovereignty, while a unit – the French Republic – that existed within the Community acted toward the outside world as if it were sovereign, while claiming to represent the entire Community and deferring the attribution of nationality to Member States.

12 A draft accord was prepared quickly (CAC, 1960).

13 Such a decision-making process was precisely what police officials in Senegal had said a few months earlier was "impensable". They were shocked that "polices non métropolitaines" who might even have "des opinions foncièrement divergentes des nôtres sur le plan national" making decisions about who was French (CADN, 1959b).

14 One post-Saint-Louis dissent came from Mali’s Minister of Public Works, Amadou Aw, who didn’t think much of any sort of community nationality: "La Communauté n’était pas un État, encore moins une Nation". Member States were neither integrated into the French Republic nor have an international personality of their own : "nous voulons demeurer nous-même et la sauvegarde de notre personnalité ne nous permet pas d’accepter la nationalité française sur la scène internationale" (CADN, 1959c).

15 Félix Houphouët-Boigny later tried, unsuccessfully, to create a West African version of superposed nationality for nationals of states allied with his Côte d'Ivoire (The Conseil de l’Entente) (Yéré, 2010).