Free French Africa in World War II
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Date
2014-02-24
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Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies
Abstract
This presentation focuses upon the contribution of African colonies to the Free French war effort of General Charles de Gaulle. Jennings contends that in its early years, between 1940 and 1942, the heart of Free France was not located in London, as standard accounts would have us believe, but rather in what was then known as French Equatorial Africa and French Cameroon. Britain did not provide the movement with the majority of its soldiers, raw materials, national territory, nor even its legitimacy and sovereignty. Territorially, Free France spanned from the Libyan border down to the Congo River, and to the scattered tiny French territories of the South Pacific and India. In 1943, the vast federation of French West Africa rallied what was then being called "Fighting France." The latter now harnessed an immense territory ranging from the Mediterranean to the Congo. The harnessing was often coercive, and much of the continent saw a marked increase in forced labor and coerced recruitment under Free French rule. While Free France was African, Africa was anything but free. Jennings shows how Gaullist jurist René Cassin and Equatorial French African governor Félix Eboué clashed over the latter’s efforts to codify and centralize forced labor. The former feared that the move would give the Free French movement a black eye. The Free French administration also encouraged a return to modes of rubber extraction (the collection of wild rubber in the tropical forests) that had long been decried by the likes of André Gide and Albert Londres, and that had once earned the Belgian Congo its murderous reputation. The mad rush for rubber, which saw a quadrupling of output in Free French Africa began in 1942, after the fall of British Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies, which together had hitherto produced 77 percent of the world’s latex. In other words, this story of extraction is directly tied to Allied demands. As important as Free French Africa was to allied transport routes, and for raising troops, its rubber supplies would prove absolutely essential to the war effort. This paper will thus focus on long-neglected African military and resource contributions to the Free French cause.
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The media can be accessed here: http://streaming.osu.edu/knowledgebank/Mershon14/022414.mp4
Keywords
Free French Africa, rubber industry