Decolonization of the French Empire Essay

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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.

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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….....

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