Abstract
By 1950 France had made little progress towards enduring and stable postwar relationships with its North African protectorates. In October 1949 the Socialist Deputy, Pierre-Olivier Lapie, a delegate to the most recent UN General Assembly session, informed Foreign Minister Robert Schuman of the growing international criticism of French colonialism. Schuman had no solution; he was exasperated by unaccountable colonial pro-consuls whose readiness to impose order by force prevented meaningful dialogue with nationalist leaders.1 Pressure from Pakistan and several Arab governments for UN consideration of self-government for Morocco and Tunisia continued to mount and, to the annoyance of the Rabat and Tunis residencies, the Istiqlal and Néo-Destour communicated directly with the British and US governments and their UN delegations in New York.2
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Notes
Tunis residency, ‘Notes schematiques sur la situation politique en Tunisie’, n.d. 1950, vol. 113, Bidault papers; note by Roger Allen, African Dept., 19 December 1950, JF1076/1, FO 371/90236, PRO; Jauffret (ed.), La Guerre d’Algérie par les Documents, II, 100–1.
William I. Hitchcock, France Restored. Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 160.
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Anne Deighton, ‘The Last Piece of the Jigsaw: Britain and the Creation of the Western European Union, 1954’, Contemporary European History, 7:2 (1998), 186–9. Mendès France, Gouverner, 331.
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DDF, 1956, I, no. 44, Roger Seydoux to Quai, 26 January 1956; regarding Bourguiba’s rivalry with Salah Ben Youssef, see DDF, 1955, II, no. 295, Seydoux to Pierre July, 13 October 1955; General Bruno Chaix, ‘La France et la réconstitution de l’armée Tunisienne en 1956’, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 110 (1996), 286–7.
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© 2000 Martin Thomas
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Thomas, M. (2000). Towards Independence for Morocco and Tunisia: British and American Concerns, 1950–56. In: The French North African Crisis. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287426_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287426_3
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