Abstract
For the die-hard supporters of Algérie française, de Gaulle’s progress towards dialogue with the FLN leadership amounted to treachery. In their eyes, the general was invested as premier on 1 June 1958 with an obligation to protect Algeria’s settlers and to revitalise the army’s campaign against FLN terror. The revolt of General Salan’s Algiers command against Pierre Pflimlin’s newly installed government on 13 May, Salan’s declaration of support for de Gaulle to the delight of the Algiers settlers two days later, and the obvious inability of the Paris authorities to bring Algeria back under control underlined the bonds between the final collapse of the Fourth Republic, the creation of a new Gaullist administration and prosecution of the Algerian war. The glaring divisions over Algeria within the leading parties of the old regime also suggested that an entirely new governmental structure was necessary to deal with the war. The Socialist leadership was by now implacably imposed to its erstwhile appointee as Resident, Robert Lacoste. The gulf within the MRP between Bidault’s extremist support for Algérie française and Pflimlin’s willingness to explore terms for a ceasefire could hardly have been wider. And divining a coherent Radical Party policy from politicians as individualistic as, for example, Edgar Faure, Mendès France and André Morice was near impossible.
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Notes
Anthony Hartley, Gaullism. The Rise and Fall of a Political Movement (London: Routledge, 1972), 148–51.
Jean Chariot, Le Gaullisme d’opposition 1946–1958. Histoire politique du Gaullisme (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 347–60.
Odile Rudelle, Mai 1958, de Gaulle et la République (Paris: Plon, 1988), 103–10. and deuxième partie; Wall, France, the United States and the Algerian War, ch. 5.
Bidault, ‘Ma Position. Discours et écrits sur l’Algérie depuis le 16 Septembre 1959’, Les Documents d’Actualité, 2 (1959); Serge Berstein, The Republic of de Gaulle 1958–1969 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 5.
Charles de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 34.
Michèle Cointet, De Gaulle et l’Algérie française 1958–1962 (Paris: Perrin, 1995), 24; Malek, L’Algérie à Evian, 38; DDF, vol. II, 1958, no. 285, n. 1; Jebb to FO, 24 October 1958, JR1193/16, FO 371/131685, PRO.
DDF, 1960, vol. I, nos. 24, 88; 1961, vol. II, nos. 5, 7, 17, 32, 42, 45; Nicole Grimaud, ‘La Crise de Bizerte’, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 110 (1996), 337–8.
Brian Urquhart, Hammarskjold (London: Bodley Head, 1972), ch. 20; de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope, 117.
John Darwin ‘The Central African Emergency, 1959’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21:1 (1993), 220–9. Entries for 22 June, 13 July 1959, fos. 26–7, 64–7, 2nd series Diaries, d. 36, Macmillan papers.
Ritchie Ovendale, ‘Macmillan and the Wind of Change in Africa, 1957–1960’, Historical Journal, 38:2 (1995), 455–77. Horne, Macmillan II, 193–200; Quote from Philip E. Hemming, ‘Macmillan and the End of the British Empire in Africa’, in Aldous and Lee (eds), Harold Macmillan and Britain’s World Role, 111.
Jean Morin, De Gaulle et l’Algérie. Mon témoignage 1960–1962 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999), 52.
Lothar Ruehl, La politique militaire de la cinquième république (Paris: Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1976), ch. III; Couve de Murville, Une politique étrangère, 60–75 passim.
Jan Melisson, ‘Nuclearizing NATO, 1957–1959: the “Anglo-Saxons”, Nuclear Sharing and the Fourth Country Problem’, Review of International Studies, 20 (1994), 256–62.
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Macmillan’s motives are examined in Constantine A. Pagedas, ‘The Limits of Personal Influence: Harold Macmillan and Anglo-French Relations, 1960–1963’, in T. G. Otte and Constantine A. Pagedas (eds), Personalities, War and Diplomacy. Essays in International History (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 254–82.
Jebb memo., 2 June 1958, PREM 11/2339, PRO; Delmas, ‘A la recherche’, 82–6; Vaïsse, ‘Aux origines du mémorandum’, 258–67; Jean Doise and Maurice Vaïsse, Diplomatie et outil militaire 1871–1991 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1987), 587–94. 601–4; Ely, Mémoires II, ch. 3, 409–15. Ely had resigned in the May crisis over the transfer of three other generals. De Gaulle quickly reinstated him.
Tels. 477, 483 and 3047, PREM 11/3002, PRO; Vaïsse, La grandeur, 117–20, 129–32; Geoffrey Warner, ‘De Gaulle and the Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship’ 1958–1966: Perceptions and Realities’, in Maurice Vaïsse et al. (eds), La France et l’OTAN (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1996), 250–5.
Sabine Lee, ‘Staying in the Game? Coming into the Game? Macmillan and European Integration’, in Aldous and Lee (eds), Harold Macmillan and Britain’s World Role, 128–32, 139; P. M. H. Bell, France and Britain 1940–1994. The Long Separation (London: Longman, 1997), 183–5.
Pagedas, ‘The Limits’, 260–3; Ian Clark, Nuclear Diplomacy and the Special Relationship. Britain’s Deterrent and America, 1957–1962 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 306–15.passim.
Maurice Vaïsse, ‘De Gaulle and the British “Application” to Join the Common Market’, in George Wilkes (ed.), Britain’s Failure to Enter the European Community 1961–63 (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 51–67.
Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Mémoires pour demain (Paris: Flammarion, 1997), 312–38.
Salan to Macmillan, 3 March 1962, PREM 11/361, PRO. The best treatment of the OAS is Alexander Harrison, Challenging De Gaulle. The O.A.S. and the counterrevolution in Algeria, 1954–1962 (New York: Praeger, 1989), esp. chs. 1–3.
Hartley, Gaullism, 186–7; Jean-François Sirinelli, ‘Guerre d’Algérie, guerre des pétitions? Quelques jalons’, Revue Historique, 291:1 (1988), 73–100. Dine, ‘French culture’, 56–66.
William B. Cohen, ‘Legacy of Empire: the Algerian Connection’, Journal of Contemporary History, 15:1 (1980), 99–110.
George Wilkes, ‘Eye-witness Views of the Brussels Breakdown’, in Wilkes (ed.), Britain’s Failure, 229, 234. The most nuanced account of Britain’s application, the Brussels entry talks in particular, is now N. Piers Ludlow, Dealing with Britain. The Six and the First UK Application to the EEC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
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Thomas, M. (2000). Britain, de Gaulle and Algeria, 1958–62. In: The French North African Crisis. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287426_8
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