The two faces of Charles the Good: Charles de Gaulle, France, and decolonization in Quebec and New Caledonia
| Published date | 01 March 2014 |
| Author | Robin S Gendron |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702013518889 |
| Date | 01 March 2014 |
| Subject Matter | The Lessons of History |
International Journal
2014, Vol. 69(1) 94–109
!The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702013518889
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The Lessons of History
The two faces of Charles
the Good: Charles de
Gaulle, France, and
decolonization in
Quebec and New
Caledonia
Robin S Gendron
Faculty of Arts and Science, Nipissing University, North Bay, ON,
Canada
Abstract
Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Quebec in 1967 continues to attract significant scholarly and
popular attention. Despite ongoing efforts to broaden our understanding of the evolu-
tion of France-Quebec relations during the 1960s, de Gaulle’s visit remains the pivotal
event of that rapprochement and is believed to confirm the French president’s personal
support for Quebec’s independence, stemming from his efforts to position post-colonial
France as the champion of decolonization and self-determination for dependent
peoples. This scholarly consensus, however, can be challenged by even a cursory
glance at France’s policies toward New Caledonia in the 1960s, which reflected a
fierce French determination to prevent the loss of its Pacific Ocean territory. Instead
of accepting, much less encouraging, New Caledonia’s autonomy, the French state in
fact re-colonized New Caledonia over the course of the 1960s, a situation that compels
us to examine more closely the attitude of de Gaulle and the French state toward
‘‘decolonization’’ in Quebec during the same period. The national aspirations that mat-
tered most to France or to de Gaulle were those of France itself.
Keywords
Decolonization, France, INCO, New Caledonia, nickel, Quebec independence
Corresponding author:
Robin Gendron, Faculty of Arts and Science, Nipissing University, 100 College Drive, North Bay, ON P1B
8L7, Canada.
Email: gendronrs@nipissingu.ca
Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Quebec in 1967 continues to attract significant scholarly
and other attention, with good reason. This visit remains, arguably, the pivotal
event of the France-Quebec rapprochement of the 1960s, despite ongoing efforts to
broaden our understanding of the evolution of France-Quebec relations in this
period. De Gaulle’s speech from the balcony of Montreal’s City Hall on 24 July
1967, especially his comparison of the scene along the old Chemin du Roy between
Quebec City and Montreal to the Liberation of Paris in 1944, as well as his infam-
ous ‘‘Vive le Que
´bec libre’’ declaration, was the symbolic culmination of France’s
renewed interest in Quebec and the national and cultural development of the
French Canadian people after two centuries of relative neglect. It also confirmed,
overtly and publicly, de Gaulle’s personal support for and encouragement of
Quebec’s independence.
The current scholarly consensus surrounding France-Quebec relations in the
1960s holds that de Gaulle, and through him the French government and state,
developed a firm belief in Quebec’s right to national independence in the early-
to-mid 1960s and were convinced that France was compelled to support it because
of the ties of history, culture, and sympathy that bound France to Quebec. In the
aftermath of the collapse of the French colonial empire, it is argued, de Gaulle and
France were transformed into champions of decolonization for the world’s remain-
ing colonized peoples, especially the Que
´be
´cois. The argument that France had
embraced such a mission libe
´ratrice is, however, highly debatable if not manifestly
incorrect. In point of fact, the only national aspirations that intrinsically mattered
to de Gaulle and the French state were those of France itself, as can be demon-
strated through even a cursory examination of the French government’s attitude
toward another emerging ‘‘nationalist’’ movement half-way around the world from
Quebec in one of France’s remaining colonial territories, the Pacific territory of
New Caledonia.
Throughout the early-to-mid 1960s—during the same period in which de Gaulle
and the French government began to support and encourage Quebec’s autonomy
and ultimately its independence from Canada—the full force of the French state
struggled to prevent local forces in New Caledonia from asserting that territory’s
autonomy from France. In September 1966, de Gaulle even paid an official visit
to New Caledonia, just as he would do in Quebec in July 1967. Yet the message
he delivered in New Caledonia differed dramatically from the more famous one he
delivered in Quebec less than a year later. In Quebec, de Gaulle expressed his
support for and belief in Quebec’s inevitable independence; in New Caledonia he
spoke of the indivisibility of France and New Caledonia and of the impossibility of
New Caledonian independence.
What, then, are we to make of these two very different messages about the right
of dependent peoples to self-determination? Does the one have any bearing on
the other? Indeed, an examination of Gaullist policies toward the French Pacific
territory of New Caledonia in the 1960s discredits the widely accepted argument
that de Gaulle’s and the French government’s support for Quebec stemmed from
a principled Gaullist and French commitment to the national aspirations of
Gendron 95
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