‘Quelques Satisfactions d'Amour-propre’: African Elite Integration, the Loi-cadre, and Involuntary Decolonisation of French Tropical Africa

On 21 March 1956, the French Overseas Minister, Gaston Defferre, addressed the Assemblée Rationale , presenting a project with especially far-reaching implications. A loi-cadre was planned in order to enable a greater degree of participation by the indigenous populations in the sub-Saharan African overseas territories. The responsibility of the local Assemblées Territoriales was to be increased in various fields. Conseils de Gouuemement were proposed, with the objective to allow Black African politicians to have a role in the territorial executive. Defferre exhorted the deputies to prevent by their vote a development of the tropical African territories in the style of the Maghreb or Indochina. His speech seemed to impress the members of the chamber. At the occasion of two ballots, on 23 March and on 23 June 1956, his bill passed with a comfortable majority.