The two faces of Charles the Good: Charles de Gaulle,France,and decolonization in Quebec and New Caledonia

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 infamous “Vive le Québec 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 remaining colonized peoples, especially the Québécois. The argument that France had embraced such a mission libératrice 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 demonstrated 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 dependent peoples. 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 a closer examination of the attitude of de Gaulle and the French state toward “decolonization” in Quebec during the same period.

The basic nature of the France-Quebec relationship in the 1960s is clear, as are its main developments and the problems they caused in Franco-Canadian relations. In broad terms, Quebec and France rediscovered each other in the early 1960s after two centuries of relative neglect and mutual disinterest. In the early years of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, Quebec’s Liberal government, led by Premier Jean Lesage, found in France a useful source of inspiration, encouragement, and assistance as it tried to modernize Quebec’s educational system, assert more control over the province’s economic and industrial development, and strengthen the French language in the historic heartland of French culture in North America. It also found in the French government an ally as it claimed, among other things, the constitutional prerogative to establish its own international contacts in areas of provincial jurisdiction like language, education, and culture. From the establishment of Quebec’s quasi-diplomatic Délégation générale in Paris in October 1960 to the increasingly numerous contacts between French and Quebec officials, the extremely warm reception that Quebec’s premier, ministers, and officials received in the French capital, and the cultural accord Quebec signed with France in 1965, Quebec’s relations with France blossomed in the early-to-mid 1960s. The Canadian government, which found itself sidelined or ignored in the process and its ministers and diplomats snubbed in Paris, was dismayed and annoyed.

The imposing figure of Charles de Gaulle loomed large over these developments, as he did over so much of the history of France and of international relations in this period. As we know, there were no indications at the beginning of the 1960s that de Gaulle had any special interest in Quebec, and the feeling was evidently mutual since the public’s response to the French president’s visit to the province in 1960 had been lukewarm at best. Yet within a few short years, de Gaulle had embraced Quebec and he and his government were assisting the province in the elaboration of its political, economic, and cultural ambitions. He was not alone in his interest in Quebec of course; a small coterie of politicians, diplomats, officials, and journalists in Paris—the so-called Quebec Mafia—shared this interest and encouraged French support for Quebec. Yet de Gaulle himself both inspired and set the framework for France’s renewed interest in and relations with Quebec in the 1960s despite the unease it caused within the Quai d’Orsay, the French foreign ministry, which was much more concerned than the Élysée about preserving France’s good relations with Canada. It was also de Gaulle who decided to travel to Quebec in 1967. Initially disinclined to the visit, ultimately he made this trip on the understanding that Quebec and Quebec alone would be its focus. The trip to Canada’s capital, Ottawa, required by protocol, would be brief and strictly a formality. In the end, it did not take place at all.

Since much has already been written about de Gaulle’s trip to Quebec in July 1967, a short summary will suffice. He arrived in Quebec City aboard the French cruiser Colbert on 23 July, landing at the historic l’Anse au Foulon, and spent the next three days greeting and being greeted by dignitaries; being feted at breakfasts, lunches, and dinners; and giving speeches. All of this was standard fare for official visits by heads of state. The most eventful part of the trip took place on 24 July, which de Gaulle spent travelling between Quebec City and Montreal on New France’s Chemin du Roy along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. The cheering crowds lining the road evidently had a tremendous effect on de Gaulle. When he finally arrived in Montreal, he insisted on addressing another large crowd eagerly waiting to see him outside City Hall, an address he began by confiding that the atmosphere all along the Chemin du Roy reminded him of the Liberation of Paris in August 1944. After some additional comments about France’s renewed interest in French Canada, de Gaulle concluded his remarks by declaring “Vive le Québec libre.” At this, the crowd below erupted in cheers—“Vive le Québec libre” was a slogan adopted by Quebec’s separatist Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale party—though the dignitaries with de Gaulle on the balcony, including Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, were distinctly less impressed. In Ottawa, Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson and his cabinet colleagues were similarly unimpressed with de Gaulle’s intrusion into Canada’s domestic affairs, and while de Gaulle toured the pavilions at the Montreal Expo on 25 July, Canada’s federal government prepared its response. That evening, Pearson issued a statement rebuking the French president for his unacceptable comments, particularly the implication that French Canadians were in need of liberation. Offended in turn by this rebuke, an unrepentant de Gaulle cancelled his scheduled trip to Ottawa and flew back to France on 26 July.

We know what happened. The more interesting and important question is why did de Gaulle make such a public declaration of support for an independent Quebec? There was some initial speculation in the press and elsewhere that, aging, tired, and either confused or caught up in the moment, de Gaulle had not really known what he was saying. Given the evidence that subsequently emerged about the extent to which de Gaulle planned to do something during his trip to Quebec, this speculation was dismissed long ago. De Gaulle clearly knew what he was doing and, moreover, planned on doing it, or something like it. ¹ Subsequently, scholars began trying to explain de Gaulle’s support for Quebec by highlighting the numerous irritants, such as the Canadian government’s refusal to sell uranium to France for its nuclear force de frappe, that bedevilled Canada-France relations in the 1960s, as well as the broader context of the deteriorating relations between France and the “Anglo-Saxon” countries throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, leading to France’s withdrawal from NATO’s military command in 1966. From this perspective, de Gaulle’s, and France’s, attacks on Canada were part and parcel of the rejection of American hegemony rather than necessarily indicative of any particular support for Quebec; French interest in Quebec increased as France’s relations with the US, Britain, and Canada deteriorated. This emphasis on politics and relations within the North Atlantic alliance, however, has fallen out of favour. ²

The new scholarly consensus, developed over several decades, argues that de Gaulle (re)discovered Quebec in the early 1960s and felt a profound sense of sympathy for the plight of French Canadians struggling to preserve their distinct language and culture within the constraints of an oppressive, anglophone-dominated federal system of government that he eventually came to consider unnatural and doomed. When exactly this discovery happened is still somewhat in question. In his memoirs, de Gaulle claimed that he first raised the issue of Quebec’s cultural distinctiveness and its future with Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker in 1960, although Diefenbaker himself rejected that claim. ³ In any case, de Gaulle became committed to the idea of Quebec’s independence by 1963 at the latest. ⁴ As identified by scholars as well as by de Gaulle himself, this commitment stemmed from two principal sources. The first was de Gaulle’s determination to strengthen and spread French culture, which in the case of Quebec entailed atoning for France’s abandonment of Quebec in the eighteenth century. This was the so-called “Debt of Louis XV.” According to this argument, after the conquest of New France in 1759–1760 French Canadians were forced to struggle to protect their culture and remain French in the hostile environment of anglophone North America. They had succeeded valiantly but now deserved help from France to complete their project of cultural and national development. ⁵ The second source was de Gaulle’s supposed commitment to the principle of self-determination for all peoples, starting with the French themselves but extending to all dependent and colonial peoples.

Scholars of French history have engaged in an extensive debate about whether or not de Gaulle returned to power in France in 1958 with the intention of decolonizing the French empire. Most of this debate centres on the messy problem of Algeria, where the Fourth Republic had been engaged in a bloody and debilitating war against Algerian nationalists since 1954. Did de Gaulle always plan on working toward Algeria’s independence, disguising his real intentions to placate the military and the French Right that insisted on the continuation of l’Algérie française? Or did he return to power in 1958, like British prime minister Winston Churchill before him, determined to preserve the empire only to be forced by circumstances beyond his control to accept its dissolution? Here, too, a consensus seems to have emerged. Scholars such as Maurice Vaïsse argue that decolonization was central to de Gaulle’s plan for France: ridding France of its colonial burdens, especially Algeria, was the key to restoring France’s own independence in international affairs as well as its grandeur by allowing France to reposition itself as the champion of self-determination for Third World, developing, and dependent peoples and states. ⁶ It took de Gaulle four years to extricate France from Algeria after his return in 1958 but, once accomplished, the French president was to make self-determination for all peoples the cornerstone of the French state’s foreign policy. The year 1962–1963 represented, therefore, a real turning point in this French diplomatic revolution.

Although popular with French scholars in particular, this argument rests on shaky foundations. First, the idea that de Gaulle was committed to decolonization in Algeria and the French empire in 1958 and thereafter depends to a large degree on accepting at face value the statements contained in de Gaulle’s own memoirs, written with the benefit of hindsight, and other self-serving statements. In contrast, as argued by Irwin Wall, the eminent scholar of postwar French history, equally if not more impressive evidence demonstrates that de Gaulle had no intention of ending the French empire in Algeria or elsewhere, that he “was part of the French colonial consensus, and quite unwilling to conceive any benefit to a France shorn of its colonies, much less Algeria.” ⁷ Moreover, Wall argues that a reconfigured relationship with Algeria and the rest of the French African colonies through the short-lived French Community was the pillar upon which de Gaulle expected to build French leadership in Europe and stake a claim to equality with the US and Britain in international affairs. Instead of actively working toward it, he had bowed to the reality of decolonization only after France lost all ability to affect developments otherwise.

These types of doubts about de Gaulle’s commitment to decolonization and the principle of colonial self-determination between 1958 and 1962 have not had any significant effect on the scholarship on de Gaulle and Quebec. The idea that de Gaulle developed a particular commitment to Quebec and its national self-determination in the early 1960s has been a staple of the literature. The most recent contributions to this literature, however, have explicitly situated this development within a post-colonial context, linking French support for Quebec independence directly to France’s departure from Algeria in 1962 and the decolonization of the rest of its empire. For these scholars, de Gaulle’s supposed diplomatic revolution, including the transformation of France into the champion of self-determination in international affairs, provides the background needed to understand the development of France-Quebec relations in the 1960s. The most notable recent example of this trend can be found in the work of David Meren, ⁸ which examines the influence that political and intellectual discourses of decolonization had on the Canada-Quebec-France triangle in the late 1960s, including de Gaulle’s visit to Quebec in 1967. Yet Frédéric Bastien, Olivier Courteaux, Marine Lefèvre, and Bernard Lachaise, among others, have all made the same basic argument recently: that French support for Quebec was rooted, at least in part, in de Gaulle’s and France’s post-colonial commitment to the idea that all peoples deserved the right to determine their futures for themselves. After all, as de Gaulle remarked to one of his ministerial colleagues, if France had had to grant self-determination to Algeria, Canada should have to do the same for Quebec. ⁹ Whether or not de Gaulle had always been committed to decolonization, these scholars have no doubt that he had, at the very least, made a virtue by 1962 of the independence of Algeria and the rest of the French empire by embracing a new mission for France, a mission libératrice.

Herein lies the major problem with the depiction of France’s post-colonial transformation into the champion of self-determination for all peoples in the 1960s. It presupposes that France’s colonial empire did in fact end with Algeria’s independence in 1962 and that the French state uniformly encouraged the ambitions of the world’s remaining colonial or dependent peoples thereafter. Both these statements are simply untrue. Aside from the fact that France had a pervasive habit of intervening in the internal affairs of its former colonies in Africa after their independence, hardly evidence of a profound French commitment to the principle of national self-determination, the simple reality is that even after Algeria’s independence in 1962, France retained a substantial colonial empire in Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, it was determined to keep these remaining colonial possessions, as is evident from the response of the French government to developments in the South Pacific territory of New Caledonia throughout the 1960s.

New Caledonia became a French colony in 1853 and, along with several other territories, it remains under French sovereignty to this day, a fact that is typically overlooked by scholars of French history. ¹⁰ It was neither a particularly large colony nor a particularly important one; its principal significance came from the fact that the archipelago’s main island, Grand Terre, is virtually one large, mountainous lump of nickel ore that has supplied France with almost all its nickel since the 1870s. Even so, compared to Algeria, Indochina, or the other French colonies in Africa, New Caledonia has never loomed large in the imagination of the French or of French historians. Perhaps the explanation for this can be found in New Caledonia’s relative acquiescence to French rule throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the period during which other French colonies secured their independence. New Caledonia, however, only appears quiescent in contrast to colonies such as Senegal or Tunisia, which experienced more severe political turmoil or nationalist upheaval, or Vietnam and Algeria, which endured long and bloody wars of national liberation. In fact, New Caledonia experienced the same types of pressures as these other colonies, leading to the emergence of its own proto-nationalist movement by the 1960s. This movement also sought to redefine the territory’s relationship to France, and the French state resisted it just as fiercely as it resisted similar movements in other colonies, though with greater success.

Strictly speaking, New Caledonia did not have an independence movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Independence would not emerge as a political issue in the territory until roughly the mid-1970s. ¹¹ The 1950s did, however, witness the birth of an autonomist movement with the establishment of the Union Calédonienne (UC) party in 1953 under the leadership of Maurice Lenormand, who had first arrived in the territory with the French military in 1934 only to return to Nouméa for good with his wife, the granddaughter of an indigenous chief from Lifou, in 1946. The goal of the UC was two-fold: to improve the political and economic conditions of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak peoples, and to achieve greater local control over New Caledonia’s economic and social development. Under the umbrella of French rule, Lenormand and the UC sought autonomy from Paris rather than independence. And for much of the 1950s, this goal seemed reasonably well aligned with the overall thrust of French colonial policy.

After the Second World War, the government of France’s Fourth Republic initiated a series of reforms whose ultimate intent was to preserve the French empire by liberalizing the terms of French rule and increasing the participation of local elites and moderate nationalists. Intended to solidify the empire through moderate, progressive change in the face of mounting pressure for decolonization, the reforms contributed to a surge in political activities and organization across the territories. Among other changes, including the accession by the Kanak peoples to citizenship and voting rights, in New Caledonia these reforms led to the development of what was known in the British Commonwealth as “responsible government” whereby control of the territory’s Conseil de gouvernement, the executive branch of government, passed from the Paris-appointed territorial governor to the elected members of the Territorial Assembly. As a result, after 1957, elected ministers from the parties that won the most seats in territorial elections exercised authority over and responsibility for a range of political, social, and economic functions. Though still under French rule, New Caledonia’s own elected officials now had greater control over the territory’s political and economic development, with the UC forming the first elected government after its victory in the territorial election of 1957. In this new government, Maurice Lenormand served as vice-president of the Conseil de gouvernement, the territory’s head of government.

The colonial reforms enacted by the French government in the 1940s and 1950s had convinced Lenormand and his UC colleagues that New Caledonia’s aspirations could be fulfilled under the umbrella of French sovereignty. It was for this reason that Lenormand and the UC continued to express their loyalty to France throughout this period. Nonetheless, many conservatives in New Caledonia, especially among the European population, never trusted the UC or its stated attachment to France. They worried that the UC’s ultimate goal was not autonomy but outright independence. In this, they shared the concerns of the French high commissioner in Nouméa and the French government in Paris, especially following the return to power of Charles de Gaulle in 1958. When conservatives rallied in Nouméa on 18 June 1958 to demand that Lenormand and the UC be removed from office, de Gaulle’s new government responded by dissolving the Territorial Assembly and calling a new territorial election. When the UC won this election too, the government in Paris dispatched a new high commissioner to New Caledonia who promptly deprived the vice-president of the governing council of his authority over the civil service, the police, and the radio station. Shortly thereafter, the high commissioner also forced Lenormand to choose between serving as vice-president of the council and retaining his position as New Caledonia’s only member of France’s National Assembly, arguing that he could not do both. Lenormand subsequently resigned his position in New Caledonia’s government and was succeeded by his UC colleague Michel Kauma. Lenormand remained the leader of the UC.

Despite the restrictions imposed on Lenormand and the reduced powers of the vice-president of the council after 1958, de Gaulle’s government continued to harbour suspicions about the ultimate intentions and loyalty of the UC. In 1963, these suspicions culminated in a radical departure from the thrust of French colonial reforms of the previous decade and a half. In December of that year, the French National Assembly passed a law—the Jacquinot Law—that transformed the Conseil de gouvernement in New Caledonia into an advisory body and restored executive power to the appointed high commissioner. This law undid most of the reforms of the 1950s, subordinating New Caledonia once again to direct rule from Paris. Moreover, the next year, Lenormand himself was convicted in a seemingly politically motivated trial for having failed to stop a bombing at the offices of L’Avenir Calédonien, the UC’s newspaper. He was deprived of his seat in the Territorial Assembly as well as his right to vote for five years. Lenormand withdrew from active political life in New Caledonia until the early 1970s. Between 1963 and 1964, therefore, the autonomist movement in New Caledonia suffered significant setbacks in the face of the determination of the Gaullist government in Paris to centralize the territory’s political power in its hands and to undermine the territory’s autonomist movement and its most important leader.

If the French government had expected these measures to weaken the territory’s autonomist movement, however, it was mistaken. The Jacquinot Law elicited bitter protests about the loss of local political responsibility from most of New Caledonia’s political parties, not just the UC. And if the territory’s conservatives did not particularly bemoan the apparent denouement of Maurice Lenormand’s political career, many nonetheless resented the way that the French government routinely subordinated New Caledonia’s interests, especially its economic ones, to its own. In fact, although only the UC continued to pursue autonomy for New Caledonia throughout the 1960s, most of the territory’s political parties and leaders challenged direct French rule, at least to some degree. Indeed, as will be discussed below, by 1966 New Caledonia’s Territorial Assembly was united in demanding a significant change to the structure of the territory’s most important industry, a demand that put it squarely at odds with French national interests as conceived by the government in Paris. This development posed such a significant challenge that the French government moved to restrict the scope for autonomous political activity in New Caledonia once again. In 1967, Pierre Billotte, the French minister of state for the overseas territories, submitted a series of three laws to the National Assembly in Paris. Together, these laws—known collectively as the lois Billotte—stripped the Territorial Assembly in Nouméa of its power over the mining industry, large-scale investments, and local communes in New Caledonia. The enactment of the laws in January 1969 centralized political authority over New Caledonia even further in Paris and rendered the Territorial Assembly even more powerless.

Between at least 1963 and 1969, then, the French government implemented a series of measures that significantly reduced the self-government exercised by the Territorial Assembly of New Caledonia. After enjoying a large degree of autonomy from 1956 to 1963, New Caledonia was in fact re-colonized by France between 1963 and the early 1970s, a process that also involved the immigration to the territory of 25,000 new inhabitants from Europe and elsewhere in Polynesia at the encouragement of the French state, including 2000 pieds noirs from Algeria who bitterly opposed the idea of New Caledonia’s independence. Several factors explain this development, including the fact that after Algeria’s independence in 1962, France shifted its nuclear testing program to French Polynesia. Control of New Caledonia, which enabled France to maintain a secure naval presence in the Pacific, was crucial to this program and thus to France’s nuclear force de frappe. Yet perhaps even more crucially, New Caledonia was home to a very important mining industry that France would not relinquish. Given its importance to modern industry, including the armaments industry, France considered nickel a strategic mineral, vital to its plans for economic development, and New Caledonia was the world’s third-largest producer of the metal in the 1960s. France’s political, economic, and strategic interests, therefore, were closely connected to New Caledonia and its nickel industry and all were seemingly threatened by the growth of New Caledonia’s autonomist forces, not least because of their campaign to open the territory’s nickel industry to non-French competition.

Since it was first mined commercially in the 1870s, nickel brought significant prosperity and benefits to New Caledonia, including one of the highest per capita standards of living in the Pacific region throughout the twentieth century. Yet, despite its benefits, the industry has also been a source of significant tension within New Caledonia due to its dominance of the territory’s economic activity. The nickel industry was the territory’s biggest employer and provided its government with the vast majority of its revenues, but the territory’s dependence on this one industry stifled economic diversification and exposed New Caledonia’s economy to the cyclical vagaries of the global nickel market. As a result, the nickel industry helped keep New Caledonia economically dependent on France and on one particular French company, Société Le Nickel (SLN), whose influence permeated all aspects of New Caledonia’s political and economic life and toward which Caledonians felt increasing resentment. They believed that SLN, which controlled the territory’s biggest and richest ore deposits and owned its only nickel refinery, kept the lion’s share of the benefits of the exploitation of the territory’s rich natural resources, leaving only scraps for its people, a situation both enabled and exacerbated by the political influence that the company enjoyed in Paris and Nouméa. ¹² By the early 1960s, many Caledonians had become convinced that the territory’s future prosperity depended on breaking SLN’s almost complete monopoly.

Unfortunately for them, this desire ran counter to the goals of the French state. The French government considered SLN a vital tool of French national industrial development and was determined to preserve its position in New Caledonia. In October 1966, de Gaulle himself worried that the people of New Caledonia were turning against SLN, a development, he said, that was not in France’s interests. ¹³ If the company was inefficient and unproductive, the French solution was to expand and upgrade its facilities in the territory, and the French state accordingly supported SLN’s ambitious 1964 plan to double its annual production in New Caledonia to 50,000 tons of nickel. The Territorial Assembly, however, refused the tax concessions, including reduced duties on nickel exports, which SLN wanted in order to make its expansion more affordable, a refusal that the French high commissioner in Nouméa characterized as “irresponsible” and proof that many of the leading figures in New Caledonia were incapable of recognizing the territory’s true interests. ¹⁴ It was a sign of things to come. In February 1966, the Territorial Assembly refused to vote on yet another request by SLN for tax concessions, without which the company could not hope to implement its modernization. For its part, the assembly refused to depend on SLN to expand the territory’s production of nickel. Instead, most of New Caledonia’s political leaders wanted new investment in the industry; in particular, they wanted to break SLN’s monopoly by establishing a second major nickel company in the territory, a prospect that the French government rejected outright.

Throughout the 1960s, New Caledonian politics was thus dominated by a dispute between territorial leaders who believed that the only way to revitalize New Caledonia’s all-important nickel industry was to allow foreign companies to invest in it, and the French authorities in Paris and Nouméa, who insisted that SLN had to be at the forefront of any new investment in the industry. It was a dispute that, from the perspective of the French government, struck at the very essence of French interests in the territory and at the core of the relationship between France and New Caledonia. It was also a dispute that centred on the role to be played in New Caledonia by a Canadian company, since territorial leaders had pinned their hopes for economic prosperity and development on the establishment in New Caledonia of the world’s biggest and most important nickel company, the International Nickel Company of Canada (INCO). INCO, they believed, had the capital resources, the industry leadership, the technological capability, and the access to markets in the US and around the world that New Caledonia’s nickel industry so desperately needed. For the French government, however, INCO’s size, power, and potential influence were precisely the problem.

The French government actually worried about allowing any non-French company to invest in New Caledonia’s nickel industry in the early-to-mid 1960s but it was far more concerned about INCO than about any other company. First, gaining access to New Caledonia’s vast nickel reserves would only reinforce INCO’s ability to dominate the global nickel industry, further marginalizing SLN and weakening vital French industrial and economic interests. More importantly, French officials, including Jacques Foccart, de Gaulle’s influential senior advisor, and de Gaulle himself, believed that INCO would open the door to a massive influx of (North) American political and economic interests in New Caledonia, thereby jeopardizing its ties to France. They also worried that INCO’s establishment in the territory would accelerate internal demands for autonomy or even independence from France. ¹⁵ The only sure way to safeguard French interests was to keep the Canadian company out of the territory altogether.

From the French perspective, the penetration of New Caledonia by North American interests was bad enough. The French government’s worries about American intentions toward the French Pacific had begun during the Second World War and persisted thereafter. De Gaulle himself was notoriously concerned about the weight of American political, economic, and cultural influence and the need for France to struggle against it. Yet French officials perceived in INCO’s interest in New Caledonia’s nickel industry a dangerous conjunction between the “American” threat and the equally grave threat to French national interests from Maurice Lenormand, the UC, and New Caledonia’s “autonomist” movement, which the French government still suspected of aspiring toward independence. After all, it was the UC that pursued INCO’s establishment in New Caledonia most aggressively throughout the 1960s as a means to increase the territory’s economic autonomy, and Maurice Lenormand himself signed deals with INCO in September 1963 allowing the Canadian company to prospect some of his own nickel concessions. ¹⁶ Given the fact that Lenormand and the UC controlled the Territorial Assembly in this period, evidence that the leader of the UC was dealing directly with INCO also helps explain the urgency with which the Jacquinot Law was implemented in December 1963 to limit the power of the assembly by vesting full executive authority in the hands of the territorial governor, a French official.

For the French, a more troublesome indication of INCO’s influence occurred in early 1966. In February of that year, a group of INCO executives and officials arrived in New Caledonia and spent several weeks touring the island. During this visit, the INCO officials announced that the company was prepared to invest US$100 million in New Caledonia to build a new refinery to produce 25,000 tons of nickel. Four months later, the Territorial Assembly overwhelmingly approved a memorandum on the development of the nickel industry in New Caledonia that severely criticized SLN and denounced its continual demands for concessions from the assembly. It also called for an end to SLN’s monopoly in the industry and demanded that the French government allow INCO to invest in it. ¹⁷ With this memo, the Territorial Assembly insisted that New Caledonia’s nickel industry had to be opened to non-French companies, especially INCO. It was a position from which territorial politicians, led by the UC, would not be moved, and the challenge it represented to the French government was clear.

It was in this context that Charles de Gaulle visited New Caledonia later that year. He arrived in Nouméa on 3 September 1966 to an enthusiastic welcome and spent several days visiting towns, giving speeches, and touring SLN’s facilities. In almost every respect, this visit was similar to the one he would make to Quebec less than a year later. It too culminated in an address he gave, this time to the Territorial Assembly in Nouméa on 5 September. The message he delivered in this address, though, differed significantly from the one he would give in Montreal. De Gaulle responded to the assembly’s nickel memorandum by speaking about the need to derive the greatest possible benefit from the development of New Caledonia’s rich natural resources but only in a way that respected, above all, the “national interest.” ¹⁸ Clearly, the national interest of which he spoke was the national interest of France itself; this was no declaration of “Vive la Calédonie libre.” As he emphasized in speeches and remarks throughout his visit, France was New Caledonia and New Caledonia was France; the two were inextricably linked, indivisible, and France would not permit New Caledonia to develop in ways inimical to the interests of France. This, then, was de Gaulle’s response to the challenge posed by the Territorial Assembly and its demand for greater economic, and political, autonomy, a response that contradicted de Gaulle’s earlier acknowledgment to Jacques Foccart on the plane heading to New Caledonia that French efforts there were doomed, that sooner or later the territory would seek its independence from France. ¹⁹ Even so, de Gaulle’s pronouncement did not have the desired effect; the territory’s leaders did not weaken in their resolve to open New Caledonia’s nickel industry to foreign investment.

Faced with New Caledonia’s continued insistence on new investment in the nickel industry even after de Gaulle’s visit, the French government ultimately relented and agreed in late 1966 to allow the establishment of a second major nickel company in the territory. It still maintained that this company had to be French, and the government consequently spent the next several months desperately trying to entice French companies to invest in the nickel industry. When it failed to do so, de Gaulle’s government turned its attention to any other company willing to make the necessary commitment. Here too it failed; although many other companies were interested in New Caledonia’s nickel industry, none was as ready to commit to it as INCO or enjoyed the level of popular support in the territory that INCO did. Having exhausted all other possibilities, the government’s opposition to INCO finally collapsed. By October 1967, INCO reached a preliminary agreement with the French Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM) to establish a new company to mine and refine nickel in New Caledonia, although it took another year and a half of difficult negotiations to finalize the agreement, which was concluded only after the passage of the Billotte laws restored New Caledonia’s mining industry to centralized control from Paris.

Throughout the 1960s, therefore, the French state campaigned fiercely to keep the Canadian company, INCO, from establishing itself in the French territory of New Caledonia, a campaign that was closely linked to the equally determined French efforts to negate the influence of the territory’s autonomist movement. Together, the Jacquinot and Billotte laws deprived New Caledonia’s Territorial Assembly of the autonomy it had exercised after 1956; in particular, they deprived the Territorial Assembly of its power over New Caledonia’s mining industry, restoring that vital responsibility to the direct rule of the French government in Paris. The timing of these measures—closely following developments related to INCO—was not accidental: commenting in late November 1963 on the urgent need to pass the Jacquinot Law, for example, Georges Pompidou pointed to the scandalous behaviour of New Caledonia’s government, especially Lenormand ceding his mining rights to INCO. ²⁰ Clearly, France’s reassertion of direct rule over New Caledonia—the territory’s re-colonization—was a direct response to what the French government perceived as a concerted assault on France’s national interests by Canadian and North American economic and political interests in the form of INCO and its suspected allies in the territory’s autonomist movement.

Given the prominent role that the Canadian company played in events in New Caledonia and the way that these events overlapped with the period leading up to de Gaulle’s visit to Quebec, is it possible that the former contributed in some way to the French president’s “Vive le Québec libre” declaration? This intriguing question must be left aside for the moment. ²¹ Nonetheless, there are lessons to be learned from New Caledonia that are more broadly applicable and, in particular, to our understanding of what happened in Quebec in July 1967. The most obvious point is that arguments about de Gaulle’s so-called diplomatic revolution are based on a far too uncritical reading of French history post-1962. Not only did France retain colonial territories even after Algeria’s independence, the French state also took dramatic steps after 1962 to reassert its authority in some colonial territories, including most notably in New Caledonia in order to keep it from succumbing to North American—Canadian—interests at the expense of France’s interests and sovereignty. Clearly, when the demand for local autonomy in New Caledonia clashed with French interests, French interests prevailed. To argue that de Gaulle and the French state championed self-determination for all dependent peoples after 1962 is, therefore, simply incorrect. They championed self-determination for some peoples, like the Québécois, but not for others, like the Caledonians. How do we explain this situation?

More broadly, although it seems trite, the lesson to be drawn from this comparison of Gaullist France’s policies toward Quebec and New Caledonia in the 1960s is that a country’s foreign policies are almost always shaped predominantly by conceptions of its national interest. De Gaulle’s and France’s support for the national aspirations of the Québécois can only be understood in terms of French conceptions of France’s national interest rather than by an overarching attachment to the principle of self-determination for dependent peoples or any other ideal or motivation. Recent analyses of France-Quebec relations have placed far too much emphasis on the cultural, intellectual, or ideological sources of French support for Quebec at the expense of political calculations or conceptions of the French national interest. Charles de Gaulle and France did not embrace a “diplomatic revolution” after 1962. Instead, they used appeals to grand principles to mask the fact that French policies served perceived French national interests, as they generally always did, whether it was to keep New Caledonia within the French fold or, among other things, to foster the emergence of a francophonie that included Quebec but excluded Canada.

Historians of Canada and of Quebec specifically are making greater efforts to situate developments in this country within broader global contexts such as the intellectual and cultural effects of decolonization. ²² This is admirable, necessary, and offers valuable insights. But the devil is often in the details, and our efforts to understand this international context would benefit from greater comparative studies of the type tentatively suggested here. These studies lead us to consider the significance of such things as the fact that while Charles de Gaulle, that great champion of national self-determination, has been commemorated with a statue in Quebec City there has been no similar commemoration of him in Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia.