Chronology – FrancAfrique – 1944-1957

1944 January 31 – February 8 – the Brazzaville Conference that affirms the assimilation doctrine and excludes any idea of independence for France’s former colonies.
December 1 – Senegalese soldiers, demanding back pay and demobilization premiums for fighting for France in WW2 are massacred at Thiaroye Senegal by French troops. The French claimed some 40 were killed, Senegalese sources suggest it was more like 400.

1945 May 8, 1945 – the Setif-Guelma Massacres. In response to Algerian demonstrators calling

for independence in the northeastern cities of Setif and Guelma, Algerians attack French colonial settlers killing 108 of them. In response, French colonial authorities and French settlers go on a systematic rampage killing, according to Wikipedia, “from 6,000 to 30,000 Algerian Muslims. Other sources put the death toll as high as 45,000. While the exact number will never be known, I lean toward the Algerian claim of 45,000 as more reliable as the French were often undercounting the number of those they eliminated.
May 8 remains an official day of mourning in Algeria to this day
The Thiaroye and Setif Massacres, the allied effort to crush Vietnamese independence in its cradle were France’s unambiguous answer to independence rejection of calls for total independence from France at the end of WW2.
September 2, 1945 – in the vacuum created at the end of WW2, Vietnam declares its independence from France. The United States and Great Britain respond by sending 20,000 British troops to Saigon to crush the independence movement. They were followed by the entry of French troops into the country and the deputizing of remaining Japanese forces in an effort to crush the independence movement.
December 25 – CFA francs are created for the French colonies with a value fixed by the French franc to guarantee French monetary authority over its colonies

1946 January 20 – Charles De Gaulle steps down as president of the provisional government of the French Republic in opposition to the constitutional project elaborated by the French Constitutional Assembly (which gives more power to parliament and limits the powers of the French president.
March-April – A number of former colonies become integrated into France proper as “departments” – Guadeloupe, Guyane, Martinique, La Réunion); forced labor is abolished and French citizenship is extended to a small minority of subjects of the French empire (the Lamine Guère Law)
June 2, 1946 – Malagasy nationalists of the Party of Marginalized of Madagascar clash with French police in Sabotsy resulting in the deaths of two Malagasies. This marks the beginning of what will soon erupt into a war of independence that will be crushed by French authorities.
October 18-21 – The Rassemblement démocratique africain (RDA), an inter-territorial grouping of African members of the French National Assembly is created.
October 27 – The new constitution of France is adopted marking the beginning of the Fourth Republic.

1947 June 2, 1946 – February, 1949 – Malagasy nationalist rebellion against French colonial rule. As many as 100,000 Malagasies were killed, its leaders killed or captured, the rebellion crushed. The violent repression of the nationalist insurgency left deep scars in Malagasy society.

1949-1950 – Although it is generally skipped over to suggest that the decolonization of the Ivory Coast was a smooth process, nothing could be further from the truth. A movement for far reaching national independence emerged in the years following the end of WW 2 led by the Ivory Coast wing of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain. The movement, rejecting both assimilation and cooperation was crushed by the French military in a most violent manner, opening the way for the more moderate, pro-French wing under the leadership of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who will be one of France’s main “point men” in Africa.

1950 – Creation of the Black African Students Association in France (Fédération des étudiants ‘dAfrique noir en France – FEANF) in Lyon, an organization of African students in France influenced by the French Communist Party which understood the struggle against French colonialism in Africa as part of a wider struggle against Western Imperialism.

1954 – May 7. The victory of the Vietnamese (Vietminh) over French colonial forces at Dien Bien Phu is followed by the Geneva Accords which ends eight years of war in Vietnam and the end of French IndoChina
November 1: The Algerian Revolution against French Colonialism, prepared for since the Setif-Guelma massacres is launched by a new formation – the Algerian National Liberation Front.

1955 – April 18-24. The Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations takes place in Indonesia.
Delegates from 29 countries were in attendance. “Never before had leaders from so many non-Western countries gathered together to make common cause.” Among the most prominent world leaders who attended the Conference were Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai. Most other countries sent high-ranking representatives, but not their heads of government. For most of the delegates in attendance, the Bandung Conference was also the first time they had engaged with any representative of Communist China. Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi, U Nu, Nasser, and Zhou spent a considerable amount of social time with one another at the Conference. Two prominent Americans were in attendance: author Richard Wright and New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell.

1956 – First Tunisia and then Morocco gain independence from France. The independence of
these two countries benefitted from the attention France was forced to give to the Algerian uprising. France simply did not have the manpower and military might to address the independence movement of all three of its Maghreb colonies. Both remained states “associated” – a formal status – within the French Union.

1957 – Gold Coast, as the British called their colony, gained independence under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. The country would shed it colonial name and from henceforth be known of Ghana.

(Note – much of this chronology comes from Thomas Borrell, Amzat Boukari-Yabara, Benoit Collombat and Thomas Deltombe. L’Empire Qui Ne Veut Pas Mourir: Une Histoire de la FrancAfrique. Seuil Publishers. 2021, p. 28. I have added some additional information.RJP)