CHARLES DE GAULLE: THE COMMUNAUTÉ AND INTERNATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY
Charles de Gaulle (1959)
Yes, in a few days France, the Federation of Mali and the states that compose it will begin negotiations to modify the status of their relations.¹ This was implicitly and even explicitly provided for by the Constitution of the Community that we all have voted. It is nonetheless true that this will lead the federal state of Mali, and the member states of Soudan and Senegal that compose it, to a new position. The one they occupied last year was new. And it will be even more so in the immediate future. In other words, this state of Mali will assume what some call a ‘position of independence’ and which I prefer to call that of ‘international sovereignty.’ I say that I prefer it, without contesting the attraction and the significance that the term independence may have and ought to have for all peoples and in particular for this one. I prefer, nevertheless, international sovereignty because it appears to me to correspond better to enduring necessities and more particularly to present–day necessities. Independence is a term which signifies an intention, but the world being what it is — so small, so cramped, so interfering with itself — that real independence, total independence does not truly belong to anybody …
When, therefore, a country like yours will assume the international responsibility that I mentioned the whole world is looking to see in which direction it will move of its own accord. Will it choose the camp of freedom, will it choose the other camp? … But again, things being what they are and the world being what it is, Mali must choose the direction that it will take. In order to choose it and to follow it there is something essential … What is essential for a country to play its international role is for it to exist by itself, through itself and in itself. There is no international reality which is not at the same time a national reality; for a country in order to play its role in the world must follow the paths permitting it to do so; the first of these paths is that it constitutes itself as a State. A country has never been known to exist and even more important exist internationally without a State. That is to say, an organization which directs the whole of the citizenry, which is accepted and recognized by [376] all the inhabitants, and which leads the entire country toward a better life …
This is a technical epoch in which we are living. There is no state with any weight which does not contribute something to the technical progress of the world. This I must recommend since I have the honor of finding myself among you. You are taking the responsibility and France accepts it with all her heart. I promise that she is ready to help you. She is ready first because of her humane nature. There have been vicissitudes in the history of France but the continuity of this history exists and goes back before the Revolution … From its very inception the vocation of France, the purpose of France, have been a humane vocation and a humane purpose. She is faithful to this purpose when she offers you her loyal and friendly cooperation in the creation, establishment, and progress of your state …
That is why you may count on France. In the world in which we are and in which we are going to be, no longer only linked together, but side by side — in this world let us stay together. This is the best service that we can render to ourselves, and in any case it is, in the last resort, what humanity requires of us.
ENDNOTES
1. Roy Constantine Macridis and Bernard Edward Brown, “Appendix B: Selected Documents Since de Gaulle’s Accession to Power on June 1, 1958: 11. Excerpts from President de Gaulle’s Address in Dakar Before the Federal Assembly of Mali at the Sixth Meeting of the Executive Council of the French Community, December 13, 1959,” The De Gaulle Republic: Quest for Unity, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press Inc., 1960), 359–385, 375–376. (Translation from the full text of the address reprinted in Le Monde, December 15, 1959)
Christopher Richard Wade Dettling, editor, Charles de Gaulle: The Communauté and International Sovereignty, Charles de Gaulle, MEDIUM, 2017.
See: “Next to the creation of the Fifth Republic itself, de Gaulle’s most striking achievement in 1958 was the establishment of the French Community, which represents a logical and considerable advance over the policies initiated in 1955 by the Fourth Republic.”
Edgar S. Furniss, Jr., France: Troubled Ally: De Gaulle’s Heritage and Prospects, (New York: Published for the Council of Foreign Relations by Harper & Brothers, 1960), 487.
De Gaulle’s most striking achievement, the establishment of the Fifth Republic and the French Community (La Communauté), really does represent a logical advance over the policies initiated by the Fourth Republic: The advancement of the last remnants of modernity as a phase upon the road of world history and the rise of Americanism. De Gaulle played his rôle to the hilt in his historically acclaimed Québec swan song, before being swallowed by the titanic forces of Globalism.
