Côte d'Ivoire 2

Côte d’Ivoire

An indigenous elite trained in French administrative practice formed an intermediary group between French and Africans. After 1930, a small number of Westernized Ivoirians were granted the right to apply for French citizenship. Most Ivoirians, however, were classified as French subjects and were governed under the principle of association. As subjects of France, natives outside the above-mentioned civilized elite had no political rights. They were drafted for work in mines, on plantations, as porters, and on public projects as part of their tax responsibility. They were expected to serve in the military and were subject to the indigénat, a separate system of law.

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Brazzaville Conference of 1944

In World War II, the Vichy regime remained in control until 1942, when British troops invaded without much resistance. Winston Churchill gave power back to members of General Charles de Gaulle’s provisional government. By 1943, the Allies had returned French West Africa to the French. The Brazzaville Conference of 1944, the first Constituent Assembly of the Fourth Republic in 1946, and France’s gratitude for African loyalty during World War II, led to far-reaching governmental reforms in 1946. French citizenship was granted to all African “subjects”, the right to organize politically was recognized, and various forms of forced labor were abolished. Between the years 1944–1946 many national conferences and constituent assemblies took place between France’s Vichy regime and provisional governments in Ivory Coast. Governmental reforms were established by late 1946, which granted French citizenship to all African “subjects” under the colonial control of the French.

Until 1958, governors appointed in Paris administered the colony of Ivory Coast, using a system of direct, centralized administration that left little room for Ivoirian participation in policy-making. While British colonial administrations adopted divide-and-rule policies elsewhere, applying ideas of assimilation only to the educated elite, the French were interested in ensuring that the small but influential elite was sufficiently satisfied with the status quo to refrain from anti-French sentiment. Although strongly opposed to the practices of association, educated Ivoirians believed that they would achieve equality with their French peers through assimilation rather than through complete independence from France. After the assimilation doctrine was implemented through the postwar reforms, though, Ivoirian leaders realized that even assimilation implied the superiority of the French over the Ivoirians. Some of them thought that discrimination and political inequality would end only with independence; others thought the problem of the division between the tribal culture and modernity would continue.

Independence:

Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the son of a Baoulé chief, became Ivory Coast’s father of independence.

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Felix-Houphouet-Boigny

In 1944, he formed the country’s first agricultural trade union for African cocoa farmers like himself. Angered that colonial policy favored French plantation owners, the union members united to recruit migrant workers for their own farms. Houphouët-Boigny soon rose to prominence and within a year was elected to the French Parliament in Paris. A year later, the French abolished forced labor. Houphouët-Boigny established a strong relationship with the French government, expressing a belief that Ivory Coast would benefit from the relationship, which it did for many years. France appointed him as a minister, the first African to become a minister in a European government.

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