Postwar

102

There was occasional substance to the French claim: Felix Eboue, the governor-general of French Equatorial Africa in 1945, was a high French colonial functionary—and he was black.

103

According to some sources, De Gaulle discouraged open talk of colonial self-government lest European settlers, notably in Algeria, seize the occasion to secede from France and establish a segregationist state, on the South African model. This was not an unreasonable anxiety, as subsequent events would show.

104

For friend and foe alike, Ho Chi Minh’s incarnation as an international Communist icon was confirmed on January 14th 1950, when Mao and Stalin were the first to recognize his newly declared Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

105

These events are memorably depicted in Gilles Pontecorvo’s 1965 film La Battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers).

106

The referendum established a new, Fifth Republic. De Gaulle was elected its first President three months later.

107

When the Belgians abandoned the Congo in 1960 they left behind just thirty Congolese university graduates to fill four thousand senior administrative positions.

108

Between 1954 and 1962, 2 million French soldiers served in Algeria; 1.2 million of them were conscripts.

109

Quoted in Fernand L’Huillier, Dialogues Franco-Allemandes 1925-1933 (Strasbourg, 1971), pp. 35-36.

110

The Canal itself had always been within Egyptian territory and indisputably a part of Egypt. But most of its revenues went to the foreign-owned company.

111

Quoted in Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (Berkeley and Los Angeles, U of California Press, 1992), page 429.

112

Andrew Moravscik, The Choice for Europe. Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998), page 137.

113

The Stalinist leadership remained firmly in place, trials continued in camera for two more years and on May 1st 1955 a grotesque, over-sized statue of Stalin was erected on a hill overlooking Prague. De-Stalinization would not reach Czechoslovakia until a decade later, with dramatic consequences.

114

Kadar, whom Nagy had released from prison three years before, was appointed First Secretary of the Hungarian Party on October 25th. He replaced Gero, whose security forces had fired on unarmed demonstrators in Parliament Square that same morning.

115