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

Abstract

Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Quebec in 1967 continues to attract significant scholarly and popular attention. Despite ongoing efforts to broaden our understanding of the evolution of France-Quebec relations during the 1960s, de Gaulle’s visit remains the pivotal event of that rapprochement and is believed to confirm the French president’s personal support for Quebec’s independence, stemming from his efforts to position post-colonial France as the champion of decolonization and self-determination for dependent peoples. This scholarly consensus, however, can be challenged by even a cursory glance at France’s policies toward New Caledonia in the 1960s, which reflected a fierce French determination to prevent the loss of its Pacific Ocean territory. 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 examine more closely the attitude of de Gaulle and the French state toward “decolonization” in Quebec during the same period. The national aspirations that mattered most to France or to de Gaulle were those of France itself.