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World War II consists of many very famous events. Two of these events were the Atlantic Charter and the Brazzaville Conference, both of which had a major impact on Africans during World War II. In this section of the web site, we examine the Atlantic Charter and the Brazzaville conference and why they were important to Africans. Use the table below to select which event you would like to explore.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic
Charter on 14 August 1941 as a “joint declaration by the United States and
Britain.” The Charter
“proclaimed the right of all peoples to choose their own form of government
and not to have boundary changes imposed on them.”
The Charter later became the basis for the United Nations Declaration,
which most free nations signed and thus “formed the basis of the UN
organization established at San Francisco in April [through] June 1945.”1
While both signatories of the Atlantic Charter agreed on the words of the
document, which H.S. Wilson described as “essentially a press release,”
Roosevelt and Churchill had very different interpretations of those words.2
In a speech to the House of Commons following the signing of the Charter,
Churchill said: “At the Atlantic meeting we had in mind, primarily, the
restoration of the sovereignty, [and] self-government...of the States and
Nations of Europe under the Nazi yoke...so that this is quite a separate problem
from the progressive evolution of self-governing institutions in the regions and
peoples which owe allegiance to the British Crown.”3
Charles de Gaulle, the leader of Free France and later, after World War
II, France, agreed with this view. Roosevelt,
however, believed “the right of self-determination should apply to all peoples
and...the United States would actively support [that right].”
African nationalists also believed this viewpoint.4
Between the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations Charter, African
nationalists believed they had all the justification necessary to demand
independence for their states.5
Ultimately, the Atlantic Charter served as the
original rallying point for African independence. Combined with the rising nationalism in African states, it
marked the beginning of the end for European imperialism in Africa.
The Brazzaville Conference in 1944 was a forum to discuss the fate of
French colonies. Charles de Gaulle
called the conference, which ran from 30 January until 8 February 1944, as a way
to discuss the fate of French colonial interests.
The conference “[decreed] that eventual self-government for any of the
colonies was unthinkable, but then went on to agree that the colonies must be
given greater economic social freedom, and that the indigenous populations must
take a greater part in the running of their countries.”6
Following the conference, American State Department official Ralph J.
Bunche, of African descent himself, “concluded that ‘The implication was
very strong that Brazzaville clung tenaciously to conventional French policy of
integration and assimilation of the colonial territories and their peoples.”7
In essence, the French were looking at their colonies as provinces in a
larger France. A French official
said in support of this idea: “In greater colonial France there are neither
peoples to enfranchise nor racial discrimination to abolish...There are
populations which we intend to conduct, stage by stage, to a political
personality, and for the more developed political rights, but this will mean the
only independence they will want will be the independence of France.”
However, the French idea of “assimilation” did not work.8
Instead, it “started the movement toward independence by nearly all
French colonies.” Obviously, the
French belief of what their actions at Brazzaville might achieve -- assimilation
rather than independence -- were off base.
Most French colonial holdings had their independence by 1962.9