1944–1945: (De Gaulle’s Brazzaville Conference and the Promise of Reform — French African Territories’ Critical Wartime Contributions Giving Nationalists Inc…

1944–1945: (De Gaulle’s Brazzaville Conference and the Promise of Reform — French African Territories’ Critical Wartime Contributions Giving Nationalists Increased Leverage, the 1944 New Deal of Political Concessions Aimed at Retaining Not Liberating the Colonies, Wartime Socioeconomic Hardships Compounding the Depression, Workers Using Strike Action and Trade Unionism, and the British Employing Propaganda to Persuade Rather Than Force African Cooperation): South of the Sahara, the support of French territories for de Gaulle had been critical — providing troops and strategically valuable land and air supply routes across the continent. This contribution gave African nationalists increased leverage. In 1944 at Brazzaville, de Gaulle was compelled to offer a new deal of political reform once the war was won, a package of concessions necessitated by African military and economic contributions — yet also a tacit recognition of how important the colonies would be to France’s postwar recovery. The promise of reform was tactical, aimed at stabilization and retention rather than liberation. War brought socioeconomic hardships — inflation, trade disruption, depressed export prices — compounding those of the 1930s, yet African workers recognized their own economic muscle and by the early 1940s were using strike action and nascent trade unionism to considerable effect, particularly in the mining economies. The potential for social unrest produced a more cautious colonial approach than during the First World War — the British employed propaganda including films, radio broadcasts, newspapers, and pamphlets aimed at encouraging African cooperation, an approach that necessitated projecting the colonial state as fundamentally good and its enemies as evil. Naked force was no longer acceptable; blind faith and obedience could no longer be taken for granted. The empire that had been built on violence now needed consent — and consent, once sought, could also be withheld.