Departementalisation

To the contemporary French mind, departmentalisation is primarily associated with a date, that of the Law of 19 March 1946 which sealed the transformation into Departments of four of the country’s oldest colonies: on the one hand, in the Caribbean, Guadeloupe, French Guiana and Martinique; on the other, in the Indian Ocean, La Réunion. Supported by the majority of the elected representatives of these territories, foremost among whom were Aimé Césaire and Gaston Monnerville, this Law set the tone for a new contract taking account of the lessons learned from the second World War, and aiming to rebuild the Empire on a basis which would be more respectful of the political and social rights of the subject populations. The Constitution of 27 October 1946 ratified this new conception of equality by instituting a Union française within which the colonies became the Overseas Territories (TOM), and the new Departments became Overseas Departments (DOM).

In the post-war period, departmentalisation appeared a possible means of putting an end to the colonial system without threatening the imperial project. Only France, however, was prepared to risk this form of decolonisation, described by Aimé Césaire in March 1946 as ‘the normal outcome of a historical process and the logical conclusion of a doctrine’. Combining the process and the doctrine, Césaire recalled that the aspiration for integration had already been voiced in Guadeloupe under the July Monarchy (1830-1848). Under the Third Republic, the four old post-slavery colonies repeatedly expressed the wish to become Departments. The black Creole elites were insistent in their determination to furnish these colonial spaces with all the Republican trappings of a Department. Despite the division of the Algerian coastline into three Departments in 1848, which seemed to correspond to the model of change that they expected, and notwithstanding a system of representation which by 1940 gave as many as ten députés and four Senators, the many proposals for departmentalisation that were put forward were never debated or voted upon.

A revolutionary legacy

The continued insistence on this aspiration can be linked to the substantial legacy of the Revolution, embodied both in the creation of the General Council (22 December 1789) and the Department (26 February 1790), and in the complex struggles to abolish the system of slavery in the colonies, and to apply to them the same law as obtained in the Republic. In this respect it is symbolic that Martinique and Guadeloupe should have chosen unilaterally, in late October 1793, to declare themselves Departments after thwarting the counter-revolutionary white Creole planters. With the similar aim of containing the separatist tendencies of those resisting the principles of liberty and equality, the Directory proclaimed that the colonies were an integral part of the Republic subject to the Constitutional Law of 5 Fructidor III (22 August 1795). By defining means of access to citizenship in the new Departments established by the Law of 4 Brumaire VI (25 October 1797), in the view of the historian Bernard Gainot, the Law of 12 Nivôse (1 January 1798) finally brought the DOM into life. The memory of this revolutionary policy of assimilation led the protagonists of the second departmentalisation, which took effect in March 1946, to endow their reform with qualities likely to prevent any return to slavery, the suppression of voter rights and persistent socio-racial discrimination.

The continued insistence on this aspiration can be linked to the substantial legacy of the Revolution, embodied both in the creation of the General Council (22 December 1789) and the Department (26 February 1790), and in the complex struggles to abolish the system of slavery in the colonies, and to apply to them the same law as obtained in the Republic. In this respect it is symbolic that Martinique and Guadeloupe should have chosen unilaterally, in late October 1793, to declare themselves Departments after thwarting the counter-revolutionary white Creole planters. With the similar aim of containing the separatist tendencies of those resisting the principles of liberty and equality, the Directory proclaimed that the colonies were an integral part of the Republic subject to the Constitutional Law of 5 Fructidor III (22 August 1795). By defining means of access to citizenship in the new Departments established by the Law of 4 Brumaire VI (25 October 1797), in the view of the historian Bernard Gainot, the Law of 12 Nivôse (1 January 1798) finally brought the DOM into life. The memory of this revolutionary policy of assimilation led the protagonists of the second departmentalisation, which took effect in March 1946, to endow their reform with qualities likely to prevent any return to slavery, the suppression of voter rights and persistent socio-racial discrimination.

An attractive but controversial model

Certain of the TOM were enticed by a further advantage of departmentalisation: the promise of profiting from massive transfers of public funds while maintaining a relatively decentralised system. A little-known instance of this is the request to become a Department made by the Democratic Rally of the Tahitian People (DRTP) in 1953, precisely with the intention of giving substance to the hopes of the French Establishments in Oceania for wider autonomy, or in French Polynesia from 1957 onwards, where it was the constant watchword of the DRTP, which dominated local political life under the Fourth Republic. Within the framework of the French Community which replaced the French Union, Gabon in turn revealed its wish to become a DOM. According to the historian Jean-Pierre Bat, exceptional diplomacy was required to convince the leader, Léon M’Ba, to opt instead for his country to become an independent State.

The first place in the third wave of departmentalisation was finally won by Saint Pierre and Miquelon in July 1976. In the same year, Mayotte held referendums which confirmed its refusal to become part of the independent Union of the Comoros created in July 1975, and its determination to seek departmental status in the footsteps of the last French isolate in North America. It was not until March 2011 that this tiny archipelago in the Indian Ocean assumed the title of 101^st French Department which had been relinquished in 1985 by its North West Atlantic counterpart.

In fact from the mid-1950s the huge hopes that had been raised by departmentalisation turned for many into bitter disappointment. Resentment was stoked by the undeniable lack of speed with which national social legislation was extended to what were known as the overseas (ultramarins) departments, and by the discredit heaped upon particular measures dreamed up to reduce the appalling divergences in standards of living. Besides the question of the inadequate powers granted to the elected assemblies, a further source of tricky problems were the constant conflicts between the agents of the State posted to the DOM and the local administrators. This lasting disaffection also stemmed from the political and cultural impact of successive waves of independence which changed the face of the world. Many disappointed ‘DOMians’ thus turned to taxing departmentalisation with being a form of false decolonisation aimed at keeping the ex-colonies in a state of dependence on Paris. The image of territories living off national welfare was a further notion that ended up by insidiously infecting public opinion.

In March 2016, the seventieth anniversary of departmentalisation was celebrated in a climate of such general indifference that in the collective unconscious the DOM were often reduced to the ignoble status of the ‘leftovers’ of empire. Although they were never set firm in the unvarying colonial and then post-colonial orders, the DOM nonetheless took their share of all the vicissitudes of French national history from the 17^th century on. Moreover the many statutory developments of which they were the subject from the middle of the 1980s have now made the acronym DOM obsolete.

Published in november 2024