French Union
프랑스 연합
The political entity created by the constitution of the French Fourth Republic of 27 October 1946 to replace the former colonial empire. It comprised metropolitan France, the overseas departments, the overseas territories, the associated states (the three states of Indochina, Morocco and Tunisia) and UN trust territories, and ended the "indigenous" status of colonial subjects. It had a President, a High Council and an Assembly, but power stayed with the French parliament. In the First Indochina War the French side fought as the French Union forces. It was replaced in 1958 by the French Community of the Fifth Republic.
In depth
The term Union française was first officially used in the Declaration on Indochina of 24 March 1945. The 1946 constitution declared that there were no longer French colonies but that metropolitan France, the overseas departments and the overseas territories formed a single French Union; the aim was to assimilate the overseas territories into a "greater France" inhabited by French citizens. The President of the Republic was President of the Union; the High Council first met in 1951 and convened only three times; and the Assembly of the Union, drawn from the Council of the Republic, the National Assembly and the regional assemblies of the overseas territories and departments, had no real power. The colonies gained local assemblies with only limited powers.
In Indochina the French Union was the framework of the war. In early 1946 the Viet Minh agreed to the return of French troops in exchange for promises of independence within the French Union, but negotiations broke down in December. The Élysée Accords of 1949 created Bảo Đại's State of Vietnam as an associated state within the Union, still partly dependent on France. Laos and Cambodia became equal members with France in late 1953 and Vietnam on 4 June 1954. The Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Viet-Nam signed at Geneva on 20 July 1954 was concluded between the Commander-in-Chief of the People's Army of Viet-Nam and the Commander-in-Chief of the French Union forces in Indochina.
A reform of 31 January 1956, prompted by the Algerian War, abandoned assimilation for autonomy but did not succeed, and in 1958 Charles de Gaulle's Fifth Republic replaced the French Union with the French Community, a federation of self-governing states. African leaders such as Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Léopold Senghor welcomed its investment and democratic reforms, but African students who experienced the gap between the colonial narrative of equality and reality grew hostile, and critics saw the Union as colonialism under a new name.