Brazzaville Conference

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Charles de Gaulle speaking at the opening of the Brazzaville Conference on 30 January 1944

The Brazzaville Conference (French: Conférence de Brazzaville) was a meeting of prominent Free French leaders held in January 1944 in Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa, during World War II.

After the Fall of France to Nazi Germany, the collaborationist Vichy France regime controlled the colonies. One by one, however, they peeled off and switched their allegiance to the Free France, a movement led by Charles de Gaulle. In January 1944, Free French politicians and high-ranking colonial officials from the French African colonies met in Brazzaville, now in the Republic of the Congo. The conference recommended political, social and economic reforms and led to an agreement called the Brazzaville Declaration.

De Gaulle believed that the survival of France depended on support from the colonies, and he made numerous concessions. They included the end of forced labour, the end of special legal restrictions that applied to indigenous peoples but not to whites, the establishment of elected territorial assemblies, representation in Paris in a new "French Federation" and the eventual entry of black Africans in the French National Assembly. However, independence was explicitly rejected as a future possibility.