Félix Éboué and Chad's Choice

After the armistice, the French colonial empire splits between loyalty to the Vichy government and rallying to de Gaulle's Free France. In French Equatorial Africa, the Governor of Chad, Félix Éboué — an administrator originally from Guiana, one of the few black senior officials of the empire — faces a decisive and risky choice.

To rally to de Gaulle is to disobey the legal Vichy government, to expose oneself to dismissal or worse, and to commit an entire territory to continuing the war alongside the British. To remain loyal to Vichy is to respect legality and avoid reprisals, but to accept submission to the armistice.

Éboué can rally to Free France, offering de Gaulle a territorial base in Africa. He can remain loyal to Vichy out of legalism. Or he can play for time, awaiting developments. His choice is all the weightier in that the first territory to rally might perhaps draw in the others, giving Free France — until then virtually without territory — a foothold and a legitimacy.