De Gaulle and the Senate 1958–1969

Abstract

On 6 May 1953, disappointed by the performance in the municipal elections and exasperated by some of his followers’ craven willingness to accept ministerial positions, de Gaulle announced his withdrawal from the RPF. A little over a year later, in June 1954, Pierre Mendès France became prime minister amid hopes that an end to the war in Indochina and a dose of constitutional reform might stabilise the regime. The first was quickly achieved, through July’s Geneva Accords, but the constitutional réformette was only ratified in December. A month earlier, the first incidents in what was to become the Algerian war had broken out. Mendès had extricated France from one war of decolonisation, but this time drew a line.

The 1958 constitution is … first and foremost the Senate.¹