Guinea's 1958 No Vote: Economic Interest or Nationalist Principle?
You are preparing a document-based question for a unit on decolonisation in French West Africa. The question is: 'Why did Guinea vote No in the 1958 referendum on the Fifth French Republic?' Source A is a speech by Charles de Gaulle in August 1958: he warns that any colony rejecting the constitution will forfeit French aid and will be alone. Source B is a speech by Sékou Touré in September 1958: he argues that there is no dignity without freedom and that Guinea prefers poverty in liberty to riches in slavery. Source C is a French intelligence report from October 1958: it claims that the No vote was driven by the personal ambition of Touré and by urban wage-earners fearing that French subsidies would be cut. The referendum result was 95.2 per cent No on a turnout of about 85 per cent. A student writes: 'Source B is the best source because Touré was the leader; the others are biased.' The exam requires you to evaluate all three and reach a reasoned judgement.
1. Evaluate the student's claim that Source B is the 'best source because Touré was the leader'.
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Reasoning
Touré's leadership gives Source B importance, but not automatic superiority. A leader's public speech is a persuasive act. Its purpose was to mobilise support and to justify a risky choice, so it is likely to present the vote as a matter of dignity and freedom. That does not mean the speech is false, but it means it reveals the public language of the campaign more reliably than the private motives of voters.
Source A is also not neutral: de Gaulle was warning and pressuring colonies. Yet it is useful because it shows the constraint against which Guinean voters acted. Source C is an intelligence report with its own purpose: it may reduce a mass movement to Touré's ambition and to urban economic fear, but it may also preserve official perceptions that the speeches conceal.
The word 'best' depends on the question. For the ideology of the campaign, Source B is central. For the pressure from France, Source A is central. For elite and economic calculations, Source C is useful. A strong answer would use all three as different lenses and would not treat the leader's speech as a transparent record of why 95.2 per cent voted No.
2. Source C offers an economic and personal explanation; Source B offers an ideological one. How would you decide between them using the referendum result and the provenance of the sources?
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Deciding between explanations
The referendum result cannot by itself prove motive. A 95.2 per cent No vote on high turnout shows that rejection was widespread, not that every voter had the same reason. It makes a purely personal explanation based on Touré's ambition less convincing, because one leader cannot simply dictate such a large majority. But it does not prove that ideology was the main motive either.
Provenance matters. Source B is a campaign speech, designed to inspire and to frame the choice in moral terms. Source C is a French intelligence report, designed to inform officials who were hostile to the No vote; it may overstate Touré's ambition and urban wage-earners' fears because those are the categories its authors understood. Source A shows that the French threat was real, which could make economic fear reasonable rather than merely selfish.
A defensible judgement is multi-causal: economic insecurity and French pressure created the conditions, while Touré's nationalist leadership gave voters a language and organisation for rejection. To decide further, I would look for regional voting returns, local reports, and evidence of rural as well as urban support. The two sources are not mutually exclusive; they answer different parts of the question.
3. Write an introduction for the essay that states a judgement and shows how the sources will be used.
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Model introduction
Guinea's 95.2 per cent No vote in the 1958 referendum is best explained as the product of both colonial economic grievance and nationalist mobilisation, with Sékou Touré's leadership crystallising rather than inventing the rejection. Source B shows the public ideology of dignity and freedom that made No seem honourable, but it cannot alone prove motive because it is a campaign speech. Source A reveals the coercive pressure from de Gaulle, which gave voters a concrete reason to fear the consequences of Yes. Source C offers an official French view that the vote was driven by Touré's ambition and urban economic fear; it is useful for elite calculations but limited by its hostile purpose and its narrow focus.
This essay will therefore use the sources as different lenses rather than rank them simply as biased or unbiased. It will argue that the referendum result reflected broad discontent with French colonial rule, that Touré's leadership gave that discontent a national voice, and that the French threat in Source A intensified rather than created the choice. The conclusion will weigh the sources against the scale of the result and against what they cannot show about rural voters.