The idea for creating a new colonial entity after World War II was linked to the French desire to hold on to its colonial empire, considered to be an integral part of its national identity and international standing. As the head of the Free French provisional government based in Algiers, Charles de Gaulle organized an important conference at Brazzaville in early 1944 to study colonial reforms. While de Gaulle refused to embark upon a policy of decolonization, his colonial specialists, such as Henri Laurentie, sought to provide the colonies with greater local autonomy within the context of a wider French Union, discussed in detail during this conference. This autonomy would be accorded through a Union based on a federal system. As historians Martin Shipway and Daniel Hémery have shown, Indochina was to be the litmus test for the French Union, crucial in determining its political shape and defining the future course of “France’s relations with the emerging forces of colonial nationalism”. The 24 March Declaration on Indochina marked the first official French use of the term Union française. The 4th Republic’s constitution of 1946 announced its formal creation, comprising metropolitan France, French overseas departments, territories, settlements, and United Nations trusteeships. The former French colonies became departments whereas protectorates were accorded greater autonomy. The French Indochinese Federation – not Vietnam – would thus be an important Asian component of the French Union. In the Accords of 6 March 1946, the French and the Vietnamese agreed to recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a “free state” within the Indochinese Federation, itself in turn part of the French Union. The outbreak of full-scale war put an end to such compromises between the two belligerants. But war also struck a severe blow to the viability of the French Union. In 1954, with the war over, the Associated States of Indochina all withdrew from the French Union, followed by Morocco and Tunisia two years later. In 1958, the French Union had to be recast as the French Community as the historical reality of decolonization began to sink in to official French colonial minds. See also ALGERIAN WAR; ANTICOLONIALISM; ESPRIT; CHARLES DE GAULLE; PAUL MUS.