Jacques Soustelle was an important and early figure of the Free French Forces, an anthropologist specializing in Pre-Columbian civilizations, and vice-director of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris in 1939. Governor General of Algeria, he helped the rise of Charles de Gaulle to the presidency of the Fifth Republic, but broke with De Gaulle over Algerian independence, joined the OAS in their efforts to overthrow De Gaulle and lived in exile between 1961 and 1968. On returning to France he resumed political and academic activity and was elected to the Académie française in 1983.
Biography
Jacques Soustelle was born in Montpellier, into a Protestant working-class family. A brilliant high school student, he was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm, which is still a major college within the French educational system. At the age of 20, he was admitted at the first place at the competitive exam of agrégation de philosophie. An anti-fascist, he was general-secretary in 1935 of the French Union of Intellectuals against Fascism.
Anthropology of Mesoamerica
Soustelle developed an interest in Ethnology while working at the Musée de l'Homme under Paul Rivet. Rivet sent him to Mexico, after Soustelle became an Agrégé, to study the Otomi people. Soustelle wrote his first major book Mexique, Terre Indienne about his time with the Otomi.
France Libre
After the Armistice of 22 June 1940, he left Mexico to join the Free French Forces in London. Charles de Gaulle charged him of a diplomatic mission in Latin America, to set up support committees to free France, to cut short the diplomatic efforts of Petainists throughout the continent. He headed the intelligence service Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action. He joined the Comité national français, in London, then ran the commissariat national à l’Information. Appointed to head the Special Services Branch in Algiers in, He was Commissioner of the Republic in Bordeaux then in the Liberation deputy of Mayenne.
Reconstruction of France
In 1945, he served first as Minister of Information, then as Minister of the Colonies. From 1947 to 1951, he served as Secretary General of the Gaullist party Rassemblement du Peuple Français and was one De Gaulle's closest counsellors.
Algeria
He was nominated Governor General of Algeria by Pierre Mendès France in 1955–56, favouring the integration of the Muslim community in the French Departments along the Mediterranean coast. Thanks to Soustelle's support during the May 1958 Algiers revolt, De Gaulle returned to power. Though he believed he would become Algeria Secretary, Soustelle was only named Information Minister in June 1958. In 1959, he was appointed Minister of State in charge of Overseas Departments by De Gaulle. He was unharmed after three Front de Libération Nationale terrorists attempted to assassinate him by shooting his car on the Place de l'Étoile in Paris. He asked De Gaulle for a presidential pardon for the only attacker who had been arrested and sentenced to death. Soustelle disagreed with De Gaulle's sudden turn for Algerian independence. He analyzed this turnaround in his book L'Espérance Trahie. Soustelle was dismissed from the cabinet and the Gaullist party Union pour la nouvelle République in 1960 and joined the terrorist Organisation armée secrète in the fight against the independence of Algeria. When the OAS was replaced by the Conseil National de la Résistance, he joined this new organization with Georges Bidault, former President of the World War II National Council of the Resistance. His activities led him to being sued for attempting to undermine the authority of the French state. He lived in exile between 1961 and his 1968 amnesty.
Soustelle was elected to France's National Assembly three times, first representing Mayenne in 1945–46, then the Rhône as a Gaullist, and from 1973 to 1978 as a member of the centrist Mouvement Réformateur. In 1974, he supported the bill legalizing abortion presented by Simone Veil. He died, aged 78, in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
