French Sudan elections held in French Sudan in 1957, the African Democratic Rally ("Rassemblement Démocratique Africain", commonly known as the RDA) won the elections in French Sudan, as well as winning majorities in neighboring Ivory Coast, French Guinea, and the Upper Volta. Following the French constitutional referendum of 1958, of which received an overwhelming majority in support, the "République Soudanaise" declared itself a republic with internal autonomy on 24 November 1958. The Sudanese Republic, as the area was now called, was the second colony after Madagascar to join the French Community, which provided it internal autonomy while linking its currency, foreign policy
What Is a Nation? and continues to be invoked. Political historian Karl Deutsch, in a quote sometimes mistakenly attributed to Renan, said that a nation is "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours". Benedict Anderson's 1983 work Imagined Communities, which states that a nation is an "imagined political community", argues that Renan contradicts himself when he says French people must have forgotten the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, yet does not explain what it is. In other words, Renan assumes that all his readers will remember the very massacre he says they have forgotten.