French Guinea was stitched together over decades. Its coastal lands first belonged to the colony of Senegal, then in 1882 were reorganized as a territory called Rivières du Sud, the "Rivers of the South." In 1891 that territory was placed under the colonial authority in Dakar, and in 1894 it was renamed the Colony of French Guinea. A year later it became one of several dependent colonies answering to a Governor-General in Dakar, and in 1904 the whole arrangement was formalized as French West Africa, a federation in which Guinea sat alongside Senegal, Dahomey, Côte d'Ivoire, and others. For half a century, Guinea was a line item in an empire administered from a city hundreds of miles away.

On 28 September 1958, the colony went to the polls. De Gaulle had been blunt during his visit: a no vote meant secession, and France would withdraw its money and its administrators. He expected the threat to work, and across Africa it did. But Sékou Touré's Democratic Party of Guinea had campaigned hard for rejection, and the colony voted overwhelmingly, around 95 percent, against the new constitution. Of all France's African territories, Guinea was the only one to refuse. On 2 October 1958, Guinea declared its independence, and Sékou Touré became its first president. A single ballot had turned a colony into a country.

France did not leave gracefully. Stung by Guinea's defiance, the departing administration carried out a vindictive withdrawal that became infamous across the continent. Within months, French officials pulled out almost everything they could move and destroyed much of what they could not. Telephone lines were torn out, medicines and medical files were burned, files and equipment were carried off, and even fixtures in government buildings were stripped. The message was meant to be a warning to any other colony that might consider the same path: independence on your own terms would come at a brutal price. Guinea began its national life nearly bare, a country forced to build from almost nothing.

French Guinea ceased to exist in 1958, but its choice echoed for generations. The country kept French as its official language, a thread of the colonial past woven permanently into independent Guinea. Sékou Touré's defiance made him a symbol of African self-determination, even as his own long rule grew authoritarian and harsh. The borders France had drawn became the borders of the modern nation. Guinea's lonely "No" remains one of the defining moments of decolonization in Africa, the instant when one territory chose dignity over security and dared the empire to do its worst.