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Cameroon
Cameroon, the country where West and Central Africa meet, is in many ways a microcosm of the continent. Rich in natural resources and ecologically diverse, the mountainous country is home to more than 250 ethnic groups. For centuries, the peoples of Cameroon experienced histories that were dominated by regional dynamics, particularly the transatlantic slave trade and the Christian missionary presence in the south, and the influences of the trans-Saharan slave trade, Islam, and neighboring savannah empires in the north. During most of the colonial period, control of the eastern and western regions of the country were split between two different European powers. Yet unlike much of the rest of postcolonial Africa, Cameroon has forged a strong sense of nationhood, while maintaining relative economic and political stability. Still, Cameroon’s state remains far from democratic, and its future stability is far from certain.
Early History
The first inhabitants of what is now Cameroon were various hunter-gatherer Pygmy groups such as the Baka, who lived in the area in small, nomadic communities as long as 50,000 years ago. Evidence suggests that Bantu-speakers originated in present-day eastern Nigeria and western Cameroon well before the Early Iron Age, and eventually dispersed across Central, East, and southern Africa, taking with them agriculture, iron working, and unique pottery styles. The Nok people, who lived near the Benue River from around 200 B.C.E. to the fourth century C.E.., left rich archaeological evidence of their crafts.Early farmers found fertile soil on the slopes of the volcanic mountain range that runs north from the coast, and the many rivers of the region supplied fish. The southern forested area, where agrarian peoples lived in small, patrilineal villages that were typically governed by chiefs and councils of elders, saw the gradual emergence of numerous ethnic groups, including the BAKWERI, DUALA, and Fang. In the grasslands and plateaus to the north and west, major dynasties such as Tikar, Bamenda, Bamum, and Bamiléké arose. Cultivating yams and bananas, these groups developed extensive trade networks and practiced metalworking, particularly in bronze.Historians believe that the first foreigner to visit the area was a Carthaginian explorer named Hanno, who recorded sighting the volcanic Cameroon Mountain around 500 B.C.E. In the centuries after his arrival, trade caravans carried gold, salt, and especially slaves from northern Cameroon across the Sahara to North Africa. Scholars estimate that as many as ten thousand slaves crossed the desert annually, many of them coming from present-day Cameroon. The trans-Saharan and Red Sea slave trade made some societies wealthy; between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, for example, the Sao kingdom flourished in the northern Chari delta, producing works of pottery, bronze, and copper.Imperialism and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Although commerce brought Arab and Islamic influences to northern Cameroon as early as the tenth century, the sixteenth-century invasion of the Massa people and the subsequent rise of the Kotoko kingdom broadened the Islamic presence. So too did the immigration of the Fulani people, whose slave-raiding practices caused northerners such as the Bali to flee south into the central highlands. In the 1800s, groups from the center, such as the Fang and Beti, fled toward the coast, where they increasingly came into contact with Europeans.In 1472 the Portuguese sailor Fernando Pó landed on the nearby island of Mbini, from which he presumably sighted the mainland, but not until some years later did Portuguese explorers sail into the estuaries. There they found swarms of prawns, and accordingly named the area Rio dos Camarões, or River of Prawns, which the British later Anglicized to Cameroons.By the sixteenth century, Cameroon had become a major source of slaves for the New World. African middlemen, many of them from the Bimbia and Duala ethnic groups, transported slaves captured in the interior to the coast, where they were shipped to Calabar, the closest European settlement and slave-trading center. In exchange, these middlemen received cloth, liquor, firearms, and other manufactured goods. Supremacy in the trade shifted over time among the Portuguese, Dutch, British, French, and finally the Americans. Trans-Saharan trade declined during this period, though the rise of the Fulani empire, known as the Sokoto Caliphate, in the early nineteenth century brought a resurgence of slave raiding in the north. An empire in the Lake Chad region established by Rabih Al-Zubayr, a slave trader originally from the Nile basin, also revitalized Islam in the area, and pushed more groups south into the Cameroon forests.The abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the early 1800s forced African traders to develop commerce in alternative commodities, such as ivory, rubber, and other cash crops. Exports of palm oil and kernels increased significantly at this time, as African farmers expanded production to meet demand in newly industrializing Europe. As cash and credit relations gradually replaced barter, many African merchants and chiefs became indebted to European trading firms.Christian missionaries, especially from Anglophone countries, were also establishing a presence in Cameroon by the mid-nineteenth century. In 1844 a Jamaican Baptist named Joseph Merrick founded a mission at Bimbia. Other Christian denominations, many of whose missionaries were African American, settled in what became the town of Victoria (today known as Limbe). African converts educated in the early mission schools eventually formed a small Anglophone elite. By 1880 the Anglophone missionary presence, combined with British domination of regional trade, made it seem likely that Great Britain would formally colonize the area. In fact, Germany became Cameroon’s first colonizer.German, French, and British Colonialism
In July 1884, as the European powers at the Berlin Conference agreed to the rules of the division of the African continent, the German explorer and diplomat Gustav Nachtigal signed a treaty with two Duala chiefs. Germany sought to occupy territory before the British and French—who were extensively preoccupied in Nigeria and Gabon, respectively—and to break the Duala’s monopoly over interior trade. German Kamerun became an exporter of agricultural products such as cocoa, palm, rubber, tea, and tobacco, grown on large German or African-owned estates on the fertile slopes of Mount Cameroon. Africans were recruited, often by force, to work on the plantations, as well as on railway and road construction projects. Thousands died as a result of the harsh working conditions and the spread of disease. Political and economic conditions were somewhat different in the north, where the Germans governed indirectly through Fulani emirs, but also weakened the Fulani’s control over regional trade. Hausa traders from northern Nigeria gained influence over commerce during this period.The movement of traders and laborers, the spread of Pidgin English, and widespread resistance to colonial rule all fostered the creation of a new collective identity in German Kamerun. Resentful of threats to their trading monopoly, the Duala initially led the resistance to German rule, and were soon joined by the Bafut, Kpe, Bulu, and others. The Germans relied on superior firepower and divide-and-rule tactics to quell a series of uprisings, but many parts of the interior remained outside of effective German control until 1910. In 1914 the colonial government executed two of the most prominent resistors, Chief Rudolph Douala Manga Bell and Martin-Paul Samba. Yet even as those living within the newly defined borders of Kamerun began to forge a common identity around the resistance movement, missionaries and the colonial government introduced other, more divisive identities. As well as creating an educated elite, Christian missionaries emphasized distinctions between Christian denominations, traditional (or indigenous) religions, and Muslims. The German colonizers particularly denounced the Muslim Hausa’s trade with British Nigeria and their continued use of slave labor.During World War I Belgian, British, and French colonial armies, including many African troops, invaded German Kamerun. After the war, the League of Nations divided the colony roughly along the axis of the mountains, giving Great Britain control over an eastern slice of the territory (British Cameroons) and granting France the rest (French Cameroun), an area nearly ten times larger. Linguistic and economic differences soon developed between the French and British mandates (renegotiated as Trusteeship Territories after World War II), though both territories’ economies depended on agricultural exports such as coffee. British Cameroons ended the use of forced labor in 1918 and left most cash-crop production to small-scale African farmers. In contrast, the French maintained forced-labor laws until the end of World War II, in order to supply labor for large state-owned agricultural estates. Vast differences also existed between the British and French territories in infrastructure, education, and health care. Great Britain invested little in Cameroons and instead made it a marginal province of the colony of Nigeria, run largely by Nigerian civil servants, but France considered Cameroun one of its model colonies. Both the British and French territories, however, concentrated economic development in the fertile south rather than the remote and arid north.Despite these differences, some sense of common identity still linked British Cameroons and French Cameroun. This was fostered by extensive trade and migration between the two territories—especially after the development of new rail and road links—and the growth of multiethnic urban centers such as Douala and Yaoundé. Resentment toward the large numbers of Nigerians recruited to work in labor-scarce regions also helped forge unity among inhabitants of the British and French territories.Nationalist Era
As elsewhere in Africa, nationalism blossomed in Cameroon after World War II. Nigerian nationalist leaders spoke of uniting southern British Cameroons with Nigeria, but this idea won little support among Cameroonians, who feared Nigerian domination. Meanwhile, for French Cameroun the primary question was the nature of its postindependence relationship with France. The 1944 Brazzaville Conference envisioned France maintaining close relations with Africa, but African agitation for independence continued to escalate. In 1945 a newly created labor union called for strikes in Douala; three years later nationalists formed the socialist Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), which called for complete independence as well as reunification of the two Cameroons. Supported primarily by urban workers, students, and the southern-based Bassa and Bamiléké ethnic groups, the UPC responded to French efforts to suppress its organizing with a clandestine sabotage campaign, killing policemen, civil servants, and soldiers, and bombing symbols of colonial rule.In 1956 France, realizing the inevitability of decolonization, passed the loi cadre, which expanded the powers of African assemblies and enlarged the electorate in preparation for independence. Largely in exile or underground, the UPC leadership boycotted the assembly elections, which were instead dominated by the southern and central Démocrates, led by André-Marie Mbida, and the northern Union Camerounaise (UC), led by El Hajj Ahmadou Ahidjo. France supported these more moderate parties, hoping for close relations with an independent Cameroon. Mbida proved to be a cautious nationalist and his transitional government collapsed as Ahidjo and the UC broke from Mbida’s governing coalition. In 1958 Ahidjo formed a new government, calling for immediate independence while reassuring France that close economic, cultural, political, and military ties would be maintained. Those ties proved immediately useful to Ahidjo, who depended upon the French military to suppress the guerrilla campaign of the UPC, a conflict that between 1955 and 1962 killed an estimated 600 insurgents, 1,500 government officials and police, and 15,000 civilians.Independence: Stability and Continuity
On the first day of 1960, the former French colony of Cameroun became the independent Republic of the Cameroon, with Ahidjo as its president. After more than a year in limbo, in February 1961 the people of British Cameroons voted in a United Nations-sponsored referendum on the issue of unification with Nigeria or Cameroon. The north, historically more closely tied to its western neighbor, voted in favor of Nigeria, and the south voted in favor of Cameroon. In October 1961 southern British Cameroons joined the Republic.President Ahidjo ruled Cameroon for the next twenty-two years. Fearing the divisive potential of ethnic, regional, religious, and linguistic identities, Ahidjo concentrated on building national unity. This he did in part through his broad popular appeal as the “father” of the nation, and in part through his eventual authoritarian control over a single-party state. Ahidjo centralized most decision-making and incorporated previously independent associations representing women, youth, and labor into the sole legal party, the Cameroon National Union (CNU). The police and military suppressed any vestiges of the political opposition, including the moribund UPC, and censored the media. Infrastructure development projects, while intended to foster economic growth and national unity, also helped the government centralize control in the capital city, Yaoundé. In 1972 Ahidjo replaced the federation with a republic.Ahidjo further solidified his rule by carefully balancing ethnic representation in the cabinet and national assembly, and by dispensing patronage to supporters at all levels of the government bureaucracy, the military, and the business community. He was able to pursue such tactics through his control over the economy and his relations with France, which remained the primary destination for Cameroon’s agricultural exports. French businesses, encouraged by a liberal investment code, also invested heavily in the country, particularly in oil exploration, mining, energy, and forestry. Despite poorly planned development projects, Cameroon’s economy grew, especially in the late 1970s following the discovery of offshore oil reserves. Meanwhile, the national soccer team, the Cameroon Lions, emerged as one of Africa’s dominant teams, a position they held into the late 1980s.In November 1982 Ahidjo handed over power to Paul Biya, the prime minister and his chosen successor. Ahidjo, still head of the CNU, found Biya resistant to his efforts to run the country from behind the scenes. Conflicts between the two men led Ahidjo loyalists in the Republican Guard to mount a bloody uprising, which Biya eventually suppressed. After initial progress toward democratization, Biya reverted to his predecessor’s authoritarian style, and came to rely upon Ahidjo’s political machinery of patronage to maintain loyalty. Ultimately, Biya built his own political machine by replacing the CNU with the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement and advocating “communal liberalism.” Biya claimed that communal liberalism would ultimately include freedom and democracy, but that single-party rule was necessary in the meantime to prevent regional, ethnic, and religious divisions. Widely recognized as corrupt, the Biya regime remained heavily dependent upon France, which operated a military base in Cameroon and consistently vetoed other foreign powers’ efforts to pressure Biya for reform.By 1987, however, Cameroon’s oil boom had ended, and government bureaucracy and debt had strained the national budget. Unable to buy political support, Biya faced growing civil unrest. In 1990 the national assembly legalized opposition parties, but Biya’s refusal to allow for a new constitution provoked a massive strike throughout the south. Although elections were finally held in 1992, Biya resorted to widespread fraud to defeat the opposition candidate, Anglophone John Ndi of the Social Democratic Front. The government easily put down subsequent riots, and the opposition faded. Even after a devaluation of the currency throughout the West African franc zone, in 1994, sparked sharp price increases, as well as protests in several countries, Cameroon experienced relatively little unrest.Although a new constitution passed in 1996 provided for local and regional elections, it also gave the executive branch of government broad powers. In elections the following year, no opposition candidate dared challenge Biya’s bid for another seven-year term, though recently he has suffered health problems. The economy continued to grow steadily in the late 1990s, with an increase in oil, timber, and coffee exports and the completion of a three-year International Monetary Fund program of structural reforms. However, the troubles plaguing the massive Chad-Cameroon pipeline, once projected to be the largest infrastructure development in Africa, signaled a significant setback. Expected to add some $540 million to Cameroon’s economy, the dam project was instead seriously delayed by a combination of national and international strife, popular opposition, and political opportunism. Relative economic prosperity and strong-arm tactics against opponents have enabled Biya to withstand both international and domestic opposition, and to carry on his predecessor’s plan to forge a sense of national unity among Cameroon’s ethnic groups, regions, and linguistic blocs.See also Bantu: Dispersion and Settlement; Islam in Africa; Slavery in Africa.
Cameroon
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