(Hereafter the APA designation refers to the Cameroun Archives.). 25 One ironic consequence of this is that the French Governor had to ask his superiors in Paris to attempt through diplomatic channels to get the Germans to send copies of the expropriation plans. "coreUseNewShare": false, cit., pp. Britain and Germany in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1967);Google Scholar and France and Britain in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1971).Google Scholar In fact, the articles tend to be either about imperial rivalry or colonial rule. The army fails to bring the situation under control. 2015. There may well be scope for further inquiry by historians interested in these womens lives, their migration around the colonial world, and the networks facilitating the globalisation of the sex trade.21 For now, Sex and Control impresses upon readers the remarkable degree of authority exercised by physicians in the German colonies before the First World War, which was not to be surpassed until the 1927 Law for Combatting Venereal Disease and later Nazi measures.22, Christine Eggers book, Transnationale Biographien, focuses on a very different kind of network. A whole range of different, Anglophone separatist groups emerge, who total some 4,000 members altogether. He has written eleven books on African and world history, including, Posted 5 months ago. Part I (Male Sexuality and Prostitution in the Overseas Territories) is a broad outline of sexuality and prostitution in the colonies written in a way that renders the book accessible to the non-expert while still engaging those more versed in the field of German colonial history. Content may require purchase if you do not have access. This geographical imbalance is further visible in the individual biographies of six missionaries in Chapter Six: four are Europeans, one American and only one Tanganyikan. The attack was a reprisal of the death of two of Eugene Zintgraff's messengers sent to Bafut to demand ivory. 27 Ibid., Note de prfcsentation en Conseil d'Administration. The guest house (which was the residence for the Fon built by the Germans) at the present palace of the Fon houses a museum. II/2930,Google Scholar L'Arrt portant internement de six indignes pour agitation politique, October 10, 1934. Explanations of the actual cause of venereal disease were subject to shifts and attributed above all to moral conditions.14 A somewhat predictable medical discourse thus targeted non-white populations when it was politically expedient to do so. 30 APA 10890, Letter from the Commissaire to the Colonial Minister, May 1, 1928. 58 APA 10572/N, Letter from Barben of R. & W. King Ltd. to the Commissaire, November 27, 1932. 2015. The study focuses on the ways in which the German colonial government exerted authority and power through biopolitics rather than, for example, the military or the police, with particular attention to both the extent and the limitations of this power.1 Focusing on the management of venereal disease in the German colonies, Walther shows the ways in which colonial authorities targeted the bodies of German military men and, ultimately, female prostitutes in their attempt to control public health. 40 APA 10572/N, Letter to the chef de circonscription in Kribi, December 15, 1927.Google Scholar. By 9:30 in the morning, the Italian force had been defeated. 5 For a factual but brief discussion of this subject, see Ardener, Edwin, The Kamerun Idea, West Africa, 06 7, 1958, p. 533Google Scholar; and June 14, 1958, p. 559. The St Benediktus-Missionsgenossenschaft (otherwise known as the St Ottilien Congregation) was founded by the Swiss Father Andreas (Josef) Amrhein in 1884. 5 years of violent civil war in Cameroon DW 10/01/2021 931.Google Scholar See also Wirz, A., Vom Sklavenhandel zum Kolonialen Handel: Wirtschaftsrume und Wirt-schaftsformen in Kamerun vor 1914 (Zrich and Freiburg: Atlantis Verlag, 1972);Google Scholar and Hausen, Karen, Deutsche Kolonialherrschaft in Afrika: Wirtschaftsinteressen und Kolonialverwaltung in Kamerun vor 1914 (Zrich and Freiburg: Atlantis Verlag, 1970).Google Scholar For a number of reasons including French financial difficulties, their physical acomplishments in Cameroun (railroads, ports, buildings, roads, bridges, etc.) APA 10226, chef de circonscription of Dschang to the Commissaire, February 12,1931; and chef de circonscription in Nkongsamba to the Commissaire, January 4, 1931. With all the agents used during the past eight years, it was perhaps becoming difficult to devise new disguises. "coreDisableEcommerceForArticlePurchase": false, Cameroon: colonial past and present frictions DW 01/31/2017 Weinberg, Gerhard L., German Colonial Plans and Policies 193842, Geschichte und Gegenwartsbewusstsein: Historische Betrachtungen und Untersuchungen, Festschrift fr H. Rothfels (Gottingen 1963), p. 462.Google Scholar, 17 Schmokel, W. W., op. A. Smith (Cambridge, MA, 2017), pp. When German colonists They also take issue with crude oil extraction off the country's southwestern coast, arguing the proceeds only benefit Cameroon's Francophone central government. Report on the Work of the Nineteenth Session of the Permanent Mandates Com mission (hereafter cited as PMC), 1930, Annex 13, p. 196. Egger approaches the history of this organisation with a translocal, transregional and transnational perspective.23 Her goal is to write the history of the modern Christian mission as part of the history of the European, American and African societies involved, but also with a view to a shared history of complex relationships and entanglements.24, In doing so, Egger casts her chronological net wider than is usual, situating her analysis from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s. 38 APA 10222, Letter from the chefde circonscription in Kribi to the Commissaire, July 23, 1925. By 1944, the group was no longer a mere propaganda instrument and, in a lengthy petition to the Commissaire aux Colonies in Algeria, a number of political and economic demands were made on behalf of the territory's inhabitants which were to be taken up by the nationalist organizations formed after the war. 89 Cf. 11/2930, Letter from Inspector-General of the Colonies Meray to the Colonial Minister, Douala, April 22, 1920. Part I includes a description of each conflict, where the reader learns a great deal about the specific nature of, and outlets for, military violence. The British Cameroons Mandate Regime: The Roots of the Twenty Although frequent references to a regional identity are revealed in diary entries and architectural examples, this important sub-theme is left as a loose end and certainly deserves further attention and study. 1043; I. 42 APA 10222, Letter to the Commissaire, June 11, 1925. He demonstrates above all that indigenous reactions to public health measures to control venereal disease varied. 53 APA 10226, Letter from the chef de circonscription of Nkongsamba to the Commissaire, January 14,1933. She challenges a new generation of historians who argue for continuity between German colonial wars and the Holocaust, and builds on Isabel Hulls findings on the tendency of German military culture to swift recourse to violence and radical solutions.40. It also includes some original research, for example, on the nature of conflict from diary entries and previously neglected sources, including a letter relating to the HereroNama War. This is followed by a chapter zooming in on individual experiences, though not abandoning the biographical approach. Kelly, Alice B. UN General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 Dec. 1948, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. II/2930,Google Scholar Letter from the Commissaire to the Colonial Minister, March 11,1920, pp. II/2930,Google Scholar Report by Administrator Rallon of his interview with Prince Alexander Manga Bell, son of the martyred Duala chieftain, and his companion, Elong nya Ngando, Paris, October 14, 1919. One of the authors most provocative claims is that the colonial public health struggle was an essentially modern one; with the focus on disciplining the population through surveillance and normalization modern medicine sought to transform society and define who belonged in the nation-state and who did not according to the authority of scientific knowledge.4 He thus works not only within a Foucauldian framework, but picks up on the idea of colonial space being a laboratory of modernity, a space where technological, racial, social and medical innovations could be tested out on a subservient population before being applied to the metropole.5 Walther pushes this thesis further, considering the colonies not as a testing ground, but as a place where doctors could apply knowledge and understanding.6 This is an important qualification to make and has further implications for how historians see the nature of knowledge transfer between colony and metropole. Military resistance also emerged in many cases when, after the conquest, conditions became particularly difficult or people organized around a particularly skilled or charismatic leader. 49 APA 10226, Report of agent Gabriel Moukong, transmitted by the chef de subdivision of Mbanga, December 22, 1928.Google Scholar. Since 2013, the activist group No Humboldt 21 has been protesting against an uncritical incorporation of ethnographic collections dating from colonial times into the planned Humboldt Forum in central Berlin. They also criticize the summit will neither address a potential return to federalism, nor possible independence for English-speaking regions of Cameroon. 876 (December 2009), pp. It could usefully have been extended with personal accounts. Walther, Sex and Control: Venereal Disease, Colonial Physicians, and Indigenous Agency in German Colonialism, 18841914 (New York, 2015), p. 2. Although the author briefly alludes to the mission emerging as a political phenomenon, one wonders what exactly this means.33 For example, to what extent were these missionaries (like many others) involved in debates on restitution of the former colonies to Germany in the 1920s? So what difference did colonialism make? hasContentIssue false, Copyright Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1975. Les intrigues imperialistes pour la possession du Cameroun. Search for other works by this author on: The Author(s) 2019. A.P. 24 A.P. Several regions fall under the control of armed separatist groups. Teachers and judges complain that English speakers are underrepresented in parliament, the government, public administration and universities. 107ff.Google Scholar, 19 Cf. "corePageComponentGetUserInfoFromSharedSession": true, Cf. Egger, Transnationale Biographien, p. 59. The museum houses a special section on the Battle of Mankon, with the skulls of four dead German soldiers, their arms and ammunition. Trench of the British Royal Garrison Artillery. Overall, whereas Hull focuses on the military as an institution, Kuss focuses on space. Several also took up the opportunity for further training at the Benedictine convent itself. Cf. But the process is fraught with uncertainties. 90 The links between French-German rivalry, the pre-World War II reforms and postwar nationalism can be traced in greater detail than space allows here. Evidence is based on necrologies and narrative interviews in Tanzania. Controlling the nation through control of (particularly womens) bodies has long been a theme in German history. The study of imperial rivalries is progressing at a rapid rate as more national archives become available and more researchers enter the field. 87 A.P. January 2017: Cameroon's central government launches a concerted campaign to weaken Anglophone separatist groups. The missionary-run training colleges were also key entry-points for the Tanganyikan brothers.30 Perhaps surprising to some readers, however, will be the fact that German missionaries also took part in military service. Commissaire Boisson to the Colonial Minister, June 1938. Pakistan's army rescues all people trapped on cable car, Zimbabwe election: Why the youth vote matters. The collective biography reveals some unsurprising commonalities in the missionaries backgrounds: European missionaries were overwhelmingly from small, rural communities, from large, hard-working agrarian or small trade families, who in turn also learned a trade or received further education in a technical college. Even though St Ottilien missionaries were exclusively male, the author alludes to the fact that women often served as household helps. This is followed by three main parts, each consisting of several chapters. To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser. Comparative Studies in Society and History, The German Question in French Cameroun, 19191939, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417500007647, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. Britta Schilling, German Colonialism in Africa, The English Historical Review, Volume 134, Issue 567, April 2019, Pages 390403, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cez006. Political and ethnic tensions between Biya supporters and the opposition intensify. It happened when workers slowed down their work, or people gave fake directions to visiting colonial officials and got them lost, or clerks sabotaged or lied on forms. The actual material that may contribute to an understanding of African agency is limited to a few tantalising glimpses rather than a sustained analysis. The secessionist movement is riven by ethnic rivalries, lacking overall military and political leadership. The British attitude towards the re-admission of Germans into the Cameroons contrasted greatly with the French unswerving hostility. 44 These involved, for example, cases of individuals who fled across the border to escape family responsibilities or following family disputes. Separatist groups like the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium subsequently call on all English speakers to participate in general strikes every Monday,bringing public life to a standstill. 11117.Google Scholar A comprehensive doctoral study of these developments is currently under way by Jonathan Derrick of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 1891: German-led forces from Bali Nyonga attacked Mankon - an ally of Bafut. II/28,Google Scholar Letter to the Colonial Ministry, December 27, 1933. 21 Cameroun National Archives, APA 10890, Letter from Marchand to the Colonial Minister, May 24, 1930. As resentment grew, a prophet named Kinjikitile Ngwale used religion to unify people of different communities. 72 A.P. Closer scrutiny of these tables, however, shows a patchiness of data that is only briefly reflected on in the text.17 The gaps in the data become particularly apparent when looking at Table 6, showing venereal diseases in German South West Africa from 1902/03 to 1911/12, where statistics are missing for half the years. cit., pp. By the 1880s, he had created a military state that allowed for religious freedom and supported trading in the region. The figure of 250 Germans managing plantations in the British sector is inflated, The largest number of total German males in the territory was reached in 1938, and that was 200. 64 APA 10226, Report received in Yaound on January 29, 1930. The case of the Bamenda Grassfield demonstrates the pattern of German penetration and the callous mistreatment of the Cameroonians that sustained resistance from their arrival till their defeat and eviction during the First World War. Roberts, Andrew 59 APA 10572/N. While it is true that the Colonial Secretary, Wilhelm Solf, had to defend the Government's policy before the Reichstag against Duala petitions in 1913 and again in May 1914, there is no indication that the Government's expropriation policy was in any danger. Le Vine, V. T., op. In northeast Africa, the Italians saw an opportunity to conquer the vast, fertile territory of Ethiopia. 66 The argument can even be made that the French administrators were more effective disseminators of German demands for the return of the colonies among Camerounians. Samori had become a soldier as a young man in the 1840s, and he waged a military campaign in the 1860s and 1870s, before Europeans really began to push into the interior of West Africa. Kamto is has repeatedly protested against systemic discrimination. B. Madley, From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South-West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe, European History Quarterly, xxxiii (2005), pp. The town of Mankon was burnt down by the force on January 31, 1891. The JCAS is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This occurred by means of publications and especially through the missionary museum, which apparently hosts thousands of visitors per year.36 Egger claims that, slowly but surely, the boundaries between self and other began to dissipate in the world-views of the missionaries.37 Things have come full circle as today, as brothers from Tanganyika come to the small villages in Germany and Switzerland from which the original European missionaries departed.38 The fruits of a Landesgeschichte approach, as laid out in the introduction, are unfortunately not as neatly resolved. The title "Fon" is a misnomer, since the many conquests consecrated the rulers of Bafut as the "Emperors" of vast regions of what is today the Northwest Province of Cameroun.". It began as an organisation working out of Schloss Emming in Bavaria and spreading the Catholic faith to German East Africa. March 2020: Attacks by radical Islamic terror group Boko Haram on northeastern Cameroon intensify. It is a strength in so far as it has generated a specific, detailed and well-researched study, but also a weakness because it forecloses discussion of the wider resonances of these conflicts. WebHe mobilized the indigenous ruling elites to peaceful resistance against the resettlement of the Douala from the banks of the Cameroon River in order for German factories to be built. Samori managed to bring together two powerful groups long-distance trading merchants and traditional rulers in the region. Even those who initially received the Germans ended up suffering from the ruthlessness of their heartless imperialism. 26 A.P. The strategies of the rebels became more effective. Attention to a possible overlap between discourses which focus on the working class in colony and metropole and on the racial underclass abroad, though briefly mentioned, might have been pursued further. He was a careful student of the military, and constantly tried to update his weapons. Relatives of Anglophone activists are arrested. 23 Archives Nationales (Service d'Outre-Mer), Cameroun A.P. As a result, the mass uprising was relatively short lived. The St Ottilien archives, however, are retained by their abbeys in St Ottilien, Peramiho and Ndanda, and are more open to research. 11/2930,Google Scholar Letter from the Commissaire in Cameroun to the Colonial Minister, March 11, 1920, pp. It provides more detail on the actual treatment of those infected by venereal disease, and the increasingly coercive measures use to control them. In fact, she argues that appreciation of these diverse motivations sheds light on the particular brutality exhibited by German naval personnel and Marine Infantrymen during the early stages of the war in German SouthWest Africa. We thus hear very little from people like Malibiche himself, and the goals of illustrating a shared history are thus only partially fulfilled. He claimed that God had told him that if everyone unified and fought for their freedom, their ancestors would return to help them. 873, Letter from the Commissaire to the Colonial Minister, August 18,1927. The approach further substantiates claims for the continuity of colonial-era relations between Germany and its colonies into the inter-war period and beyond. When this failed, however, they sent an army to conquer Ethiopia. Has data issue: false 1889: The German explorer Eugene Zintgraff visits the town of Bafut after visiting Bali Nyonga, a neighboring fondom and rival to Bafut. Cameroon was under German colonial rule from 1884 to 1916. Cf. Elements within the separatist movement now regard English-speaking Cameroon as an independent state, calling it Ambazonia. French-administered Cameroon gained independence in 1960. Protesters criticize that English-speaking regions of Cameroon are far less developed than French-speaking parts. } The largest separatist militant group, the Ambazonian Defense Forces (ADF), declines to take part in the cease-fire. For example, in June 1938 a halt was put to further rural concessions to Europeans in the territory specifically to counter German propaganda. In densely populated West Africa, many different states and independent societies resisted colonialism. 82 Personal interviews with Chief Ekwalla Esaka and Leopold Moum-Etia in Douala, 1972. In the newspaper of the latter group, entitled Le Cri des Ngres, several articles were written between 1933 and 1936 by a radical named Ebele, under the pseudonym Doualaman, with such titles as The imperialist intrigues for the possession of Cameroun, For Cameroun, as for the Saar, a plebiscite is imperative, A French colonat demands the resurrection of German methods, etc. Over the years, historians have found that missionary archives can reveal a plethora of information about German colonialism and transnational networks. Whatever were Rottman's reasons for bringing the pigeons with him, the matter is reminiscent of the cause clbre in metropolitan France when Jacques Duclos, leader of the French Communist Party, was arrested in 1952 for possessing pigeons which the police believed were to be used to send messages to the Russians although M. Duclos protested that they were for his dinner. 88 There were also economic features to this change in French policy. Throughout the work, the author also recognises the complicated relationship between missionary and (neo-)colonial ideals. Nevertheless, the author does draw considerable insights from this evidence. In a few mass battles, the Tanganyikans were badly defeated. At this point, Samori decided to uproot everyone in his empire. The Italians first tried to trick Menelik by having him sign a treaty that said different things in Italian than in Amharic (the main language of Ethiopia). "coreDisableSocialShare": false, The most influential separatists organizations are the Ambazonia Defense Forces, Ambazonia Self-Defense Council, African People's Liberation Movement and its armed wing, the Southern Cameroons Defense Forces. Pinning explanations on specifically German behaviour is thus considered an insufficient explanation.41 Moreover, the author claims that, as much as colonial violence was anchored in the mental maps of the German soldiers themselves, historians must also consider the specific set of circumstances that motivated their conduct. 83358. The discussion pays particular attention to the multi-ethnic nature of these conflicts, as well as to the selective approaches to violence employed by the intervening forces. One, Selemani Mamba, told his followers: We shall not die. It continues to exist, with members of the congregation in Germany and Switzerland, but also in Tanzania, Togo, Namibia, the United States and the Philippines, among other locations. Opposition figures, however, decry the move as "window dressing" to keep Biya in power. 75 A very brief discussion of this pre-nationalist ferment could be found in Le Vine, V. T., op. 28 A.P. II/2930,Google Scholar Sret, P.V. This is not least because of the comparatively large body of data available for Germanys largest former settler colony. 1986. 63 APA 10572/N, Letter to the Colonial Minister, August 18, 1927. ), 1973.Google Scholar, 3 This non-advocacy of what is the usual objective of anti-colonial movements is discussed by Crowder, Michael in Independence as a Goal in French West African Politics: 194460, in Lewis, William, ed., French-Speaking Africa: The Search for Identity (New York: Walker and Company, 1965).Google Scholar. for this article. For that reason, Africans, like other people around the world who found themselves under foreign rule, found ways to resist. Cameroon - German Kamerun - GlobalSecurity.org In the early period of formal colonialism in Africa, military resistance could sometimes be effective, but this was rare. A year later, a referendum was held in British-ruled Cameroon over whether to join the newly independent Cameroon or Nigeria. Research Article Resistance to European Penetration To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. "Achirimbi" means "Protector of the World", a title assumed when the conquest was complete, and most small kingdoms sought refuge through alliances with the reigns of the Fon of Bafut. Despite the volumes almost 400-page expanse, the reader is thus still left with the feeling that the topic has not been exhausted and may offer several valuable leads for further research. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War (Ithaca, NY, 2005). 22 APA 10890, Letter from the Colonial Minister to the Commissaire in Yaound, Cameroun, October 30, 1930. After the German Empirewas defeated in World War I, the League of Nations handed one portion of Cameroon over to France, the other to Britain. Most people under colonialism lived their lives normally until a policy like this came about. Render date: 2023-08-22T17:16:30.204Z Cameroon was under German colonial rule from 1884 to 1916. Consequently, of the 264,000 acres formerly owned by the Germans, 207,000 now reverted to their ownership. It begins with an overview of the colonial context and of St Ottilien and other missionary organisations in the nineteenth century. 35 On the pre-war limitations of the Colonial Section of the German Foreign Office and the consequent importance of the commercial pressure groups in determining colonial policy, see Newbury, C., op. International organizations become increasingly aware of the conflict.
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