The Reunification Debate in British Southern Cameroons: The Role of French Cameroon Immigrants

Chapter 8. General Conclusion

339 Chapter 8 General Conclusion The First World War brought considerable suffering to the colonized peoples of Cameroon. It caused enormous social, economic and political dislocation and inspired increase resistance to Imperial institutions. Germany lost Cameroon and all its other African possessions to the Allies. Britain and France survived the war as the world’s two largest overseas colonial powers. These two powers dominated the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 during which the question of restituting the lost German colonies was opposed. These colonies were placed under the supervision of a newly created League of Nations. The partitioned Cameroon was given to Britain and France as Mandates within a framework of international accountability rather than as colonies under national sovereignty. Cameroon was given to Britain and France as a class “B” Mandate. It was on these terms that both powers obtained confirmation on their partition of German Cameroon in 1922. Whereas the British merged the administration of their sector with that of Nigeria, the French considered their own sector for administrative purposes as an Overseas Department of France outrémer . administratively; France did not bring Cameroon officially into French Equatorial Africa. Once in place, the mandate system represented the changing character of post war European imperialism in Africa. However, while the British considered the mandates as the expression of the very best intentions of British imperialism, their French counterparts considered mandates as danger to the intentions of French imperialism in Africa. Despite its flaws, mandates contributed to an evolution in the culture of colonialism that affected not only the vast diplomatic and colonial bureaucracies of both Britain and France with all the mandated territories as well. Again in 340 Cameroon, it cemented the joint occupation of the territory and its partition. If the partition was cemented, the Africans did not see the boundary as divisive because the pre-colonial concept of boundary in Cameroon was fluid and permeable. This concept of fluid boundary was different from the Anglo-French concept of a geometric boundary which separated the intervening lands and people, into distinct entities under different political sovereignties. This alien concept of a boundary was what sparked off disregard for the AngloFrench frontier in Cameroon. In the first place, the partition shattered the unity of a people after close to 32 years under a common German administration. The Germans had built the foundation of a Cameroon state by establishing its boundaries and putting its inhabitants under the same administration with a good communication network, plantations and schools which fostered a sense of a common political destiny. However, the partition of Cameroon in 1916 and the re-organization of the territory thereafter would have meant very little to the Cameroonians had they been consulted and had other things remained equal. But, they were not. The Cameroonians were not consulted and the Anglo-French frontier paid scant attention to the interests and rights of the Africans. This became all the more glaring when the “picot-line” drawn as the provisional boundary was artificial at almost every point. It cut across ethnic groups, kingdoms, villages, families, farmland, plantations, fishing and hunting grounds of the border peoples like the Tikar, Bamileke, Balong, Mbo, Balondo, Bakossi and Mungo. These groups had shared a common culture and similar historical experiences. They shared traditions of origins, possessed the same socio-political and economic institutions, adhered to the same religious beliefs and had been exposed to a remarkably similar degree of contact with the outside world. The Anglo-French partition of these peoples was distressful as each fraction was placed in an area of jurisdiction of two distinct and new socio-economic and political systems far removed from the original cultural whole. 341 After the partition, the British and the French installed their administration on their respective spheres of the territory. Differences in European colonial administrative heritage tended to pull the Cameroonians apart. The most remarkable difference was administrative practices especially the use of the chieftaincy institution. While the British consciously attempted to adapt their method of governance to indigenous rule and customs, the French displayed relatively little compunction in dismissing chiefs whom they disliked. This and other French colonial policies such as the forced labour, prestation, indigénat, police harassment, laissez-passer, high taxes, conscription and de-germanisation pushed many to escape to the more liberal British Southern Cameroons. The migrations to the Southern Cameroons were not only due to political persecutions but also because...