Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence: Nationalism, Grassfields Tradition, and State Building in Cameroon by Meredith Teretta (review)

Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence: Nationalism, Grassfields Tradition, and State Building in Cameroon recounts the history of the practices and discourses of Cameroon’s nationalism, spearheaded by the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), shortly before and after independence in intersecting local, territorial, and global political arenas. Meredith Teretta approaches nationalism in Cameroon multidimensionally, suggesting it is the most effective way of explaining the complexities of African nationalist struggles.

The crux of this book is to reflect more authentically on the meanings of nationalism within the context of modernization and postmodernism. As a historian, Teretta does an excellent job of providing an exhaustively detailed history that should be considered an essential primer for anyone interested in the political development of Cameroon in particular, and African countries in general, shortly before and after independence.

Both French and British Cameroons were UN trust territories rather than colonies, placing the region in a unique situation. The UPC attracted the largest number of members and sympathizers of any political party in French Cameroon, becoming the most popular nationalist movement in the territory; however, despite its grassroots popularity, its support throughout Africa and beyond, and its armed struggles, it failed to achieve political power in the postcolonial state government, as was the case with similar organizations across Africa (p. 2). This book provides an understanding of this situation by examining the ways in which UPC nationalists engaged in shifting local, territorial, and international political currents and the roadblocks the organization faced.

Nation of Outlaws is grounded in three geographical focal points of Cameroonian nationalism: Baham, a strong chiefdom, situated in the Bamileke Region; Nkonsamba, the capital of the Mungo Region, with a rich plantation zone; and Accra, Ghana, where Kwame Nkrumah’s government (in 1957) founded the Bureau of African Affairs to support and assist anticolonial liberation movements. Nationalist activities radiated outward from these points to create regional centers with overlapping peripheries.

The book is structured in three parts of two chapters each and progresses against the backdrop of the interconnected locations mentioned above. Each chapter looks at the intertextuality of separate narratives and points out general divergences as well as overlaps, coalitions, and shared experiences of the people in the Bamileke area of Cameroon. Part one discusses historical practices of the Bamileke people before European rule and evaluates the formation of Bamileke identity in the region under French administration. It shows a thriving, chiefdom-based political structure, which exercised power until the French took over. Chapter one, for an understanding of UPC nationalism, focuses on the nineteenth-century traits of Grassfields government and spirituality that nationalists tapped into in the 1950s. Nationalism, the conviction that the national and political unit should synchronize, is a modern phenomenon. There is a divergence between romantic and historical views of it: the former holds that it arises from a place of deep collective feeling, and the latter shows that this view never captures the entire truth.

As articulated in the chapter, the Bamileke nationalists emphasized two political concepts indigenous to the Grassfield region: lepue and gung, terms used to translate ‘independence’ and ‘nation’, respectively. In the 1950s, the UPC redefined these terms in an attempt to restore autonomy and legitimacy to chiefs and to separate so-called traitors (known locally as mfingung), from patriots (mpouogung). Spiritual alliances greatly shaped the governance and constituted an essential part of the political culture, land distribution, justice, and power. Chapter two explores the ways in which Bamileke migrants kept the town connected to their chiefdoms of origin. It puts forward a broader set of structural transformations in the region, explaining the development of regional consciousness. The transformation of the colonial economy, the growth of the urban population, and the awareness of political development propelled the rise of nationalism in this region. The early development of a middle class in the region added impetus to the nationalist tendencies.

Part two shows how the...