Reconsidering Patrimonialization in the Bamun Kingdom: Heritage, Image, and Politics from 1906 to the Present

Behind the photograph depicting the facade of the palace of the kings of Bamun in west Cameroon, reproduced at two-thirds of its real size, the Chicago Field Museum also presents a vitrine dedicated to the Palace Museum.¹ The photograph is not a representation of the original structure created by King Njoya (ca. 1860–1933) in the 1920s, or of the later building established at the palace entrance by his heir King Njimoluh (r. 1933–1992), but rather it encapsulates the fourth version produced by a Swiss expert during palace repair works in 1985 (Bosserdet 1985). Another restructuring was carried out in 1996 and the latest, involving the construction of a new museum, is ongoing.² The Field Museum vitrine is therefore obsolete and has always been incomplete. It does, however, acknowledge the existence of an endogenous patrimonial process, presenting objects presumed representative of it, namely masks, a portrait of King Mbuembue (r. first half of the nineteenth century), objects associated with King Njoya, manuscripts in Bamun script, and products of the encounter with the European world. As artificial as it may seem, this mise en abyme of an “African” museum in a “Western” museum is therefore significant.

In the mid-1920s, there already existed a museumlike institution in the royal palace founded by King Njoya following the dismantling of his kingdom by the French colonial administration. Unique in Cameroon and Central Africa, this display, which corresponded more to an exhibition of dynastic legitimacy and of a “royal treasury” than a museum per se, responded primarily to a local political agenda. In fact, the stakes of controlling regalia pitted the palace museum against the collection put together by the King’s cousin, Mosé Yeyap (ca. 1875–1941), a Christianized interpreter at the local colonial post. While this context of increasing political tensions was central to the creation of the royal museum, its importance also resided in the crystallization of multiple parallel patrimonialization processes, which characterized the emergence of a “Bamun modernity” between 1895 and 1933, during the long reign of King Njimoluh, and up to the present. These processes derive from the existence of Bamun script and historiography; the large-scale circulation of photographs and printed materials; means of self-representation; the continuous presence from the end of the nineteenth century of external third parties, namely Muslim proselytes, Protestant missionaries, colonial administrators, researchers, and even internal opponents who stimulated creations or reactions; and the personality of protagonists, specifically that of King Njoya. The reciprocal influence of the diverse actors and vectors must be viewed in a synchronic manner in order to bring out the contiguous and often antagonistic patrimonial arenas and, consequently, the modalities of articulating politics and patrimony in the Bamun kingdom.

BAMUN CONCEPTIONS OF PATRIMONY

The existence of patrimonial processes seems to be integrated into a social organization founded on the capitalization of borrowings. From the founding of the kingdom, probably in the seventeenth century, a desire for autonomy from his homeland led the first king to use the language and elements of the rituals of conquered peoples. This policy of incorporating captured peoples, rituals, and later artistic techniques continued beyond the arrival of the first Europeans in July 1902. Fundamental in maintaining political prominence in the cultural region called the Grassfields, the politics of incorporation required a balance between processes of innovation and stabilization, both of which fall within the powers of the king, in modified forms, up to the present. As a result, patrimonial processes were closely linked to power wielding at various levels, and the power-patrimony paradigm was continuously reconfigured.

Principle of heritage: from ruin to patrimony

The continuity of the power-patrimony paradigm is portrayed in the methods of transmitting and inheriting titles as property. The referent is the method of dynastic transmission, reproduced in lineages and families (Tardits 1980, Wasaki 1992). The new king “ascends to the throne of Nshare Yen,” founder of the dynasty, as the heir of an office that incarnates his forefathers. With each enthronement, the ruler reaches back multiple generations, re-entrenching an ancestral figure...