August Manga Ndumbe Bell

The "Pagoda", the palace of the Bells

August Manga Ndumbe Bell (* 1851 ; † September 2, 1908 ) was king of the Duala people in Cameroon during the German colonial era .

He was the son of King Ndumbe Lobe Bell ( King Bell ), who in 1884 was one of the signatories of the protection treaty with the German Empire . August Manga Ndumbe Bell was educated from 1867 to 1872 in Bristol / England, where the Baptist missionary Alfred Saker had taken him. In 1888 August Manga Ndumbe Bell went to Togo for two yearsbanished. The exact reasons are unknown. After his return to Cameroon, however, he attached great importance to good cooperation with the German authorities. After the death of his father Ndumbe Lobe, he took over his position as head of the Duala. In 1902 he led a delegation that traveled to Germany to complain to the government in Berlin about measures taken by the German colonial administration.

Manga Ndumbe Bell was the first Duala to set up cocoa plantations, thereby reorienting itself economically from trade with the hinterland to the production of agricultural goods. During his reign, the Bells controlled most of the region's cocoa trade.

In the center of Douala , Manga Ndumbe Bell had a palace built in the then modern Indian style, the so-called "Pagoda". The palace was completed in 1905. August Manga Ndumbe Bell died on September 2, 1908. His successor was his son Rudolf Manga Bell .

Royal palace
Photp by Emiliano Gandolfi, 2007.
Photo by Roberto Paci Dalò, 2010.

Individual evidence

^ Joachim Zeller: "Dark Existences" in Berlin. The presence of black people in the mirror of white iconography. In: Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Sunna Gieseke (ed.): Colonial and post-colonial constructions of Africa and people of African origin in everyday German culture . 1st edition. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 424 .
↑ Jean-Pierre Félix Eyoum, Stefanie Michels, Joachim Zeller: Bonamanga. A cosmopolitan family story. In: Mont Cameroun. African journal for intercultural studies in German-speaking countries, No. 2, 2005, pp. 11–48
↑ Austen, Ralph A .; Derrick, Jonathan (1999). Middlemen of the Cameroons Rivers: the Duala and their hinterland, c.1600-c.1960. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56664-9 .

personal data
SURNAME	Bell, August Manga Ndumbe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	King of the Duala people in Cameroon during the German colonial period
DATE OF BIRTH	1851
DATE OF DEATH	September 2, 1908

[1] Joachim Zeller: "Dark Existences" in Berlin. The presence of black people in the mirror of white iconography. In: Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Sunna Gieseke (ed.): Colonial and post-colonial constructions of Africa and people of African origin in everyday German culture . 1st edition. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 424 .

[2] Jean-Pierre Félix Eyoum, Stefanie Michels, Joachim Zeller: Bonamanga. A cosmopolitan family story. In: Mont Cameroun. African journal for intercultural studies in German-speaking countries, No. 2, 2005, pp. 11–48

[3] Austen, Ralph A .; Derrick, Jonathan (1999). Middlemen of the Cameroons Rivers: the Duala and their hinterland, c.1600-c.1960. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56664-9 .