Duckbill (Cameroon)
Coordinates: 10 ° 20 ′ N , 15 ° 30 ′ E
Eastern and southern borders of Old Cameroon until November 1911
Border between old and new Cameroon around 1914
The duck's bill (rarely also duck's head ) was a particularly prominent border protrusion from 1894 to 1911 in the northeast of the German “protected area” of Cameroon in Africa. It formed the eastern part of the German Tschadseeländer . The Cameroon duckbill is an example of the colonial border agreements between Europeans that still shape Africa's national borders.
Naming
The term duckbill for the extreme northeast of Cameroon was coined by travelers to Africa at the end of the 19th century. The German officer and Africa researcher Franz Karl Hutter compared the shape of Cameroon to a bird:
“The shape of Cameroon is a very peculiar one because of the borderline; you don't need to have a caricaturing vein to involuntarily think of the shape of a not exactly very graceful bird, such as a hoopoe with a forelock and with a beak turned to the east. "
history
At the beginning of the colonial era, the region of what would later become the duckbill was mainly inhabited by the Fulbe and Hausa tribes. At the end of the 19th century, the German sphere of influence expanded increasingly from the coast of Cameroon to the north and east. With the expansion of the German claim to territory by researchers and the military, the region between the Logone and Schari rivers also came under German influence. The duck's bill was mainly located in the river bifurcation, which opened to the south, and extended to about ten degrees north latitude . A border treaty with France of March 15, 1894 finally gave northeast Cameroon the shape of a pointed beak and limited further penetration into central Africa .
In 1904 the German colonial officer Herbert Kund set up a military post in Bongor .
In the course of the German-French exchange of territory on November 4, 1911 ( Morocco-Congo Treaty ), the major part of the duck bill was incorporated into French Equatorial Africa (around 12,000 km 2 ). As a result, the border region lost much of its distinctive shape. Instead, Germany received a wide belt of territory in the east and south of Cameroon from the French colonial masses , which was called New Cameroon .
The duck's bill is divided between the independent states of Cameroon and Chad . The Cameroon border still shows traces of the old duck's bill at this point, but no longer extends that far to the east.
See also
literature
- Herbert Kund: In the duck's beak - travel and hunting memories from old Cameroon . Neudamm: Neumann, 1931.
- Karl Ritter : New Cameroon: The area ceded by France to Germany in the agreement of November 4, 1911; Described on the basis of the communications available so far . Publications of the Reichskolonialamt , No. 4, Jena: Fischer, 1912. http://d-nb.info/362169454 ( online full text )
Web links
- Entry duckbill in the German Colonial Lexicon from 1920
Individual evidence
- ^ Karlheinz Graudenz: The German colonies - history of the German protected areas in words, pictures and maps. 3rd edition, Weltbild, Augsburg 1988, ISBN 3-926187-49-2 , p. 235.
- ^ Franz K. Hutter, quoted from Bernd G. Längin : The German Colonies - Schauplätze und Schicksale 1884–1918 . Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn: Mittler, 2005, p. 73, ISBN 3-8132-0854-0 .
- ↑ Entry Acquisition of the German Colonies in the German Colonial Lexicon
- ^ Florian Hoffmann: Occupation and military administration in Cameroon . Part II - The imperial protection force and their officer corps, Göttingen: Cuvillier, 2007, p. 123f. ISBN 978-3-86727-473-9 .
- ^ Horst founder : History of the German colonies . 5th edition, Paderborn: Schöningh / UTB, 2004, p. 101, ISBN 3-506-99415-8 ( preview on Google Books )