History of Cameroon

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Pre-colonial era

In pre-colonial times, the area of ​​today's Cameroon was characterized by ethnic groups of different origins. While in the woodlands of the south Bantu societies with a predominantly acephalic structure and without higher-level political structures dominated, in western Cameroon and the north there was greater centralization and stratification with the development of early state structures. The more important states included the "Sultanates" Bornu , Mandara , Logone-Birni and Makari-Goulfey in the far north, the kingdom of Fombina (Adamawa) with its subamirates Ngaoundéré, Garoua-Lainde, Maroua, Rei-Bouba, Tibati, Banyo and others. a., as well as the kingdom of Bamum in the grasslands of Western Cameroon .

First European contacts

Historical map (around 1888)

European influence began in 1472 when, under the command of the navigator Fernando do Poo, Portuguese sailors landed in the delta of the Wouri River . Because of the many crabs they found there, they named the river Rio de Camarões (Crab River ), from which the later name Cameroon is derived. With the appearance of the Portuguese around 1520, a lively exchange of goods began. Trade goods were in particular slaves , ivory and palm oil . The main trading partners were the coastal companies such as the Duala, which settled on the Cameroon estuary .

In the years after the Portuguese appeared, the first sugar cane plantations were established. In addition, the slave trade became more and more important. It officially ended with the signing of the treaty between the Douala and the British government on June 10, 1840. During this period, the missionary work of Cameroon began.

The first research in the hinterland began in the middle of the 19th century via the old Trans-Saharan routes. The German Africa explorer Heinrich Barth traveled to the Sahara in 1851 on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society of London and also stayed in the north of what would later become Cameroon. The military doctor Gustav Nachtigal was one of the first researchers to bring news from the Lake Chad region .

In 1858 the British missionary Alfred Saker founded a small colony in Ambas Bay together with freed slaves . The capital of the colony, Victoria (Limbe), was after the British Queen Victoria I named.

Cameroon as a German colony

Cameroon was a German colony from 1884 to 1919 . The colony initially had an area of ​​495,000 km². After the annexation of New Cameroon and the transfer of the so-called duck bill in 1911, it had an area of ​​790,000 km². The colony was about 1.3 times the size of the mother country. Cameroon had 2,600,000 inhabitants in 1897, including 253 Europeans (181 Germans). New Cameroon added another approx. 2 million inhabitants, of which 1900 were Europeans (1000 Germans) in 1912.

During the First World War, the German troops were able to hold out until 1916. On February 20, 1916, the last German garrison finally surrendered to the British colonial army after promising a free withdrawal.

Term of office

With the Versailles Treaty of 1919, Cameroon officially became the property of the League of Nations , which in turn gave the British and French a mandate to administer it. As a result, Cameroon was divided into a British Cameroon and a French Cameroon . This explains the two national languages French and English . The French received the greater part (4/5) and set up a completely independent administration with which they tried to bind the country as strongly as possible. In their part of the country they practiced a strong expansion of cocoa and coffee growing areas. However, the production of these coveted cash crops (coffee / cocoa) was not expanded to large plantations, rather the cultivation by small farmers was encouraged, which hoped that the population would participate more in production for export. In this way and because of the strong demand, Cameroon developed into an important export country for these two agricultural products. In addition to the increased commitment in the first sector, the industrialization of the country was promoted at the same time, which specifically means the start of oil extraction and aluminum production as well as the establishment of breweries. There was even a certain prosperity, but great economic or social progress did not materialize, as in the British part.

The British, on the other hand, had very different goals. They had little interest in economic exploitation of the country on their own. Many of the previous German plantation owners were able to re-auction their confiscated property at an auction in London . The paradoxical situation arose that even in 1938 there were three times more Germans than British in the British mandate of Cameroon. In addition, the British gave their part of Cameroon its own administration and far more rights. Eventually the British even withdrew completely from Cameroon.

During the Nazi era , German offices and associations pursued plans to restore the German colony of Cameroon. During the Second World War , however, the French mandate joined the French government in exile, the Free French , under Charles de Gaulle . After the Second World War, both League of Nations mandates were converted into trustee mandates by the successor organization, the United Nations. The aim of the United Nations was to achieve gradual self-government in the area. In the years that followed, up to 1957, there were frequent riots and the struggle for the independence of the French colony.

In 1944 the first trade union federation, the Union des syndicats confédérés du Cameroun (USCC) was founded in Duala . She was close to the French CCT. A fierce anti-union campaign by the conservative Catholic clergy immediately began. In 1945 the USCC organized the first major strike. Provocateurs looted some buildings, giving the settlers the pretext to stock up on weapons from the poorly guarded arsenal of the garrison in Duala and to hunt the strikers and ultimately Africans in general. According to an official estimate, more than 80 people were murdered.

In 1947 Ruben Um Nyobé was elected Secretary General of the USCC. In 1948 the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), the first political mass party, was founded. Ruben Um Nyobé became its general secretary. In 1952 he was the first Cameroonian to speak at the UN to demand an end to his mandate.

In 1953 the French missionary Louis-Paul Aujoulat founded a political party with the aim of fighting the left-wing UPC. In 1955 the UPC was banned. Elections were held in 1957, but an amnesty law was only passed in first reading by the French National Assembly twelve days before the elections. The UPC reacted to what it considered to be the fake elections by taking up armed struggle.

In 1957, the first Cameroonian government under André-Marie Mbida came to power in the French mandate and the first constitution for the French part of Cameroon was enacted. Mbida was initially an employee of Aujoulat, but then fell out with him. On the advice of the French High Commissioner in Cameroon, Jean Ramadier , Ahmadou Ahidjo , who later became dictator, resigned from the Mbida government and provoked a government crisis. In September 1958, Ruben Um Nyobé was killed. In October 1958, Ramadier's successor announced General de Gaulle's will to grant Cameroon independence. In 1959, Ahmadou Ahidjo and Michel Debré signed a "cooperation" agreement between France and Cameroon, which continued to secure France's decisive influence.

Cameroon since independence

President Ahmadou Ahidjo

On January 1, 1960, after a referendum and the expiry of the UN mandate, French Cameroon gained independence and called itself East Cameroon. The north of the British mandate area voted in a previous referendum in favor of annexation to Nigeria, the southern part opted for annexation to the state of Cameroon; This leads to the two official languages ​​French and English and the problem of two completely separate administrative systems. On November 11, 1960, Cameroon became a member of UNESCO .

The Fulbe Ahmadou Ahidjo , who rose from prime minister to Cameroonian state president, set up a bloody dictatorship and suppressed any independent expression of opinion. He was advised by French specialists from the milieu of the extreme right. The "final" suppression of the UPC was proclaimed again and again, but all trips by the President in his own country remained secret for fear of attacks. With the help of his French advisers and brutal repression, Ahidjo succeeded in consolidating his regime. The unity party UNC ( National Cameroonian Union ) was founded.

Prime Minister Paul Biya in conversation with Colin Powell

Reforms were not implemented until 1972. The Federal Republic of Cameroon was converted into a unitary state on May 20, 1972 (United Republic of Cameroon). After the resignation of President Ahidjo on November 6, 1982, his Prime Minister Paul Biya became head of state and chairman of the new unity party, the Democratic Gathering of the Cameroonian People . He won the 1984 elections and was able to thwart an attempted coup. Biya promised the democratization of the country and more social justice. In the 1988 elections, Biya ran unopposed and received a majority. His government was burdened by the country's economic and social crisis during the 1980s, which he and his corrupt cabinet were accused of. The demands for freedom of the press and an end to the one-party system grew louder.

With the admission of press freedom, many critical newspapers appeared and the opposition in the country grew stronger. At the beginning of the 1990s there were increased unrest and general strikes with the demand for the end of the monopoly of the RDPC. Biya reluctantly gave in to street pressure and allowed the formation of opposition parties, so that in 1992 the first free elections took place, in which Biya won again. The opposition suspected electoral fraud as foreign election observers were hindered. It is more likely, however, that the opposition parties were too fragmented (32 parties ran in the election) to pool their votes. Nevertheless, the result of the election meant that the RDPC (89 seats) had to form a coalition with the largest opposition party, the UNPD (65 seats). With French support and skillful playing of his political opponents, he was able to hold his majority in parliament until 1997 and was confirmed in the elections in the same year. After his renewed election victory in 2004, Paul Biya ran again in 2011, now at the age of 78, and was re-elected with 77 percent of the vote. The country's head of government from 2009 to 2019 was Philémon Yang , who replaced the former head of government Ephraim Inoni (also RDPC), who had been in office since December 8, 2004. In the 2018 presidential election , Biya was re-elected.

Since independence, in particular the creation of a unitary state in 1972 and the renaming of the United Republic of Cameroon to the Republic of Cameroon in 1984, there have been repeated attempts at autonomy in the English-speaking part of Southern Cameroon . The South Cameroons National Council and the South Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUP) are fighting for a state of Ambazonia , the name of which is derived from the local name Ambas Bay of the Cameroon Estuary. In 1984 the Republic of Ambazonia was proclaimed for the first time . There have been protests since 2016; in 2017 they were bloodily crushed by the army. The total number of fatalities from the unrest in the region was given as almost 3,000 in February 2020, and the number of internally displaced persons at over 700,000.

literature

  • Alexandre Kum´a Ndumbe III (ed.): L´Afrique et ´Allemagne de la Colonisation à la Coopération 1884–1986 (Le cas du Cameroun) , Yaoundé 1986
  • Victor T. LeVine / Roger P. Nye: Historical Dictionary of Cameroon , Metuchen, NJ 1974
  • Albert Gouaffo: Knowledge and Culture Transfer in a Colonial Context: The Example Cameroon - Germany (1884–1919) . Saarbrücker Contributions to Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Volume 39, 2007, ISBN 3-8260-3754-5
  • Thomas Morlang: Askari and Fitafita: “colored” mercenaries in the German colonies. Chr. Links Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-476-1
  • John Mukum Mbaku: Culture and customs of Cameroon . Greenwood Press, Westport (Conn.) 2005, ISBN 0-313-33231-2
  • Engelbert Mveng: Histoire du Cameroon , Paris 1963
  • Victor Julius Ngoh: Cameroun 1884-1985; cent ans d´histoire , Yaoundé 1990
  • Adalbert Owona: La naissance du Cameroun 1884-1914 , Paris 1996
  • Ulrike Schaper: Colonial Negotiations. Jurisdiction, administration and rule in Cameroon 1884–1916 , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 3-593-39639-4
  • André Tiebel: The emergence of the protection force laws for the German protected areas German East Africa, German South West Africa and Cameroon (1884–1898) . Legal history series: 358, Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 3-631-57096-1

Web links

Commons : History of Cameroon  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Victoria Centenary Committee: Victoria - Southern Cameroons 1858-1958. Spottiswoode Ballantyne, London 1958.
  2. ↑ a b Cameroon - German colony from 1884 to 1919 , deutsche-schutzgebiete.de
  3. ↑ Will Ambazonia become Africa's newest country? dw.com from 2017 (English), accessed on July 7, 2018
  4. ^ Cameroon's international partners call for investigation into village massacre. africanews.com, February 19, 2020, accessed February 19, 2020