History of Central Africa Cameroon
1884-1918






Precolonial Cameroon



The territory which was to become Kamerun/Cameroon/Cameroun during the SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA was neither a political nor cultural unity before the Germans appeared. In the southern, coastal areas political units were rather small and the religion practised animistic. Further north the Muslim SULTANATE OF SOKOTO, with it's center in Northern Nigeria, extended into Cameroon (the province of ADEMAUA). It's dominant ethnic group were the Muslim FULANI; Islam was state religion, but they ruled over many animistic peoples.
The northernmost stretch of Cameroon, adjacent to Lake Chad, was part of the KOTOKO which were conquered by the Empire of BORNU late in the 19th century and converted to Islam.

Protestant mission, by British, West Indian and American missionaries, began in 1845 at Victoria near Bimbia, in the coastal region. The chiefs of Duala offered to cede stretches along the coast to Britain as early as 1833; an offer which was repeated several times. The natives hoped the British would guarantee, and at the same time respect the Dualans' monopoly in the trade with the interior. The British, however, hesitated, fearing a protectorate over Cameroons would become a financial burden. When Britain, fearing French attempts for a colonial acquisition, acted, they were surprised by a German coup.
In 1884, GUSTAV NACHTIGAL arrived, obtained treaties from local chiefs and proclaimed Kamerun (at that time only a coastal stretch of territory) a German colony. Germany had trading interests in the area, second only to the British.






EXTERNAL
FILES 		Cameroon, History of, from Infoplease and from Douala.com
History of Douala, from Douala.com
African Alphabets, by Saki Mafundikwa, on the Bamum syllabary and the Nsibidi alphabet (Cameroon)
DOCUMENTS Documents on the history of pre-colonial Kamerun, from psm-data
REFERENCE Harry Rudin, Germans in the Cameroons 1884-1914. A Case Study in Modern Imperialism, New Haven : Yale Univ. Press 1938, 456 pp.



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2001, last revised on November 6th 2004

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