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Who colonized Cameroon?

Central Africa — the powers that ruled Cameroon, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Cameroon?

Germany from 1884, then France and Britain, who divided the territory as League of Nations mandates in 1919; independence came in 1960, after a French war against the UPC that killed tens of thousands.

Cameroon's independence war is among the least discussed in French history: a counter-insurgency campaign against the UPC that continued after formal independence with French support.

Reference

Who ruled Cameroon, and when

before 1884
Duala, Bamum, Fulbe and other polities
1884–1916
German Kamerun
1919–1960
French and British mandates

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Germany, France, Britain
Independence
1 January 1960
Hidden war
French counter-insurgency 1955–64 with tens of thousands of deaths
Assassinations
UPC leaders Um Nyobè, Moumié and Ouandié killed
Two legal systems
The anglophone/francophone divide dates from the 1919 partition

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1884

    German protectorate treaties on the Douala coast.

  2. 1919

    Partition between France and Britain.

  3. 1955–71

    French and then Cameroonian forces wage war on the UPC independence movement.

  4. 1960

    Independence of French Cameroon.

  5. 1961

    Southern Cameroons joins; Northern Cameroons joins Nigeria.

Context

What the record shows

The 1919 partition created the anglophone–francophone split that drives the country's current conflict.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Cameroon?
Germany from 1884, then France and Britain after 1919 under League of Nations mandates.
What was the UPC war?
A French counter-insurgency campaign against the Union des Populations du Cameroun from 1955, continuing after independence, with death tolls estimated in the tens of thousands.
When did Cameroon become independent?
1 January 1960 for French Cameroon; Southern Cameroons joined in 1961.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Cameroon

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.