Cameroon, four powers at loggerheads
Roberto Correa Wilson
Cameroon was a unique case in the history of slavery and colonization
imposed by the then most developed European nations, which boosted their
gains by exploiting the African peoples.
Conquerors and navigators from Portugal, Germany, Great Britain and
France arrived in Cameroon, located in Western Africa, and turned it
into the only nation in the continent bearing the presence of four
powers on its soil. The linguistic groups making up Cameroon’s ethnics
are the Bantu-speaking one in the south and the west, and the
Sudanese-speaking one in the north. Bantu settlers stemmed from
Equatorial Africa.
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Fertile area in Cameroon. - Courtesy Google |
The first group arriving in the country included Makas, dualas and
njemas, who were followed later on by the fang, bete, sao, fulani and
Kanuri, whereas the most ancient inhabitants are the Pygmies (baringas
and bagueilli).
It was the indigenous population found by the Portuguese navigators,
the first Europeans reaching Cameroon in 1476, who explored the
seacoasts of territories now comprising Angola, Gabon and Congo. At that
time, Portuguese authorities were interested in opening the safest
commercial route to India, and financed Lusitanian navigators’ projects
with that aim in mind. Portugese started trafficking in slaves, who were
sent to their colony in Brazil, their first and only one in America, for
working under a strenuous regime of slavery in sugar-cane plantations
and other crops.
Ivory and oil trade, as well as that of slaves attracted British,
French and Spanish traders along with traffickers from other countries.
The peoples of Cameroon staged staunch resistance to hunters of slaves,
whose opposition was outdone by the conquerors’ superiority in weapons
and military knowledge.
Historiography does not record how many members of Bantu groups from
Cameroon were enslaved in America and the Caribbean, where they took
their habits, customs, and traditions, which exerted influence upon the
countries where they were settled.
Colonization, which opened a brand new chapter in oppressing the
African peoples and exploiting their plentiful resources, meant a new
way of slavery in which the rights of the native people were denied and
trampled by domineering Europeans.
In 1884, at the behest of King Leopold of Belgium, who turned Congo,
twenty times as big as his own kingdom, into a private estate, called
upon a conference held in Berlin, where European powers decided to
parcel out Africa.
The meeting attempted to avoid prey wars and conflicts among the
colonizers for controlling nations, in the first place, those excelling
on account of their natural resources.
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