Published on and written by Cyril Jarnias
Long before the very name “Cameroon” appeared on maps, the current territory was already a human, political, and commercial crossroads. From the Sahelian civilizations of the north to the Grassfields chiefdoms, passing through the forest peoples and coastal kingdoms, the country’s history in Cameroon is that of a mosaic patiently shaped, then violently disrupted by German colonization, the partition between French and British, the wars of independence, and the long construction of a state marked by authoritarian centralism.
To tell this story is to follow a thread that begins with the first prehistoric settlements, crosses the Bantu expansion, the Fulani jihads, the Atlantic trade, and German plantations, then plunges into the UPC maquis before emerging into reunification, the one-party system, and contemporary Anglophone tensions.
From early settlements to great kingdoms
Long before the era of empires and colonial borders, the territory of Cameroon was inhabited by human groups for tens of thousands of years. Archaeological excavations at Shum Laka, in what is now the Northwest region, have revealed human presence dating back 30,000 years, while in the southern forests traces of occupation go back about 7,000 years. The ancestors of the Baka, often associated today with the “Pygmies” of the forest, are attested in the area as early as the 8th millennium BCE.
The western highlands—the so-called Grassfields—have been densely occupied for at least 4,000 years. Several linguistic and archaeological studies converge to place one of the likely cradles of the Bantu expansion in the Bamenda highlands, on the border with present-day Nigeria. From there, starting around 1000 BCE, large population movements spread south and east, carrying with them languages, agricultural techniques, and probably iron metallurgy. By around 200 BCE, Bantu-speaking groups were established in the southern and eastern forest zones.
Over the course of these migrations, the older hunter-gatherer populations—groups related to the Baka—were pushed back into dense forest massifs and marginalized. At the same time, other inflows arrived from the north (Chadic languages, influence of the future Kanem-Bornu), from the Sudanese corridor, and later from the Arab-Sahelian sphere.
Sahelian civilizations: Sao, Kanem-Bornu, and Mandara
In the north, around Lake Chad, one of the oldest civilizations in the region developed: the Sao culture. Renowned for its terracotta and bronze sculptures and its fortified circular settlements, it flourished roughly between the last millennium BCE and the end of the first millennium CE, with a peak between the 9th and 15th centuries. Gradually, the Sao were absorbed or pushed back by the rise of Kanem, then Bornu, collectively known as the Kanem-Bornu empire.
Islamized by the 11th century at the latest, this empire became a major regional power from the 13th century onward. It controlled most of present-day Chad and extended its influence over northern Cameroon. Its economy relied in part on the slave trade, fueled by raids to the south, as well as salt mining.
Further west, in the Mandara Mountains, a centralized kingdom consolidated from the late 15th century. With its capital at Dulo, the Mandara kingdom had conflictual and sometimes vassal relations with Bornu. After briefly gaining the upper hand at the end of the 18th century, collecting tributes from neighboring villages, it was gradually weakened by Fulani offensives and the long rivalry with Bornu. The Fulani conquest of 1893 finished transforming its status, though its political structures did not completely disappear.
Fulani jihad and the formation of the Adamawa Emirate
Islam reached the Sahelian borders of Cameroon through trans-Saharan trade after the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the 8th century. But it was the expansion of the Fulani, pastoralists and warriors, that durably reshaped the political map of northern Cameroon. An early Fulani presence is attested around Lake Chad as early as the late 16th century, but it was especially at the turn of the 19th century that their role became decisive.
Inspired by the reform of Usman dan Fodio, a jihad was launched from northern Nigeria to overthrow powers deemed impious and extend an Islamic order. Usman entrusted this mission to Modibbo Adama, who led the holy war eastward and southward. This campaign resulted in the creation of the Adamawa Emirate, integrated into the Sokoto Caliphate and covering a large part of northern Cameroon.
Within a few decades, the majority of non-Muslim populations in this area were either subjugated or pushed back into the mountains and forests. Fulani sultanates durably structured the political and economic space: Islamization, rigid social hierarchies, organization of the slave trade, and large-scale pastoralism marked the human landscape. This configuration would later weigh heavily on the ethnic and political balances of the postcolonial state.
Grassfields, Bamoun, and Bamileke: chiefdoms and kingdoms of the West
In the western highlands, between the 14th and 17th centuries, powerful political entities formed: the Bamoun, Bamileke, Nso’, Bafut, Kom, Bandjoun kingdoms, and many others. These societies, often called “chiefdoms” or “fondoms,” were far from simple micro-powers: they had elaborate political systems, complex ritual institutions, and refined material cultures.
Founded by Prince Tikar Nshare, with Foumban as its capital, the Bamoun kingdom extended its influence through war, trade, and alliances. Its expansion continued under King Mboumbouo Mandù at the end of the 18th century. At the turn of the 20th century, Sultan Ibrahim Njoya marked his reign by creating a syllabic script, shu-mom, to transcribe the Bamoun language, and by modernizing the court through openness to Islamic and European influences.
Bamileke societies, for their part, developed strong lineage stratification, a political culture of consensus framed by the chiefdom, and a diversified agricultural and artisanal economy (raphia textiles, bronze, carved wood). This social and economic density would later allow them to play a major role in political life, the market economy, and anti-colonial resistance.
Forests and coasts: stateless peoples and intermediary kingdoms
In the south and along the coast, societies such as the Bassa, Bakweri, Bakoko, Duala, and many others lived by fishing, hunting and gathering, and slash-and-burn agriculture (yam, plantain, millet). Many were organized into clans, without a centralized state, but with power structures based on elders, secret societies, and ancestor worship.
On the coast, the Duala took on particular importance from the time of the Atlantic opening. They became indispensable intermediaries between the interior and European traders: slaves, ivory, palm oil, then rubber and other products passed through their trading posts. The Duala royal lineages, such as Akwa or Bell, derived considerable prestige and wealth from this situation, but also direct exposure to the colonial pressures to come.
Atlantic trade, Christian missions, and early Europeans
Cameroon’s maritime coast entered European accounts as early as the 15th century. In 1472, the Portuguese navigator Fernão do Pó sailed along the coast and up the Wouri estuary. Impressed by the abundance of crustaceans, he named the river “Rio dos Camarões,” the “river of shrimp”: from this name later came “Cameroon,” then “Cameroun.”
For several centuries, European presence (Portuguese, Dutch, British, French, and Germans) was primarily commercial, marked by the establishment of coastal trading posts without major territorial conquest. The coast, especially through ports like Bimbia or Douala, served as a key link in the Atlantic slave trade, exporting captives from the interior, particularly from the Bamileke and Bamoun regions.
Starting from the early 19th century, the tide turned. The United Kingdom abolished the slave trade within its empire in 1807 and mobilized its navy to suppress it along the West African coast. British pressure, combined with the end of legal slave imports to the United States the same year, caused a sharp decline in the slave trade. The center of gravity of trade then shifted toward “legitimate products”: palm oil, rubber, ivory, timber, then cocoa and coffee.
Starting in 1845, Christian missions established themselves on the coast. English Baptists (Alfred Saker) founded stations in Douala and Limbé, followed by American Presbyterians in 1871. These missions attracted emancipated slaves from various regions and introduced schools, hospitals, and a new worldview, helping to form the first literate elites.
During this time, the coast remained in a form of British “informal protectorate,” without formal annexation but under strong commercial and missionary influence. It was this ambiguous situation that Germany would brutally overturn at the time of the colonial “scramble for Africa.”
German colonization: from the Kamerun protectorate to revolt
The “Scramble for Africa” of the 1880s saw European powers rush to transform their trading posts into colonies. In Douala, major German trading houses, notably C. Woermann and later Jantzen & Thormählen, had already been solidly established since the 1860s‑1870s. They had bought vast tracts of land from local chiefs, set up banana plantations, and developed their own fleet connecting Hamburg to the Cameroonian coast.
Fearing being overtaken by the United Kingdom, these firms pressured Berlin. Adolph Woermann, spokesman for West African commercial interests, finally convinced Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to abandon his reluctance toward colonial adventure. In 1884, Gustav Nachtigal, explorer and consul, was dispatched on site with the mission to sign “protection” treaties with the Duala chiefs. On July 5, 1884, the first agreements were concluded, paving the way for the proclamation of a German protectorate over Kamerun.
German diplomacy obtained recognition of its sovereignty over the coastline from Rio del Rey to Campo, to the detriment of French and British influence, surprising London. The colonial administrative apparatus was quickly put in place: a consul was appointed as early as 1884, a governor in 1885, the capital was established in Buea and later moved to Yaoundé after the creation of a post in the mountains by explorer Georg Zenker.
German diplomacy at the Berlin Conference (1884‑1885)
An economic project first and foremost
German colonization of Kamerun clearly followed the principle summarized by Bismarck: “first the merchant, then the soldier.” Initially, Berlin delegated a large part of the administration to major concessionary companies. These companies obtained thousands of hectares to develop plantations of bananas, rubber, oil palm, and cocoa.
To fuel this export economy and the major infrastructure projects, the regime imposed forced labor. Thousands of men were conscripted to build roads, lay rails, and clear plantations. Two main railway lines gradually connected Douala to the interior: a northern line of about 160 kilometers toward the Manengouba mountains, and a line of about 300 kilometers toward Makak on the Nyong. Spectacular bridges, such as the 160-meter bridge over a branch of the Sanaga, symbolized this forced modernization. A postal and telegraph network was established, and river cabotage organized by the administration allowed linking the coast to the hinterland.
To better grasp this turning point, we can summarize some features of the German period in a comparative table:
| Aspect | Situation before 1884 | German period (1884‑1916) |
|---|---|---|
| Political status | Informal British influence, chiefdoms | Protectorate then German colony (Kamerun) |
| Dominant actors | Coastal chiefs, British/Portuguese firms | Major German companies, imperial administration |
| Main economy | Slave trade, oil, ivory | Plantations (banana, rubber, cocoa, oil) |
| Labor | Internal slavery, debt bondage | Systematized forced labor for plantations and projects |
| Modern infrastructure | Very limited | Railways, roads, post offices, telegraphs |
Colonial violence and local resistance
Behind this facade of modernization lay extreme brutality. Under the governorship of Jesko von Puttkamer (1895‑1906), the policy of repression reached a peak: mutilations (hands, genitals, gouged eyes), decapitations, large-scale floggings, massacres of entire villages. Germany’s African colonies were nicknamed “colonies of the whip.”
Local populations were subjected to forced labor and violent repression. Refusal of requisitions or taxes led to sanctions, sometimes collective. Punitive expeditions, such as those led by Hans Dominik, resulted in massacres of civilians, drownings of children, and scorched-earth campaigns, particularly against the Duala suspected of collusion with the enemy.
Faced with this violence, indigenous reactions oscillated between self-interested collaboration, open resistance, and intermediate strategies. Figures like Rudolf Duala Manga Bell and Martin Paul Samba attempted, at the beginning of the 20th century, to legally challenge land expropriations and abuses of power. Their petitions were ignored, and both were eventually executed in 1914 for “high treason,” becoming early symbols of Cameroonian nationalism.
Some Grassfields kings, like Njoya of the Bamoun, concluded pacts with German colonial authorities. They provided warriors and served as consultants in exchange for protection against local enemies, but these alliances were often instrumentalized by the Germans to repress other forms of resistance.
Several factors limited the possibility of unified resistance: village dispersion, inter-ethnic rivalries, absence of a shared national consciousness, lack of external support (the 1890 Brussels Conference sealing a European agreement for the “fight against the slave trade” also helped marginalize African resisters in the name of “progress”).
Territorial expansion and World War I
Geopolitically, Germany sought to enlarge its Kamerun. After negotiations with France, the Treaty of Fez of 1911 ended the Agadir Crisis: Berlin renounced its claims on Morocco in exchange for nearly 300,000 km² taken from French Equatorial Africa. This “Neukamerun” (New Cameroon) extended the colony southward and eastward (present-day Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad), while a small strip in Chad was ceded to Paris.
But this expansion was short-lived. In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Franco‑British (and Belgian) forces invaded Kamerun. Despite fierce resistance, local victories such as the first battles of Garoua, and a strategic retreat into the mountainous interior, German troops were overwhelmed by Allied numerical superiority. In February 1916, after the surrender of the last fort at Mora and the flight of part of the contingent to Spanish Guinea, the colony fell entirely.
The Franco-British partition: mandates, assimilation, and indirect rule
The German defeat opened a new phase in the country’s history in Cameroon. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles confirmed the dismantling of the German colonies. The League of Nations (LON) system, created by Article 22 of its Covenant, provided that territories “unable to stand by themselves” would be administered by mandatory powers in the name of a “sacred mission of civilization.” These territories, wrested from the losers of World War I, could not be formally annexed, but their management remained highly colonial.
Kamerun was classified as a B-type mandate, supposedly requiring closer supervision than A-type mandates (mainly in the Middle East) but without being fully assimilated into the mandatory’s national territory like C-type mandates. The mandate notably prohibited the creation of military or naval bases on the territory, but granted the administration extensive powers.
Two Cameroons within the mandate system
The League of Nations entrusted about four-fifths of the territory to France (432,000 km² and about two million inhabitants), and one-fifth to the United Kingdom (88,000 km² and about 500,000 inhabitants). This partition followed a provisional line known as the “Picot Line,” cutting through ethnic, familial, linguistic, and commercial groups without regard.
After World War I, the French part of Cameroon was administered from Yaoundé according to an assimilationist model: banning bilingualism (German was banned in favor of French), imposing the French school system, administrative centralization, and economic exploitation by large metropolitan companies. German properties were largely redistributed to French firms, such as the Société financière des Caoutchoucs, which dominated the plantation sector.
The British part, called “British Cameroons,” was not managed as a separate colony but was administratively attached to Nigeria, first de facto from 1916 and then officially under the LON mandate in 1922. The United Kingdom applied its classic policy of “indirect rule”: the governing colonial authorities relied on local chiefs, sultanates, and, in the case of the southern plantation zones, former German owners, who often recovered their estates in post-war auctions. English replaced German as the official language, but very few resources were actually invested in this “forgotten strip,” where people often spoke of an administration of neglect.
A summary table to visualize the extent of divergence between the two economic zones.
Characterized by moderate growth and controlled inflation.
Marked by rapid expansion and inflationary pressures.
| Element | French Cameroon (LON mandate, then UN trusteeship) | British Cameroons (LON mandate, then UN trusteeship) |
|---|---|---|
| Mandatory power | France | United Kingdom |
| Administrative status | Separate territory, capital in Yaoundé | Attached to Nigeria, administered from Lagos |
| Colonial policy | Assimilation, centralization, direct administration | Indirect rule, reliance on local chiefs and existing structures |
| Official language | French | English |
| Fate of plantations | Taken over by French firms | Mostly repurchased by former German owners |
| Infrastructure investment | Roads, railways, major public works | Limited, priority given to Nigeria |
In 1946, the League of Nations dissolved. Its mandates were transferred to the UN system of “trust territories.” French Cameroon and British Cameroons became UN trust territories, administered respectively by Paris and London under theoretically stricter international control, but in practice quite weak.
Nationalisms, UPC, and the war of independence
World War II and the creation of the UN changed the situation. The rhetoric of peoples’ rights to self-determination, the discrediting of colonialism after the horrors of the conflict, and the example of independence in Asia fueled African demands. In French Cameroon, the issue quickly took an explosive turn.
In 1948, in Douala, union activists and intellectuals created the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC). Among them were Ruben Um Nyobè, Félix‑Roland Moumié, Ernest Ouandié, Abel Kingué. Their program was clear: immediate independence, reunification of French and British Cameroon, and a socialist political orientation. Um Nyobè repeatedly (1952, 1953, 1954) presented the Cameroonian cause before the UN General Assembly, denouncing French repression and the ambiguities of the trusteeship system.
Official number of deaths during the repression of the May 1955 demonstrations in Cameroon, though internal French reports suggest a heavier toll.
On July 13, 1955, Paris banned the UPC. Nearly 800 activists were arrested, many tortured. The leaders went underground. From December 18, 1956, maquis were organized, particularly in the Bassa (Sanaga-Maritime) and Bamileke areas in the West. The UPC guerrillas, grouped within the National Organization Committee and later the Kamerun National Liberation Army (ALNK), multiplied their actions, despite limited weaponry.
Estimates of victims of the Cameroonian war of independence range from a few thousand to several hundred thousand.
The UPC obtained symbolic support from figures of African nationalism like Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt or Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, but this did not compensate for its military isolation. At the UN, the Cameroonian issue was raised by several delegations, including India, Syria, and the USSR, which denounced the violence of French trusteeship.
Toward independence: Ahidjo, the UN, and the marginalization of the maquis
Paradoxically, it was in this context of war that the institutional timetable leading to independence was set. In 1957, a “Statute of Cameroon” turned the French territory into an “Associated State” within the French Union, with separate Cameroonian citizenship and a Legislative Assembly with extended powers, but still under the authority of the French High Commissioner. André-Marie Mbida became its first Prime Minister.
In February 1958, under French influence, André-Marie Mbida was forced to resign. He was replaced by Ahmadou Ahidjo, a former Fulani telegraphist trained in the administration and leader of the Cameroonian Union. Ahidjo embodied a moderate line, advocating a negotiated independence, maintaining economic and military ties with France, and rejecting the radicalism of the UPC.
In September 1958, Ruben Um Nyobè was killed in a French army operation near Boumnyebel. His body was secretly buried to prevent it from becoming a place of pilgrimage. Other UPC leaders, including Félix‑Roland Moumié, were eliminated abroad by French services (Moumié died poisoned in Geneva in 1960). The political decapitation of the movement facilitated Ahidjo’s emergence as the privileged interlocutor.
In 1958, the Cameroonian Legislative Assembly officially requested independence. Paris recognized this right and referred the matter to the UN, which sent a fact-finding mission. In March 1959, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution ending the trusteeship on the day of independence. The Republic of Cameroon was finally proclaimed on January 1, 1960, becoming the second francophone sub-Saharan African colony to gain sovereignty, after Guinea.
The new president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, elected by the Assembly after a constitutional referendum, maintained close ties with France. French advisers, officers, and companies remained omnipresent in all key sectors. At the same time, the war against the UPC maquis continued, this time conducted by a now “Cameroonian” army but still overseen by Paris. The rebellion was gradually crushed; the last major military leader was captured in 1970, and the conflict officially ended only in 1971.
The puzzle of reunification: British Cameroons between Nigeria and Yaoundé
While French Cameroon negotiated its independence, the fate of British Cameroons remained in limbo. Also placed under UN trusteeship but administered from Lagos, this territory was divided into two entities: Northern Cameroons (predominantly Muslim, linked to the Hausa-Fulani emirates) and Southern Cameroons (predominantly Christian, oriented toward the Grassfields, Buea, Bamenda).
In the 1950s in Southern Cameroons, two main parties opposed each other on the territory’s future. The Kamerun National Congress (KNC) of Dr. E.M.L. Endeley defended integration into an independent Nigeria. In 1955, a split gave rise to the Kamerun National Democratic Party (KNDP) of John Ngu Foncha, which campaigned for separation from Nigeria and reunification with francophone Cameroon. The KNDP victory in the January 1959 elections strengthened this prospect of rapprochement with Yaoundé.
Under pressure from the UN, a plebiscite was held on February 11, 1961 in both British regions. Determinant fact: the option of outright independence was excluded from the ballot. Voters had to choose between joining Nigeria or Cameroon. In the North, the majority opted for Nigeria, a choice endorsed by the UN General Assembly. In the South, the population voted for reunification with the young Republic of Cameroon. Of about 331,000 valid votes, nearly 233,000 were cast for Cameroon versus fewer than 98,000 for Nigeria.
The modalities of this union remained to be defined. A constitutional conference was held in Foumban in July 1961, bringing together the Southern Cameroons delegation led by Foncha and the Republic of Cameroon delegation led by Ahidjo. The discussions resulted in a draft federal constitution largely inspired by the text already in force in Yaoundé, which nonetheless provided substantial autonomy to the two federated states: East Cameroon (formerly French) and West Cameroon (formerly Southern Cameroons).
On October 1, 1961, a date that became Unification Day, British trusteeship ended and the Federation of the Republic of Cameroon was proclaimed. Yaoundé became the federal capital and the capital of the Eastern State, while Buea regained a capital status, this time for the Western State. Ahmadou Ahidjo became federal president, while John Ngu Foncha held the positions of Prime Minister of West Cameroon and Vice President of the federation.
From federalism to the unitary state: centralization and Anglophone frustrations
The Cameroonian federation as established in 1961 rested on a fragile balance. On one side, Anglophone elites wanted to preserve a high degree of autonomy, especially regarding the legal system (common law), education, and administrative organization. On the other, Ahidjo saw federalism as a transitional stage and advocated for a more integrated state, in the name of “nation building” and the fight against tribalism.
Starting in 1966, under the pretext of the war against the UPC, Ahidjo’s regime established a centralized and authoritarian state. Exceptional measures (arbitrary detentions, censorship, restrictions on freedoms) were put in place. All political parties were dissolved and forcibly merged into a single party, the Cameroonian National Union (UNC), chaired by Ahidjo, concentrating all powers in Yaoundé despite the formal federal structure.
On May 20, 1972, a referendum was organized to replace the federal system with a unitary state. The consultation, whose official results showed over 99% “yes,” transformed the Federation into the “United Republic of Cameroon.” The two federated states disappeared, replaced a few years later by a division into administrative provinces. For many Anglophones, this reform was experienced as a betrayal of the Foumban agreements, a forced assimilation, and the beginning of the “Anglophone problem.”
The modification of the flag in 1975, where two stars were replaced by a single central star, aimed to symbolize the regained national unity and visually consecrated the centralization of the state. However, this change was also perceived by the Anglophone community as the dilution of its specificity within a predominantly Francophone state.
Politically, Ahmadou Ahidjo ruled the country with an iron fist from 1960 to 1982. Relying on the army, security services, and a single party that integrated a large part of the regional elites, he maintained an authoritarian order presented as a guarantor of ethnic peace and modernization. Opponents were marginalized, imprisoned, or, in the case of the UPC, eliminated. Plebiscitary elections (100% of the vote in 1970, with 99.4% official turnout) periodically legitimized his presidency.
After independence, economic policy was based on “planned liberalism,” combining private initiative and state control. The economy was initially dominated by cash crops (cocoa, coffee, cotton). Starting in the late 1970s, the discovery of offshore oil radically transformed the economy, making hydrocarbons the main source of GDP, public revenue, and exports. This growth was structured by five-year plans, with significant investments in infrastructure, hydroelectric power, and education.
This apparent success masked, however, growing corruption, opaque management, particularly of oil revenues—placed in “off-budget” accounts abroad, according to several sources—and a structural dependence on raw materials. It was also bought at the cost of complete political lockdown, especially in the Anglophone regions where any challenge to the unitary model was suppressed.
In November 1982, unexpectedly, Ahidjo announced his resignation for health reasons and appointed his Prime Minister, Paul Biya, as his constitutional successor. The latter was a senior civil servant from the Beti-Pahuin group (Bulu subgroup), a Christian from the South, fully integrated into the state apparatus. His accession to the presidency was initially interpreted as a controlled transition, even the opening of a democratic “renewal”: some internal party elections were allowed, a more liberal discourse was displayed.
But very quickly, a power struggle opposed the incumbent president to his predecessor, who remained at the head of the single party, now renamed the Cameroonian People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM). In 1983, Ahidjo was forced to resign, went into exile in France then Senegal, and in 1984 a coup attempt by the Republican Guard, largely composed of soldiers from the North, tried to overthrow Biya. The failure of the putsch (70 dead, more than a thousand arrests, dozens of executions) reinforced the new regime’s distrust and reverted to authoritarian methods. The country’s name was changed: in 1984, it became “Republic of Cameroon” again, reverting to the name of the former French colony alone—a symbol that revived Anglophone resentment, some seeing it as a denial of the British component.
Controlled democratization and the resurgence of the Anglophone problem
The wave of democratic transitions that swept through Africa at the turn of the 1990s reached Cameroon. Under pressure from student and union movements and underground parties, the regime legalized multiparty politics in 1990. Figures like John Fru Ndi, founder of the predominantly Anglophone Social Democratic Front (SDF), became the faces of a plural opposition.
The first pluralist elections were held in 1992 for the presidency and legislature. Biya was declared winner of the presidential election with about 40% of the vote, against 36% for Fru Ndi, in a context marked by massive allegations of fraud and intimidation. International observers deemed the vote far from democratic standards. The CPDM retained control of the National Assembly, even when it had to form alliances with small parties to keep a majority.
A 1996 revision introduced a “decentralized unitary state,” created a Senate and regional councils, set the presidential term at 7 years renewable, and designated the Senate President as constitutional successor. However, these reforms remained largely theoretical for more than 15 years: the Senate was only established in 2013, regional councils were slow to be implemented, and executive power remained highly concentrated in the president’s hands.
On the identity front, the Anglophone question resurfaced with force. Many natives of the Northwest and Southwest regions denounced the marginalization of their language, their legal system, and their regions, as well as the non-application of the spirit of the 1961 federation. Movements like the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) initially demanded a return to federalism, then, for some currents, outright secession. The state responded by banning these organizations, arrests, and trials, without offering a substantive political response.
Number of people killed during the repression of protests in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon between October 2016 and February 2017.
On October 1, 2017, the symbolic date of unification, separatist leaders proclaimed the independence of the Anglophone regions under the name “Federal Republic of Ambazonia.” Armed groups such as the Ambazonia Defence Forces (ADF) engaged in guerrilla warfare against security forces. The state launched a large-scale military offensive. The conflict, now known as the “Anglophone crisis,” has caused thousands of deaths, more than 900,000 internally displaced persons, and about 60,000 refugees abroad. Despite an attempted “national dialogue” in 2019 and the granting of a “special status” to the two Anglophone regions in 2020, fighting continues and mistrust remains.
A long history that still weighs on the present
The country’s history in Cameroon is not a simple succession of dates and regimes. It is an intertwining of layers: ancient Sahelian empires and Fulani jihads that structured the north; Grassfields chiefdoms and Bamoun and Bamileke kingdoms whose political logics continue to shape local solidarities; a coast marked by Duala commercial intermediation and early missionary experiments; a brutal but infrastructure-modernizing German colonization; a Franco-British partition that imposed a lasting linguistic divide; a long-occluded war of independence that was decisive in building the postcolonial state; and finally, an unfinished reunification, a source of major political tensions.
The long periods of authoritarian rule under Ahidjo and Biya brought stability and economic growth, but also generated a locked political system, endemic corruption, and strong centralization. These factors fueled regional frustrations. Contemporary crises, such as the Anglophone unrest, the Boko Haram insurgency in the Far North, and economic vulnerabilities, are directly linked to this historical legacy.
In this context, the memory of the great figures of Cameroonian history—Ruben Um Nyobè, Ahmadou Ahidjo, John Ngu Foncha, but also thousands of anonymous individuals who fell in the maquis or in colonial and postcolonial prisons—remains a subject of debate. Between partial rehabilitation of independence heroes, still-timid recognition of colonial violence, and the demand for a new, more inclusive political contract, Cameroonian society continues to negotiate with its past in an attempt to sketch a common future.
Cameroon’s history is not a closed narrative but an always active field of forces, marked by old fractures that replay: between center and peripheries, French and British legacies, official memory and subaltern memories. Understanding this history means measuring how past choices (Fulani jihads, protectorate treaties, constitutional reforms of 1961 and 1972) still weigh powerfully on contemporary Cameroon.
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