Kamerun

Germany's colony in west-central Africa, Kamerun, stretched from the Gulf of Guinea coast at Duala deep into the interior, covering most of present-day Cameroon and, by 1914, slices of Chad, the Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon and Nigeria. It existed from 1884 until British, French and Belgian forces conquered it in 1914–1916. Its history is one of plantations, forced labour and violent conquest, but also of African rulers who negotiated, collaborated and, in the end, resisted.

The Hamburg firm C. Woermann opened a trading post on the Kamerun (Wouri) river estuary in 1868, and German merchants soon acquired land from local chiefs for plantations, although British traders were also active and the region was largely within Britain's informal sphere. Lobbying by Adolph Woermann helped persuade Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to approve a colony during the Scramble for Africa. In July 1884 the envoy Gustav Nachtigal signed a treaty with Duala rulers, and the protectorate was formally proclaimed on 17 August 1884. Further treaties with peoples along the rivers followed.

Rule through chartered trading companies failed amid conflict with local traders, and the German state took direct control. German forces pushed inland in a series of wars, among them the Bafut and Adamawa wars. Governor Jesko von Puttkamer, who served from 1895 to 1906, often armed allied local powers against their rivals. Accounts of the period describe massacres by troops under officers such as Hans Dominik, including at the Nachtigal Falls, along with mutilations, and levies of people taken for forced plantation labour with very high death rates. Flogging was so routine that the German colonies were called the "flogging colonies". The slave trade was formally banned in 1902, but slave raiding in the north was tolerated throughout German rule.

After 1907 aggressive expansion slowed. With imperial subsidies, two railways were built from Duala, one of 160 kilometres north towards the Manenguba mountains and one of 300 kilometres to Makak on the Nyong river, alongside postal, telegraph and river shipping networks. Plantations produced bananas, cocoa and other crops for export. In 1911, after the Agadir Crisis, France ceded a large area to the east and south, known as Neukamerun, under the Treaty of Fez.

From 1910 the colonial government planned to move the Duala people away from the Wouri riverfront to create European-only districts. Rudolf Duala Manga Bell, king of the Bell lineage, who had been educated in Germany and had generally cooperated with the administration, united the Duala clans in opposition through petitions and letters to the Reichstag in 1911 and 1912, and later sent envoys to other Cameroonian leaders. Some, such as Sultan Ibrahim Njoya of the Bamum, informed the authorities. The Bulu former officer Martin-Paul Samba, who had once fought in German expeditions, reportedly sought French help. Both men were executed for high treason on 8 August 1914, after rushed trials. Historians disagree over whether Manga Bell intended an uprising, but in Cameroon he and Samba are remembered as national heroes.

Surrounded by Allied colonies, Kamerun was invaded from several sides in the First World War. Duala surrendered on 27 September 1914. German forces held out in the interior around Jaunde (Yaoundé) until early 1916, when most German troops and the civil administration withdrew to neutral Spanish Guinea; the northern fort at Mora surrendered in February 1916. The Allied armies used some 40,000 African carriers. Britain and France divided the colony, with France taking about four-fifths, and the Treaty of Versailles confirmed the split into League of Nations mandates, including French Cameroon. French Cameroon and part of British Cameroons reunited as independent Cameroon in 1961.

Our 1914 map shows Kamerun at its largest, after the 1911 additions, between British Nigeria to the west and French Equatorial Africa to the east and south.