Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Anglo-French Occupation and the Provisional Partition of the Cameroons, 1914-1916

1975; Volume: 7; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

0018-2540

Akinjide Osuntokun,

Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics

e v e N T s in the Cameroons, from the fall of Duala in September 1914 to the provisional partition in March 1916, showed among other things, the relative importance which Britain placed on East and West Africa in terms of each area's relevance to Britain's world wide imperial interests and strategy. Furthermore this period is also significant in that one could see that contrary to what Allied propaganda would have us believe it was territorial covetousness rather than the question of imperial security that let France and Great Britain to attack German Colonial Empire in 1914. It can of course be argued that the question of security and territorial aggrandizement cannot be completely separated. Events during the First World War showed that the era of the scramble did not end in the 1890s in West Africa, the First World War provided a reenactment of the drama of this earlier period. The earlier mistakes of not respecting African claims and ethnic boundaries were again committed during the period of the new scramble and finally events in the Cameroons demonstrated the nature of interdepartmental relations within the British government in the process of policy-making involving the Colonial office, the War office, the Admiralty and the Foreign Office. It also illustrates the role of personalities in the process. The way the decisions affecting the provisional partition of the Cameroons were taken lends credence to the view that the Asquith Cabinet was a coalition of independent departmental heads dominated by the Asquith, Grey and Haldane triumvirate with the effect that decision of this group, particularly that of Grey, tended to carry more weight than those of his colleagues in the Cabinet.1 Since the events to be considered in this essay took place during the First World War, we shall also consider how the uneasy Anglo-French Alliance was severely strained by the war. As soon as Duala surrendered to the British navy in September 1914, the British were faced with the problems of maintaining law and order and salvaging what was left of the economy and administration of the German colony. In order to minimise national rivalry the area overrun by the British navy was put under the administrative umbrella of an Anglo-French expeditionary force which was charged with the duty of conquering the Cameroons. This apparent sinking of national differences in the overall military success of the Allies soon broke down, with the result that French