At the crossroads of West Africa and Central Africa, the territory of what is now Cameroon has seen human habitation since some time in the Middle Paleolithic, likely no later than 130,000 years ago. The earliest discovered archaeological evidence of humans dates from around 30,000 years ago at Shum Laka. Cameroon as a political entity emerged from the colonization of Africa by Europeans.
European traders arrived in the fifteenth century and Cameroon was the exonym given by the Portuguese to the Wouri river, which they called Rio dos Camarões-"river of shrimps" or "shrimp river", referring to the then-abundant Cameroon ghost shrimp. Cameroon was a source of slaves for the slave trade.
From 1884, Cameroon was a German colony, German Kamerun, with its borders drawn through negotiations between the Germans, British, and French. After the First World War, the League of Nations mandated France to administer most of the territory, with the United Kingdom administering a small portion in the west. Following World War II, the League of Nations' successor, the United Nations, instituted a Trusteeship system, leaving France and Britain in control of their respective regions, French Cameroon and British Cameroon.
In 1960, Cameroon became independent with part of British Cameroons voting to join former French Cameroon. Cameroon has had only two presidents since independence and while opposition parties were legalized in 1990 only one party has ever governed. Cameroon has maintained close relations with France and allied itself largely with Western political and economic interests throughout the Cold War and into the twenty-first century. This consistency gave Cameroon a reputation as one of the most stable countries in the region. In January 2024, Cameroon launched the world's first routine malaria vaccine program, using the World Health Organization (WHO)-approved RTS,S vaccine developed by British drugmaker GSK. The initiative aims to save thousands of African children's lives annually.
Early European Presence and Trade
When the Portuguese arrived in the region in the fifteenth century, a large number of kings, chiefs, and fons ruled small territories. Malaria prevented significant European settlement or exploration until the late 1870s, when large supplies of the malaria suppressant quinine became available. The early European presence in Cameroon was primarily devoted to coastal trade and the acquisition of slaves. The Cameroon coast was a major hub for the purchase of slaves who were taken across the Atlantic to Brazil, the United States, and the Caribbean. In 1807, the British abolished slavery in the Empire and began military efforts to suppress the slave trade, particularly in West Africa.
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Combined with the end of legal slave imports in the United States the same year, the international slave trade in Cameroon declined sharply. Christian missionaries established a presence in the late nineteenth century. Around this time, the Aro Confederacy, was expanding its economic and political influence from southeastern Nigeria into western Cameroon.
Map of Africa in 1890 showing colonial territories.
The Scramble for Africa and German Acquisition
The Scramble for Africa beginning in the late 1870s, saw European powers, primarily seeking to establish formal control over the parts of Africa not yet colonized. The Cameroon coast was of interest to both the British, already established in what is now Nigeria and with missionaries outposts in several towns, and the Germans who had extensive trading relationships and plantations established in the Douala region. On July 5, 1884, German explorer and administrator Gustav Nachtigal began signing agreements with Duala leaders establishing a German protectorate in the region. A brief conflict ensued with rival Duala chiefs which Germany and its allies won, leaving the British with little choice but to acknowledge Germany's claim to the region.
The borders of modern Cameroon were established through a series of negotiations with the British and French. Germany established an administration for the colony with a capital first at Buea and later at Yaoundé and continued to explore the interior and co-opt or subjugate local rulers. Germany was particularly interested in Cameroon's agricultural potential and entrusted large firms with the task of exploiting and exporting it.
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It was under the influence of a businessman Adolph Woermann, whose company set up a trading house in Douala, that Bismarck, initially skeptical about the interest of the colonial project, was convinced. Large German trading companies (Woermann, Jantzen & Thormählen) and concession companies (Südkamerun Gesellschaft, Nord-West Kamerun Gesellschaft) established themselves massively in the colony. Letting the big companies impose their order, the administration simply supported them, protected them, and tried to eliminate indigenous rebellions.
C. Woermann, a shipping and trading firm from Hamburg, first set up shop in Douala, Cameroon, in 1868. Adolph Woermann took over the family business of his father, Carl Woermann, in 1874. A growing number of colonies set up by other European nations made Woermann fear that he and other German businesses would lose access to African markets. But as European competition for African markets grew, so did lobbying from business people like Woermann. In 1883, he proposed establishing protectorates in West Africa, convincing Bismarck it would show that Germany had arrived as a great power. Historians, like Kim Todzi from the University of Hamburg, argue the German colony of Cameroon would not have happened without Woermann.
Woermann was a crucial player in the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference that essentially formalized European colonial claims. "Protectorates" were good for merchants because they shielded German firms and their markets from European competition. About 60% of German exports to Cameroon consisted of alcohol products. This emboldened German colonial officers to venture into the interior to exploit local trade routes. By 1905, some 200 firms operated in West Africa, 30 belonging to Woermann alone.
Douala chiefs believed they had signed an agreement that limited German activity to the coast. However, colonial officials presented the chiefs with a document different from the German version that was eventually signed. Violent colonial officers like Jesko von Puttkamer ensured that 20,000-30,000 Cameroonians were forced to harvest and transport rubber from the hinterland to waiting ships. The Woermann Line monopolized transport to German colonies and shipped around 19,000 soldiers and military personnel to South West Africa to crush the Herero and Nama Uprising between 1904 and 1907. It made millions from shipping personnel, supplies, horses and weapons for the German state. The Woermann Company's close association with the German state meant it lost influence in Africa when Germany was forced to relinquish colonial territories after World War I.
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An idyllic depiction of colonial-era Woermann Company factory in Douala, Cameroon.
German Administration and Investment
The Imperial German government made substantial investments in the infrastructure of Cameroon, including the extensive railways, such as the 160-metre single-span railway bridge on the southern branch of Sanaga River. Hospitals were opened all over the colony, including two major hospitals at Douala, one of which specialised in tropical diseases (the Germans had discovered the connection between mosquitoes and malaria).
In 1912, wrote in an official report in 1919 that the population of Kamerun had increased significantly.
World War I and the End of German Rule
Kamerun Campaign
Shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the British invaded Cameroon from Nigeria and the French from French Equatorial Africa in the Kamerun campaign. The last German fort in the country surrendered in February 1916.
The League of Nations Mandate and Partition
After the war this colony was partitioned between the United Kingdom and France under a June 28, 1919 League of Nations mandates (Class B). France gained the larger geographical share, transferred Neukamerun back to neighboring French colonies, and ruled the rest from Yaounde as Cameroun (French Cameroons). Britain's territory, a strip bordering Nigeria from the sea to Lake Chad, with an equal population was ruled from Lagos as Cameroons (British Cameroons).
German administrators were allowed to once again run the plantations of the southwestern coastal area. A British Parliamentary Publication, Report on the British Sphere of the Cameroons (May 1922, p. 62-8), reports that the German plantations there were 'as a whole . . . wonderful examples of industry, based on solid scientific knowledge. The natives have been taught discipline and have come to realise what can be achieved by industry.
French Cameroon and Independence
French Cameroon joined the Free France in August 1940. The system established by Free France was essentially a military dictatorship. Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque established a state of siege throughout the country and abolished almost all public freedom. The objective was to neutralize any potential feelings of independence or sympathy for the former German colonizer. Indigenous people known for their Germanophilia were executed in public places. In 1948, the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC), a nationalist movement, was founded and Ruben Um Nyobe took over as its leader.
In May 1955, the arrests of independence activists were followed by riots in several cities across the country. The repression caused several dozen or hundreds of deaths - the French administration officially lists twenty-two, although secret reports acknowledge many more. Because they were wanted by the police, UPC activists took refuge in the forests, where they formed guerilla bands; they also took refuge in neighboring British Cameroon. The French authorities repressed these events and made arbitrary arrests. An insurrection broke out among the Bassa people on 18 to 19 December 1956. Several dozen anti-UPC figures were murdered or kidnapped, bridges, telephone lines, and other infrastructure were sabotaged. The French military and native security forces violently repressed these uprisings, which led to many native Cameroonians joining the cause of independence and long-running guerilla war.
Legislative elections were held on 23 December 1956 and the resulting Assembly passed a decree on 16 April 1957 which made French Cameroon a state. It took back its former status of associated territory as a member of the French Union. Its inhabitants became Cameroonian citizens, and Cameroonian institutions were created under a parliamentary democracy. On 12 June 1958, the Legislative Assembly of French Cameroon asked the French government to: "Accord independence to the State of Cameroon at the ends of their trusteeship. Transfer every competence related to the running of internal affairs of Cameroon to Cameroonians". On 19 October 1958, France recognized the right of its United Nations trust territory to choose independence.
British Cameroons and the Plebiscite
The British territory was administered as two areas, Northern Cameroons and Southern Cameroons. Northern Cameroons consisted of two non-contiguous sections, divided by a point where the Nigerian and Cameroon borders met and were governed as part of the Northern Region of Nigeria. Southern Cameroons was administered as a province of Eastern Nigeria. In British Cameroons, many German administrators were allowed to run the plantations of the southern coastal area after World War I. A British parliamentary publication, Report on the British Sphere of the Cameroons (May 1922, p. 62-8), reported that the German plantations there were "as a whole . . . wonderful examples of industry, based on solid scientific knowledge.
When the League of Nations ceased to exist in 1946, British Cameroons was reclassified as a UN trust territory, administered through the UN Trusteeship Council, but remained under British control. French Cameroun became independent, as Cameroun or Cameroon, in January 1960, and Nigeria was scheduled for independence later that same year, which raised the question of what to do with the British territory. After some discussion (which had been going on since 1959), a plebiscite was agreed to and held on 11 February 1961.
French Cameroon achieved independence on January 1, 1960. After Guinea, it was the second of France's colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa to become independent. On 21 February 1960, the new nation held a constitutional referendum, approving a new constitution. On 5 May 1960, Ahmadou Ahidjo became president. On 12 February 1961, the results of the Southern Cameroon plebiscite were announced and it was learned that Southern Cameroons had voted for unification with the Republic Of Cameroon, sometimes called "reunification" since both regions had been part of German Kamerun. To negotiate the terms of this union, the Foumban Conference was held on 16-21 July 1961. John Ngu Foncha, the leader of the Kamerun National Democratic Party and the Southern Cameroons elected government represented Southern Cameroons while Ahidjo represented Cameroon. The agreement reached was a new constitution, based heavily on the version adopted in Cameroon earlier that year, but with a federal structure granting former British Cameroons - now West Cameroon - jurisdiction over certain issues and procedural rights. Buea became the capital of West Cameroon while Yaounde doubled as the federal capital and East Cameroon's capital.
The Colonial Legacy and Modern Cameroon
The colonial legacy - particularly the forced imposition of artificial borders that disregarded ethnic and cultural realities - disrupted natural state formations, divided families and fostered tensions that persist today. These borders continue to shape Cameroon’s socio-political landscape. The Elung clan, for example, which remains divided along the Picot Line, is a painful reminder of how colonial partition disrupted communities.
Table: Key Events in the History of German Cameroon
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1868 | C. Woermann establishes a trading post in Douala. |
| 1884 | German protectorate established by Gustav Nachtigal. |
| 1884-1885 | Berlin Conference formalizes European colonial claims. |
| 1914-1916 | Kamerun campaign during World War I. |
| 1919 | Cameroon partitioned between France and the United Kingdom under League of Nations mandates. |
| 1960 | French Cameroon gains independence. |
| 1961 | British Southern Cameroons votes to join former French Cameroon. |
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