Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T18:34:51.031Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

History, the Nation-State, and Alternative Narratives: An Example from Colonial Douala

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Abstract:

This article examines processes of community-building in the immigrant quarter of New Bell, Douala, during the interwar years. Historians of Douala have overlooked the history of New Bell, focusing instead on the political and economic activity of Duala's Westernized elite during this period. This historiographic oversight reflects a preoccupation with elite politics identified as the seeds of nationalism in Cameroon. An examination of the community of immigrants provides us with an alternative conceptualization of a multiethnic collective. By tracing the construction and evolution of public space in interwar New Bell, we can uncover elements of group solidarity binding together this highly diverse population.

Résumé:

Résumé:

Cet article examine les processus d'organisation communautaire dans le quartier immigrant de New Bell à Douala, pendant les années d'entre guerres. Les historiens de Douala ont négligé l'Histoire du quartier de New Bell, se concentrant plutôt sur l'activité politique et économique de l'élite occidentale de Douala pendant cette période. Cet oubli reflète une préoccupation de l'élite politique identifiée comme étant à l'origine du nationalisme au Cameroun. Une analyse de la communauté immigrante nous offre une conceptualisation alternative d'une collectivité multiethnique. En retraçant la construction et l'évolution de l'espace publique dans le New Bell de l'entre guerres, nous pouvons mettre en lumière les éléments d'une solidarité de groupe liant de manière solide cette population hautement diversifiée.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akyeampong, Emmanuel. 1996. Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c. 1800 to Recent Times. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Ambler, Charles, and Crush, Jonathan. 1992. “Alcohol in Southern African Labor History.” In Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa, edited by Ambler, Charles and Crush, Jonathan. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, David M., and Rathbone, Richard, eds. 2000. Africa's Urban Past. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Atangana, Martin-René. 1998. Capitalisme et Nationalisme au Cameroun: au lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale, 1946–1956. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne.Google Scholar
Austen, Ralph. 1992. “Tradition, Invention, and History: The Case of the Ngondo, Cameroon.” Cahiers d'Études africaines 126 (32–2): 285309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austen, Ralph, and Derrick, Jonathan. 1999. Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers: The Duala and their Hinterland, c. 1600–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Austen, Ralph, and Derrick, Jonathan. 1995. “Slavery and the Slave Trade on the Atlantic Coast: The Duala of the Littoral.” Paideuma 41.Google Scholar
Bravman, Bill. 1998. Making Ethnic Ways: Communities and Their Transformations in Taita, Kenya, 1800–1950. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Buell, Raymond Leslie. 1928. The Native Problem in Africa. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Chanock, Martin. 1985. Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Zambia and Malawi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. 1994. “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History.” American Historical Review 99 (5): 1516–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Frederick, and Stolen, Ann Laura 1997. “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda.” In Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, edited by Cooper, Frederick and Stoler, Ann Laura. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
de Féral, Carole. 1989. Pidgin-English du Cameroun: description linguistic et sociologuistique. Paris: Peeters/Selaf.Google Scholar
Derrick, Jonathan. 1979. “Douala under the French Mandate, 1916 to 1936.” Ph.D. diss., University of London.Google Scholar
Diziain, R., and Cambon, A.. 1956. Etude sur la population du quartier New-Bell à Douala. Yaounde: Orstom.Google Scholar
Dongmo, Jean-Louis. 1981. Le Dynamisme Bamiléké. Yaounde: CEPER.Google Scholar
Eckert, Andreas. 1991. Die Duala und die Kolonialmächte. Hamburg: University of Hamburg.Google Scholar
Eckert, Andreas. 1999a. “African Rural Entrepreneurs and Labour in the Cameroon Littoral.” Journal of African History 40 (1): 109–26.Google Scholar
Eckert, Andreas. 1999b. Grundbesitz, Landkonflikte und kolonialer Wandel: Douala 1880 bis 1960. Stuttgart: Steiner.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Ghosh, Amitav. 1995. “The Ghost of Mrs. Ghandi.” The New Yorker, 07 17, 3541.Google Scholar
Glassman, Jonathon. 1995. Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Glassman, Jonathon. 2000. “Sorting Out the Tribes: The Creation of Racial Identities in Colonial Zanzibar's Newspaper Wars.” Journal of African History 41: 395428.Google Scholar
Gosselin, G. 1970. Le crédit mutuel en pays bamiléké. Geneva: BIT.Google Scholar
Gouellain, René. 1975. Douala: ville et histoire. Paris: Institut d'ethnologie, Musée de l'homme.Google Scholar
Hendrickson, Hildi, ed. 1996. Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Herschatter, Gail. 1997. Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in TwentiethCentury Shanghai. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Joseph, Richard. 1974. “Settlers, Strikers, and Sans-Travail: The Douala Riots of September 1945.” Journal of African History 15 (4): 669–87.Google Scholar
Joseph, Richard. 1997. Radical Nationalism in Cameroun: Social Origins of the U.P.C Rebellion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lawrance, Benjamin. 2000. “Most Obedient Servants: The Politics of Language in German Colonial Togo.” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 159: 489524.Google Scholar
LeVine, Victor. 1964. The Cameroons: From Mandate to Independence. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Phyllis M. 1995. Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1991. “Introduction, Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism.” In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by Mohanty, C., Russo, A., and Torres, L.. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Monga, Yvette. 2000. “‘Au village!’: Space, Culture and Politics in Cameroon.” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 160 (4).Google Scholar
Osborn, Emily Lynn. In press. “Loyalty, Perfidy, and Scandal in Guinée Française: The Noirot-Penda Affair of 1905.” In Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa, edited by Lawrance, Benjamin Nicholas, Osborn, Emily Lynn, and Roberts, Richard L.. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Rapport Annuel du Gouvernement Français sur admininstration sous mandat des territoires du Cameroun. 1921, 1923, 1926.Google Scholar
Roberts, Richard. 2000. “History and Memory: The Power of Statist Narratives.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 33 (3): 513–22.Google Scholar
Rudin, Harry S. 1968. Germans in the Cameroons 1884–1914. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Schler, Lynn. 2001. “The Strangers of New Bell: Immigration, Community and Public Space in Colonial Douala, Cameroon 1914–1960.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.Google Scholar
Schler, Lynn. 2002. “Looking through a Glass of Beer: Alcohol in the Cultural Spaces of Colonial Douala, 1910–1945.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 35 (2): 315–34.Google Scholar
Spear, Thomas, ed. 1993. Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Stumpf, Rudolph P. K. 1977. “La Politique Linguistique au Cameroun de 1884 à 1960.” These de doctorat de 3e cycle, d.e.f.a.p. Paris.Google Scholar
Tarlo, Emma. 1996. Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Vail, Leroy, ed. 1991. The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan. 2000. Review of Middlemen of the Cameroons Rivers: The Duala and Their Hinterland, c. 1600-C.1960 , by Austen, Ralph A. and Derrick, Jonathan. American Historical Review 105 (2): 653–54.Google Scholar