Cameroon - History

Archaeological evidence suggests that the region may have been the first homeland of the Bantu peoples, who developed methods of working iron and an advanced agriculture. After around 200 BC, the Bantu peoples spread east and south, to become the dominant ethnic group of sub-Saharan Africa.

European exploration began in the 15th century with the Portuguese who established sugar plantations and gained control of the slave trade around the coast in the following century. Dutch slave traders subsequently gained the ascendancy. Slavery ravaged West African societies until the middle of the 19th century, when Britain’s abolition of the slave trade (in 1807) and the activities of the anti-slavers became effective. In northern Cameroon, during the 19th century, nomadic Fulani arrived and settled.

Germany (a late entrant into the European scramble for colonial possessions in Africa) claimed Cameroon as a German Protectorate in 1884; it remained so until 1916, when Britain, France and Belgium took it by military force in a combined operation. The German administration built the railways between Douala and Eséka and between Douala and Nkongsamba in the west; and German farmers settled in the areas that are now North-West and South-West provinces.

After the First World War, the country was divided into two zones. The western zone (comprising two separate areas, later known as the Northern and Southern Cameroons) was administered by Britain under a League of Nations mandate. The rest of the country (comprising four-fifths of the total) was administered by France, directly from Paris. During the French administration, the port at Douala was built, the coffee and cocoa industries increased and extensive road-building was undertaken. In the British area, there was local participation in government, and both Northern and Southern Cameroons were joined to parts of Nigeria for administrative purposes. After 1945, the UK and France continued to administer the country as UN Trust Territories.

During this period, political parties emerged, the largest being the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC) led by Ruben Um Nyobe. The UPC, which demanded that French and British Cameroons should be united into one independent country, was banned in the mid-1950s, leading to a rebellion in which thousands of people were killed, including Um Nyobe in 1958. Nonetheless, the country proceeded to partial self-government in 1957 and full independence on 1 January 1960.

After a UN plebiscite in 1961, Northern Cameroons chose union with Nigeria, as part of the Northern Region. Southern Cameroons joined the Republic in October 1961. The country became a federal republic in the same year, with both components retaining their local parliaments. In 1972 the federation was dissolved and the country became a unitary republic (the United Republic of Cameroon), the name changing once again to the Republic of Cameroon in 1984.

Following independence, the country was ruled first by President Ahmadou Ahidjo (from 1960 to 1982) and then by President Paul Biya, who took office as president in 1982. A one-party regime was established in 1966 through the merger of the two governing parties and several opposition groups. In 1968 the ruling party was reconstituted as the Union national camerounaise (UNC) and was renamed once again the Rassemblement démocratique du peuple camerounais (Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement – RDPC or CPDM) in 1985.

Cameroon has never had a successful military coup. A plot by military officers was uncovered in 1979. A further planned coup was discovered in 1983 and in February 1984 the former President Ahmadou Ahidjo (then in exile where he subsequently died) was tried in absentia and found guilty, along with two of his military advisers. Two months later, the Republican Guard attempted a coup. This was foiled by the army, but 500–1,000 people were killed in the fighting; the Republican Guard was then disbanded.

In 1995, with the approval of all other member countries, Cameroon joined the Commonwealth.