In 1933, French administrators classified indigenous chiefs of French Cameroon hierarchically as superior chiefs (chefs supérieurs), settlement chiefs (chefs de groupement), or village chiefs (chefs de village), contradicting Brévié’s philosophy.86 By imposing an administrative hierarchy on chiefs in the Bamileke Region, the French implied that superior chiefs were more powerful than village chiefs. The administration used the census of the fo’s subjects as a quantifying factor, but in Grassfields politics, a polity’s degree of sovereignty (lepue), not the size of its population, defined a chieftaincy’s power and influence within the region. The 1933 decree also gave French administrators the right to name chiefs, although “whenever possible, tradition should be respected.” Nevertheless, the decree made official the administration’s right to intrude on successions in Bamileke chieftaincies.87 Also in 1933, schools for the sons of chiefs were established by administrative decree at Yaoundé, Dschang (the capital of the Bamileke Region), Domé, Edea (in the Sanaga-Maritime), and Garoua (in the north of French Cameroon).88 The creation of special elementary schools for the sons of chiefs reflected administrators’ desire to standardize the educational level of the traditional authorities, who would “become, in the future, our collaborators.”89
Despite Brévié’s stated shift in French colonial policy, which emphasized custom and tradition as the legitimate sources of traditional chiefs’ authority to rule, in the Bamileke Region of French Cameroon, the administration’s primary objectives remained taxation, labor recruitment, and the resettlement of populations from the Bafoussam area (Mifi) to the left bank of the Noun River (Nde). From the viewpoint of French administrators, a chief’s quality as a ruler was determined by his ability to raise the requisite tax. Because of the balance of power between the mfo and the district heads in Bamileke chieftaincies, French local administrators dissatisfied with the tax revenue found that they could bypass the fo and rely directly on his mfonte and mwabo.90 If the fo was uncooperative, the French supported a new district head of their own choosing to replace the one named by the fo. Yet their interventions did not always achieve the desired outcome.
In 1934, Fo Nganjong of Bandrefam replaced a wabo, Ouambo Nzezip, with an eight-year-old boy and his regent, and began to send his armed guards (tchindas) to notables’ compounds to collect taxes. The fo’s coercive tax collection methods caused a number of inhabitants, including titled notables, to emigrate to neighboring chieftaincies in protest. Concerned by the exodus, the administration categorized Bandrefam as a problem chieftaincy. While on tour of the subregion, French subdivision chief Robert Gentil attempted to reconcile the fo and his notables in order to encourage emigrants to return to their village. Gentil reinstated the wabo, whom he described as not quite a model leader but one capable of keeping the inhabitants of his district from leaving to other chieftaincies. Two months later, when interviewing notables about the reconciliation process, Gentil discovered that twenty-three people had returned because the fo no longer sent tchindas to their homes to collect taxes. With a touch of sarcasm, Gentil remarked in his report, “Everything runs smoothly as long as our chief does not govern,” clearly articulating the relationship between “native command” and tax collection in French administrative policy.91
Reading between the lines of Gentil’s annual report, the notables’ emigration can be seen as resistance to a fo who had overstepped what they perceived as an acceptable level of taxation in that district. It could be that the “problem district” was governed by a wabo who had historically been exempt from paying tribute to the chief’s palace, as was the case with the Ngougoua District in Baham.92 However, with the increasing taxation imposed under French rule, Fo Nganjong had gambled that the administration would support his position and seized an opportunity to bring Wabo Nzezip’s district firmly under his command by forcibly collecting taxes. By leaving the chieftaincy, the notables in the problem district of Bandrefam communicated their refusal to submit (lepue) to the fo’s exploitative taxation methods, leaving Fo Nganjong unable to meet the required tax quota.
Subdivision chief Gentil did not take the time to evaluate the reasons for the fo’s deposition of the wabo or to learn the identity of his eight-year-old successor (which would have told us a great deal about the breakdown in power and the fo’s strategies for its reconstruction). Instead, Gentil simply “reinstated” the leader he believed best suited to the regime’s objectives at the time—curtailing unauthorized emigration and collecting revenue. He thereby reinforced the notion that the fo was not capable of governing his chieftaincy, and increased the notables’ power in relation to the fo’s. Gentil’s decision also displaced the source of the notables’ legitimacy from the fo to the French administration. But, the French, like Fo Nganjong, overplayed their hand: restoring the wabo to his position may have stemmed the emigration from Bandrefam, but taxes remained uncollected.
In contrast to Bandrefam, Bandjoun, one of the first chieftaincies in the area to submit to European rule, was a model of successful tax collection. The cooperation of Fo Kamga of Bandjoun allowed administrators to congratulate themselves for following the French colonial policy du jour in the matter of native command. Citing his “close relationship” with Fo Kamga, Gentil reported that the fo accepted that his mfonte collect taxes for 1935. Gentil expected that that would increase Kamga’s authority, since he would find himself “in the simple roles of arbitrator and guardian of customs in the chieftaincy, and no longer in that of tax collector.”93 Fo Kamga was left to govern the internal affairs of his chieftaincy unhindered by French intrusion, thus preserving the polity’s autonomy to a degree.
The French administration’s inability to manipulate the workings of traditional governance to their advantage was best illustrated by the failure of the resettlement project on the left bank of the Noun River. French regional chief Ripert launched the project in 1925 in Dschang to address overpopulation in the Bamileke Region, to encourage the commercial production of coffee, raffia palm and kola nut, and to channel migration toward unsettled land in the Bamileke Region, rather than toward the Mungo Region connecting the area to the port city of Douala. The administration’s pet project in the Bafoussam subdivision for over a decade, resettlement proceeded slowly, and only three mfo appeared to cooperate: Fo Kamga of Bandjoun, Fo Kamwa of Baham (who owed his position to French intervention as mentioned above), and Fo Komguem of Bayangam.94 As part of the strategy, administrators selected notables to serve as chiefs of the new settlements, arranged by chieftaincy of origin: Baham II, Bandjoun II, Bamendjou II, and so on.95
The new “villages” were settled by district, each with its district chief. The local French administrator soon dismissed and replaced these satellite district chiefs for being “incapable of governing,” for having coffee plantations that did not conform to agricultural standards, or for being unable to maintain a minimum number of families in the new settlement.96 The Noun project eventually fizzled out, mostly for lack of enthusiasm among the mfo.97 Gentil remarked in his report that, should chiefs prove hostile to the project, “we should bypass them and rely on their notables in the left bank,” and entice a nobility leadership to collaborate by offering them free coffee seedlings.98 But by 1935 it became clear that the district chiefs selected to govern the new settlements had no authority over their populations.
French administrators had been certain that by building a replicate model of “traditional” structures of Bamileke governance, complete with a reigning fo and his mfonte, they could ensure the success of the settlement project. But the project’s failure demonstrated French ignorance of the essential ingredients the governance of gung. For example, nothing had been done to domesticate the spiritual landscape and render it habitable. By 1935 an unusually high mortality rate due to high infection by malaria appeared