It was true that by the 1930s—when Bamileke planters emerged as dominant players in the Mungo Region’s plantation economy—nobility and chiefs did not hold the same sway over young emigrants, who had not inherited land or titles from their fathers. But the new planters, shopkeepers, and traders in the Mungo Region certainly did not sever ties with their chieftaincies of origin, nor can they be accurately described as social rebels. Successful emigrants who excelled in their new circumstances and managed, at the same time, to penetrate the echelons of wealth, status, and nobility in their home chieftaincies might better be understood as social innovators. They conserved, rather than overturned, the chieftaincy norms and protocols that rendered their achievements meaningful in Grassfields sociopolitical terms—but found ways to leverage their own inclusion in traditional chieftaincy structures, thus increasing their flexibility and engendering their redefinition.
Like Warnier and Argenti, Andreas Eckert describes Bamileke migration to the Mungo as a “migration away from a highly centralized and unequal system of disinherited groups” that was present in Grassfields chieftaincies.99 Indeed, young migrants sought opportunities for economic advancement, wanting to escape the rigorous labor demands that elders and notables placed on them. But it was the “highly centralized and unequal system” of chieftaincy governance that continued to give their social status meaning. Mfo’s eventual bestowal of nobility titles to successful emigrants may have clinched the deal, but even those who did not achieve titles remained bound by their cosmology to sacred sites of the chieftaincy, and depended on the approval of their elders, ancestors, and mfo to ensure their success in their new world. An investment in their chieftaincy of origin was necessary in order for them to carry out sacrifices to ancestors and spirits, fulfill their duties as good children, increase their social status, and ensure their own honorable entry into the ancestral world upon their death. Emigrants returned regularly to benefit from the fixed attributes of gung: the sacred sites (cheup’si), the fo, their fathers’ compound, and ancestral skulls. In this way, emigrants continued to uphold the spiritual alliance between the visible world of the living and the unseen world of ancestors, spirits, and gods that underwrote governance in their chieftaincies of origin.100
In a time before European rule, emigrants to the Mungo River valley might have established their own chieftaincies with ties to home echoing only in remnant oral histories. Historically, ambitious Grassfielders had broken away from their chieftaincies of origin and founded new polities.101 But under colonial rule, when boundaries between polities and populations were no longer in flux, and battles over territory could no longer be fought, the French administration’s reification of territorialized ethnic categories prevented Mungo autochthons from being co-opted into the migrants’ sociopolitical structure—or vice versa. Bamileke immigrants to the Mungo Region had little choice but to continue to turn to their specific chieftaincies in instances where traditional governance and spirituality remained important, submitting—albeit from a distance—to the authority of the mfo they had left behind in ways they expected would increase their social standing and enhance their success. Somewhat paradoxically, it was their choice to leave their home chieftaincies that opened up avenues to the economic successes that enabled them to symbolically return having attained a level of recognition and status that would have remained out of reach for most had they never left. Migration and exile thus became a cornerstone of a twentieth-century Bamileke moral economy and identity.
While the fertility of the land in the Mungo River valley was undeniably attractive to Bamileke farmers used to working the hard, sometimes rocky, red soil of the eastern Grassfields, it was not this alone that caused them to settle.102 The promise of greater commercial opportunities and wage labor—whether in fields, factories, slaughterhouses, or homes—and the simultaneous growth of European settlement were factors in providing a financial safety net for immigrants. But it was the Bamileke migrants’ demographic makeup—mostly young men and foster children during the mandate and early trusteeship periods—that accounted for their level of activity and economic success. In 1935 an administrator at Mbanga remarked in exasperation that only a third of Bamileke men in his subdivision were married, and that they brought boys and girls from their villages to cook and clean for them.103 These young men sought to surpass the expectations of the families they left behind in their home chieftaincies.
Young Bamileke men in the Mungo Region used their access to cash to gain social and political standing back home as well as to gain recognition for their new pursuits in their chieftaincies of origin. European settlers and administrators mostly viewed Bamileke as second-class citizens, and autochthonous populations increasingly resented their intrusion and appropriation of lands. As Bamileke migrants fell through the administrative cracks or faced restrictions due to their categorization as strangers in their new land, they began to organize themselves in self-government associations based on chieftaincy of origin and which followed the principles of Grassfields governance. They also established elaborate networks of cultural associations and mutual financial-aid and credit societies. As a result they gained the security of social networks in the Mungo Region, while at the same time preserving and even increasing their influence and importance in their home chieftaincies. Since their successes in the Mungo Region had little social significance in their new surroundings, bringing economic resources back to the chieftaincy increased their status in the eyes of their elders.
The mfo in the Bamileke Region, in turn, recognized the importance of preserving connections with their emigrant communities and soon realized that the chieftaincy’s emigrant communities represented a source of revenue for the palace treasury. As rewards, successful emigrants were sometimes “given” plots of land, or wives—gifts that incurred allegiance and obligations to the fo. Most important, beginning in the 1950s if not before, the most successful emigrants could obtain a nobility title. In bestowing traditional nobility titles to youths who had moved away, mfo acknowledged the achievements of cadets, while continuing to benefit indirectly from their labor and keeping them an integral part of the polity. The inclusion of emigrants in the ranks of chieftaincy nobility ushered in an era of young urban Bamileke working with—rather than against—traditional palace elite.104
As the connection between home chieftaincies and emigrant communities evolved, it became clear that, by the late 1930s, the chieftaincy was no longer the hegemonic seat of power it had been at the turn of the twentieth century. The mfo had no say in the selection of the family chiefs, who essentially served as their representatives in emigrant communities throughout Cameroon’s urban areas. Instead, they relied increasingly on their emigrant intermediaries to keep them informed of territorial affairs, economic trends, and, after World War II, political processes. The Mungo River valley—and other sites of Bamileke settlement throughout the territory—became the locations in which the ranks of modern Bamileke nobility could expand despite a finite supply of land within the bounds of home chieftaincies.
Although a majority of Bamileke migrants to the Mungo maintained active links to their chieftaincies of origin, a few who achieved a degree of financial success so complete that they felt no need for the social or spiritual currency provided by the chieftaincy did sever ties, opting for a more permanent emigration. Isaac Bondja, for instance, originally from the area of Bangangte in the Nde Subdivision of Bamileke country, had by 1927 acquired European-style plantations of eighty hectares near Melong, at the northernmost edge of the Mungo Region.105 Bondja was one of three Africans claiming the desirable A lots within the urban perimeter of Nkongsamba in 1923.106