Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence. Meredith Terretta

issued by the Communauté financière africaine FLN Front de libération nationale FO Foreign Office FOPROJEUBA Foyer de progrès de la jeunesse de Bayangam FPUP Front populaire pour l’unité et la paix GPRA Gouvernement provisoire de la République algérienne IISH Institute of International Social History ILRM International League of the Rights of Man INDECAM Coordination des indépendants camerounais JDC Jeunesse démocratique du Cameroun JEUCAFRA Jeunesse camerounaise française MACNA Mouvement d’action national MAE Ministère des affaires étrangères MTLD Mouvement pour la triomphe des libertés démocratiques NA National Archives NYPL New York Public Library PCF Parti communiste français PDG Parti démocratique guinéen PMC Permanent Mandates Commission RDA Rassemblement démocratique africain RPC Rassemblement du peuple camerounais SDNK Sinistre de la défense nationale du Kamerun SDECE Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage SEDOC Service des études de la documentation SMEP Société des missions évangéliques de Paris UC Union camerounaise UCU Usambara Citizens’ Union UDEFEC Union démocratique des femmes camerounaises UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights UDN Union démocratique nigérienne UDS Union démocratique sénégalaise UFC Union des femmes camerounaises UNC Union nationale camerounaise UNGA United Nations General Assembly UNTC United Nations Trusteeship Council UPC Union des populations du Cameroun USCC Union des syndicats confédérés du Cameroun WFDY World Federation of Democratic Youth WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions WIDF Women’s International Democratic Federation ZANLA Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army ZANU–PF Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front ZOPAC Zone de pacification

      British Cameroons and western French Cameroon, 1950s. Map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP.

      Cameroon. Map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP.

      INTRODUCTION

      Layering Nationalism from Local to Global

      In Douala in 2003, I was speaking in French with a Cameroonian woman in her sixties about George W. Bush’s decision to go to war against Iraq. She was from the West Province, or the Bamileke Region, the portion of the Grassfields that fell under French administration from 1919 to 1960.¹ She was unschooled but spoke fluent French, pidgin English, and her mother tongue, Medumba. She was against the US invasion and, referring to the United Nations Security Council’s vote against military intervention in Iraq, she said, “But all the other villages did not want to go to war.” Her grandchildren laughed at her use of the term village, but her word choice and the youngsters’ reaction to it revealed a generational, linguistic memory gap.

      She had lived through “the time of troubles,” as Bamileke survivors describe the conflict that, at its beginning, in late 1956, resembled a nationalist war for independence from European rule; in its middle, the early 1960s, a civil war; and by its end, the late 1960s, seemed to have unraveled into random, unpredictable violence, looting, and revenge. In 1964 the British embassy in Cameroon² reported that between 61,300 and 76,300 civilians had lost their lives as a result of independence-era violence, from December 1956 to June 1964, and that nearly 80 percent of these casualties had occurred in the Bamileke region.³ Inhabitants of the region had plenty of reason during those years to think about the meanings of nation and independence. Since the French and British Cameroons were UN trust territories rather than colonies, Cameroonians who lived through “the time of troubles” also became familiar with the UN and its legal role in the politics of decolonization. In 2003 the grandmother’s words carried a memory of a time when Cameroonian nationalists from the Bamileke region used gung, the indigenous word for chieftaincy, which French administrators had translated and codified as “village,” to define the nation they envisioned. Her words also carried the faint echo of a time when many Cameroonians overestimated the ability of the UN to serve as a forum for international consensus and as an arbitrator and protector in world affairs.

      This book recounts the history of the practice and discourse of Cameroonian nationalism, spearheaded by the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC), as it unfolded in intersecting local, territorial, and global political arenas in the 1950s and 1960s. I have found this multidimensional perspective most effective for explaining why the UPC attracted the largest number of members and sympathizers of any political party in French Cameroon, becoming the most popular nationalist movement in the territory. Only by examining the ways in which UPC nationalists engaged shifting local, territorial, and international political currents can we approach a full understanding of why, despite the movement’s grassroots popularity, its support throughout Africa and beyond, and its decade-long armed struggle, upécistes (as UPC members called themselves) failed to achieve political