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 to be evidence of a lack of divine benevolence in the area, and the resettled population lacked spiritual advocates or the sites on which to offer sacrifices. A massive emigration from the Noun area began after 1935. Inhabitants of Baham II actually preferred to seek refuge in chieftaincies bordering Baham rather than risk being sent back to Baham II by Fo Kamwa, a French protégé, and, not coincidentally, one of the project’s most loyal supporters.99
The French administration played on what they perceived as a dialectic of power in gung between the fo and the notables. But it is too simple to suggest that they reinforced the fo’s power to the detriment of the nobility and spiritualists in gung.100 In many cases, they minimized the power of the fo in favor of a district head who conformed to taxation policies or who could curb unauthorized migration. At the same time, French policies opened up new political opportunities for notables and chiefs, who saw in the French administration a new variable that could affect the precarious balance of power in their chieftaincy. As French policies toward native command shifted, the malleability of chieftaincy governance afforded new political platforms on which an ambitious notable could reinvent himself and reposition his lineage vis-à-vis the chief’s palace.
In 1941, French Equatorial Africa governor general Félix Eboué’s circular announced a new shift in administrative policy, which amounted to an effort to restore traditional chiefs to the prestigious position they held before European occupation. Eboué wrote, “The chief is not a functionary, he is an aristocrat. The best functionary with the highest rank is not comparable to the chief.”101 Eboué’s study recognized the chief’s supporting religious and traditional institutions as the foundation of his authority: “No council should be omitted, no guardian overlooked, no religious taboo neglected.”102 Eboué had come to understand, as many colonial administrators did not, that French attempts to make their own administration the source of the chief’s legitimacy constituted a flawed policy. In fact, there is some evidence that he had understood this for at least two decades, but had had to await his promotion to governor general before articulating his understanding as policy.103 However, Eboué’s study appeared in the twilight of colonialism, after the chieftaincy’s supporting institutions had been reconfigured during decades of foreign administration. In the Bamileke Region, where French administrators had focused primarily on the fo as the figurehead of power and government in the chieftaincy, it was too late for them to retrieve and integrate his supporting religious institutions into the “traditional chieftaincy” they had conceived. The French administration had, mostly unwittingly, already separated the visible symbols of rule and its concealed, religious, or mystical forms.
The Second World War interrupted Governor General Eboué’s proposed change in attitude toward “native command” before it came to fruition. In 1946, French Cameroon and the British Cameroons became United Nations trust territories, to be administered according to the UN Charter and the UN trusteeship agreements. Article 76 of the charter, the most crucial to Cameroonian nationalists, placed an expiry date on European rule by stating that the administering authorities’ must lead their territories on a path of “progressive development towards self-government or independence.” In 1947 the French administration in Cameroon released a decree designating chiefs as members of the public function.104 In late 1948 the high commissioner stated that, as intermediaries, traditional chiefs were to be representatives of both their populations and the French administration. This assertion cast aside Eboué’s contention that the chief’s legitimacy before his people came, not from his association with colonial power, but rather from sacred institutions, relatively unknown to European administrators.
CUSTOMARY
