Brigade mixte mobile de recherche et d’exploitation opérationnelles
BTC
Battalion of the Tirailleurs of Cameroon
CAOM
Centre des archives d’outre-mer
CGT
Confédération générale du travail
CHAN
Centre historique des archives nationales
CHETOM
Centre d’histoire et d’études des troupes d’outre-mer
CIDEO
Comité international de la défense d’Ernest Ouandié
CNO
Comité national d’organisation
ESOCAM
Évolution sociale camerounaise
FCFA
francs 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
