At a time when historical series in African Studies seem to be
out of fashion among many British publishers, yielding in favour
to series on development or democratisation, it is a pleasure to
be able to congratulate Berghahn Books, of Providence, Rhode
Island and Oxford, on the launch of the inaugural volumes in
their Cameroon Studies series. Both
books are unambiguously historical in their emphasis, the one
sub-titled “Studies in the History of the Cameroon Coast:
1500-1970” and the other focusing on the convergence of
history and anthropology in Cameroon.
Cameroon’s rare international history among Africa’s
new states (only Togo can also point to colonial rule by as many
as three European powers) is at once an advantage and a drawback
in the consequent literature. On the credit side is, obviously,
the bonus of more than one source to recount the interaction of
ruler and ruled: the differing experience, the two-way
perceptions and the multiple legacy. On the debit side is the
resultant compartmentalisation of the language in which these
historical accounts were written, leaving many African scholars
sharing with their European colleagues the problem of not being
conversant with English and French and German - let alone the
Portuguese, Dutch and Swedish of pre-colonial contact chronicles.
Hence, the importance of the publishers’ signalled
intention to extend the series to translations of early German
explanation and missiologigal historical texts.
Both volumes now published carry a commemorative message. Indeed,
African Crossroads is literally
presented as a collection of essays in honour of Sally Chilver,
the ‘Mama for Story’ and distinguished scholar to
whom it is dedicated. At the same time, Kingdom on
Mount Cameroon is very much a project in memory
of the late Edwin Ardener - Oxford lecturer in social
anthropology with 25 years of Cameroonian research and
publication to his credit -with a bibliography of his African
writings as well as a perceptive introduction by his widow and
constant co-author, Shirley.
Kingdom of Mount Cameroon
reproduces lengthy extracts from five of Edwin Ardener’s
published works, along with several unpublished pieces. Among the
latter, the most substantial (more than 100 pages) is his
examination of five centuries of contact between the Bakweri and
Europeans. This is enhanced by a number of photographs, among
them the ill-fated Governor Puttkamer in dress uniform and the no
less fortunate Resident Dominik on horseback. Readers will link
the German element in this historical overview with the
complementary Eye-Witnesses to the Annexation of Cameroon:
1883-1887 by Shirley Ardener (1968) and Sally
Chilver’s Zintgraff’s Explorations in
Bamenda (1961), both published in Buea. Edwin
Ardener’s other unpublished essay assumes, a renewed
topicality in the mid-1990s, for it is and extensive account of
the Cameroon’s boundaries since 1827 and their political
significance. Among the previously published pieces are those on
Bakweri fertility and marriage, the Bakweri elephant dance, and
on the plantations and people of the Victoria region, abridged
from his chapters in Plantation and Village in the
Cameroons (1960), sponsored by NISER, Ibadan.
The presentation and ordering of the last 50 pages is a bit of a
hiccup. The contents page is prima facie
straightforward and standard: Introduction, Chapters,
Bibliography and Index. However, without any signposting, not
only is it unexpectedly continued overlead, but the four
appendices are abruptly listed after the index
(p.373) on the preceding page, although they appear before it in
the text (pp.345-372). Furthermore, the original bibliography
(pp.337-343) now finds itself supplemented by further titles at
p.365. However, this is just a momentary spasm of indigestion in
the partaking of what is emphatically a Bakweri banquet and a
timely tribute to Edwin Ardener’s continuing position of
authority in Cameroon studies.
African Crossroads is a much
shorter book, with a diversity of contributors and of aspects of
Cameroonian history and anthropology. It opens with Shirley
Ardener’s tribute to Sally Chilver, who, along with the
late Phyllis Kaberry, is the doyenne of Cameroonian Studies in
Britain. The spread and status of the authors bespeak the quality
of the chapters, among them Philip Burnham and Richard Fardon
from London, C. Tardits and J-P. Warnier from Paris, V.G. Fanso
from Yaoundé and Ralph Austen from Chicago, besides the
two editors Ian Fowler and David Zeitlyn, from Oxford and
Canterbury respectively. The essays deal with certain
contemporary views of the state (political relations, military
organisation) or with such issues as chieftancy, ethnicity,
gender and religion, many of them combining historical and
anthropological perspectives. The bibliography is extensive,
although narrower than the more general one in
Kingdom of Mount Cameroon; the
illustrations are valuable, although once again, the publishers
let the reader down, here by failing to indicate where the
so-called “Figures” are located in the text. These
photographs do, in fact, belong to one of the most original and
attractive chapters in the whole volume, Christaud Geary’s
analysis of political dress and German-style military attire in
Bamum. Newcomers may wonder what relation her unedited
“Elizabeth” Chilver is to the “Sally” to
whom the book is dedicated. Regrettably, there is in this volume
no map of Cameroon to guide us over these African Crossroads.
This is a fine tribute to Sally Chilver. Yet, unusually,
African Crossroads is only one of
three accolades, the others appearing in the Frobenius
Institute’s Paideuma (1995) and in a
forth-coming issue of the Journal of the Anthropological
Society of Oxford (JASO). Together they reflect not only
the esteem amongst researchers on Cameroon, in which Sally
Chilver is held as a scholar, a person and a friend, but also the
reinvigorated state of Cameroonian Studies today.
Observant readers will not fail to notice the neat coincidence
wherein Cameroon’s richly international past and present
are reflected in this new series, written by Cameroonian, British
and French scholars and brought to fruition by a publisher of
German origin. Au revoir Études
Camérounaises, welcome Cameroonian Studies.
Y.Y.