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along with several unpublished pieces.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.