DOUALA UNDER THE FRENCH MANDATE, 1916 TO 1956 JONATHAN DERRICK Thesis submitted for the Degree of Ph.D. at the University of London. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. ProQuest Number: 11010378 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11010378 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 DOUALA UNDER THE FRENCH MANDATE, 1916 to 19 36 JONATHAN DERRICK ABSTRACT Douala arose from the settlement founded by the Dualas beside the Wouri river estuary, initially called Cameroons. A fishing and farming community, the Dualas became successful palm produce traders with the Europeans in the 19th century. Then they were ruled by Germany from 1884 to 1914. In the formative German period the Dualas showed their approach to European rule - collaboration aimed at seeking advantages, combined with criticism culminating in the protests against land expropriation effected in 1914 - which they continued after the First World War had led to French rule from 1916. There was widespread opposition to France initially, with calls for self- government. After 1920 this movement declined tempor­ arily, but protests continued. Douala was the main commercial centre of French Cameroun. Economic expansion provided many opportunities seized by Dualas, as traders and especially as cash crop planters. They served the French, to mutual advantage, as clerks. They extended their education further, mainly through the Protestant Mission which most followed. French policy reduced but did not eliminate their influence over non-Dualas. Continued a n ti-c o lo n ia lism was shown in the movement surrounding the independent B a p tis ts; the movement for r e s ­ toration of land expropriated in 1914; and active nationalism including approaches to the League of Nations (1929-32). The last phase coincided with the Depression. Economic damage to Duala interests in the Depression was limited, but politically they were more subdued after 19 32. They were then outnumbered by African immigrants. With the French at the height of their power, ruling through the Dualas1 important traditional rulers and the Strangers' untraditional ones, Douala in 1936 exemplified a West African city at the zenith of colonialism. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 4 CHAPTER ONE: THE PRE-COLONIAL AND GERMAN PERIODS 20 CHAPTER TWO: THE DUALAS AND THE FRENCH, 1916 TO 1920; WAR, PEACE AND PROTEST 93 CHAPTER THREE: ACTION AND REACTION IN COMMERCE AND POLITICS, 1920 TO 1927 168 CHAPTER FOUR: NATIONALISM AND DEPRESSION, 1927 TO 1934 274 CHAPTER FIVE: DOUALA IN THE THIRTIES 376 Appendix: the Wouri Region food and income survey, 19 38 436 List of sources and bibliography Maps PREFACE In the study of Africa under colonial rule the history of a particular city has seldom been attempted so far. But the growth of cities was an important development in colonial Africa. While many cities had existed before, new ones were started then and all major cities became areas of particular colonial impact. Cities were centres of European commerce and ad m in istratio n in A frica, whose growth is illustrated in many ways by the study of urban development. For the study of Africans living under colonial rule, to be distinguished from the study of colonial rule in Africa, it is particularly useful to examine how Africans lived in the areas which, on the whole, became the most westernised, the furthest from traditional life, in the various colonies. A particularly large and varied set of new opportunities for Africans was available from an early date in the towns, and their responses are an important subject for research. For recent urban history material is so abundant that the development of a large city over the whole 60-80-year period of colonial rule is too large a subject for a thesis. This one eventually had to cover only twenty years. The colonial archives contain plenty of material on the main European centres in the colonies. So do the published and unpublished documents of Missions, while in the many cities where literate Africans were concentrated from an early date, as well as European settlers, there are newspapers going back to the early colonial period. Above all there are many informants a v a ila b le . The field for research on an African urban community in the colonial era was therefore wide when I began research on the subject. I eventually chose the example of Douala, which turned out to be a particularly happy choice. Typical in some ways of major West African seaports, it is also unique in the history of the reaction of its founding inhabitants, the Dualas, .fco colonial rule, on which almost no research has been done. Few other cities, probably, would have offered such a valuable new insight into African reactions to European rule, including early political activity almost unrecorded in published w orks. The period of the study was narrowed down to the in ter-w ar p erio d , which fo r French Cameroun was the Mandate period. The post-war period, in which Douala was a centre of great political activity on which there are superabundant records, is for that reason alone a sufficient topic for a thesis in itself, and Dr. R.A.Joseph's thesis for Oxford U niversity on post-w ar Cameroun n atio n alism (now published by OUP as Radical Nationalism in Cameroun) uses a con­ siderable amount of the material on Douala in that period. The pre-1914 period could not be studied without full examination of the colonial archives of the German government of Kamerun (which, however, have y ield ed p len ty of m ateria l on Douala used in Kamerun under Deutscher Kolonialherrschaft, ed. H. Stocker). This would have been considerably less easy for me than the study of the French Mandate period. The study of the French Mandate period turned out to be very rewarding. The scarcely studied but well documented anti-colonial activity of the Dualas, just mentioned, was in the 1920s and 1930s. On many aspects of the history of Douala in the Mandate years, besides that one, material turned out to be abundant, and useful for addition to knowledge of the Africans' role in the period of secure and established colonial rule. That period is perhaps less studied than both the period of colonisation and that of decolonisation. But the reactions of Africans at the time when European rule must have seemed eternal are of particular interest. Besides the political protests, the documents on Douala showed th a t there was a remarkable exploitation of the opportunities of their new situation by the Dualas, including a large-scale establishment of cash crop plantations which has hardly been studied hitherto. There is also material on the immigration of Africans from other areas, a major theme of sociological and geographical studies of African cities since the Second World War; such studies have covered many cities, including Ibadan, Freetown, Kampala, Jos, Brazzaville, Dakar and Douala. The in flu x began w ell before the Second World War, i f on a smaller scale, and this can be illustrated by the example of Douala. Some aspects of the growth of a major seaport are easily traced through documents on shipping, harbour works, railway traffic to and from the port,and imports and exports. The effect of the Great Depress ion, so important for all of Africa, is well documented for a town lik e Douala. Thus a comprehensive p ic tu re of the growth of the town, both the commercial and political activities of the Africans and the background of steady development as a colonial commercial centre, can be constructed for the Mandate period. I decided to construct such a picture in a small but comprehensive historical monograph. In Cameroun, as in other African countries, monographs on the colonial impact and African reactions in a number of selected areas have been made, including some historical studies of cities; there are unpublished d is s e rta tio n s on Nkongsamba (by Bernard Nkuissi, for the University of Lille) and on Kribi (by Jean-Marie Essomba, for the University of Cameroon). Much can be learned from comparison of such geographically confined studies. Neither a simple study of political movememts, nor a thematic approach with those movements singled out in one chapter, seemed possible. Among the small communities of educated coastal Africans who were prominent in early nationalism, like the Dualas, such activity was inseparable from their activities and achievements in business, religion and office employment -- and, in the case of the Dualas, in cash crop farming. To concentrate exclusively on the political protests of a community of clerks, businessmen, clergymen, landlords and planters would give a distorted view of such a community. So, in a way, would a series of thematic chapters on "the economy”, "the Missions", "protest activity", etc. All these aspects of life were simul­ taneous and intermingled; the people under study passed continually between their houses, their offices, their shops, their plantations, their churches and their political meetings. It gives a more accurate picture, and involves fewer and more manageable cross-references, to deal with all these aspects of life in chronological chapters covering a few years each.