Zintgraffs Explorations in Bamenda, Adamawa and the Benue Lands 18891892

Zintgraffs Explorations in Bamenda, Adamawa and the Benue Lands 18891892 PDF Author: E.M. Chilver
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9956578258
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
The following pages, initially prepared for limited circulation in 1961, contain brief extracts and summaries of those parts of Eugen Zintgraffs book NORD-KAMERUN (1895), of most interest concerning the colonial Bamenda and Wum Division. Zintgraffs book, the first by a European about the Grassfields, has not been translated and is hard to get second-hand. In using these notes the following points should be borne in mind: Zintgraffs knowledge of Bali (Mungaka) and Hausa was very slight, and his discussions of character, motives and political institutions are consequently superficial and open to criticisms. He had no means of checking what he was told, or thought he was told. He had no previous knowledge of any similar culture and no training in ethnographical method. He was, however, a good observer, and his descriptions of tools, dress, weapons and the like, can be regarded as fairly reliable. Finally, it must be remembered that Zintgraff wrote the book to justify his own actions and to support that small but influential section of public opinion in Germany which favoured rapid imperial expansion. A full account of the actions and motives of Zintgraffs opponents in the Kamerun Government and in the Colonial Bureau of the German Foreign Office has not been written: we only have one side of the story. But there are some suggestive points made in Rudins GERMANS IN THE CAMEROONS and others referred to in these notes. What is perhaps most striking about Zintgraffs account is the fact that the people of the Western Grassfields were not so isolated from one another or their neighbours as might be thought. A network of trade-friendships covered the country and big men exchanged gifts over long distances. These links must be set beside the insecurity due to raids and slave-catching, and are well worth investigation.

Zintgraffs Explorations in Bamenda, Adamawa and the Benue Lands 18891892

Zintgraffs Explorations in Bamenda, Adamawa and the Benue Lands 18891892 PDF Author: E.M. Chilver
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9956578258
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
The following pages, initially prepared for limited circulation in 1961, contain brief extracts and summaries of those parts of Eugen Zintgraffs book NORD-KAMERUN (1895), of most interest concerning the colonial Bamenda and Wum Division. Zintgraffs book, the first by a European about the Grassfields, has not been translated and is hard to get second-hand. In using these notes the following points should be borne in mind: Zintgraffs knowledge of Bali (Mungaka) and Hausa was very slight, and his discussions of character, motives and political institutions are consequently superficial and open to criticisms. He had no means of checking what he was told, or thought he was told. He had no previous knowledge of any similar culture and no training in ethnographical method. He was, however, a good observer, and his descriptions of tools, dress, weapons and the like, can be regarded as fairly reliable. Finally, it must be remembered that Zintgraff wrote the book to justify his own actions and to support that small but influential section of public opinion in Germany which favoured rapid imperial expansion. A full account of the actions and motives of Zintgraffs opponents in the Kamerun Government and in the Colonial Bureau of the German Foreign Office has not been written: we only have one side of the story. But there are some suggestive points made in Rudins GERMANS IN THE CAMEROONS and others referred to in these notes. What is perhaps most striking about Zintgraffs account is the fact that the people of the Western Grassfields were not so isolated from one another or their neighbours as might be thought. A network of trade-friendships covered the country and big men exchanged gifts over long distances. These links must be set beside the insecurity due to raids and slave-catching, and are well worth investigation.

Zintgraffís Explorations in Bamenda, Adamawa and the Benue Lands 1889ó1892

Zintgraffís Explorations in Bamenda, Adamawa and the Benue Lands 1889ó1892 PDF Author: E. M. Chilver
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9956616710
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
The following pages, initially prepared for limited circulation in 1961, contain brief extracts and summaries of those parts of Eugen ZintgraffÍs book Nord-Kamerun (1895), of most interest concerning the colonial Bamenda and Wum Division. ZintgraffÍs book, the first by a European about the Grassfields, has not been translated and is hard to get second-hand. In using these notes the following points should be borne in mind: ZintgraffÍs knowdie;ledge of Bali (Mungaka) and Hausa was very slight, and his discussions of character, motives and political institutions are consequently superficial and open to criticisms. He had no means of checking what he was told, or thought he was told. He had no previous knowledge of any similar culture and no training in ethnographical method. He was, however, a good observer, and his descriptions of tools, dress, weapons and the like, can be regarded as fairly reliable. Finally, it must be remembered that Zintgraff wrote the book to justify his own actions and to support that small but influential section of public opinion in Germany which favoured rapid imperial expansion. A full account of the actions and motives of ZintgraffÍs opponents in the Kamerun Governdie;ment and in the Colonial Bureau of the German Foreign Office has not been written: we only have one side of the story. But there are some suggestive points made in RudinÍs Germans in the Cameroons and others referred to in these notes. What is perhaps most striking about ZintgraffÍs account is the fact that the people of the Western Grassfields were not so isolated from one another or their neighbours as might be thought. A network of trade-friendships covered the country and big men exchanged gifts over long distances. These links must be set beside the insedie;curity due to raids and slave-catching, and are well worth investigation.

Environment and Identity Politics in Colonial Africa

Environment and Identity Politics in Colonial Africa PDF Author: Emmanuel Mbah
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315294168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Economic, political, and ethnic favoritism are common themes in the historiography of colonial Africa. Land ownership and control, and the abilities of the respective landscapes to sustain Africa’s growing population amidst the throes of climate change, have created recurrent identity crises throughout Africa. The book’s chapters elevate the discussion on recurrent environmental issues, the problems of contested ownership of land, autochthonism as well as the interaction and blending of different cultures in a restricted geographical space. The study highlights a neglected aspect of the history of Fulani migrations in West Africa - the colonial extension of the Fulani into the Southern Cameroons (the Fulani as a group did not exist in the region prior to 1916). Therefore the introduction of the Fulani in the region, at a time when ethnic affinities and control over land had already crystallized, resulted in problems of a wider magnitude that have been carefully and meticulously addressed in this book. Environment and Identity Politics in Colonial Africa makes a major contribution to colonial African historiography. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Modern Africa, African Environmental History and Colonial History

Betrayal of Too Trusting a People. The UN, the UK and the Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons

Betrayal of Too Trusting a People. The UN, the UK and the Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons PDF Author: Carlson Anyangwe
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9956558818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
There is a growing body of literature on what was originally envisioned as a free political association of the French and British Cameroons and its dramatic effects on the 'British Cameroons' community. Anyangwe's new book is an attempt to write the history of the Southern Cameroons from a legal perspective. This authoritative work describes in great detail the story of La Republique du Cameroun's alleged annexation and colonization of the Southern Cameroons following the achievement of its independence, while highlighting the seeming complicity of the United Nations and the British Trusteeship Authority. In the process, Anyangwe unravels a number of myths created by the main actors to justify this injustice and, in the end, makes useful suggestions to reverse the situation and to restore statehood to the Southern Cameroons. The book is rich in archival research and informed by a global perspective. It convincingly shows the uniqueness of the Southern Cameroons case.

Land Grabbing and Conflict in the North West Region of Cameroon

Land Grabbing and Conflict in the North West Region of Cameroon PDF Author: René Ngek Monteh
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527556336
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
In Cameroon, conflicts emerging from land ownership and boundary discrepancies have reached record heights with the North West Region serving as the theatre of land and boundary conflicts. These conflicts are not just rampant, but have taken shifting positions, making the much-cherished desire for peaceful cohabitation a far-fetched possibility. As this book shows, the ordinances of the 1970s which stopped traditional communities from making claims of ownership of land, the unwillingness of the traditional elite to understand and accept the arbitrary colonial imposed boundaries, and the dubious role played by those in authority in an attempt to solve or identify the root causes of these conflicts constituted the bed rock for the emergence of multi-dimensional problems. This book argues that conflicts in the North West Region have been promoted by the colonial factor, the authorities’ insistence on focusing on the consequences rather than on the deep causes, land laws, administrative orders and formally made arrangements. It argues very strongly that conflicts in the North West Region have become so protracted that solving them has been an uphill task.

Swedish Ventures in Cameroon, 1883-1923

Swedish Ventures in Cameroon, 1883-1923 PDF Author: Knut Knutson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571817259
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
In the 1880s two Swedes were living on the upper slopes of the Cameroon Mountain. One of them, Knutson, wrote a long memoir of his time in Cameroon (1883-1895). It gives fascinating insights into everyday life in pre-colonial Cameroon.

Kingdom on Mount Cameroon

Kingdom on Mount Cameroon PDF Author: Edwin Ardener†
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782388702
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
The Bakweri people of Mount Cameroon, an active volcano on the coast of West Africa a few degrees north of the equator, have had a varied and at times exciting history which has brought them into contact, not only with other West African peoples, but with merchants, missionaries, soldiers and administrators from Portugal, Holland, England, Jamaica, Sweden, Germany and more recently France.

Cameroon Grassfields Civilization

Cameroon Grassfields Civilization PDF Author: Jean-Pierre Warnier
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9956727903
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
This book brings and blends together a dozen scholarly articles published by the author since the 1970s. It sketches two different yet related stories: first, that of one of the most ancient and prestigious African civilizations, the antiquity and sophistication of which are becoming more and more prominent as field research unfolds their many facets. Second, the story of the researcher himself, who has had to alter and shift his approach to that civilization as he got to meet Grassfielders, colleagues, friends and scholars who changed his views about the Grassfields kingdoms and their people. This book bears witness to those many encounters. Historical and anthropological research is not only a question of relevant theories and methodologies. It is also a human endeavour made of networks and friendships.

Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness

Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness PDF Author: Robert Pool
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000325067
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The etiology of the Wimbum people in the Western Grassfields of Cameroon is described through an examination of the way in which the meanings of key concepts, used to interpret and explain illness and other forms of misfortune, are continually being produced and reproduced in the praxis of everyday communication. During the course of numerous dialogues, witchcraft, a highly ambivalent force, gradually emerges as the prime mover. As destructive cannibals or respectable elders the witches are the ultimate cause of all significant illness, misfortune and death, and as diviners they are also the ultimate judges who apportion moral responsibility. Even the ancestors and the traditional gods turn out to be fronts behind which the witches hide their activities.The study is on three levels: a medical anthropological exploration of explanations of illness and misfortune; a detailed ethnography of traditional African cosmology and witchcraft; and an examination of recent theoretical issues in anthropology such as the nature of ethnographic fieldwork and the possibility of dialogical or postmodern ethnography.

Tiger in an African palace, and other thoughts about identification and transformation

Tiger in an African palace, and other thoughts about identification and transformation PDF Author: Richard Fardon
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 995679225X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Tiger in an African palace collects eight essays about kinship and belonging that Richard Fardon wrote to complement his monographs on West Africa. The essays extend those book-length descriptions by pursuing their wider implications for theory in social anthropology: exploring the relationship between comparison and historical reconstruction, and questioning the fit between personal, ethnic and cosmopolitan identities in contemporary West African nations. In an Introduction written specially for this Langaa collection, Richard Fardon retraces the career-long development of his preoccupation with concepts of identification and transformation, and their relevance to understanding West African societies comparatively and historically.