African Slavery Artifacts and European Colonialism: The Cameroon Grassfields from 1600 to 1950

Abstract

African slavers used various articles, often of intrinsic value, in their slave business: in the purchase of slaves, in regulating the trade and in assigning special functions to slaves. These articles constitute valuable slavery artifacts in Africa today. Using the Grassfields of Cameroon as a case study, this paper shows how the study of these artifacts exposes not only how African slavers perceived and treated slaves but, more importantly, how these artifacts were used in regulating and controlling the trade. The paper also stresses the fact that a great number of these artifacts of material history were seized, destroyed or looted by European colonialists and Christian missionaries, which accounts for their scarcity. The authors conclude that the study of slavery art constitutes a novel approach for researching the slave trade and African history from an African perspective.

Acknowledgement

This work is based on an earlier paper presented at the Codesria Symposium, on the sub-theme “Slavery and Colonialism in African Artistic and Cultural Production,” University of Legon, Accra, Ghana, 17–19 September 2003.

Notes

NOTES

1. Françios Renault, Libération d’esclaves et nouvelle servitude: Les rachats de captifs Africain pour le compte des colonies française après l’abolition de l’esclavage (Abidjan: Les Nouvelles ed. Africaines, 1976); Martin A. Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 141–45; Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L’ouverture Publications, 1972), 223–87.

2. L. Adele Jinadu, Fanon: In Search of the African Revolution (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1980), 24, 30.

3. Harry R. Rudin, The Germans in the Cameroons, 1884–1914: A Case Study in Modern Imperialism (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 10.

4. Writing and record keeping in the European languages came much later and spread with colonialism.

5. Philip Curtin et al., African History (Boston: Little Brown, 1982), 542–43; J. R. O. Ojo, “Art in Traditional African Culture,” in African History and Culture, ed. Richard Olaniyam (Lagos: Longman Nigeria, 1993), 200–223.

6. Edwin Ardener, Coastal Bantu of Cameroons (London: International African Institute, 1956), 48.

7. Christraud Geary, Things of the Palace: A Catalogue of Bamum Palace Museum in Foumban (Cameroon) (Wiesbaden: Paideuma, 1983), 158.

8. E. S. D. Fomin, A Comparative Study of Societal Influences on Indigenous Slavery in Two Types of Societies in Africa (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).

9. E. S. D. Fomin, “Female Slavery in Nweh Country, 1850–1970,” West African Journal of Archaeology 26.2 (1996): 140–54.

10. Bongfen Chem-Langhéé, “Slavery and Slave Marketing in Nso in the Nineteenth Century,” Paideuma 41 (1995): 177–90.

11. Interview with Teih Bezanchong, Essoh-Attah, 15 March 1981.

12. Philip Burnham, “Raiders and Traders in Adamawa: Slavery as a Regional System,” in Slavery and Slave Dealing in Cameroon in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Bongfen Chem-Langhéé (Weisbaden: Paideuma, 1995), 153–76.

13. David Eltis and James Walvin, eds, The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa and Americas (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), 106.

14. Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformation in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 104, 197, 214–15.

15. Chem-Langhéé, Slavery and Slave Dealing in Cameroon, 177–90.

16. Interview with Mbe Tieh Bezanchong, Essoh-Attah, 15 March 1981.

17. Geary, Things of the Palace, 175, 86–87.

18. Eltis and Walvin, The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 106.

19. Fomin, A Comparative Study of Societal Influences.

20. Ralph A. Austen, “Slavery among the Coastal Middlemen: The Duala of Cameroon,” in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 326.

21. Chem-Langhéé, Slavery and Slave Dealing in Cameroon, 177–90.

22. E. S. D. Fomin, “Slavery in Cameroon: A Comparative Study of Slavery in Selected Centralized and Non-Centralized Societies in Cameroon” (PhD dissertation, University of Yaounde, 1985), 75.

23. Paul N. Mzeka, The Core Culture of Nso’ (Agawam: Gerome Radin, 1980), 76–81. Nweron was and still is a regulatory institution of adult males from different clans in the Nso fondom.

24. Chem-Langhéé, Slavery and Slave Dealing in Cameroon, 185.

25. Jean-Pierre Warnier, “Slave-Trading without Slave-Raiding in Cameroon,” in Chem-Langhéé, Slavery and Slave-Dealing in Cameroon, Paideuma 41 (1995): 251–73.

26. Interview with Anthony Ngwa, Buea, 20 May 2003.

27. Warnier, “Slave-Trading without Slave-Raiding in Cameroon.”

28. Ibid.; Michael Mbapndah Ndobegang, “Grassfields Chiefs and Political Change in Cameroon, ca. 1884–1966” (PhD dissertation, Boston University, 1985), 49.

29. Curtin et al., African History, 542; Ojo, “Art in Traditional African Culture,” 200–223.

30. Fomin, A Comparative Study of Societal Influences, 33; Martin A. Klein, Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 68; Lovejoy, Transformation in Slavery, 28–29.

31. William Akepu Ndifor, “Colonial Impact on Indigenous Political Institutions (A Case Study of Nweh Polities)” (Post-graduate Diploma, ENS, University of Yaounde, 1981).

32. Interviews with Teih Bezanchong, Essoh-Attah, 15 March 1981; Nkemacheh, Buea, 12 May 2004.

33. Fomin, A Comparative Study of Societal Influences, 68.

34. Fomin, “Slavery in Cameroon,” 88.

35. Interview with Tieh Bezanchong, Essoh-Attah, 15 March 1981.

36. Africans who were brought up in Christian mission schools were especially hostile to African art because they erroneously believed that their forefathers took these objects for gods.

37. E. S. D. Fomin and V. J. Ngoh. Slaves Settlements in the Banyang Country, 1850–1950 (Limbe: Publications of the University of Buea, 1978), 37–42.

38. Ibid.

39. Curtin et al., African History, 541.

40. Basil Davidson, The Africans: An Entry to Cultural History (London: Penguin, 1969), 160.

41. Interview with Teih Bezanchong, Essoh-Attah, 15 March 1981.

42. Geary, Things of the Palace, 7; Claude Tardits, Le Royaume Bamum (Paris: Armand Colin, 1980).

43. Geary, Things of the Palace, 60.

44. Interview with George Atem, Buea, 12 June 2004.

45. Fomin, “Slavery in Cameroon,” 104.

46. C. Weladji, “Cameroon Nigeria Border,” Abbia [Cameroon Cultural Review] nos. 34–37 (1979): 359–400.

47. Joseph C. Miller, “Lineage, Ideology and the History of Slavery in Western Central Africa,” in The Ideology of Slavery in Africa, ed. Paul E. Lovejoy (London: Sage, 1981), 57.

48. Walter Nkwi, “From Village to National and Global Art, Whose Art?” in Central Africa: Crises, Reform and Reconstruction, ed. E. S. D. Fomin and John W. Forjie (Dakar: Codesria, 2005), 133–55; Geary, Things of the Palace, 96–105.

49. Miller, “Lineage, Ideology and the History of Slavery,” 58.

50. Ralph A. Austen, “Slavery and Slave Trade on the Atlantic Coast: The Duala of the Littoral,” Paideuma 41 (1995): 127–52.

51. Robert W. July, A History of the African People (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980), 188.

52. Eric William, Capitalism and Slavery (London: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 19; Chioma Filomina Steady, “Women of Africa and African Diaspora: Linkages and Influences,” in Global Dimension of African Diaspora, ed. Joseph E. Harris, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1993), 167.