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ABSTRACT
The paper explores the history of refugee experiences between Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, one that transcends different historical periods. It pays particular attention to the European-engineered First World War in Africa, which triggered an unprecedented refugee situation. Digging into the deeper histories of the African refugee experiences through this case study, and particularly from the time of the war, allows for a better appreciation of the experiences as continuous global historical processes that are not peculiar to specific regions of the world. Furthermore, the paper discusses the socio-economic relevance of the refugees to their host communities, especially in circumstances where they shared ethnic affinities and cultural similarities.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet article explore l’histoire des expériences des réfugiés entre le Cameroun et la Guinée équatoriale, une histoire qui transcende les différentes périodes historiques. Il accorde une attention particulière à la Première Guerre mondiale en Afrique, conçue en Europe, qui a déclenché une crise des réfugiés sans précédent. Creuser l’histoire profonde des expériences des réfugiés africains à travers cette étude de cas, en particulier celles des temps de guerre, permet de mieux apprécier les expériences en tant que processus historiques mondiaux continus qui ne sont pas propres à des régions spécifiques du monde. En outre, l’article aborde la pertinence socio-économique des réfugiés pour leurs communautés d’accueil, en particulier dans les cas où ils partagent des affinités ethniques et des similitudes culturelles.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Meredith Terretta for sponsoring the workshopping of the first draft of the article with funds from the Gordon Henderson Chair in Human Rights at the Canadian Association of African Studies Annual meeting in Kingston, Canada, in May 2018, and for her role and that of Philip Janzen in reviewing earlier drafts. Other individuals who contributed to the success of this article, through proofreading of drafts, collection of archival sources or assistance with maps, include Marcia Schenck, Joseph Ayodokun and Juscar Ndjounguep.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For more on this, see my most recent scholarship (Njung Citation2019b, Citation2020).
2. Fact documented by colonial officials in the National Archives of Nigeria, Ibadan (hereafter NANI) CSO 19/6, from Headquarter Office, Nigeria Regiment, Kaduna, to the Central Secretary’s Office, Lagos, 8 April 1918.
3. Recent scholarship has now begun to question this dismissal of African campaigns as mere sideshows and to suggest ways in which the sideshows can be centered. See, for example, Moyd (2016).
4. The fighting in Cameroon was such that there was significant direct contact between soldiers and the civilian populations, and such circumstances were bound to generate flight among terrified civilians.
5. Both the Allies and the Germans accused each other of war misconduct, and of being responsible for refugee situations. While the largely Allied-generated sources point to the Germans and their African soldiers as responsible for the refugee situation, other non-Allied sources, including admittance by the Germans themselves and their military officials, show that the Germans were indeed largely responsible. Much of the responsibility of the Allies stems from the fact that they brought the war to Cameroon, and were one of the war belligerents, a war whose pandemonium alone created a general refugee situation. Meanwhile, German responsibility stemmed mainly from a desire for vengeance against the colonized people, and the perception that the colonized, who had been resisting German colonialism, would become supportive of the Allies in the war. A British primary source pointing to the fact that both the Germans and the Allies carried out brutal treatment against Cameroonians and caused the refugee situation is provided by Robinson (Citation2010).
6. This is contained in a detailed report in the Nigerian national archives on military operations in the Cameroons. See NANI CSO 19/6, G.J.F Tomlinson, 2nd class district officer, Report on Military Operations in the Cameroons, June 1916.
7. For example, the British had, during the 1899–1902 Anglo–Boer War or the South African War, set up several war refugee camps to cater for the many displaced Africans during the war. Many held in the camps had come looking for British protection, as would later be the case in Cameroon during World War I.
8. This does not undermine the fact that the vast majority of the Douala people and their neighbors, including the Fang in the region who had fled across to Spanish Guinea, did so not by any choice of their own but because of uncontrollable war circumstances.
9. The records have been translated and explored by O’Neil (Citation2018) and Jacqueline De Vries Citation2018, whose works have been cited frequently in this study.
10. The hosting of Equatoguinean refugees in Cameroon in the 1970s and their treatment by the Cameroon government is fairly well documented in the Cameroon national archives. See Archives Nationales de Yaoundé [Cameroon] [hereafter ANY], 1AA28 Affaires étrangères 1963–1969, Lettre no. 565 du Ministre des Affaires Étrangères Nzo Ekahah-Ngakkhy au ministre de l’administration territorial fédérale du 25/04/1963.
11. ANY, 1AA28 Affaires étrangères 1963–1969, Lettre n°565 du Ministre des affaires étrangères Nzo Ekahah-Ngakkhy au Ministre de l’Administration Territoriale Fédérale du 25/04/1963.
12. At the time, President Ahidjo of Cameroon had personal political interests in Equatorial Guinea, to the extent of secretly trying to undermine Equatorial Guinea’s sovereignty and encouraging political organizations there that sought to advocate unity with Cameroon. While they disguised it as unity, it was actually a ploy to assimilate the territory into Cameroon.
13. Again, this is fairly well documented in the Cameroon national archives. See ANY, 1AA28 Affaires Étrangères 1963–1969.
14. The other two durable solutions are either voluntary repatriation or resettlement of the refugees in third countries.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
George N. Njung
George N. Njung is a lecturer at the Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He holds a PhD in (African) history from the University of Michigan. His other articles have been published or are forthcoming in multiple journals, including Africa Today (2021), Journal of Social History (2020), American Historical Review (2019) and First World War Studies (2019). He is currently working on his first monograph, Violent Encounters: Colonial Gendered Violence, African Soldiers, and the First World War in Cameroon, and on a second one, provisionally titled Amputated Men: A Comparative Study of the Struggles of Disabled WW1 Soldiers in Colonial British and French West Africa.