5 - Middlemen as ethnic elite: the Duala under French mandate rule, 1914–1941

Summary

On September 27, 1914 – exactly seven weeks after the execution of Duala Manga Bell – the Germans surrendered Douala to Allied forces and began withdrawing their forces from the entire Littoral. The Duala now moved from the “mythic” to the more “normal” phase of their colonial experience in which the expatriate rulers would be the same authorities responsible for the neighboring territories of French Equatorial Africa.

Normalization in this instance refers not only to the nationality of the Europeans in control but also the integration of what had for centuries been a coastal entrepot enclave into a fully Cameroonian political and economic regime, with its capital in the interior at Yaoundé. In formal political terms, the Duala now became marginalized: local chiefs had no authority over the rest of the Littoral and what little power they enjoyed within Douala was again divided between Akwa and Bell. Political struggles would continue to be waged at least through the early 1930s around two issues directly inherited from the German past: the mandate status of Cameroon (theoretically administered by France for the League of Nations); and the expropriated Bell land. Battles over these questions were fought with funds earned from a continuation of Duala enterprise in trade and particularly in cash-crop agriculture.