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New African Histories
Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence: Nationalism, Grassfields Tradition, and State Building in Cameroon
Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence is the first extensive history of Cameroonian nationalism to consider the global and local influences that shaped the movement within the French and British Cameroons and beyond. Drawing on the archives of the United Nations, France, Great Britain, Ghana, and Cameroon, as well as oral sources, Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence chronicles the spread of the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) nationalist movement from the late 1940s into the first postcolonial decade. It shows how, in the French and British Cameroon territories administered as UN Trusteeships after the Second World War, notions of international human rights, the promise of Third World independence, Pan-African federation, and national citizenship blended with local political and spiritual practices that resurfaced as the period of European rule came to a close. After French and British administrators banned the party in the mid-1950s, UPC nationalists adopted violence as a revolutionary strategy. In the 1960s, the nationalist vision disintegrated. The postcolonial regime labeled UPC nationalists “outlaws” and rounded them up for imprisonment or execution as the state shifted to single-party rule in 1966. Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence traces the connection between local and transregional politics in the age of Africa’s decolonization and the early decades of the Cold War. Rather than stop at official independence as most conventional histories of African nationalist movements do, this book considers postindependence events as crucial to the history of Cameroonian nationalism and to an understanding of the postcolonial government that came to power on 1 January 1960. While the history of the UPC is a story that ends with the party’s failure to gain access to political power with independence, it is also a story of the postcolonial state’s failure to become a nation.
368 pages, Paperback
Published November 8, 2013
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About the author
Meredith Terretta
6 books1 followerMeredith Terretta is an author and Professor of history at the University of Ottawa, specializing in themes of international law and human rights. She teaches and directs student research in African and legal and human rights history.
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June 7, 2014
Terretta's basic thesis is that the UPC can best be understood through a study of discourse and practice at multiple levels (local, national and international) and in multiple locations ("Baham, a strong chieftaincy situated in the densely populated, mostly rural Bamileke region; Nkongsamba, the capital of the Mungo region, French Cameroon’s fertile plantation zone; and Accra, Ghana, where the Kwame Nkrumah government that came into power at independence, in 1957, founded the Bureau of African Affairs to support and assist anti-colonial liberation movements in territories still under European rule."
As a result, even though this is not a short book, it seems that Terretta could have written at least three books from the narratives touched upon in the volume. First, Terretta connects the history of the UPC to the charged relationships between "traditional" rule and attempts by colonial and post-colonial figures to forcibly appropriate land, labor and capital. These resulting cultural-political conflicts are a core part of colonialism, and they are so often replaced in mainstream discourse with primordial notions of unsophisticated tradition meeting forward-looking modernity. Second, Terretta writes about how the UPC first comes together through a process of political mobilization, using whatever discourses are available to fight for independence from the French colonial/post-colonial system. Through persecution, international disregard (not only by the French but by anti-independence U.S. administrations), and subsequent colonial/post-colonial repression, the UPC fragmented and became an amalgam of persecuted traditional/secular leaders, semi-organized militias, and brutal marauders competing with equally brutal state security. Third, Terretta writes of the very important and oft-overlooked relationships between the UPC and the broader projects of pan-African liberation. UPC leaders were prominent among these figures early on, and one wonders what Africa might be today if international colonial regimes sought solidarity instead of discord with strong regionalist/nationalist figures like Nkrumah, the other members of the All-African Peoples' Conference, and other figures of black liberation (notably, given her recent passing, Maya Angelou).
Each of these three strands is important to the thesis, but the methods chosen for dealing with them makes the narrative somewhat fragmented, moving too rapidly from one sphere of analysis to another without providing adequate transitions.
More importantly, I would have liked to read more about the relations (such as they were) between Francophone and Anglophone liberation movements and figures within Cameroon. The trade-off would have been a longer book, and perhaps this requires a separate volume to do it justice. However, this would have increased understanding of the process through which Cameroon eventually became a "unified" state, ruled by the dictator Ahidjo (and subsequently the dictator Biya) under the tutelage of France but also containing remnants of suppressed but occasionally resurgent/insurgent opposition.
Overall, the book is quite a valuable contribution to literature about Africa, colonial/post-colonial history, liberation movements, and the Cameroon/UPC experience in particular.
As a result, even though this is not a short book, it seems that Terretta could have written at least three books from the narratives touched upon in the volume. First, Terretta connects the history of the UPC to the charged relationships between "traditional" rule and attempts by colonial and post-colonial figures to forcibly appropriate land, labor and capital. These resulting cultural-political conflicts are a core part of colonialism, and they are so often replaced in mainstream discourse with primordial notions of unsophisticated tradition meeting forward-looking modernity. Second, Terretta writes about how the UPC first comes together through a process of political mobilization, using whatever discourses are available to fight for independence from the French colonial/post-colonial system. Through persecution, international disregard (not only by the French but by anti-independence U.S. administrations), and subsequent colonial/post-colonial repression, the UPC fragmented and became an amalgam of persecuted traditional/secular leaders, semi-organized militias, and brutal marauders competing with equally brutal state security. Third, Terretta writes of the very important and oft-overlooked relationships between the UPC and the broader projects of pan-African liberation. UPC leaders were prominent among these figures early on, and one wonders what Africa might be today if international colonial regimes sought solidarity instead of discord with strong regionalist/nationalist figures like Nkrumah, the other members of the All-African Peoples' Conference, and other figures of black liberation (notably, given her recent passing, Maya Angelou).
Each of these three strands is important to the thesis, but the methods chosen for dealing with them makes the narrative somewhat fragmented, moving too rapidly from one sphere of analysis to another without providing adequate transitions.
More importantly, I would have liked to read more about the relations (such as they were) between Francophone and Anglophone liberation movements and figures within Cameroon. The trade-off would have been a longer book, and perhaps this requires a separate volume to do it justice. However, this would have increased understanding of the process through which Cameroon eventually became a "unified" state, ruled by the dictator Ahidjo (and subsequently the dictator Biya) under the tutelage of France but also containing remnants of suppressed but occasionally resurgent/insurgent opposition.
Overall, the book is quite a valuable contribution to literature about Africa, colonial/post-colonial history, liberation movements, and the Cameroon/UPC experience in particular.
Displaying 1 of 1 review