Nick’s Reviews > Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence: Nationalism, Grassfields Tradition, and State Building in Cameroon > Status Update

"African delegates, most of whom had attended the AAPC two months earlier, proposed a resolution to extend complete amnesty to political prisoners, to repeal the proscription of the UPC, and to organize new, UN-supervised parliamentary elections before independence. But the American delegation 'exerted every available form of pressure . . . to defeat the African resolution.'"

I find myself wondering at this point of the book, what if the UPC members had succeeded in their project? What might Cameroon look like today? Of course, the international hegemonic powers could not allow this kind of independence.

The entire first chapter is valuable, but particularly interesting is examination of the process whereby the invisible aspects of Grassfields institutions separated from the colonial figure of the fo (fon) as tax collector.