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Charles Atangana of Yaounde

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Frederick Quinn
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Charles Atangana (c. 1880–1943) is an African chief whose career defies easy categorization. He was one of several thousand Beti headman's sons in central Cameroon, and not in the line of succession to replace his father as lineage chief within this acephalous society. However, he became a houseboy to the Germans who moved to the Yaounde district in the 1880s, was sent to a mission school by them, and rose from being medical assistant, clerk and interpreter to Oberhäuptling, or Paramount Chief, of this group of perhaps 500,000 persons in 1914. No sooner had he achieved a position of power than he lost it with the coming of World War I. Atangana led the German exodus to Spanish Guinea, and then was sent to Spain by the Germans, who expected him to testify on their behalf at the Versailles peace talks, but he was never called on. After returning to Cameroon he was eventually returned to a position of power by the French, who never had the complete confidence in him the Germans had shown. The 1920s and 1930s brought increasing difficulties to Atangana and other appointed Beti chiefs. To begin with, chiefs were an alien institution imposed on the Beti; the French were not satisfied with them because few of them could deliver the tax revenues and workers for public-works projects in the desired quantities; the Beti became increasingly estranged from them because they did not care for the heavy demands they made. As a generation of school-educated Beti emerged in the 1930s, the chiefs' role was increasingly questioned. Atangana could never be considered a resistance figure; he believed it was useless for the Beti to fight the Europeans, and he accepted the religion and culture of the Europeans. At the same time he did much to advance African interests. He often interceded with the Europeans on behalf of individual Africans, and actively supported campaigns like the sleeping-sickness eradication effort of the French. Within the limited possibilities open to him, he steered a middle course, as he saw it.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 1980 , pp. 485 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 This paper was originally presented at a meeting of the American Historical Association in New York in December 1979.Google Scholar I am grateful to Prof. Bernard Fonlon of the University of Cameroon, Prof. Paul R. Dekar of McMaster Divinity College, Dr Jane Guyer of the African Studies Center, Boston University, and Ambassador Robert L. Payton, President of the Exxon Education Foundation, for their comments on the original draft.

2 Some basic references on the Beti include Binet, L. and Alexandre, P., Le Groupe dit Pahouin (Fang-Boulon-Beti), Monographies Ethnologiques Africaines publiées sous le patronage de l'Institut International Africain (Paris, 1958)Google Scholar; Dugast, I., Inventaire Ethnique du Sud-Cameroun (Mémoires de l'Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (Centre du Cameroun) Yaounde, 1949)Google Scholar; Laburthe-Tolra, P., Minl´aba, Histoire et Société Traditionelle chez les Bëti du Sud Cameroun (tomes I–III) (Paris, 1977)Google Scholar; Quinn, F., ‘Beti society in the nineteenth century’, Africa, L, iii (1980)Google Scholar; Quinn, F., ‘Changes in Beti Society, 1887–1960’, (Ph.D thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1970).Google Scholar Copies of my research notes, Beti manuscripts, and of archival reports from Cameroonian sources about the Beti have been placed in the Hoover Institution's Africa Section (Quinn collection), Palo Alto, California.

3 Billard, P., Le Cameroun Physique (Lyon, 1961)Google Scholar; Ngwa, J. A., An Outline Geography of the Federal Republic of Cameroon (London, 1967).Google Scholar

4 Heppe, M., ‘Jaunde-Texte Von Karl Atangana und Paul Messi, nebst Experimental-phonetischen Untersuchungen über die Sprache’, Abhandlungen des Hamburgischen Kolonial-Instituts, xxiv (1919)Google Scholar; Tsala, T., Oral Interview, Mvolye, 18 July 1968.Google Scholar

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6 Schutzbrief, Yaounde, 29 August 1905Google Scholar, reproduced in Quinn, F., ‘Charles Atangana and the Ewondo Chiefs, a Document’, Abbia, XXIII (1969), 83–102.Google Scholar

7 The section on Atangana and the Germans is drawn from Quinn, F., ‘The Beti and the Germans (1887–1916)’, in Afrika und Übersee, LVI, 1/2 (1973), 119–130, 200–214Google Scholar; and Quinn, F., ‘German and French rule in the Cameroon’, Tarikh, IV, iv (1974), 55–69.Google Scholar

8 Tsala, T., Oral interview, Mvolye, 18 July 1968.Google Scholar

9 Dominik, H., Kamerun, Sechs Kriegs-und Friedensjahre in deutschen Tropen (Berlin, 1901)Google Scholar; Dominik, H., Vom Atlantik zum Tschadsee, Kriegs-und Forschungs-Fahrten in Kamerun, (Berlin, 1908).Google Scholar

10 Heepe, , ‘Jaunde-Texte’, 107–11.Google Scholar

11 Quinn, F., ‘Charles Atangana’, 96.Google Scholar

12 Foudda, Max Abbe, Oral Interview, Nkolbewa, 23 December 1967.Google Scholar

13 ibid.

14 On the Beti in World War I see Quinn, F., ‘An African reaction to World War I; the Beti of Cameroon’, Cahiers d'Études Africaines, XIII, iv, (1973), 722–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Foudda, Max Abbe, Oral Interview, Nkolbewa, 23 December 1967.Google Scholar

16 ‘Atangana Ntsama, the War is Over’, MSS of Beti songs, collected by Quinn, F., 1966–1968Google Scholar, on file in the Hoover Institution African Collection. Other traditional Beti songs are contained in Quinn, F., ‘Eight Beti songs’, African Arts, v, i (1970), 30–34.Google Scholar

17 Foudda, Max Abbe, Oral Interview, Nkolbewa, 23 December 1967.Google Scholar

18 Cameroonian National Archives (CNA), Yaounde, 11.828.

19 ibid.

20 Foudda, Max Abbe, Oral Interview, Nkolbewa, 23 December 1967.Google Scholar

21 Quinn, F., ‘Charles Atangana’, 101.Google Scholar

22 CNA APA 11.819, Atangana, Charles to Chef de la Région de Nyong et Sanaga, Mvolye, 23 August 1948.Google Scholar

23 ibid.

24 Rapport Annuel du Gouvernement Français sur l'Administration sous mandat des territoires du Cameroun pour l'année 1939 (Paris: 1940), 75–76.Google Scholar A useful article on the plight of the chefferie in the interwar period is Guyer, Jane I., ‘The food economy and French colonial rule in Central Cameroon’, Journal of African History, xix, iv (1978), 577–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar