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Settlers, Strikers and Sans-Travail: The Douala Riots of September 1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Richard A. Joseph
Richard A. Joseph
Affiliation:
University of Khartoum
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Extract

The outbreak of World War II is generally regarded as having had profound consequences for the future of the colonial world. These consequences are usually linked to such largely external factors as the signing of the Atlantic Charter, the participation of colonial subjects in Allied armies, and the demands made for political reforms by colonial officials and metropolitan political groups. Of equal importance for the rapid pace of political change ushered in by the war, however, were developments within the colonial territories themselves. For one thing, the world depression of 1929 lasted right up to the war in many African countries. A connexion can often be drawn between the ‘unfavourable terms of trade, the declining revenues … the pessimism of the period 1930–45’ and the emerging anti-colonial movement. In the case of certain countries, however, this general economic explanation must be broadened to take other factors into account. For example, in the Ivory Coast, the contradiction between African cash-crop agriculture on the one hand and, on the other, such colonial policies as forced labour and the indigénat which favoured European agriculture was also at the root of the discontent. In the Congo, the excessive demands made on the rural population to produce for the ‘war effort’—following upon similar exactions during the depression years—reinforced the oppressive apparatus of the colonial state and, in turn, heightened the discontent.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 1974 , pp. 669 - 687
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 Hopkins, A. G., An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman Group Ltd., 1973),266. See also 183, 253 and 267.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Morgenthau, R. S., Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1964), 176 ff.Google Scholar

3 Crawford, Young, Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence (Princeton University Press, 1965), 220 ff.Google Scholar

4 A pioneering study of this community is Rita, Cruise O'Brien'sWhite Society in Black Africa: The French in Senegal (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1972).Google Scholar What is most needed, however, are studies which deal with the political and social framework embracing both European and African communities.

5 Despite considerable Duala opposition to German colonial rule, a small number of Duals who had been employed by the German administration agitated for the return of their former colonial masters during the inter-war period. See Joseph, R. A., ‘The German Question in French Cameroun, 1919–1939’; Comparative Studies in Society and History, forthcoming.Google Scholar

6 Cf. Alexandre, Pierre, ‘Problème de détribalisés urbains Douala’, Centre des Hautes Etudes Africaines et Malgaches, Paris, vol. 103, no. 2. 441, n.d., 4.Google Scholar

7 Based on Maslin, Ph., ‘Peuplement blanc et mise en valeur de l'Ouest Cameroun’, Mémoire de L'Ecole Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer, no. 20, 1951–1952, IIGoogle Scholar. In 1951, for example, when the total European population in Cameroun was between 11,000 and 12,000, that of Douala alone was 6,000.

8 Approximately 40 per cent of Europeans in the Wouri region (slightly larger than the town of Douala itself) fell within the category of colons, i.e. were involved in industry, commerce and agriculture. From administrative statistics for this region in 1947, we find 821 colons, 858 civil servants, 223 military personnel, 36 gendarmes, and 33 missionary personnel. Cameroun Archives, APA 11337/A, Rapport Annuel du Wouri, 1947. Here after the ‘APA’ designation refers to dossiers in the Cameroun Archives in Yaoundé.

9 Cf.R., Gouellain, ‘New-Bell Douala: Enquete urbaine demandée par M. Ie HautCominissaire’, Institut de Recherche Camerounaise, Yaoundé, 1956, pp. 50 ff.Google Scholar

10 Ibid.

11 The proposals made at the Conference, and their implementation by the French Provisional Government and Constituent Assemblies, have been discussed in detail in several works. See, for example, Morgenthau, R. S., op. cit., 27–31, and 37–41;Google Scholar and Marshall, D. Bruce, The French Colonial Myth and Constitution-Making in the Fourth Republic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 102–15.Google Scholar

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14 Details of these agreements are found in Cmd. 6345, ‘Commercial and Economic Relations between the United Kingdom and the Cameroons under French Mandate’, Exchange of Letters between the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and General de Gaulle, London, 28 03. 1942.

15 Claude, E. Welch Jr, Dream of Unity: Pan-Africanism and Political Unzfication in West Africa (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), 27.Google Scholar

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18 Unlike West Africa, Cameroun did not benefit from the partial trade union reforms instituted by the Popular Front Government in France before the war. One of the constant problems in Cameroun during the post-war period was the non-implementation of reform bills—such as the Labour Code of 1952—because of settler opposition and administrative hostility towards the trade unions.

19 ‘Malgré Ia répression notre victoire est certaine’, Address before the Second Inter- territorial Congress of the R.D.A., Abidjan, 2–6 Jan. 1949, reprinted in A.E.F. Nouvelle, special issue (Feb. 1949), 2.

2 A copy of this petition is in the author's possession.

21 These economic relations were primarily with Great Britain, the U.S.A. and, significantly, South Africa. On the wartime contacts with the latter, see Marches, Coloniaux, I (17 11. 1945), 38–9; and II (12 05. 1946), 39–40.Google Scholar

22 Le Cameroun Libre, 262 (I 04. 1945). The deliberate echoing of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto is significant in itself. The socio-economic ambivalence of this group–disadvantaged from the standpoint of metropolitan society but advantaged and dominant in the colonial world–was manifested in a radical, in this case revolutionary, conservatism on the ideological plane. The ‘political assembly’ referred to here is, of course, the French Constituent Assembly to determine the new Constitution, and the ‘policy of abstinence’ is a notion which compresses two related developments: the labour-resistance of Africans with the end of the war; and the reluctance of administrators to continue the wartime and pre-war policy of furnishing prestation labour for European enterprises.Google Scholar

23 For the links of this organization with colonial interests and groups in the métropoe, and their successful campaign to defeat the April draft of the new French Constitution with its liberal proposals regarding overseas France, see Morgenthau, R. S., op. cit. 44.. ff.Google Scholar

24 Much of the following account will be based on the detailed reports of this Conference printed in the special issue of Le Cameroun Libre, 273 (15 09. 1945) under the headline, ‘Lea Etats Généraux de Ia Colonization Francaise tenus à Douala du 5 au 8 septembre 1945’–hereafter Etats-Gen.eraux, Douala.Google Scholar

25 Etah Généraux, Douala, 5.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., I.

27 The reference here was to the plans for an active and concerted programme of economic development in the overseas territories which had been actively proposed among colonial politicians since the appearance of Albert Sarraut's La mise en valeur des colonies in 1922–6, and was to be realized after World War II in the Ponds d'Investissements pour le Développement Economique et Social des Territoires d'Outre-Mer (F.I.D.E.S.).

28 Etats-Généraux, Douala, 5.Google Scholar

29 Ibid. 3.

30 Personal Interview, Paris, 1971.

31 Le Cameroun Libre, 272 (1 09. 1945), 3.Google Scholar

32 Abel, Eyinga, ‘Démocratie de Yaoundé’, unpublished typescript, 64.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 43.

34 Cf., Jean Suret-Canale, Afrique Noire Occidentale et Centrale: De la Colonisation au.x Indépendances (1945–1960), I (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1972), 18.Google Scholar

35 Eyinga, A., op. cit., 66.Google Scholar

36 Cf. L'Eveil du Cameroun, 2 10. 1945, 2.Google Scholar

37 This point is confirmed by the Colonial Ministry itself. See ‘Les, Evénements de Douala’, in Bulletin Quotidiens d'Information, Colonial Ministry, Paris, 1110. 1945.Google Scholar

38 For example, Vine, V. T. Le, op. cit., 143.Google Scholar

39 Cf., Adalbert Owona, ‘Introduction à I'Etude du Nationalisme Camerounais’, unpublished typescript, 221.Google Scholar

40 For a discussion of the role of provocation by Europeans in Ivory Coast in late 1944, Douala in September 1945, and Thiaroye in Senegal in December 1945, see SuretCanale, J., op. cit., 54, 18 and 27. Significantly, in an official statement after the Douala strikes and riots, Governor Nicolas strongly criticized the European community for the ‘false rumours’ which had triggered off the disorders. Reprinted in L'Eveil dii Cameroun, 2 10. 1945, 3.Google Scholar

41 Jacques, N'Gom, ‘Discours prononcé à l'occasion de Ia troisiéme commémoration des événements du 24 Septembre 1945’ Le Travailler Camerounais, 30 (30 09 1948).Google Scholar

42 Owona, A., op. cit., 221.Google Scholar

43 L'Eveil du Cameroun, 2 10., 1945, 2.Google Scholar

44 While Owona speaks of the ‘open State of rebellion’ of the whites, op. cit., 221–2n., Suret-Canale refers to the Governor as being either ‘obliging or powerless’ in the face of the European rising, op. cit., 18.

45 L'Eveil du Cameroun, 2 10. 1945, 2. It is unclear from the article who ‘Gamison’ was. He may have been the officer in charge of the arms stocks of the police authorities.Google Scholar

46 Suret-Canale, J., op. cit., 18–19 citing Administrator Jacquot.Google Scholar

47 This point was confirmed by G-G. Delavignette, Personal Interview.

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49 Owona, A., op. cit., 222 n.Google Scholar

50 APA 10209/14, Governor of French Cameroun to the Colonial Minister, 5 10. 1945.Google Scholar

51 Ibid.

52 No information on Raggi has been found; but Verges was an administrator who, in 1939, directed the destruction of churches of the Native Baptist movement throughout the Mungo region. According to Léopold Moumé-Etia, Verges was relieved of his duties after the riots and repatriated to France. Personal interview, Douala, May 1974.

53 APA 10209/14, Note du Gouverneur, 12 November. 1945.

54 Ibid., Lieutenant Bocchino to Governor Nicolas, 8 11. 1945.Google Scholar

55 There is a copy of this tract in APA 10175.

56 Ibid., ‘Appel à la population européenne’.

57 Ibid., High Commissioner R. Delavignette to the Minister of Overseas France, 28 09. 1946. The title, ‘Governor of French Cameroun’, was changed back to that of ‘High Commissioner’ in 1946.Google Scholar

58 See his brief article, ‘ A letter from French Cameroun’, in African Affairs, 46, 184 (07 1947), 152.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., 153.

60 ‘Monsieur, Giacobbi“explique les incidents du Cameroun”’, Franc-Tireur, reprinted in Le Cameroun Lthre, 15 12. 1945.Google Scholar Despite the exaggeration of the colons’ economic situation in this partisan comment, it correctly evokes the settlers' financial and political attitudes towards France. See also Marches Coloniaux, 16 03. 1946, 256.Google Scholar

61 Cf.J., Kuoh-Moukouri, Doigts Noirs: Je Fus rivain-Interpréte au Cameroun (Montreal, Canada, 1963),93–4.Google Scholar

62 See Joseph, R. A., ‘Radical Nationalism in Carneroun: The Case of the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC)’, D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1973; and ‘Ruben Urn Nyobé and the “Karnerun” Rebellion’, African Affairs, 1974.Google Scholar

63 According to Delavignette, before leaving for Cameroun in 1946 he asked Maurice Thorez, leader of the French Communist Party (P.C.F.), what the position of the Party was towards Cameroun and recent developments there. ‘There is no communist organization in Cameroun’, he replied, ‘the communists who are there act on their own account.’ As Delavignette himself added: ‘that explains the ease with which we were able to get rid of Soulier, Durand and Lalaurie, as well as Donnat, after the incidents of September 1945.’ Personal interview, Paris, 1971.