Chiefs, Traitors, and Representatives

In 1956 the French administration in the UN trusteeship territory of Cameroun began to depose traditional chiefs in the Bamileke region, part of the Grassfields under French rule, for their involvement in anti-colonial, pro-nationalist politics.2 In the Grassfields, chieftaincy had a long history of political significance prior to colonial occupation, and so the administration's deposition of chiefs in the late trusteeship period created a greater backlash there than in regions where chieftaincy had not existed prior to colonization.3 The Grassfields, bisected by the Anglo-French boundary in 1919, were comprised of a hundred or so chieftaincies prior to colonization. It was a region …