Diplomacy and Nationbuilding in Africa: Franco-British Relations and Cameroon at the End of Empire 9780755619146, 9781848857773

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PR EFACE

Half a century ago, on 1 October 1961, the British flag was lowered in the Southern Cameroons, as the territory and its people joined the Republic of Cameroun, the ex-French mandate that had been independent since 1 January 1960. As one looks across both sides of the symbolic River Mungo, the old boundary between the French and English worlds, signs of an original, officially bilingual, profoundly multilingual, Cameroonian nation appear. On 27-29 July 2011, the inaugural Commonwealth Summer School was held in Cameroon. The University of Buea was chosen as the location; the organisers also came from one of its partner universities, Douala; participants hailed from across the Commonwealth, and included representatives from all the universities in Cameroon. Cameroonian students have now launched a national students’ association and the Buea event enabled the Commonwealth Secretariat to organise a youth consultation prior to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Perth, Australia, in October. Having joined in 1995 at the same time as Mozambique, Cameroon is one of the Commonwealth’s youngest members and its citizens across the territory have been giving increasing importance to the organisation, relying on its networks to promote political, economic and social rights. Current membership, however, has not been the result of natural, smooth and simple evolutions. Nor is contemporary politics free from

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controversies and struggles. National scrutiny and international attention have converged on democratic processes and wealth redistribution. Some emphasise the persisting dominance of the initial Republic of Cameroun in today’s State and the more radical Southern Cameroons National Council call for the independence of the once British mandate. Only if the years of distance, misperceptions, misunderstandings and suspicions are taken into account can contemporary engagements between Cameroon and the Commonwealth be properly assessed and usefully acted on. This book, therefore, does not focus on the application process which led to Cameroon’s Commonwealth membership (1989–95) but on the complex national and international power struggles which occurred at the end of Empire. What I hope to achieve in these pages is to shed some light on the international connections, the forms of cooperation, conciliation, compromise and resistance that influenced the multilateralisation of international relations in the post-independence era. This research stems from the belief that Cameroon is central to the histories of French and British decolonisation processes and foreign policy choices, forcing the two European powers into conversations that did not occur elsewhere. It also intends to emphasise that international history is a central component of any national narrative: Franco-British relations in Cameroon, the emergence of Francophone and Anglophone international networks and the management of postindependence diplomacy will hopefully shed light on the history of the Cameroonian, French and British States. Transnational, transregional and multilateral histories of decolonisation are essential to understand the globalising and globalised networks of today’s international affairs. This book would never have been written without the support of a great number of people, whom I wish to thank wholeheartedly – the staff at all the archives centres I visited, for their highly valuable help, and my research centre at Paris Diderot which provided me with the necessary means to carry out this work. Very special thanks are owed to friends and colleagues who gave me undivided moral and intellectual support in this endeavour – particularly Jean-Claude Redonnet, for his unflinching enthusiasm, in the years of my PhD and much

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beyond; Toby Garfitt, for his constant, kind encouragement and his generous time, and Claire Sanderson, for sharing with me so much of her experience and for her precious friendship. Exchanges with Terry Barringer, Richard Bourne, James Mayall, Philip Murphy, Andrew Williams and other members of the Round Table, as well as Virginie Roiron and Leo Zeilig, have also opened new insights into British decolonisation, Commonwealth affairs and liberation movements. I am very grateful to them. This book is also, and perhaps primarily, the result of my family’s unquestioning support, in all areas of life: none of this would have been possible without the endless devotion and intellectual engagement of my grandparents and parents, and the presence of my brother. Finally, my deepest thanks go to Roger, for his endless patience, critical mind and precious love. All mistakes that might remain are, of course, my own.

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ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

AAMS ACCT ALCAM APLF AUPELF BBC BCEAC BEAC Camdev CAR CCCE CDC CFTC CIDA CNPC CNU CONFEJES CPA CPNC CRO CYP ECA

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Associated African and Malagasy States Agence de coopération culturelle et technique Atlas linguistique du Cameroun Association des parlementaires de langue française Association des universités partiellement ou entièrement de langue française British Broadcasting Corporation Banque Centrale des Etats d’Afrique Equatoriale et du Cameroun Banque des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale Cameroon Development Corporation Central African Republic Caisse centrale de coopération économique Colonial Development Corporation Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation Canadian International Development Agency Cameroons People National Council Cameroon National Union Conférence des ministres de la jeunesse et des sports des pays d’expression française Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Cameroons People National Council Commonwealth Relations Office Commonwealth Youth Programme Economic Commission for Africa

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xii ECOWAS EDF EEC ENAM ENS FAC FCO FO GATT KNDP KPP IBRD LGTC MPLA NATO OAMCE OAU OCAM ODA ODM OIF OK Party PAID PLR SGAAM UAM UAMCE UAMPT UAR UC UDEAC UDI UN UPC UNESCO UNICEF USAID USSR VSO

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Economic Community of West African States European Development Fund European Economic Community Ecole nationale de la magistrature Ecole normale supérieure Fonds d’aide et de coopération Foreign and Commonwealth Office Foreign Office General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Kamerun National Democratic Party Kamerun People’s Party International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Local Government Training Centre Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola North Atlantic Treaty Organisation African and Malagasy Organisation for Economic Cooperation Organisation of African Unity Organisation de coopération africaine et malgache Overseas Development Administration Overseas Development Ministry Organisation internationale de la Francophonie One Kamerun Party Pan-African Institute for Development Postes de liaison et de renseignement Secrétariat général aux affaires africaines et malgaches Union africaine et malgache African and Malagasy Union for Economic Cooperation Malagasy Union for Post and Telecommunication United Arab Republic Union Camerounaise Union douanière et économique de l’Afrique centrale Unilateral Declaration of Independence United Nations Union des populations du Cameroun United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation United Nations Children’s Fund United States Agency for International Development Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Voluntary Services Overseas

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INTRODUCTION

In late November 1967, British ambassadors and high commissioners from West Africa gathered in London to exchange information on their respective countries, discuss present foreign-policy choices in the light of British interests, and envisage future orientations. One of the items on their agenda for the first day of the conference was: ‘Can outsiders influence the process of nationbuilding?’1 This had strong resonance in the context of East-West competition in the cold war but the real point of interest in the West African region was to discuss what role Britain and France played, with what motives, consequences and foreseeable evolutions. Both France and Britain had handed over power to African governments in the region but two major differences marked their relations with Africa. First, while French sub-Saharan territories had all become independent by November 1960, Britain was still in the process of negotiating the transfer of power in Swaziland and faced failure in Rhodesia, where Ian Smith’s government had proclaimed unilateral independence almost exactly two years previously and maintained a strict regime of racial segregation for the benefit of the white settlers. Second, at a time when the ‘Franco-African State’2 had emerged in Francophone spheres, Britain had retained little influence over its former West African territories. Membership of the Commonwealth did not protect Britain from the fierce attacks of its former colonies. While Britain often remained their most valuable Western partner, the new states repeatedly decried British policies, from restrictive immigration laws to failed decolonisation processes, in both closed and public circles. France, the British ambassador to the Ivory Coast underlined, had instead ‘continue[d] to influence individual Francophone countries in every sphere – political, social and economic’3 to an incomparable degree. British foreign policy and diplomacy undoubtedly sought to protect and promote British interests but in Africa, and even more acutely in West and Equatorial Africa, British interests could only be fully understood and preserved if French foreign policy and diplomacy were scrutinised with equal subtlety. At country level this French prism was central in Britain’s relations with one State: Cameroon.

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Born from the union of an ex-French mandate and an ex-British mandate on 1 October 1961, Cameroon was a unique experiment in nation building, facing a unique set of divisions imposed during the Franco-British era. The first essential division was territorial. The official partition of the German Protectorate of Kamerun on 22 July 1922 between France and Britain, who had conquered the territory in 1916 as the First World War had spread to the African continent, had given birth to three territories: a vast French mandate and a British mandate almost five times smaller, which had itself been divided into the Northern Cameroons and the Southern Cameroons.4 Only the Southern Cameroons chose to reunify with their Cameroonian neighbours, while the Northern Cameroons integrated with Nigeria on 1 June 1961. The union of 1961 therefore rested on a double territorial imbalance: the absence of the Northern Cameroons and the much smaller size of the Southern Cameroons, four times less populated than the ex-French mandate.5 Within a two-state Federation, land and population gave much greater weight to East Cameroon, the former French mandate, than to West Cameroon, the former Southern Cameroons. The second division was temporal. The Cameroons were never a colony but League of Nations mandates, later UN trusteeships, and independence had always been envisaged. However, progress towards independence and more importantly, independence itself, came in very different ways. The Republic of Cameroun,6 under President Ahmadou Ahidjo, celebrated its independence from France on 1 January 1960, following an agreement between the French and the Camerounian governments, approved by the UN. The future of the British Cameroons remained undecided by that date, although United Nations Resolutions 1352 (XIII) and 1473 (XIV) had stipulated that plebiscites would be held in both territories no later than March 1961, offering a choice between integration in the Nigerian Union or union with the Cameroun Republic. The options for the popular vote in the British Cameroons, however, did not include independence and a Republic of Cameroun existed for 21 months before the advent of contemporary Cameroon. The third division was political. Calls for independence and reunification had first emerged from trade union movements and the UPC,7 formed by Ruben Um Nyobé in 1948 to seek total independence from the colonial powers. Banned in 1955, violently repressed by the French authorities and the successive autonomous Cameroonian governments who acted in cooperation with France, the UPC struggle was only fully brought under control with the trials of 1971.8 UPC militants had gone into exile in the British Cameroons, where they also met with official repression, and abroad, where they found sympathisers in Ghana, Guinea or the UAR. Cameroon therefore emerged in the midst of civil violence and competing claims to political legitimacy.

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Finally, French and British legacies, from the modes of administering the mandates to the transfers of power, marked fundamental distinctions between the two parties to the union.9 Administered from Nigeria under indirect rule, the Southern Cameroons was included in the Eastern region of the Nigerian Federation with the Richards Constitution of 1946. The objective of the first nationalist movements in the Southern Cameroons, which emerged from Lagos, focused on separation from Nigeria, which became official when the Lyttleton Constitution created the Southern Cameroons Parliament in 1954. On the French side, by contrast, Cameroon had been firmly linked to the metropolitan centre. Cameroon’s Territorial Assembly was established in 1952, but between 1946 and 1958 representatives were also sent to the Assembly of the French Union in Paris. This was undoubtedly crucial in the career of Ahidjo, Cameroon’s President until 1982. Vice President of the Territorial Assembly of Cameroon in 1955, its President by 1957 and Minister of the Interior in Cameroon’s first autonomous government of May 1957, Prime Minister by February 1958 and founding leader of the UC in July 1958, Ahidjo had first been a councillor of the French Union in 1953. Seeking to negotiate independence in cooperation with the French government, which supported the UC against radical nationalist forces, Ahidjo held strong official and personal connections with French leaders. Politically therefore there existed intimate Franco-Camerounian links which had no Anglo-Cameroonian equivalent. But the distinct legacies of the Franco-British period pervaded all other spheres of Cameroonian life: French codified law versus British common law, EEC association versus Commonwealth economic preference, a centralised state school system with compulsory French versus a mission-led education which left far more space to national languages. Often referred to as a microcosm of Africa, host to 236 linguistic communities, most religions and philosophies, the Cameroonian nation would therefore have to build not only on pre-European diversity and on a single European legacy but on two very different European legacies. In The Two Alternatives, published at the end of 1960 before the United Nations plebiscites, Ahidjo and the Southern Cameroons Premier, John Ngu Foncha, based the future of a reunified Cameroon on one fundamental promise: official bilingualism would be embedded in the Constitution, a national undertaking which would be translated on the international stage by the pledge not to join the French Community or the British Commonwealth. This was a formidable challenge at a time of solid linguistic barriers between French and English in Africa10 and when neither Ahidjo11 nor Foncha mastered the other’s language. In 1952, less than 10 per cent of the population of the French Cameroons spoke French, while English speakers were even fewer

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in the British Cameroons, where national languages and pidgin prevailed.12 In 1962–63, the French ambassador noted that there were only around 1,500 English speakers in West Cameroon and that virtually nobody there understood a word of French.13 The number of young Cameroonians attending secondary school increased from 12,000 in 1960 to around 100,000 in 197414 while the number of university students grew by an annual average of 35 per cent between 1969 and 1973.15 By 1973 however, it was still essentially the political and business elite who spoke French and English.16 The ‘diglossia’ in Africa after independence, when ‘the prestigious social functions [were] dealt with through the European language’,17 was made more complex in Cameroon where most citizens of the officially bilingual state spoke neither French nor English and truly bilingual individuals were extremely rare. Cameroon’s official languages had strong differential territorial connotations, more than anywhere else in Africa. Following the analysis of Alobwed Epie,18 Anglophones in a Cameroonian context will here refer to those who identify strongly with both the English language and the former Southern Cameroons, irrespective of other simultaneous identity markers, religious, social or otherwise. The 1960 pledge pervades official discourse in the first formative phases of reunified Cameroon. It accompanies the drive for political hegemony, which finds its first major expression in the formation of the one-party state in 1966. It supports the drive for territorial unification, from the construction of the Federation in 1961, around the ex-French East Cameroon and the ex-British West Cameroon, to its abolition in 1972, when seven regions were created out of the original two states in a clear move for territorial integration.19 After independence, as Gilbert M. Khadiagala and Terrence Lyons demonstrate, African leaders became ‘the source, site and embodiment of foreign policy’ and diplomacy, which they used ‘as a tool to both disarm their domestic opponents and compensate for unpopular domestic policies’.20 International relations, therefore, became a means for the representation21 and legitimisation of political power within the nation, with strong symbolic force being attributed to diplomatic representation. In 1976, the Quai d’Orsay still considered that virtually all of Cameroon’s foreign policy decisions derived from a careful assessment of national unity requirements.22 By founding reunified Cameroon on the 1960 pledge, Ahidjo and Foncha gave three sets of diplomatic relations exceptional importance: relations between Cameroon and each of the former trusteeship administrators, France and Britain; relations between France and Britain, as European neighbours, EEC partners after 1 January 1973 and dwindling imperial powers; and finally, relations between Cameroon and each of the multilateral international associations which emerged from the redefinition

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and renegotiation of foreign affairs and diplomacy that decolonisation processes entailed. In order to understand the dynamics of nation building and power politics in Cameroon deriving from the 1960 pledge, it is necessary to go beyond a comparative approach to French and British retreats from empire. What matters are the consultations, frictions, connections, compromises and agreements that brought into contact French, British and Cameroonian politicians and diplomats during the transfer of powers and in the first phase of Cameroonian nation-building. Investigating national identity in Cameroon itself, as Ndive Kofele Kale has argued, would imply analysing three levels: ‘political consciousness[,] political knowledge [and] system affect [or] emotional attachment’ to the country’.23 This, however, is not the purpose of this book. In diplomacy and foreign affairs over the period, with limited literacy and in the absence of a free press, public opinion counted very little in decision making24 and there are in fact no polls or other criteria to assess the national mood.25 Public opinion, in the words of I. William Zartman, was in fact ‘elite opinion’.26 Just as Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale have distinguished between state building and state formation, this book will focus on relations between state processes for the deliberate creation of a nation and ‘historical process[es] whose outcome is a largely unconscious and contradictory process of conflicts, negotiations and promises between diverse groups’.27 While Cameroonian archival material remained largely unavailable,28 French, British and Canadian archives, as well as the records of expanding multilateral organisations, such as the Commonwealth of Nations,29 provide very valuable sources to assess Cameroon’s evolving relations with the francophone and anglophone networks of the former trusteeship powers. This book focuses on the importance that France and Britain gave to Cameroon, on the influence that they sought to exercise in the country and that they had on each other, in the wider context of diplomatic decision making during decolonisation.30 It therefore argues that Franco-British relations form an integral part of the study of the motives, strategies and consequences of the transfers of power in Africa. Beyond a comparative approach to French and British decolonisation processes, the history of Cameroon requires a combined approach to the negotiation of post-colonial international relations. The role of diplomacy in nation-building is not limited to Cameroon here. Franco-British relations in Cameroon, within the wider evolutions of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy between 1959 and 1975, also shed light on the redefinition of French and British identity at the end of empire and in the early days of their European partnership. The 1960 pledge sought to manage the likely ‘tensions between domestic and international society’31 at a time when Cameroonian leaders, and Ahidjo

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most particularly, seem to have been keenly aware of the constraints that limited resources placed on their capacity to implement foreign-policy decisions. Throughout the period, most diplomats based in Yaoundé, from the British to the French, the Americans and the Canadians, portrayed the Cameroonian President as a highly intelligent leader, who was simultaneously extremely cautious and pragmatic. In favour of a carefully planned drive towards African unity, opposed to the radical pan-Africanism of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah, Ahidjo instilled a strong sense of realism in Cameroonian diplomacy. In 1970, the Singapore Minister for Foreign Affairs expressed the view that for the developing countries which had recently gained independence, ‘difficulties over foreign policy [derived] from enunciating policies which countries [were] not in a position organisationally to translate into action’.32 If the decision to strike a balance between the two French and British spheres was motivated by the demands of nation-building in reunified Cameroon, to what extent did national and international evolutions, individual personalities and structural changes, influence Cameroon’s determination and ability to follow this course? Official records highlight the role of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy in the complex negotiation and assertion of independence. The confrontation of the perceptions, discourse and actions of all diplomatic actors, individual and institutional, brings into focus French and British post-colonial strategies and their relations with Cameroonian objectives and achievements. The interconnections between French, British and Cameroonian policies, as Francophone organisations and the Commonwealth of Nations were fundamentally transformed, shed light on the opportunities and constraints that the international environment placed on nationbuilding and on the diplomatic strategies that national leaders sought to implement in return. Looking at patterns of continuity and change in the higher echelons of politics between 1959 and 1975, Cameroonian and French decision makers were bound together by greater longevity than their British counterparts. Cameroonian diplomacy was highly centralised around Ahidjo, who had himself held the posts of President and Minister of Foreign Affairs simultaneously in early 1960.33 The speed with which ministers succeeded each other at the head of Foreign Affairs, with ten incumbents in 15 years, reinforced Ahidjo’s control over proceedings34 while their linguistic origins favoured the Francophone element – as the French Ambassador noted in May 1962, French was the language of most Cameroonian elite, including those who might express ‘hostility or reserve’35 towards France, and this undoubtedly gave France a special place in Cameroon. While the first two Deputy Ministers, Nzo Ekangaki (14 February 1962–1 July 1964) and Bernard Fonlon (1 July 1964–1 January 1968), were Anglophones, all ministers but one were

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Francophones from East Cameroon – just as at the Cameroonian Embassy in London, only Martin Epie (1962–1965) and J. Achidi Kisob (1973–1974) were Anglophones.36 The role of the Foreign Affairs Minister, British diplomats in Yaoundé knew, was to be ‘a faithful executant of the President’s foreign policy [with] little influence on it’ and to be hopefully ‘happier at ceremonial than at substantive work’.37 By 1975, the British Ambassador to Cameroon, Albert Saunders, considered that Ahidjo kept his ministers ‘firmly muzzled and on a very short leash[, unable] to wag a polite tail of welcome let alone to go for a gentle and harmless stroll off the well-beaten tracks of diplomatic platitudes’.38 Even Paul Biya, newly appointed to the resurrected function of Prime Minister in 1975, and who would become Cameroon’s second President in 1982, knew ‘his principal role [was] to co-ordinate Government business and to keep his hands off such matters as national defence, foreign affairs, internal security and the Assemblies’.39 Yaoundé was the centre for foreign and diplomatic affairs, as the federated government of West Cameroon was told in no uncertain terms.40 French diplomats similarly emphasised the President’s omnipotence. Ahidjo’s control over Cameroonian foreign affairs and diplomacy was rather in line with African practices after independence’,41 but in the Cameroonian context such control was potentially damaging for balanced relations with the two former trustees. Decision making in foreign affairs and high-level diplomacy was firmly in the hands of a President whose relations were primarily with France, its leaders and its officials. Until 1975, Ahidjo paid one official visit to France, in July 1960, and one to Britain following reunification, in May 1963. Ahidjo, however, met President de Gaulle for private talks on seven occasions42 over a nine-year period, and President Pompidou, who himself visited Cameroon in February 1971, twice.43 Maurice Foley, then Undersecretary of State at the FCO, visited Cameroon in May 1969, followed by Lady Tweedsmuir, Minister of State at the FCO, in January 1973. But it was never envisaged that the British Monarch or the British Prime Minister should visit Cameroon44 and no Secretary of State went before 1984. Although Ahidjo remained more distant from France than some of his Francophone counterparts in Africa, he maintained a clear link with French soil through his regular visits to his property in Grasse. The first two Cameroonian Ministers of Foreign Affairs also entertained very close links with the French: Charles Okala had been a member of the Senate of the French Union while Jean-Faustin Bétayéné had been a former administrator in Overseas France.45 Paris, British officials believed by 1963, had become ‘the clearing house of French African diplomacy’.46 In 1965, the Ivorian President Felix Houphouët-Boigny47 suggested that he and Ahidjo might meet in Paris, rather than on African soil. As the French capital

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became the centre of flight connections between French-speaking Africa and the rest of the world, additional opportunities for exchanges arose between French and Cameroonian officials.48 Clear continuity in French politics also favoured relations. All three French Presidents between 1958 and 1975, Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou and Valery Giscard d’Estaing, knew Africa and African leaders personally. All three maintained the successive French governments in right-of-centre politics, and all had been involved in African affairs before reaching the Presidency, as leader of Free France, Prime Minister or Finance Minister. Of all the African leaders who moved in French and Francophone circles, Ahidjo was said to have the most intimate knowledge and the keenest interest in French affairs, as well as the greatest concern for French heads of State.49 The Cameroonian President sat in the front row at NotreDame de Paris for Pompidou’s funeral50 and told the French Ambassador in May 1974 that Giscard’s victory against François Mitterrand in the presidential election was a real relief.51 Relations with former French Africa were an integral part of French grandeur52 as defined by de Gaulle, to an extent which was simply not true in British politics. As Tony Chafer argues, ‘Africa has historically been a key arena for the projection of French power overseas’53. Close links between France and Cameroon also built on the stability in the ministries, divisions and secretariats in charge of African affairs. Maurice Couve de Murville remained in charge of foreign affairs at the Quai d’Orsay from June 1958 to May 1968 and Maurice Schumann from June 1969 to March 1973. Even though Michel Debré, André Bettencourt, Michel Jobert and Jean Sauvagnargues held shorter mandates, continuity was very much felt by African leaders. In any case, the Quai d’Orsay was only one of the actors in France’s African policies – superseded in many ways by the SGAAM, established through Decree n°61–491 (18 May 1961) and entrusted to Jacques Foccart.54 Couve de Murville claimed that Foccart’s mission was not foreign affairs but ‘the special relations, human relations in some way, between the President of each Republic and the President of the French Republic’55 and that the Quai was generally strengthened under de Gaulle. However, Foccart’s activities did curtail the power of the Quai d’Orsay. Jean-François Médard has emphasised the role of Foccart in ‘clientelising’, ‘patrimonalising’ and privatising Franco-African relations, based on his formal and informal networks in French and African politics and business.56 Within Whitehall, the Foreign Office, Colonial Office and Commonwealth Relations Office were keenly aware of Foccart’s ‘wide influence’57 for clandestine activities throughout the Francophone world. By contrast, British officials believed that British politics left a far more marginal place to African affairs, which remained a highly treacherous

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terrain. Not only had Britain never practised assimilation as France had but the politics of decolonisation had left at least two open dossiers on British desks: South Africa and Rhodesia. Controversies over the use of military force and/or sanctions to force the segregationist governments out created clear international problems for Britain but also caused acute domestic dissensions, albeit on a more irregular basis. As the West African Department of the FCO noted in November 1972, ‘black Africa tend[ed] to be a vote loser in British politics’ and, unlike in France, could never be seen as ‘salvation’.58 This meant that African affairs were both potentially dangerous and essentially focused on Commonwealth Africa. Churchill’s model of the three circles in British foreign affairs – balancing relations with the USA, Europe and the Empire/Commonwealth – may have been under review, but the Commonwealth certainly remained a clear distinguishing feature in British interpretations of Africa. While the French increasingly looked at Francophone or Anglophone Africa, fostering close relations with ex-Belgian colonies early on, the British tended to look at Commonwealth or non-Commonwealth Africa – ex-French and Francophone Africa being the major sub-category of the latter group. Cameroon’s dual heritage mattered but it belonged, in effect, to non-Commonwealth Africa. The succession of Conservative and Labour governments throughout the period also had a clear impact. Not only did Cameroon initially have more tenuous links with Britain, but the succession of five different governments, under Prime Ministers who were far more personally detached from Africa than their French counterparts were, was a crucial difference. In parallel, there were nine successive Foreign Secretaries between 1959 and 1975, with only Alec Douglas-Home staying in the post for any prolonged period, first in the Macmillan Government (July 1960–October 1963) and then under Edward Heath (June 1970–March 1974). The rest, except Michael Stewart (March 1968–June 1970) and James Callaghan (March 1974–April 1976) under the two Wilson Governments, stayed for less than two years. In the early 1960s the Congo crisis was probably the key priority outside Britain’s immediate sphere, but throughout the period Britain’s primary preoccupations lay with Southern Africa and Commonwealth Africa. In parallel, French assistance in Africa was led by the Ministry for Cooperation (Coopération), which was established on 27 March 1959 (decree n°59–462) on rue Oudinot where the Ministry for Overseas France had been and which was, according to Couve de Murville, ‘a sort of remnant’59 of the latter, all the more so as many of the former overseas civil servants worked there. The Cameroonian economy, based on five-year plans, fared rather better than some of its neighbours and the crisis which hit Kenya, the Ivory Coast or Nigeria in the mid to late 1970s only really affected Cameroon in

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the mid 1980s. Between 1960 and 1976, three major sectors contributed to Cameroon’s Gross National Product: agriculture (30 per cent), industries (20 per cent) and services and trade (50 per cent).60 Real economic growth stood at around 6 per cent between 1960 and 1968 and 4.9% between 1974 and 1979.61 The Cameroonian budget, however, relied heavily on external assistance and France was its major source of aid throughout the period. The Coopération was in charge of economic, financial, cultural, social and technical assistance – as well as military assistance although the decree did not explicitly state it – to 14 African territories. An inter-ministerial committee was created but the Coopération remained the main interlocutor for African leaders on issues related to aid, organised through the FAC and the CCCE.62 Although most were Community states,63 Cameroun and Togo were also included in the remit of the Coopération, until it was absorbed within the Quai in 196664 on Couve de Murville’s initiative.65 In the Quai, cooperation was divided between the Secretariat d’Etat à la Coopération, which dealt with Francophone Africa, and the Direction Générale for Cultural, Scientific and Technical Relations, which dealt with nonFrancophone Africa.66 This, British officials argued, ‘reflect[ed] an emotional concentration on preserving French influence in that area’67and the division of funds, budgets and personnel certainly limited Franco-British and Anglophone-Francophone cooperation. They noted French ignorance and misconceptions about Commonwealth Africa – attributing it to distance more than anything else.68 French embassies in Africa, Cameroon included, hosted a Mission for Aid and Cooperation, to which in the early years after independence, a number of Colonial officials had transferred.69 Cultural action and technical cooperation were therefore inextricably linked within the French diplomatic system, to an extent which was not true in Britain. Even in its own Commonwealth sphere, British assistance programmes emerged later and remained far more limited than French initiatives. Only in 1961 was the Department of Technical Cooperation created and following Labour’s victory in the 1964 general election, the ODM was established and given Cabinet representation. The seat in Cabinet, however, was lost less than three years later and the Conservative victory in 1970 led to the integration of Development within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as the ODA. At a time when Britain lacked ‘any clear “development doctrine” or strategy’70 in the Commonwealth, it was highly unlikely that non-Commonwealth Africa would feature highly in British plans. The diplomatic channels between France and Africa differed markedly from those between Britain and Africa, particularly after the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office merged in 1968. While the FCO dealt with

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African politics regionally, the Direction Afrique Levant in the Quai d’Orsay and its successor in 1972,71 the Direction Afrique, remained organised around two distinct divisions for Francophone and non-Francophone Africa. British officials reported in July 1974 that cooperation with France was facilitated by the presence of ‘able and broad-minded people in charge’72 but admitted that the fact that Africa’s linguistic divide was embedded in the structure of the Quai made ‘things unnecessarily difficult’. They came to learn that their Quai d’Orsay counterparts ‘ha[d] never been happy with th[is] curious division of responsibilities’73 but no change was made until 1978, when a regional approach was adopted. Although the West Africa division still counted a desk officer for Anglophone Africa,74 the changes reflected a new French determination to cast a more global look on Africa, geographically, politically and economically. For most of the period therefore, France looked essentially to Francophone Africa – and given the size of the ex-French Cameroon and the limited number of Anglophone Cameroonians, Cameroon was very much considered to be part of this core remit. The Franco-British approach of this book rests on the fact that between 1959 and 1975 France and Britain engaged in regular consultations on Africa. In July 1959, British officials acknowledged that ‘policies towards the emergent countries of Africa’ should be harmonised with those ‘prescribed by relations with other colonial Powers in Africa’.75 Five months before, the Undersecretary in charge of Africa and the Levant at the Quai d’Orsay, Monsieur Sébilleau, had suggested to the British Ambassador in Paris that in African matters France and Britain ‘must try to act in concert’ and even ‘ought between [them] to decide how to “refaire l’Afrique”’.76 Regular talks between colonial officials since the Second World War and between foreign-affairs officials since 1958,77 when the Quai d’Orsay proposed annual meetings,78 provided the framework for consultation on African colonial and foreign affairs.79 Officials also met before UN meetings and in the Commission for Technical Cooperation in Africa South of the Sahara – along with representatives from the main European powers with territorial interests in Africa, South Africa, the Central African Federation, Ghana, Liberia and Guinea.80 Africa was also discussed at regular Anglo-American meetings,81 but as Macmillan wrote to de Gaulle in June 1959: ‘our two countries ought to be able to help each other. Certainly almost no other nations of the world now have these particular difficulties to contend with’.82 British officials had a keener sense than the French of the consequences of imperial retreat on international influence83 and were anxious for ‘informal and not . . . too official’84 talks, to avoid giving other governments the impression of another scramble for Africa. However, interaction with the French was very much welcomed. The United Kingdom and France were NATO partners, committed to

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preserving close contacts with their African territories after independence and blocking Soviet penetration into the continent. High-level discussions were held in Paris and London – five in 1959 alone – and all diplomats in Africa were encouraged to exchange information and views.85 On de Gaulle’s initiative, six-monthly Anglo-French talks on Africa between the Quai and the Foreign Office were broken off in May 1962, after the British only very belatedly invited France to talks on the Congo which had been planned with the Americans and the Belgians in London.86 Contacts were made via embassies but direct ministerial discussions on Africa only resumed in 1966, on a British initiative. The British Ambassador in Paris had referred to the need ‘to convince thinking Frenchmen that their idiosyncratic President [was] the odd-man-out and that her allies would be only too glad to work closely with France’87 and Sir Harold Caccia, the Permanent Undersecretary of State at the Foreign Office, had approached the French Ambassador in London before Harold Wilson’s visit to Paris in 1965. From a French perspective, Africa could become a problem for Franco-British relations in three major areas: the relations between their respective ‘zones of influence’, the negative impact of ‘subversion, panafricanism, under-development, etc.’ in the two zones, and relations with non-ex-territories.88 The major interest of the discussions for the French was to glean information on Anglophone Africa from the British. Two concerns were expressed: that little publicity should be given to the talks, because of Britain’s compromising position in Southern Africa, and that the risk of having to provide information on Francophone Africa in return should be assessed.89 In reality, Anglo-French talks were severely limited in the late 1960s by the Nigerian civil war, as Britain officially backed the Federal Government and France provided support to secessionist Biafra.90 But officials in the West Africa Department of the FCO emphasised in 1971 that France and Britain ‘kn[e]w more about Africa than any other powers outside the continent and share[d] the same fundamental objectives, that is to see the African countries develop as stable, prosperous states pursuing moderate and sensible policies and to prevent them from being drawn under the influence of the Russians and the Chinese’.91 Washington and Ottawa may have been the ‘inner circle’92 of British diplomacy, but on African affairs Paris remained a key agent and consultations with the French provided essential perspectives for British decision making. As Jean-François Médard has argued, the Pompidolian management of African affairs occurred essentially along Gaullist lines and more radical changes were only made under Giscard d’Estaing. The Ministry for Cooperation was restored in June 197493 and given enlarged powers as decree

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n°74–598 (21 June 1974) terminated Foccart’s Secretariat and transfered its responsibilities on to the new ministry.94 The influence and special status of the Coopération would be confirmed when, in 1979, all ministers except the Coopération minister were instructed to communicate with ambassadors via the Quai.95 British ODA officials were amazed that cooperation with anglophone Africa remained handled by the Quai. French officials admitted that it ‘was a terribly confused and unsatisfactory situation’ and that Coopération looked forward to dealing with the whole of Africa. The fact that Coopération dealt with ‘aid to the eighteen Francophone countries in Africa excluding the Maghreb . . . but including Mauritius on the grounds that they are an EEC Associate and speak French’96 seemed to the British an amazingly outdated complexity. However, Coopération held enlarged powers, as Foreign Secretary Louis de Guiringaud’s visit to the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Cameroon on 17–22 July 1977 was in itself a radical change. It was the first time a French foreign secretary had been to Africa since 1960; Francophone, Anglophone – and bilingual – countries were included, and the British Embassy in Paris emphasised the significance of the trip.97 At least three major elements struck British diplomats: Giscard was actively seeking contacts with Anglophone Africa; he was promoting more multilateral relations, through the European ‘Solidarity Pact’ for instance and a more open attitude to the USA; and he seemed eager to improve France’s image in Southern Africa.98 ‘In foreign affairs,’ Christopher T.E. Ewart-Biggs in Paris noted, ‘the change ha[d] been more in manner and method than in overt doctrine’99 and neither ‘the Fashoda complex [nor the] constant aversion to being seen to play second fiddle to the Americans’100 had yet vanished. But it still markedly altered the pattern of France’s international relations. This analysis was in fact confirmed by confidential French correspondence on the subject. Over 15 years after independence, French officials in Paris told British ambassador Nicholas Henderson that Africa was ‘no longer a continent whose countries were to be treated in ex-colonial terms, mainly as the recipients for development aid. African states now had to be dealt with on a new footing with all possible emphasis laid on their political and international maturity and the role they could play in world affairs’.101 The mid 1970s were therefore seen as a turning point in Franco-British relations over Africa. France’s political ambitions were only curtailed by the financial constraints of the time102 and significant developments required an increasingly wide-ranging French African policy: Portuguese decolonisation, Nigeria’s growing dominance in West Africa, the influence of Zaire and tensions in the Horn of Africa.103 Following Michael Clarke’s definition of foreign policy as ‘a continuing and confusing “flow of action” made up of a mixture of political decisions, non-political decisions, bureaucratic procedures, continuations of previous

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policy, and sheer accident,’104 this book intends to demonstrate to what extent Franco-British relations form a central component of the ‘impediments and opportunities that emanate[d] from the external environment’105 between 1959 and 1975. French decolonisation, Tony Chafer has argued, ‘has not been the product of some “grand plan” [but a] reactive’106 process. In many ways, British decolonisation proceeded on an even more pragmatic, case-by-case basis and this was particularly true in Cameroon, which had none of the characteristics of any of its other former territories. The agreements, adjustments and tensions between central decision-making officials in Paris and London and local diplomats abroad also reveal the influence of diplomacy in nation-building processes. By the end of 1975, British membership of the EEC had been confirmed in a nationwide referendum; the collapse of the Portuguese empire in Angola and Mozambique had raised hopes for faster progress to black-majority rule in Southern Africa and more assertive action against South African rule over Namibia; Cameroon had signed the Lomé Convention, associating African, Caribbean and Pacific States, including Commonwealth associates, with the EEC, and had given much public press to the renegotiation of its original cooperation agreements with France, taking stock of over a decade of independence. For all its limits, the First Lomé Convention, as Frédéric Turpin has argued, marked a turning point in the relations between Europe and Africa.107 Between 1959 and 1975, there was constant tension between the nationbuilding strategies of individual states and the rise of multiple forms of multilateral diplomacy – at the regional, continental and international levels, ranging from the political to the economic and the cultural. The 1960 pledge stemmed from Cameroon’s Franco-British heritage but was firmly grounded in how Cameroonian leaders interpreted the multilateral legacy of European empires and what they predicted these associations would become. By 1975, the Commonwealth of Nations had evolved tremendously from the association that Cameroon had seen in 1959. The creation of a Commonwealth Secretariat in 1965, headed by Canadian diplomat Arnold Smith, the growing membership of the new developing Commonwealth of the South, in pace with British imperial retreat, and the 1971 Declaration of Commonwealth Principles gave the original white club a collective yet diverse voice, on an unprecedented level. In 1975, Guyanese diplomat Shridath Ramphal was chosen to succeed Arnold Smith, confirming that small states and development had become core concerns. The French Community, by contrast, had disappeared. But regional African organisations, Francophone professional bodies and the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT) formed a network of Francophone multilateral associations, whose links with the French imperial legacy was somehow more complex than the British heritage

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of the Commonwealth. The pattern of relations between France, Britain, Cameroon and these multilateral bodies breaks the distinction between what Christopher Clapham has called ‘the sphere of equals [and] the sphere of outsiders’.108 It is for this same reason that the Canadian factor deserves close scrutiny. Sharing with Cameroon a complex Franco-British heritage but a different set of domestic and international constraints, Canada is a recurrent diplomatic actor in the networks detailed above. The motives and strategies of Canada’s engagement with Cameroon, its relations with France and Britain and its militant approach to multilateral diplomacy provide key insights into the dynamics of nation-building in a globalising world. Nation-building in Cameroon has been the subject of detailed analysis, as have French and British African policies after independence. But there has been comparatively little focus on triangular relations between France, Britain and Cameroon in the context of rising multilateral diplomacy in a globalising environment. Chapter 1 will focus on the negotiations for independence and reunification between 1959 and 1961, emphasising the influence of bilateral diplomacy, European power relations and the UN on the strategies for the termination of the French and British mandates in Cameroon.109 Chapter 2 will analyse the forces and motives behind Cameroon’s retreat from Commonwealth dynamics and its consequences for federal harmonisation up to the assertion of the single party in 1966. The opportunities and dangers of emerging Francophone diplomacies in the second half of the 1960s will be the central concern of Chapter 3, while Chapter 4 will investigate the new conditions created by integration processes in Cameroon and Western Europe, as 1972 saw both the transformation of the Cameroonian Federation into a unitary state and the Treaty of Accession which secured British membership of the EEC starting on 1 January 1973. Finally, Chapter 5 will study the limits of multilateral diplomacy addressing the conflictual and persisting divides of European rule in Africa and of the Franco-British period in Cameroon. Often defined as a ‘bridge’, Cameroon sought to use its Franco-British heritage as a strength on which to build its international influence, with variable success. Diplomacy, as the following pages hope to show, provides an essential insight into decolonisation processes after formal independence, bridging the divide between national, international and global modes of analysis, influence and action.

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CHAPTER 1 THE R EUNIFICATION DIALOGUES: COOR DINATING DECOLONISATION IN THE COLD WAR

Early consultations During the Franco-British talks of February 1959, as discussions were about to resume after lunch, a message was given to the British delegation by a member of staff of French Secretary of State Louis Jacquinot: French Prime Minister Michel Debré was ‘personally interested and regarded the future of the Cameroons as a test case for Anglo-French co-operation in Africa’.1 Rather than an ominous warning, this was an indication that the French welcomed the consultations and wanted the exchange of information that had operated throughout the decade to continue. There had been tensions and disagreements, constantly alerting both sides to the formidable contrasts in their colonial policies, but the two European neighbours had not allowed them to prevail. The issue of Cameroonian reunification had indeed been a recurring item of Anglo-French consultations since it was first promoted by early nationalist leaders on both sides of the River Mungo in the late 1940s. Ruben Um Nyobé and the UPC in the French Cameroons had called for independence and reunification, generating interest among Dr Emmanuel Endeley’s Cameroons Federal Union across the colonial border.2 The movement gathered pace in 1951 when UPC leaders

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and Dr. Endeley’s transformed party, the Kamerun National Congress (KNC), met. A few months before the Franco-British conversations of April 1952, official correspondence underlined the initial determination of both sides to cooperate against the Cameroons unification movement. The British Commissioner advised giving the French authorities ‘full information regarding the political activities in the British Cameroons of people from the French Cameroons’.3 In Paris, the French authorities were reluctant to grant too much negotiating power to their officials on the ground in Africa: it would interfere with the chain of command, as ministers had yet to agree on a common policy, and it might in fact encourage the nationalists, if they learnt that they now had a place on colonial agendas.4 However, they welcomed exchanges at the metropolitan level5 and the Cameroons unification movement was one of the three central issues discussed in April 1952 – with the Ewe movement in Togo and the Pan-African Congress in Accra.6 Both France and Britain initially opposed reunification, yet their common objective stemmed from distinct motives. British officials opposed the unification movement in Cameroon because they themselves favoured the integration of the British trust territories with their much larger Nigerian neighbour. Yet if independence came through reunification with the French Cameroons rather than integration with Nigeria, there was no reason to ‘regard it as a failure’:7 no date had been determined but self-government and separation from the metropolis were already planned. The general feeling seems to have been that reunification would essentially be a great inconvenience, given the wide disparities between the French and British Cameroons. Conversely, as British officials underlined, the French position derived from a fundamental opposition to nationalist movements, which conflicted with the ultimate purpose of ‘assimilat[ing] the Trust Territories into the French Union’.8 Ruben Um Nyobé had clearly asserted his opposition to French organisations and would warn the Fourth Committee in December that links with the French Union would be an act of ‘political swindling’.9 How the French interpreted British colonial policy in the neighbouring territories certainly magnified their concerns. Black African nationalism was to be contained in Central, Eastern and Southern African territories, which white settlers would turn into Commonwealth dominions, but encouraged, if not actually welcomed, in Britain’s four West African territories – Nigeria, the Gambia, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast – as long as British financial and economic supremacy remained virtually untouched.10 French officials were increasingly concerned that their attempts to ‘departmentalise French Africa’11 contrasted with constitutional conferences leading to black self-government in British West Africa. In a sense, both France and Britain, through the French Union and the Commonwealth, aimed to keep territories within

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a privileged realm of influence. Only in April 1949 had the British Monarch become merely the symbol of the Commonwealth association, when leaders had decided that securing continued membership for the Indian Republic should prevail over all other considerations. In 1956, the British Government still saw Britain as ‘the keystone of the Commonwealth arch’, ‘incomparably more important internationally than even the most important of the Commonwealth countries’.12 But more rapid evolutions in the British spheres at a time when pressure for decolonisation was stepped up at the UN alarmed the French, who noted that ‘every important event on British territory [had] immediate repercussions on French territory’.13 Nationalist and unificationist calls in both Togo and the Cameroons had in fact emanated from the British side and were fuelled by progress towards self-government in Nigeria. French officials acknowledged that ‘[a]ppropriate reforms’14 would become necessary but also took comfort in the fact that the size of the French Cameroons played in their favour.15 The French and British authorities were equally determined that cooperation should prevail and their respective impressions of the April 1952 talks were very positive. As French officials acknowledged at the end of the decade, the major objective of Franco-British consultations was not to work towards any real partnership but to gather information – on nationalist movements, on plans for decolonisation, on global forces, in order to devise more efficient policies in the French territories and in international organisations.16 The French highlighted the need for regional stability, for colonial cohesion at the UN,17 and pleaded for all officials in the Cameroons to ‘slow down’18 the unification movements. While British officials saw ‘no reason whatever to take any active steps to harry the Movement or its members’, the delegation was instructed, ‘in order to allay potential French suspicion’, to express a ‘desire to maintain the status quo’ and ‘reject as hypothetical’ all suggestion that the British Cameroons might opt for reunification.19 The unification movement was portrayed as ‘artificially inflated and unrepresentative in scope’20 and not to be encouraged. The talks of April 1952 strengthened the British resolve to resist all attempts by nationalist movements to drive a wedge between the colonial powers by ‘discrediting’ the French and praising the British.21 This proved essential as Cameroonian movements sought to instrumentalise diverging colonial policies. The year the Southern Cameroons was given ‘quasi-federal status’22 and Endeley elected Leader of Government Business, following the Nigerian constitutional conferences of 1953 and 1954, the appointment of Roland Pré as French Commissioner opened a period of intense violence in the French Cameroons.23 UPC leaders and nationalist demonstrations were repressed in May 1955 and December 1956 and the movement was

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outlawed, forcing leaders into the maquis or exile abroad. British Prime Minister Anthony Eden was contacted by the UPC in August 195524 and the British delegation to the UN also received correspondence from the Association of Cameroonian Students in France in January 1957, in the hope that Britain would support the case for reunification at the UN.25 Both letters appealed to British political liberalism and love of freedom while condemning French policies. To some extent, British leaders and officials were concerned about the situation in the French Cameroons, particularly as the Southern Cameroons was the UPC’s first port of call. However, it only offered temporary refuge. Firstly, John Foncha’s newly-formed KNDP did support reunification, which the KNC had abandoned, but opposed any resort to violence – only the small OK Party could provide the UPC with very limited support.26 Secondly, the British authorities outlawed the UPC in 1957 for fear of growing insurrection and remained convinced that reunification was a daunting prospect. At the Nigerian constitutional conference of 1957, the Colonial Secretary emphasised that the prolongation of the British mandate would be among the options offered to Cameroonians27 but union with Nigeria remained the preferred option.28 At the regional level, British and French policies continued to diverge widely. On 11 May 1956, the Colonial Secretary had announced that the Gold Coast would become independent on 6 March 1957, accelerating the pace of constitutional conferences in the rest of West Africa.29 As historians have emphasised, Macmillan’s so-called ‘Wind of Change’ speech in February 1960 merely confirmed previous plans for decolonisation, after the Conservative victory in the 1959 general election had given the Government the confidence to press ahead with plans first evolved in 1956. Within the French Empire, the French Union was reformed through the Loi-Cadre, and in Cameroon itself, André-Marie Mbida became the first Cameroonian Prime Minister following elections. However, as T. Chafer has demonstrated, the reforms of 1956 were ‘a belated and reluctant recognition by the French government of the increasing lack of acceptance of empire’, ‘a question of modernising the imperial link so as to make it more sustainable for France and more acceptable to Africans’, and essentially, a way of ensuring a French presence beyond independence. In reality, through the Loi-Cadre, power was moved from the federal to the territorial level and to Paris, dreams of unity were ended, a greater financial burden was placed on Africa itself, and France retained control of all strategic matters.30 As nationalist movements and calls for reunification gathered momentum in the Southern and French Cameroons, the two territories were simultaneously pulled further apart by economic and financial evolutions in the

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French and British empires. Within the British Empire and Commonwealth, the system of imperial preference as established at the Ottawa Imperial Economic Conference in 1932 prevailed. Reciprocal agreements were signed which favoured intra-imperial links, while customs tariffs against foreign countries were raised. Financial relations between Britain and its African territories were organised around three main principles: ‘the automatic exchange of local currencies with the pound sterling on demand; the full backing of the local currencies with the pound; and the compulsory investment of sterling funds in Britain’.31 Nigeria benefited from imperial preference and section 2(3)(d) of the Import and Duties Act of 1958 confirmed that ‘countries administered by Her Majesty’s Government under the Trusteeship system of the United Nations shall be part of the Commonwealth Preference area’.32 Conversely, the French Cameroons belonged to the franc zone and all currency matters were overseen by the Institut d’émission of French Equatorial Africa and Cameroun – which became the BCEAC in April 1959.33 More importantly, the French Cameroons became an associate member of the Common Market, after the Treaty of Rome34 was signed in 1957 by France, West Germany, Italy and Benelux, while Britain itself remained outside. Under Part IV of the Treaty of Rome, a number of territories in Africa and the Caribbean were given special status in trade outside the EEC. France wanted the Common Market but equally wanted to pursue its ambitions for a symbiotic Eurafrican relationship and a reinforced Franco-African union. During the negotiations in 1956, Gaston Defferre and Christian Pineau, respectively Ministers for Overseas France and Foreign Affairs, had made clear that unless special preference was granted to its overseas territories, France would pull out, and the principle was eventually accepted at the Venice Conference of May 1956.35 Part IV intended to support development in the associated territories through an investment fund, the EDF, to be reviewed after five years. It was to be distinct from bilateral aid, and as I.W. Zartman has observed, it did begin ‘in a small way to dilute bilateral colonies ties through multilateralization’,36 while a number of councils, committees and courts were created to deal with association matters. Although no competition with European agricultural produce would be allowed and association was in fact not ‘an act of decolonisation [but] a means of protecting colonial markets and assuring supplies of primary products for the Six’,37 the British were very much aware of the dangerous divisions brought about by the Treaty of Association: the Six, over a period of twelve to fifteen years, [would] eliminate their customs tariffs against goods coming from the associated territories,

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while their common tariff [was] being progressively applied during the same period to similar goods from elsewhere, thus creating new preferences in those countries of the Six which [had] not hitherto had a preferential system.38 Franco-African ties would thereby be maintained but divisions in Africa and the Caribbean between British and French territories would be magnified, as British territories would see the German, Italian and Dutch markets progressively restricted. At a time when ‘Nigeria and Sierra Leone sent about 33 per cent, and 40 per cent, respectively of their total exports of cocoa in 1957 to the Six’, this was an extremely worrying prospect.39 The evolution of French attitudes to reunification can be traced back to the consequences of the decision to outlaw the UPC. Achille Mbembe has demonstrated that the key notions of UPC discourse, ‘independence, unification and non-integration in the French Union’, became ‘the hegemonic statement on which all other political actors and projects would take position’. 40 In June 1958, the French commissioner confirmed to the Colonial Office that although reunification was not the wish of the French authorities, it had gained vast support in the French Cameroons and no politician was prepared to oppose it.41 In Ahidjo, who had become head of government in Yaoundé in February 1958, the French had a trusted ally but he was an ally who knew very well that his popularity in the territory would depend on his support for unification. Although outlawed, the UPC was in fact the central pillar of independence and nation-building projects. Its pro-reunification discourse was appropriated while the restoration of order against its activities was presented as the means of making national unity across the Mungo – their original objective – a reality. French officials interpreted Ahidjo’s position as a rational rather than a sentimental choice, and Couve de Murville told his British counterpart in November 1959 that ‘Ahidjo was being pulled in two directions: on the one hand annexation would create many formidable political and economic problems; on the other, there was the natural tendency to want to expand’. 42 As independence was being negotiated, reunification held two daunting prospects for the French Cameroons: ‘the integration of 400,000 Bamileke’, who as well as being potentially UPC sympathisers would upset the territory’s delicate balance between the Muslim North and the Christian and animist South; and ‘the costly necessity of promoting a more backward country to its level’. 43 But no risk was greater than leaving the popular reunification platform to the UPC. By mid 1958, the French remained nonetheless uncomfortable with the practical and security consequences of reunification. At a meeting at the

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Colonial Office in June 1958, the French commissioner in Cameroon learnt that with Nigerian independence planned for November 1960 at the latest, the British were looking to end their Trusteeship over the Cameroons and would ask the UN visiting mission to support plebiscites for early 1960.44 Convinced that the prospect of plebiscites would fuel demands for reunification, French officials were alarmed by British intentions and attempted to persuade them to change their minds. French records of the meeting remain somewhat vague but there is no doubt that it was a heated debate. Eventually, the British reassured the French that they would not press for a date to be set – but would indeed ask the visiting mission to accept the plebiscites in principle, and the choice between union with Nigeria or independence.45 Overall, maintaining good relations with Britain remained the priority in the instructions given to the French delegation at the UN. In a letter to the Quai d’Orsay in September, the Minister for Overseas France argued that France had to support Britain in delaying decisions on reunification until 1960 and could not be seen to side with ‘the anti-colonial powers of the Eastern bloc’.46 The pace of events was altered through decisions made in Cameroon’s legislative assembly: on 24 October 1958, the elected body asked for full independence after 1 January 1960, envisaged good relations with France and claimed support for reunification. During the UN debates in November, France supported independence for the territory on 1 January 1960, which Resolution 1282 (XIII) approved on 5 December 1958. According to Robert Foulon from the US diplomatic mission in Yaoundé, both the British and the French were content for Ahidjo to become President at independence and for elections to be organised after the event. This, Foulon himself later argued, may not have been ‘a very democratic decision perhaps, but probably a very wise one’. 47 The fact that nothing quite as definite was secured on the British side – the objectives of Article 76b of the UN Charter would be achieved in the course of 1960 – changed the balance of power between the French and British spheres in the Cameroons: Britain might have planned independence earlier but concrete independence would come first to the French trust territory. Cameroon’s legislative assembly’s request for independence came barely a month after the joint birth of the Fifth Republic and the French Community. Through a referendum, French territories were given the option of forming one single institution48 presided over by ‘an Executive Council, composed of the Prime Ministers of France and the Republics and the French Ministers responsible for the reserved subjects, together with a Senate, composed of members chosen from the legislatures of France and the Member States’ 49: local autonomy would be given to each territory but defence, foreign affairs, energy, international economy and currency would remain in the hands of the colonial metropolis.50 Given its special status as a Trust territory, Cameroon

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did not take part in the referendum but all overseas departments and territories, all French colonies in West Africa and Madagascar voted to join the French Community. Only Sekou Touré’s Guinea, publicly applauded by Ghana, cast a vigorous ‘non’ and became independent as all French presence, and most importantly French aid, were withdrawn. The British Ambassador in Paris was rather surprised to learn from official talks and private conversations with the French in February 1959 that reunification still seemed a rather daunting prospect to them. Following Guinea’s defection, the British had expected that the possibility of an ex-British territory joining an ex-French territory would be seen as a sweet victory – or at least as a useful form of compensation to present to some parts of the French electorate.51 The British themselves remained opposed to the idea of reunification and the Foreign Office told British representatives in no uncertain terms that ‘unification with French Cameroons should not (repeat not) be an issue in any form’.52 But the primary reason why full support for reunification was only a matter of time, as the Ambassador foresaw, was that the French wanted ‘to ensure that the French Cameroons accede to independence on friendly terms with France’.53 France hoped that Article 88 of the Constitution of the new Fifth Republic, providing for association beyond independence, might yet prove an attractive option for Cameroun.54 Less than four months before independence, French officials were planning to entrust Franco-Camerounian relations to the African department of the Quai d’Orsay but remained hopeful that it might still become an associated state and deal essentially with the Community Secretariat.55

No separate independence for the Southern Cameroons: British doubts, Commonwealth indifference, French reluctance The election of John Ngu Foncha as the Southern Cameroons Premier in January 1959 gave reunification renewed momentum, particularly at the UN. In Foncha’s mind however, reunification remained a distant option and French and British officials meeting in early February 1959 before the UN session confronted the distinct wishes of their respective territories. The Colonial Secretary gave ‘due weight’56 to the reservations of Foncha, who now favoured ‘secession from Nigeria and interval for negotiations with French Cameroons’, not immediate unification.57 Both the British and the French noted that it had been a general election, not a referendum on the territory’s future, and local issues had weighed far more heavily in the political balance.58 However, the French pointed out that Foncha’s victory was considered across the border as a vote for reunification:59 excluding reunification from the

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plebiscite alternatives ‘would be strongly resented in the French Cameroons and would make great difficulties for the French position there’.60 The French were extremely clear on two points: they ‘did not favour continued UK trusteeship as specific alternative in plebiscite’ and nothing should come in the way of Cameroun’s independence on 1 January.61 The British agreed fully with the latter point and the consensus by the end of the meeting seems to have been to press Foncha, ‘if he wanted anything other than straight choice between Nigeria and French Cameroons [to] make a firm statement’62 at the UN. Most importantly, despite the distinct timetables they had to contend with, the two parties agreed to keep each other informed. The British noted with satisfaction that French officials ‘were clearly anxious to cooperate and make things as easy as possible for’ London.63 On 17 February, Foncha told Endeley and the British that if no satisfactory terms of union could be found, ‘new terms might be agreed with Nigeria or, alternatively, the Southern Cameroons might remain a small independent territory within the Commonwealth’.64 Just as they opposed reunification, the Nigerian leaders contested any form of separate independence for the Southern Cameroons and were anxious for the fate of the British Cameroons to be decided before their own independence. They therefore protested against Foncha’s demands for full independence within the Commonwealth,65 adding further pressure by threatening to turn their back on the territory.66 The position of Southern Cameroonian politicians was weakened by divisions over what the plebiscite questions should be, as Endeley’s transformed party, the CPNC, had always been clearly in favour of union with Nigeria. Tensions played on regional differences between the less developed Grasslands of the North West and the Bakweri-dominated South West, which had benefited from greater economic growth and better infrastructure during the mandate.67 Cooperation was also made more difficult by the conflicting personalities of Foncha, described by Frank Stark as ‘a good “grass roots” politician who travelled to the villages by bicycle and on foot’, a ‘primary school teacher with a secondary school education, [who] placed more emphasis on personal contact’, and Endeley, ‘his more intellectual rival [who] was aware of his coastal sophistication’.68 The report of the UN visiting mission to the Cameroons in February/March 1959 underlined indecision in the Southern Cameroons, while it had observed a clear wish in the French Cameroons for independence and in the Northern Cameroons for union with Nigeria.69 Resolution 1350 (XIII) of 13 March clearly requested Southern Cameroonian leaders to agree on the terms of the plebiscite before the fourteenth session. At the Colonial Office, Christopher Eastwood, the Assistant Undersecretary of State, expressed the UN’s ‘alarm at the obvious lack of agreement between the parties on the second question’,70 and added: ‘It would be a tragedy if

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through [the Southern Cameroons’ leaders’] failure to agree among themselves or state forthrightly what their wishes and demands are, the United Nations were to force on the people of the Southern Cameroons a choice which only a tiny minority of the people want’.71 On the whole, the Nigerian option was always secure and British correspondence demonstrates a clear desire to preserve good relations with the Nigerian leaders, both before and after independence. The September brief warned that ‘the disentanglement of the territory from Nigeria might lead to friction with that country as it becomes independent’.72 Extreme caution was therefore essential. In January 1960, the Colonial Office made clear that its ‘major objective [was] that both countries should vote for union with Nigeria’,73 while the British Ambassador in Yaoundé stated just over a year later that ‘the Nigerians [took] it as a matter of course that the UK should be in favour of the territory voting for Nigeria and therefore the Commonwealth’.74 British support for the Nigerian option at the time stemmed from a mixture of pride in British traditions and awe at the practical difficulties of reunification, a unique experiment in decolonisation.75 Colonial Office documents throughout 1959 underlined the ‘economic, legal, financial and linguistic links which forty years of British administration had drawn between Nigeria and the Cameroons’,76 and these profound differences were frequently mentioned in the House of Commons debates on the matter. French officials were also aware of Britain’s preference for the union of both their Cameroonian territories with Nigeria, which reinforced their conviction that Ahidjo was an indispensable man if French influence in the region was to persist. Political dynamics between Northern Nigeria, the British Northern Cameroons and the northern region of the French Cameroons partly explained France’s staunch support for Ahidjo’s leadership and the postponement of elections. Had Ahidjo lost the contest, France would have lost a close ally and the Muslim North of the Republic might have been inclined to look to their Muslim neighbours to the West, augmenting the risk of a break-up of the Republic of Cameroun and playing in favour of Nigerian aggrandisement.77 In fact, the British noted that both the Nigerians78 and a number of Southern Cameroonians79 saw reunification as joining ‘the French’ and that even some British officials had adopted the habit. British decision makers were therefore aware that their relations with their French partner in Europe or their forthcoming Nigerian partner in the Commonwealth would necessarily be compromised in some way. The dominant position in the Colonial Office and Foreign Office was that independence, whether definite or transitory, was not a viable option for the Southern Cameroons. Correspondence from the UK Mission to the UN in February 1959 shows that British officials only thought of the future

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of the Southern Cameroons in relation to its two neighbours.80 The notion that independence would give the Southern Cameroons added weight in negotiations with its neighbours seemed simply ludicrous. As a note from the Colonial Office stated in May 1959, it ‘would be a poor weak country’, ‘unable to stand alone and would have to accept whatever terms were offered them’.81 While they predicted immense practical difficulties, the British also knew that the Southern Cameroons represented only very limited interests for the Nigerian leaders82 – in many ways, it seemed more a matter of international prestige than political or economic national interest. British support for separate independence was extremely rare. In June 1959, MP John Tilney, the chairman of both the Conservative Council’s West Africa Group and the Economic and Development Sub-Committee of the Parliamentary Commonwealth Affairs Committee, wrote to the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, arguing that ‘any territory under United Kingdom Trusteeship’ should have the right to ‘choos[e] independence within the Commonwealth, and in the last resort to do so by unilateral action if need be’.83 Simultaneously, the West Africa branch of the Conservative Commonwealth Council ‘unanimously resolve[d] that Independence in the Commonwealth should be included’ in the plebiscite options.84 Only Endeley’s preference for integration with Nigeria stopped Tilney from advocating the option of separate independence more forcefully.85 Within the Colonial Office, only one letter, dated August 1959, presented a moderately optimistic perspective. It still acknowledged, however, that independence for such a small state ‘seem[ed] a nonsense’.86 In theory, nothing precluded the Southern Cameroons from seeking independence and Commonwealth membership. Following the 1931 Statute of Westminster and the 1949 London Declaration, Commonwealth membership was open to any independent state that shared a past constitutional link with an existing Commonwealth member as a former part of the Empire and acknowledged the British Monarch as the symbol of the organisation. English was the working language among members, who shared strong political, economic, legal and cultural links, beyond a profound diversity across continents. Although national wealth and international influence varied, both declarations also entrenched the fundamental equality of all members and even more disparity was expected as decolonisation proceeded and membership grew. Yet documents sought to guarantee a flexible association and as Winston Churchill had claimed, the Commonwealth ‘found its “strength not in any formal bond but in the hidden springs from which human actions flow”’.87 Until 1967, when the recently founded Commonwealth Secretariat took over, Britain was responsible for seeking the agreement of fellow members when territories approaching independence had requested membership

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and the final decision depended on the consensual approval of the existing members. At the turn of the 1960s however, Commonwealth membership for small states was the object of fierce debate within the organisation, as Britain’s planned decolonisation in the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific promised to give birth to a sizeable number of small countries whose economic viability seemed very doubtful. This can be interpreted as a strong factor against the possibility of Southern Cameroonian membership being fully explored. Eventually, the Brooke Committee on Commonwealth membership concluded that membership ‘should be granted to all territories, irrespective of their size, which attained independence’88 and suggestions of a two-tier organisation, with smaller members gaining the ‘inferior status of “Associate Membership”’ were entirely dismissed.89 As Arnold Smith, the first Commonwealth Secretary General, reported in his memoirs, the decision was based on the opinion that ‘the coming of more members would bring the larger countries the advantage of meeting a greater cross-section of opinion, while for the new countries, the association would offer a window on the wider world and links with some useful friends’.90 Yet the conclusions of the Brooke Committee were only approved at the Prime Ministers’ Meeting of March 1961 – as South Africa left the Commonwealth in reaction to the other members’ opposition to apartheid.91 Not only were Commonwealth Prime Ministers intensely preoccupied with tensions among existing members, but the Cameroons agenda had required decisions to be taken before a general agreement on membership was found. In reality, the issue never seems to have been raised in Commonwealth discussions and those Commonwealth members who showed an interest in the Cameroons do not seem to have lobbied for membership. Private talks were held in February 1959 at the UN,92 and Commonwealth members met the two main Southern Cameroonian leaders, Foncha and Endeley, on at least two occasions, in an atmosphere of ‘frankness and freedom’.93 South Africa is never mentioned and Ghana only attended the first meeting, but Canada, New Zealand, Pakistan, Ceylon94 and most particularly, India95 and Malaya,96 were thanked by the UK mission in New York for their support at the UN. In the case of India however, it was essentially to thank them for accepting that the plebiscites in the Northern and Southern Cameroons should be held on different dates – facilitating Britain’s administrative tasks97 – and there is no evidence that potential Commonwealth membership for the Southern Cameroons was in fact discussed. Documents related to the Gambia shed some light, at least indirectly, on the Cameroonian case. In March 1959, the Colonial Office believed the Gambia’s political and economic prospects to be very dire and union with Senegal to be an interesting option.98 One official

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concluded: ‘ties of kinship, plus . . . economic advantages . . . will in the course of time outweigh the advantages of connection’ with Britain.99 The British government actively encouraged Senagalese–Gambian talks in 1962100 and while welcoming Gambia’s forthcoming Commonwealth membership in November 1964, Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson hoped that ‘neither such membership nor any other step taken in connection with independence of Gambia would delay or inhibit advance towards union with Senegal’.101 The prospect of separate independence for the Southern Cameroons therefore ran counter to contemporary trends towards federation in Africa, and it is important to note that French embassies and consulates kept official in Paris well aware that federation was actively sought across the spectrum of international politics. As the champion of pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was one of the bitterest opponents of the admission of small states – and of Cyprus as a full member of the Commonwealth in particular – for fear that it would in effect encourage the balkanisation of Africa. No country with fewer than two million inhabitants, Nkrumah argued, should be allowed into the Commonwealth.102 His concerns were shared by Canadian officials,103 but particularly by British officials. By July 1959 the memorandum, Africa: the next ten years, favoured ‘a more limited number of new members in the Commonwealth’ and hoped for the success of federations across Africa – the British African Territories, the Central African Federation and Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika.104 The French Ambassador in London told Couve de Murville in September 1961 – only a few days before Cameroonian reunification – that British policy in Africa rested on three major objectives: avoiding another Congo or Angola; maintaining a strong British influence through shared traditions in the Commonwealth; and, most importantly here, ‘maintaining or reconstituting ensembles . . . and if possible, granting independence . . . within a federal framework to avoid the risk of fragmentation’.105 Interestingly, the Africa memo raised potential difficulties regarding the Gambia and Somaliland, yet the Cameroons were never mentioned. Nor would they be mentioned when Nigerian membership of the Commonwealth was accepted by all existing members in September 1960.106 Central in Franco-British discussions, the Cameroons remained marginal in Commonwealth consultations. British and Commonwealth concerns also rested on the economic viability of ‘small’ and ‘to some extent immature and hypersensitive’107 members, as the Africa memo described them. Pakistan’s Ayub Khan had similarly hinted that size did not matter but economic viability certainly did.108 Constitutional talks in Sierra Leone – ‘a rather doubtful starter in the Commonwealth Membership stakes’,109 as one official put it – had brought these issues to

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the fore and the Colonial Secretary warned leaders in April 1960 that ‘independence mean[t] independence financially as well as constitutionally’.110 At a time when the British government feared Soviet penetration of the African continent, the emergence of ‘a patchwork of independent States, politically at odds and economically weak’ was a daunting prospect.111 Back in January 1955, Endeley had portrayed the Commonwealth as a guarantee of prosperity for the Southern Cameroons112 and welcomed prospective links with the organisation in February 1959 – but through union with Nigeria, not independently.113 Similarly, what mattered to Britain was not membership of the Commonwealth but economic viability – with Nigeria if possible, but with the French Cameroons otherwise. Keeping the Cameroons ‘forever in their “Commonwealth” pocket’,114 as UPC sympathisers had accused British officials of attempting to do, was not their priority. Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd informed Foncha early in 1959 that independence was not a financially and economically viable option115 and the position of the Colonial Office was made explicit in June: ‘independence within or without the Commonwealth’ was ‘meaningless’116 for a ‘territory [which was] very small, very much under-developed, especially so far as vital communications [were] concerned’, without ‘even a Public Service of its own’ and which ‘could not balance its budget at an acceptable level’.117 As LennoxBoyd wrote to Conservative MP John Tilney, ‘immediate independence does not seem a practical possibility since the territory cannot yet stand on its own feet’.118 The late Ruben Um Nyobé119 had warned that British administration of the Cameroons through Nigeria was ‘a subtle process as dangerous as the [French] policy of assimilation’,120 and indeed one of the major arguments in the UK brief for the UN meetings in September was that the Southern Cameroons ran on considerable Nigerian funding – about £500,000 a year.121 The Colonial Office was also conscious that separate independence would translate into a heavy burden for the British tax-payers,122 all the more so as the territory would not have the means to defend itself and would depend on the ex-trustee to do so.123 The central pillar of the Southern Cameroonian economy was the Camdev, managed by the British-funded CDC124 and which owned 200,000 acres of land. Camdev was in effect established on Southern plantations in the Southern Cameroons in December 1946: the Custodian of Enemy Property Act allowed for German lands in the British Cameroons125 to be seized and the Ex-Enemy Lands (Cameroon) Ordinance gave the Nigerian Governor the right to acquire the lands for the Southern Cameroons and appoint the chairman and members of the Corporation. Camdev was involved in a number of key activities, including ‘cultivating crops and developing and managing the estates[,] constructing and maintaining roads, railways, waterways, quays

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and wharves[,] conducting the export and import trade[,] constructing and/or acquiring buildings’.126 Rubber, palm and almond oil production constantly increased between 1947 and 1965127 on 58,000 acres of cultivated land and represented 40 per cent of total exports. The British Government commissioned Kenneth Berrill, a Cambridge academic, to report on the future of the economy in the region.128 His findings welcomed the diversification of production away from bananas, favouring rubber and palm products, as well as the ongoing extension of cultivated areas. However, lack of funds in Camdev had led the CDC to invest £3 million in 1959, in exchange for managing the corporation and receiving part of the profits.129 According to the agreement, which covered a ten-year period, [t]he Nigerian Government (who put money in originally) and the Southern Cameroons Government [would] each own stock bearing a fixed-interest return (the Southern Cameroons about three-sevenths and Nigeria four-seventh) and the risk capital [would] be held as to 50 per cent by the Colonial Development Corporation, 45 per cent by the Southern Cameroons Government and 5 per cent by Nigeria.130 The final report was therefore bleak: new plantations gave a low yield, they were far more costly, markets remained uncertain and the viability prospects of the small territory poor.131 Malcolm Milne, the Deputy Commissioner in the Southern Cameroons at the time of independence, has argued that the British ultimately did ‘the Cameroonians a wrong [and] should have struggled harder to continue [their] trusteeship for several years longer’.132 There were indeed still calls in the Commons in July 1959 to postpone a final decision until better information was available to the Cameroonian voters.133 However, pressure for decolonisation at the UN itself played against prolonging the British mandate in the Cameroons, and the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office were acutely aware of the importance of ‘tactics in the UN’,134 as the Cameroons were seen to be ready for self-determination.135 Continued trusteeship would be ‘evidence that the U.K was reluctant to abandon her “colonial” possessions’,136 postponing the plebiscites ‘would be met with hostility’,137 and as Governor Grey in Lagos warned the Colonial Office, expose the British ‘to all the anti-Colonial voices already ready to accuse [them] of double-dealing and to argue that [their] sole interest [was] to maintain the Colonial yoke for as long as possible’.138 The atmosphere at the UN also played against separate independence. In March 1959, a Colonial Office note listed 13 territories which could possibly qualify ‘at some stage in their evolution for being “Commonwealth States” on the Singapore

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model’139 but it was argued in the summer that the UN would oppose this being applied to a trust territory. New Zealand’s moves to grant independence to Western Samoa were seen as an additional factor which would heighten the UN’s growing fears of a general balkanisation.140 Given that the UN mission had found no consensus among Southern Cameroonians, the Colonial Office was further convinced that independence within the Commonwealth had no support whatsoever in New York.141 Members of the West Africa branch of the Conservative Commonwealth Council similarly reported a general determination at the UN, including in the Fourth Committee, to prevent the Southern Cameroons from obtaining independence within the Commonwealth.142 In September, the British delegation was made aware that in fact reunification, which promised to erase the artificiality of colonial borders, prevailed as the most appealing option.143 Simultaneously, France put its weight behind reunification – to the extent that the British, albeit incorrectly, suspected Paris and Yaoundé of financing Foncha’s campaign in early 1959.144 Initially, Foncha’s reluctance to countenance immediate reunification had been rather welcomed by the French.145 France was still being fully reconciled to the prospect of reunification, and concern over the lower level of economic development in the British Cameroons played no small part in its position. The Colonial Office was fully aware that the Southern Cameroons lagged behind the French Cameroons146 and Ahidjo himself was worried about the economic and financial consequences of reunification.147 At the Franco-British meetings of March and April 1959, officials on both sides remained equally cautious and cooperative. The British were ‘anxious not to embarrass the French in their plans for their own Cameroons’148 and expressed their unwillingness to ‘raise . . . difficulties’149 if reunification was the express wish of the Southern Cameroonians. Although he remained vague over the questions that would ultimately be put to the voters, Lennox-Boyd, on Prime Minister Macmillan’s instructions, drew a clear difference between the Northern Cameroons, whose future within Nigeria seemed virtually certain, and the Southern Cameroons, now led by the pro-reunification KNDP.150 For his part, Prime Minister Debré underlined France’s desire to cooperate over the British Cameroons151 and Couve de Murville stated that ‘the French Government certainly had no wish that the Southern British Cameroons should join the French Cameroons’,152 thereby confirming the impressions of the British Ambassador in Paris. However, political and security concerns prevailed and the daunting prospect of reunification was ultimately considered by France to be the least damaging alternative, because it would save Ahidjo from immense political damage. The British were consequently advised that ‘the French Government would have no option but to fight a resolution project’ which did not include

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reunification.153 Possible Soviet penetration in Africa was a constant concern for French and British officials in the late 1950s and all Anglo-French talks in 1959 focused on assessing potential Communist methods and discussing coordinated actions to counter the risk. Following a memorandum sent by de Gaulle to Eisenhower and Macmillan in September 1958, the French government strove to gain influence in any Western strategy that the British and the USA might put forward154 and argued for a ‘common global strategy’, which would ‘end all competition and bidding among the Western powers’155 and prevent the Soviets from using divisions to subvert students, infiltrate trade unions and stir up racial agitation. During the talks of April 1959, Prime Minister Debré was anxious to stress that beyond differences and rivalries, France and Britain should above all be partners in Africa. ‘The essential idea’,156 he told the British, was ‘that Britain and France [had] fundamental interests in common in Africa’,157 including transferring powers to friendly leaders and maintaining economic influence on the continent. Consequently, their governments, administrations and representatives in international organisations ‘should co-ordinate their policies as closely as possible’: ‘A regular, co-ordinated scheme was better than a series of isolated actions’.158 By June, Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd was sending positive reports to London and Macmillan wrote to de Gaulle to emphasise that Franco-British coordination in Geneva would ‘show the Russians that it is not only under their system that common policies can be devised’.159 Advertising a common front was essential. The late 1950s corresponded to better Franco-British relations on colonial matters in West Africa, flowing from the creation of the French Community. A note for Macmillan described the Community as ‘a bold experiment which makes for stability in Africa’160 and British officials were briefed to be very positive about it during the April 1959 talks. British correspondence demonstrates that the Community was in effect seen as an inferior type of Commonwealth, which could only exist temporarily as ‘most of the African States in the Community [would] want complete independence’,161 and which might only really ‘be suitable for areas which were not viable and too small to aspire to full independence’162 – Whitehall fully agreed with de Gaulle that the Community and the Commonwealth were two very different organisations.163 Against the French-dominated, centralised Community, the Commonwealth had ‘nothing in the way of a common structure or organs’, no ‘central control of foreign policy’, ‘neither treaties, alliances nor formal obligations’, ‘no centralised economic policy and no central financial control’, with London ‘operat[ing] no exchange control over current or capital transactions by the rest of the sterling area with the outside world’.164 One Commonwealth Relations Office member compared ‘the central organs of the Community [to] a meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers in permanent

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sessions with powers representing the Commonwealth as a whole’,165 which throws into relief the complete contrast between the two organisations. Community arrangements were certainly very imperfect in British eyes but they held one advantage: they were ‘much better than nothing, and [could] help to keep African countries away from Communism’.166 Beyond institutional differences, the British emphasised common objectives. The British ambassador in Paris in July 1960 admitted that Britain too wanted to ‘retain a degree of economic, military and cultural influence’, as well as financial ties and opportunities for military bases in West Africa, and Commonwealth relations in particular were one possible avenue to do so.167 All meetings in 1959 were in fact used to explain the nature and objectives of the Commonwealth to the French, as there was a consensus among British officials that suspicions of the Commonwealth were ‘at the root of many of [their] differences with France in regard to the emergent territories in Africa’.168 Many ‘Frenchmen and French Africans’, the Colonial Office noted, ‘affect[ed] to believe that Ghana engineered the defection of Guinea from the Community’, and more importantly for the Cameroons, ‘that Nigeria by its very size and power [would] attract its neighbour states as it emerge[d] into full independence’.169 At a time when apartheid in South Africa, racial segregation in the Central African Federation and uprisings in Kenya shook the Commonwealth and the remaining British Empire, British officials devoted much effort to convincing their partners that Britain was both unable and unwilling to dictate the policies of other Commonwealth members. Macmillan told the Nigerian leaders that the British ‘founded the Club but [did] not manage it’170 and the Foreign Office assured the French that ‘while Her Majesty’s Government could sometimes influence [it], they could not control the internal or external policies of the independent member Governments’.171 Any attempt to do so ‘would not only be entirely fruitless but would lead irrevocably to the dissolution of the Commonwealth’.172 Yet rivalry might have been overstated on both sides and although the Horn, North Africa and Guinea were seen as difficult cases in February 1959,173 discussions over the Cameroons seem to have been fairly open. Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd thus recounts discussing it with his French counterpart, Couve de Murville, as they were flying to New York in May 1959: both men were aware of the potential for ‘friction’ which the subject entailed, but both men were equally determined to cooperate. Selwyn Lloyd’s assurances that it was a British interest that ‘the Community should be strong’ are backed by diplomatic files on the issue.174 Simultaneously, Couve de Murville’s warning that a plebiscite in favour of reunification might be exploited ‘as a victory for the French’175 was taken as evidence that the French did want to cooperate on the matter – he made it a priority in fact to work against ‘misunderstandings’ in the November talks.176

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Beyond differences, French and British officials were determined to maintain European influence in West Africa and common interests were voiced forcefully during the talks. Macmillan was advised that the Community was ‘a major contribution to African development in partnership with the West’177 and the severance of all Franco-Guinean relations following Guinea’s rejection of the French Community and independence in September 1958 was a concern for Britain.178 Franco-African ties ought to be encouraged in order to prevent Communist ‘bridgehead[s]’ in the region.179 A Colonial Office note from July 1959 was even clearer: the aims of the French and ourselves in Africa are the same. We both of us want to see Africa develop in peace and prosperity and in association with the West. We both of us accept that the days of unqualified white supremacy in Africa are over. We both of us oppose the spread of Soviet or United Arab Republic influence in the continent. This basic identity of view is more important than180 anything else. The French agreed, as Jean Sauvagnargues, the Director for African and Middle Eastern Affairs, told Sir Roger Stevens, the Deputy Undersecretary of State at the Foreign Office, in December 1960. The main division in Africa, he stated, was not between English speakers and French speakers, but between radical and moderate governments.181 In reality, discussions did not lead to global pan-African Franco-British programmes. This was partly because British officials were concerned that as the African continent was moving towards independence, Franco-British policies would be interpreted as an imperial or neo-colonial manoeuvre on the part of the European powers.182 It was also due to an implicit understanding that France and Britain would consult but essentially act within the parts of Africa that were or had been part of their Empire, as the French Ambassador to London confirmed in early 1960.183 As the future of the Southern Cameroons was being discussed, the French authorities repeatedly tried to persuade the British to do more against the UPC – in the series of Anglo-French talks in 1958,184 through the French Commissioner in Yaoundé and the French Ambassador in London,185 urging greater control over UPC militants.186 By mid 1959, the French authorities were blaming British inaction for allowing the UPC to organise networks187 and extend their influence.188 French minutes emphasised fears of a communist takeover189 and the growing insecurity in the territory to urge cooperation against the UPC nationalists in the course of 1959. British officials themselves were increasingly convinced that a firmer line was necessary as decolonisation gathered pace and the Western powers would ‘not be able to take for granted either the will or the ability of [African] Governments to maintain internal

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stability and to resist external aggression’.190 Ahidjo’s appeal to the French to convince Britain to propose a choice between Nigeria and Cameroun at the UN met with little success.191 The British delegation in New York was instructed in September 1959 to ‘prevent any move for a plebiscite with immediate unification with the French Cameroons as one choice’, which would in effect have thrown the territory into ‘the unknown’.192 Immediate reunification was therefore opposed but no real alternative to reunification remained. When debates opened at the end of the summer, the Fourth Committee heard contradictory statements by Southern Cameroonian politicians. Foncha maintained that preventing a period of independence ‘would be tantamount to a breach of the United Nations Charter and of [their] fundamental human rights’,193 and Endeley, that any delay would merely ‘prolong the pangs of uncertainty’.194 It seems that Nigeria was prepared to integrate the Southern Cameroons after 1 October 1960 even without a plebiscite, but the situation remained volatile and Endeley argued that a delay would in effect shut the doors to the Nigerian Federation. Options were further limited by the pace of events in Nigeria and the French Cameroons. As the UK permanent representative, Andrew Cohen, told the Fourth Committee, ‘next year two great African countries, the Federation of Nigeria and the Republic of the Cameroons, will attain their independence . . . The trust territory of the Cameroons lies between the [two]. Now its future has to be settled’.195 On 16 October 1959, UN Resolution 1352 (XIV) determined the timing and options of the plebiscites in the Southern Cameroons, noting the lack of agreement between parties but disregarding demands for more time: the vote would be held no later than March 1961 and offer a choice between Nigeria and Cameroun. The United Kingdom was to start the process of separating the Southern Cameroons from Nigeria no later than 1 October 1960. Save for Afghanistan and Iraq who abstained, all delegations voted in favour of the resolution. The British delegation’s vote, the Colonial Secretary stated in the Commons, was cast in the knowledge that none of the Cameroonian leaders wanted separate independence.196 Less than two months later, on 1 January 1960, the Republic of Cameroun was celebrating its own independence from French trusteeship and its international recognition as a sovereign nation.

Independence for the Republic of Cameroun: from French mandate to French ally Reports of the fighting in the Cameroun Republic at independence197 and the proclamation of a state of emergency on 8 May 1960 heightened fears about the consequences of reunification. The legality of the UPC was restored on 25 February 1960 but the decree set clear restrictions – a legal branch emerged but more radical leaders continued the fighting. Individual

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and collective liberties were restricted in an attempt to control population movements and four temporary military tribunals were established to support the permanent one in Yaoundé, with powers to rule on a wide-range of activities.198 Over the course of 1960, fears of Soviet activities increased and in the early months of the Republic of Cameroun, orientations in internal and external affairs were focused on a major governmental concern: the need to crush the remaining pockets of UPC rebels. Cameroun’s relations with Liberia and the UAR remained distant following their involvement with the UPC and Camerounian leaders were equally cool towards the Eastern bloc, despite Soviet representation at the independence.199 The establishment of a diplomatic mission from nationalist China, added to Cameroun’s repeated refusal to cast any favourable vote for Communist China at the UN, made their opposition to Beijing quite clear. In all cases, diplomatic antagonism stemmed from UPC connections rather than ideological tenets. Support for the UPC therefore explains Cameroun’s hostility to the other two sub-Saharan countries that had recently become independent. In May 1959, Ghana and Guinea had published a joint declaration demanding ‘a general and unconditional amnesty for all condemned politicians’, freedom of political association and ‘representative and democratic’ elections to be held before independence, as conditions for bringing the French mandate to an end.200 Absent from the independence celebrations of 1 January 1960, Ghana was perceived to be a threat to Cameroun’s integrity, as it recognised the new country but not its leader, and allowed the UPC to use press conferences in Accra to pursue its objectives. After the expulsion of UPC leader Felix Moumié from Egypt in 1959, Guinea and Ghana were identified as the main enemies of the Camerounian state,201 with whom no diplomatic relation was desirable.202 Every public platform was used to attack them: Foreign Minister Charles Okala did so at the African Heads of State Conference in Addis Abeba in 1960,203 while Ahidjo himself claimed on several occasions that Ghana was directly responsible for what he considered to be acts of terrorism on Camerounian soil.204 Only after Nkrumah, highlighting the significance of Cameroonian reunification in the context of African unity, officially recognised Ahidjo’s government on 18 February 1962, did relations improve. But progress remained slow and Cameroonian leaders highly cautious. There was no display of affection between the two Presidents when they met at the founding of the OAU in 1963.205 Both Foreign Minister S. Nko’o Etoungou206 and his deputy Bernard Fonlon207 stressed the need for hard evidence that Ghana no longer supported UPC activities. A few months later, the OCAM, equally angered by Nkrumah’s links with the Sanwi and Sawaba secessionist movements in the Ivory Coast and Niger,208 publicly condemned Ghana’s ‘subversive actions’ in February 1965.209

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In the early 1960s, British High Commissioners around Africa sent reports to the Commonwealth Relaions Office disapproving of Nkrumah’s ‘inept diplomacy’210 and criticising his interference in his neighbours’ affairs. While they criticised his interference in his neighbour’s affairs, they understood very clearly where this interference came from. One of the major motivations behind Nkrumah’s policies, as the British High Commissioner in Uganda pointed out in 1963, was to ‘break French centres of influence’.211 Suspicions that France was attempting to control independent African states was also something that Ahidjo was acutely aware of. He knew that Cameroun’s ministers needed to demonstrate to foreign and national opponents, to the people as a whole and to foreign diplomats in Yaoundé that they were no ‘French puppets’.212 But in practice, Ghana’s policies only served to draw France and Cameroun closer together, in a concerted effort to buttress Ahidjo’s Camerounian state in the midst of a civil war.213 Cameroun’s symbiotic links with France have received considerable attention from generations of scholars.214 What needs to be emphasised further is the impact they had on the parallel discussions for a potential reunification and on the actual negotiations: three independent states were brought into close contact, but France was the only country to be considered by each of the other two as a crucial partner. The signature by French and Camerounian leaders of temporary cooperation agreements in December 1959 ensured that France would remain the most influential presence in Cameroun after independence. French officials from Foreign Affairs, Finance, Trade and Defence had been sent to Yaoundé in October to negotiate a partnership215 which would take into account Ahidjo’s demand for ‘the political necessity of a clear break’216 after independence while keeping changes to a minimum. On the military front, two French battalions were devoted to helping Cameroun ‘defend itself, maintain the integrity of Cameroun’s territory and preserve its population and material resources from the dangers of external aggression’,217 which included supporting Ahidjo crush the UPC rebellion at home and abroad. A mixed Franco-Camerounian military committee was set up and France assisted the creation of the Camerounian gendarmerie. Just as some scholars have referred to a FrancoAfrican State,218 one might be tempted to consider this period as the reign of a Franco-Camerounian State, born of the way independence was granted and taken. With postponed elections scheduled for the spring of 1960, the German press characterised Ahidjo’s position in unambiguous terms: no full independence with French troops, yet no survival without them.219 In a letter dated 7 January 1960, Couve de Murville, warning that there should be no ‘alibi for inaction when action is useful’, informed the French Ambassador in Yaoundé that a landslide victory by Ahidjo in the forthcoming election was a French national interest: all French personnel in Cameroun, including the

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military, needed to be made aware of this and full support should be provided to the Head of State, without compromising his independence.220 In reality, French support fell short of the full expectations of the Camerounian military forces. The French authorities seem to have been ill at ease with the appeal for a ‘psychological shock’, ‘a military operation wide enough in scope to strike the imagination of the population’.221 Concern for the safety of French citizens and France’s reputation in Camerounian and international circles pleaded for ‘a progressive pacification’ but were matched by fears of the consequences if Ahidjo was overthrown. The French ambassador was at pains to underline that the brutal repression among civilian populations after 10 February 1960 was carried out by Camerounians only. But French assistance, at least strategic and technical, was involved,222 with free weapons and ammunitions brought into the country.223 In fact, the Colonial Office and Foreign Office emphasised France’s involvement in the security of Cameroun and saw the struggle against the UPC as a Franco-Camerounian partnership, whose success essentially depended on the participation of the French military.224 British resolve against the UPC had strengthened during 1959,225 at a time when over 80,000 Bamileke refugees were thought to have crossed the border226 and as two deadlines loomed: the forthcoming independence of Nigeria in October 1960 and the inclusion of reunification as an option for the British Cameroons, following Resolution 1352 (XIV) of 16 October 1959. During the November talks, the British delegation underlined the ‘[v]igorous measures . . . being taken [against] French Cameroonian trouble-makers’227 and a security agreement was in fact signed with the newly independent Cameroun on 29 January 1960.228 Yet it contrasted with the wide-ranging Franco-Camerounian agreements of 13 November 1960, which remained in force until February 1974, and echoed broadly similar agreements between France and the Community states. The agreement on technical military assistance to the Camerounian armed forces and the convention on the role and status of the French military mission in Cameroun were crucial in these matters. Like Gabon, Cameroun gave France essential access to the sea for its military bases in Ndjamena, Bouar and Bangui, whilst France provided precious support to Cameroun’s security apparatus, including the intelligence services. The Republic of Cameroun was therefore part of the network of liaison and intelligence posts (postes de liaison et de renseignement, PLR) which the head of French intelligence, Maurice Robert, helped set up at independence – and among African presidents, Ahidjo was one of the first to adhere to the idea, sending regular interns to the main training centre in Dakar.229 Influence in intelligence matters, Robert acknowledged, was all the more crucial as among France’s European partners, the British seemed little interested: trade, development and diplomacy would prevail over intense

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intelligence gathering.230 Links between France and Cameroun were also supported by an agreement on judicial cooperation, which strengthened possibilities for concerted actions against undesirable individuals.231 As French officials underlined, the first ten years of Franco-Cameroonian relations revolved around the ‘priority’ given to fighting the UPC, a common objective which created ‘strong and trusting relations’.232 In 1963, more than a thousand French soldiers remained in Cameroon, with two French colonels heading the Cameroonian army and gendarmerie, while if events so required the military mission could take command of the Cameroonian and French armed forces and bring in reinforcements from France.233 Members of the Cameroonian armed forces were sent to the French military academies for training on a regular basis. By early 1973, the Combined Military Academy, the Engineering battalion, the Air Force and the Navy were still headed by French officers.234 It was therefore hardly surprising that a Commonwealth official attributed Cameroon’s political stability to what he called the ‘French militia’,235 an integral part of Franco-African relations in the early 1970s. Cameroun was seen predominantly as France’s ally rather than as a new British partner. On the diplomatic front, the Franco-Camerounian partnership was extremely strong.236 Back in March 1959, both parties had stated that France and Cameroun would be closer than foreign partners.237 Regular consultations on foreign policy were to be held and France was to assist in training Camerounian diplomats. France would also represent the Camerounian State where it was yet to have its own mission, and in a letter dated 15 January 1960, Couve de Murville instructed French diplomats abroad to look after Camerounian interests.238 Representation would only be at Cameroun’s request, Camerounian diplomats would be welcomed within French missions and delegations to follow national interests239 – and would remain Cameroun’s official spokesmen.240 This was the case in the EEC, pending the transformation of the Treaty of Association.241 Beyond undeniable political objectives, economic constraints also explained Cameroun’s early reliance on France and the extensive use of multiple accreditation, based on Article 5 of the Vienna Convention. Yet by making the French Ambassador the Dean of the diplomatic corps and establishing its first Embassy in Paris, Yaoundé signalled France’s privileged position in its emerging international network.242 By the summer of 1960, Britain, the USA, the Federal Republic of Germany, Liberia and nationalist China had established diplomatic missions in Yaoundé, while Lebanon and the UAR were about to do so.243 Yet none could rival the size and influence of the French embassy – and the British embassy was on an even smaller scale than the German or American missions.244 In Paris, relations with Cameroon also fell under the remit of the SGAAM, as a note in May 1961 confirmed, placing the future reunified

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Cameroon firmly in the Francophone sphere of French diplomacy.245 British commercial interests also remained very low-key. John Holt and Patterson Zachonis were the only two British firms then operating in Cameroun and the Greek and Lebanese communities were the largest after the French. Ahidjo was very much aware that Britain would be a very small ‘source of public or private investment or financial aid’, compared to France.246 Cameroon only set up an Embassy in London in 1962, the result of plans that had accelerated once reunification had become a certainty.247 British officials encouraged diplomatic representation in view of the practical issues which reunification would raise, yet seemed content to deal with the Cameroonian Ambassador in Paris. They even suggested that the French mission might ‘look over their interests’,248 shortly before reunification took place. Britain’s diplomatic position can be seen as evidence that despite the historical connection with West Cameroon, the Cameroon Federation was already seen as part of a wider Francophone whole, removed from the core of British political, economic and diplomatic interests. Since his first calls for ‘a structured association’ between France and its overseas territories in 1958,249 Ahidjo had moved away from all suggestion that Cameroun should join any form of French Community. Yet his discourse on nation-building, from early declarations as the leader of the Camerounian government250 to his independence speech251 and first declarations on foreign affairs,252 was built on the parallel condemnation of the UPC as the destroyer of Cameroun and the commendation of France as a natural ally. Cameroun was bound to matter for Britain – even if there was no reunification, it would still be Nigeria’s neighbour – yet Britain seemed little interested in the new country. Britain did make a gift at the independence celebrations but not, it seems, out of any particular desire to cultivate Cameroonian goodwill. Rather, Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office correspondence suggests that British officials were essentially driven by their fear of damaging Britain’s reputation on the Trusteeship Council253 and among Commonwealth members.254 Foncha’s belief that a reunified Cameroon would put France and Britain on an equal footing was clearly dismissed by British officials as naive – if the KNDP did entertain such thoughts, then they had fallen prey to ‘the intense flattery from the more sophisticated and intellectually superior politicians in the French Cameroons’.255 Relations between Britain and Cameroun soured further as British officials continued to favour the Nigerian option. Misrepresentations and suspicions of the Commonwealth prevailed among Camerounian leaders themselves. In August 1960, the British Ambassador in Yaoundé warned his Foreign Secretary that ‘the Commonwealth tends, on balance, to work against’ Britain, ‘always bound to side with the

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Commonwealth’,256 in the eyes of Camerounians. Whether they looked at Nkrumah’s radical pan-Africanism and support to the UPC or at South Africa’s apartheid state, they suspected Britain of pulling the strings, concluded the Ambassador. Anti-British feelings were openly vented during the organisation and aftermath of the plebiscites. Camerounian leaders were in effect convinced that Britain was determined to prevent the British Cameroons from voting in favour of reunification. In the course of 1959, several Southern Cameroonians had openly accused the British of confusing voters, encouraging Nigerian residents to vote and even proceeding to early voter registration so that the votes of those who died before the elections could be manipulated.257 The British ambassador failed to convince Camerounian leaders that Britain ‘had no wish to influence the outcome’258 and did not automatically side with Nigeria and the Commonwealth. Ahidjo accused the authorities of plotting against Cameroonian reunification259 and shortly before Nigerian independence, publicly condemned assimilationist and annexationist policies in the British Cameroons in unusually strong terms, according to the French Ambassador.260 On 6 January 1961, Charles Okala attacked Britain for discriminating against Cameroun, by allowing the Nigerian Information Agency to participate in the campaign, using Nigerian vehicles and making sure that the great number of Nigerian traders and administrators still present in the Southern Cameroons would be on the voting register.261 British diplomats did note that ‘anti-French feeling’ was prevalent among the population, but it was essentially directed against ‘the arrogance of the petits blancs’ and above all, there was very little ‘resentment against French government policies or even French officials’.262 The British Ambassador found himself discussing foreign affairs with a ‘Monsieur Rousseau’, a French official standing in for Ahidjo who was unwell,263 and noted in August 1960 that beyond the French, Cameroun had ‘little official contact with the outside world’.264 Ahidjo’s government, he informed Selwyn Lloyd, felt comfortable siding with the French in international affairs, as the refusal to condemn the French nuclear test in the Sahara demonstrated, and Camerounian ministers felt relief that the planned negotiations between the Algerian Provisional Government and the French authorities had saved them from having to make a choice at Addis Abeba.265 Cameroun attended the UN General Assembly but relied on a French delegate outside, before a permanent Camerounian mission was established in New York. British diplomats and Nigerian leaders exchanged information for the establishment of a Nigerian Embassy in Cameroun after independence on 1 October 1960, which reinforced the perception that British and French African contacts lay in different spheres, true to colonial boundaries and to distinct traditions within these.

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Cameroun’s history as a French mandate, not a colony, was subsumed under the common characteristics of French rule across West and Central Africa. As the French Ambassador in Yaoundé considered that shared language and administrative traditions, strengthened by a strong French presence, would ensure that France remained Cameroun’s privileged partner,266 his British counterpart considered that France’s Roman conception of empire had led to the creation of ‘a small number of black Frenchmen rather than a large number of Cameroonians or Malians or Ivorians capable of running their own affairs’.267 And this was not an isolated view. Within a few weeks, the British Ambassador in Paris sent a similar letter to the Foreign Office, emphasising the gap in the administrative and cultural legacies of the exFrench and ex-British territories.268 ‘Though I may well be wrong’, he stated, ‘I cannot easily imagine that Dr. Nkrumah has ever read a line of Racine; and I am convinced that Mr. Houphouet-Boigny is totally ignorant of the very existence of Macaulay’. Behind these two examples lay a deeper conviction that France’s assimilationist policies and Britain’s earlier acceptance of self-government and political participation had created obstacles for post-colonial African cooperation. Such impressions were not limited to the British. Like Togo, Cameroun was included in the Community tour of one of the Canadian diplomats at the Paris Embassy, on the grounds of ‘its colonial history and its current interests’.269 Suspicions of assimilation were reflected in Britain’s post-colonial plans. During discussions for Sierra Leone’s independence in December 1959, the Commonwealth Relations Office warned that British representation of the ex-territories’ interests was ill-advised and should be as limited in time and in scope as possible.270 British retreat was to be more complete, and assistance more distant. The Colonial Office and Foreign Office believed in the superiority of the Commonwealth experiment over any Community plans, and welcomed the French decision – seen in many ways as a sign of pragmatism more akin to traditional British policy – to transform the Community into an association of independent states.271 To some extent, the fact that the Community experiment was a shortlived affair improved the framework for Franco-British cooperation. By December 1959, de Gaulle had announced that procedures for independence would be undertaken; by March 1960, executive meetings had been replaced by a committee for relations with Community states, itself replaced in March 1961 by the Council for African and Malagasy Affairs;272 and by November 1960, all French territories in sub-Saharan Africa had become independent and joined the UN. Yet the calls for independence had not questioned close relations with France, and under Article 88 of the Constitution, close cooperation accompanied independence. The fact that France had managed to grant independence to its West and Equatorial

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African territories whilst retaining a large degree of presence and influence there gave it added confidence – far more than British assurances that the Commonwealth was not a rival ever could. This rapid, albeit superficial, transformation had given France the lead in the decolonisation of West and Central Africa. The French Ambassador in London noted with satisfaction in March 1960 that ‘there no longer [was], at the governmental level, any Franco-British rivalry in Africa’.273 British officials might have thought that France had unrealistic expectations regarding its control of Western policy on the African continent,274 yet they acknowledged that it should retain some influence in its former sphere.275 Discussions over the future of the Cameroons therefore occurred at a time when beyond persistent differences, France and Britain exchanged information on the nature and form of their respective decolonisation processes and calls for cooperation were translated into mutually understood spheres of influence. Throughout 1959, an official at the Foreign Office encouraged the mutualisation of interests and called for an extension of French and British cultural and economic activities in West Africa as a whole, regardless of past colonial identity.276 In practice though, ‘not “get[ing] in each other’s light”’277 meant restricting diplomatic and commercial endeavours to the former colonial boundaries. The prevalent position of the Foreign Office by mid 1960 was to consider French influence in Africa, based on mutual consent, ‘as a United Kingdom interest’ and it was therefore crucial to ‘do nothing to discourage the French’ nor to ‘appear to be seeking to replace them’.278 In the year between Cameroun’s independence and the plebiscites, the Foreign Office was focused on achieving an acceptable balance in relations with newly independent African countries and with their European neighbour. In June 1960, the British Consul in Dakar voiced concerns that Britain’s position on Algeria and the Saharan nuclear tests was very damaging for her reputation in Africa. Supporting French policies in all African matters, thereby giving Africans the impression that Europe was ‘“ganging up” against them’ and ‘used [them] as makeweights in European quarrels’, was simply ‘a very short-sighted and unwise approach’.279 His advice was to be ‘as little involved as possible in these unfortunate controversies between France and the emerging African nations; but rather to remain on good terms with both’. At the African department of the Foreign Office, Basil E. Boothby concurred that there could be nothing more discrediting than appearing to ‘present a solid front on African affairs’280 with other colonial powers. There was no doubt that the objective of British diplomacy was ‘to preserve and advance the interests of the United Kingdom’, ideally without causing ‘undue offence’281 but never allowing the cultivation of some partners to compromise Britain’s global national interest. Yet in Francophone Africa, extreme caution prevailed in the guidelines given

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to British diplomats, as upsetting the French could be extremely damaging. ‘[W]hile Her Majesty’s Representatives in Africa should not go out of their way to defend unpopular French policies, they should not support, or seem to support, attacks on the French’,282 recommended Boothby. African states may well claim that the modalities of independence allowed France to cling on to key areas of power in West and Central Africa, but this was not to be voiced by Britain. While British correspondence displayed a clear sense of superiority, diplomats were simultaneously aware that there was little they could do to modify French policies.283 British diplomats posted in West Africa sent reports that both emphasised French suspicions of British presence there and sought to dispel them. Early in 1959, the Ambassador in Dakar had recommended setting up an information office on British and Commonwealth policies in Africa, to prove that, contrary to French interpretations, Britain did not seek a new empire in disguise.284 But the Foreign Office and the British Embassy in Paris were equally negative, raising fears that it would be seen as ‘perfidious British plans to lure the French territories into the Commonwealth’,285 ‘the spearhead of our fifth column’ by a number of Frenchmen that still acted like Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Monsieur Ballon’.286 In July 1960, the British Ambassador in Conakry attributed renewed French interest in the country to ‘the false fear of being supplanted by [the British] or the Americans’,287 and considered that the French were really ‘their own enemies’ in the region. Correspondence between the French Ambassador in London and the Quai d’Orsay demonstrates that British fears were in fact based on real French suspicions, not purely on a myth of French paranoia. The French embassy played a crucial part in improving Franco-British relations over these months, by arguing that the British were valuable partners in Africa, not envious rivals. Reports emphasised that London did not control the Commonwealth – and particularly not Ghana – and that there did exist British ‘goodwill’ which would only be wasted if memories of past rivalries were allowed to persist.288 In this respect, Cameroun was mentioned as a potential point for discussion over transfers of powers, and the general tone suggested no alarm, very much in keeping with British efforts at finding a modus vivendi. With the UN’s decision to terminate the French and British mandates in the Cameroons at different times, negotiations singled out Southern Cameroonians as the only party not to be an independent sovereign country. Ahidjo had always been cautious regarding Cameroun’s foreign policy choices and relations with neighbouring territories.289 Following Cameroun’s independence, Ahidjo remained very vague on the issue of reunification. His concern over what he saw as ‘an economic liability’ and a distortion of Cameroun’s

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fragile balance between North and South290 partly explained his caution. According to one assessment the French gave the British, reunification with the Southern Cameroons only was the worst option for Ahidjo.291 Cameroun’s President stressed that most Cameroonians in the British territories remained undecided and that opting out of Nigeria did not necessarily entail joining Cameroun.292 One US diplomat remembers Ahidjo asking ‘What do we do now?’ following the plebiscite in the Southern Cameroons whose results Camerounians ‘never expected[,] even though they had been pounding drums for it for years’.293 Foncha himself remained equally content with postponing discussions.294 Conversely, correspondence shows that British officials were anxious for potential reunification to be discussed following Cameroun’s independence. Their concern stemmed partly from the realisation that Ahidjo and Foncha held different interpretations of what reunification would entail and that it was therefore urgent to get them to confront their views.295 Moreover, the Colonial Office saw in Ahidjo a clever and fierce negotiator who in all likelihood, would be able to hold sway over the ‘rather naïve’296 Southern Cameroonians. In effect, the British saw the Camerounians and the French as key actors in the talks: during the Anglo-French talks of April 1959 and December 1959, the Colonial Office repeatedly pressed the French to encourage ‘the more sophisticated’297 Ahidjo to engage in meetings with Foncha, and France itself ‘to assist [Foncha,] the new and unsophisticated Premier of the Southern Cameroons’.298 The French Ambassador in Yaoundé was also approached by his British counterpart, ‘whenever possible and insistently’.299 As the Ambassador’s slight irritation suggests, the French were in fact unwilling to lean on Ahidjo and had pointed out on the eve of independence that the Camerounian government would have ‘too much immediate work to do’300 to consider reunification seriously before six months. Moreover, the French authorities were concerned that Britain was pressing for information at a time of fierce fighting against the UPC forces, in a bid to make union with Nigeria the more attractive option.301 They therefore saw little point in encouraging early negotiations. The obvious lack of information on the Camerounian option was lamented during the constitutional discussions on Nigeria in early May 1960302 and the announcement that Ahidjo would visit Lagos at the end of the month was very much welcomed, in the hope that talks with the Nigerian Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, would demonstrate ‘that on the Nigerian side at least there [were] concrete terms of association which [were] well known and well understood’.303 Disappointment was to follow when Okala told the British Ambassador in June that the modalities for reunification would only be discussed after the plebiscites and among Cameroonians.304 Ahidjo himself confirmed the decision a few days later in an interview to La Presse du Cameroun: ‘the reunification of the two Cameroons is

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a matter above all for Cameroonians, for the Camerounians of our Cameroun and the other Cameroonians’.305 Caution and delays in Cameroun found echo in the Southern Cameroons. Well into 1960, complete independence within the Commonwealth was still being forcefully and consistently promoted by Peter Kale, the co-founder of the KPP. During talks at the Colonial Office in November 1960, Kale argued that the Southern Cameroons would ultimately be engulfed, either by Nigeria or Cameroun, and its culture destroyed.306 The only way for Britain to guarantee the sovereignty and integrity of its territory was to welcome it into the Commonwealth, an option which, Kale claimed, was supported by at least 80 per cent of the population. British officials were divided over how much credence to give his figures. Some argued that the KPP, with no seats in the House of Assembly, ‘cut very little ice’ and that Kale himself did not have ‘much personal following in the country’. Yet British Commissioner John Field was convinced that Foncha’s optimistic support for reunification failed to win the vast majority of the people who ‘wanted neither the Republic nor Nigeria but to stay as they were’307 and the petitions sent to the UN following the 1961 plebiscites demonstrate that independence within the Commonwealth did have some support.308 Kale also argued that with some initial assistance, the Southern Cameroons would be a perfectly viable territory, and its admission into the Commonwealth would pose no problem, since ‘there were many other small states and the Southern Cameroons would be amongst them’.309 British officials across departments, however, had dismissed such notions months before. The UN resolutions now comforted their position and fear of African balkanisation was again reiterated in an official policy report approved by the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Realtions Officer in August 1961.310 In parallel, part of the KNDP had been bitterly disappointed by the failure of Foncha to secure provisions for independence at the UN, and put pressure on his position as Premier and party leader.311 Foncha therefore pursued his efforts to secure some form of temporary independence to bolster the Southern Cameroons’ position in post-plebiscite talks: reunification, he argued in private talks at the Colonial Office, should not be an immediate process.312 It was not the wish of the population, there were many practical issues to be solved and there remained the possibility that Cameroun would turn communist.313 In February 1959, the Colonial Office had warned Foncha that there would have to be a choice between the French and British economic zones and that it was ‘a delusion’ to believe otherwise.314 Southern Cameroonian claims that there would be no reunification if Cameroun kept ‘economic ties with France’ seemed equally naive to the British mission in New York.315 The situation remained unchanged a year later: Foncha and

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his colleagues, the Colonial Office believed, were ‘rather naive. They were still talking, for example, of remaining within the sterling area after joining the Cameroun Republic, although the former French area would remain within the franc zone’.316 Talks with Cameroun were therefore a pressing matter, all the more so as delays and lack of clarity played in Ahidjo’s favour. Correspondence shows that Britain thought Ahidjo had the upper hand and Cameroun’s leading position was exemplified through two decisive options: the French Community and the franc zone. Back in February 1959, Foncha had promised that reunification would not take place if Cameroun joined the French Community.317 In reality, the commitment made in The Two Alternatives not to take a reunified Cameroon into the Commonwealth or the French Community was less radical than it seemed.318 The only politician to have expressed the possibility that a reunified Cameroon might join the Commonwealth was Dr Endeley,319 but he did so after the plebiscites. The Camerounian government suspected Britain of playing the Commonwealth card – but only for separate Southern Cameroons membership and as British correspondence demonstrates, this was far from correct.320 No mention of Commonwealth membership for a reunified Cameroon appears in the available archives. However, the case of Somaliland, which was discussed, would tend to prove that the extension of Commonwealth membership beyond the borders of the ex-Empire was not envisaged. The French were in fact explicitly told in March 1959 that no such project existed321 and an internal note confirmed it in 1960: We are aware that the French Government and certain other governments have been apprehensive about the possibility that the Somali Republic might enter the Commonwealth. We have already explained to the French and others who have expressed concern that no such request has been made, that it is not our policy to stimulate an application, and that if one were made it would be a matter for the Commonwealth as a whole to decide. H.M.G. have now decided that if the Somalis should make any tentative enquiries about Commonwealth membership they should be told that very difficult problems would be raised by a request from a state two-thirds of whose inhabitants have never been part of the British family of nations; that Commonwealth membership would not imply any increase in financial or other aid from the United Kingdom, while it might well jeopardise aid from non-Commonwealth sources; that the Somali Republic does not need to enter the Commonwealth to ensure our friendship; and that we should prefer not to be faced with an application.322

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Cameroun’s position towards the French Community, by contrast, could be a more problematic issue. As Couve de Murville underlined, Community states ‘were not entirely comparable to other independent countries’323 and a number of French officials hoped to see a much closer association with Cameroon develop.324 But in reality, membership of the French Community had no appeal for Ahidjo, for a number of reasons that went beyond the immediate needs of potential reunification. First of all, power politics in Cameroun itself played against Community membership. Cameroun’s President had dismissed membership in August 1959, at a time when reunification remained uncertain.325 He was prepared to pledge Cameroun’s support for Francophone spheres and welcomed direct diplomatic as well as unofficial contacts between Community and Cameroonian agents.326 But Ahidjo also made it clear that Cameroun would not be in the same category as Community states: the French would have to establish an Embassy in Yaoundé after independence, not simply a delegation. As Ahidjo told the people of Victoria (now Limbe) in July 1960, there would be no membership of the Community because Cameroun would not relinquish any independence.327 A month later, the President publicly denied Reuters’ claims that Community membership was in sight:328 the prospects of reunification were mentioned but so was independence and this, at a time when pockets of UPC militants remained, was the crucial point. Secondly, the joint pledge was made at a time when the Community was being transformed into a different set of individual and regional relations between the French and their African partners. This enabled Cameroun to remain close to Community concerns while asserting its independence. Finally, the pledge should be read in the light of international power relations in the area at the time. The proposed balance between Commonwealth and Community was not matched by a similar balance between France and Britain. The ‘Cameroonians’, Ahidjo said at the Yaoundé Conference in August 1961, ‘were not worried at the prospect that a continuing British presence would lead to accusations that the Federation was being integrated into the Commonwealth’.329 Yet there was little danger of this as French presence was much greater. The commitment to stay out of the Community was therefore made publicly but official motives did not rest solely on the grounds of reunification. Throughout 1959, the impact of Common Market preferences for the Associated Territories on Africa as a whole surfaced recurrently in AngloFrench talks330 and in Foreign Office–Colonial Office correspondence. British concerns, summed up in the memorandum Africa: The Next Ten Years in July 1959, rested on two main objectives: the need to block Soviet attempts to penetrate Africa; and the need to prevent France’s European and African policies from damaging British national and colonial as well as Commonwealth

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economic interests – and British international reputation as a consequence. In many ways, it seemed extremely difficult to conciliate the two. France provided Africa with considerable financial assistance and any reduction in aid would give the Soviet bloc a golden opportunity to replace the West on the continent.331 Yet simultaneously, competition between Associated and non-Associated Territories in Africa, essentially a distinction between French and British territories, might lead the latter to seek markets elsewhere, notably in Eastern Europe. French claims that ‘the association clauses [were] an unselfish attempt by the Six to benefit the African peoples’ and that the Associated Territories could not ‘satisfy the requirements of the European countries’, therefore leaving a share of the market for other producers, were dismissed as virtual bad faith.332 The British delegation brief for the Anglo-French talks of April 1959 had warned that Debré ‘understate[d] the importance of economic questions’.333 During a radio interview in French in March 1960, the British Ambassador in Paris expressed fears of ‘une sorte de rivalité ou même de guerre commerciale entre les Etats africains de culture anglaise et française’.334 On the other side of the channel, these concerns were confirmed by the French Ambassador: African competition, the British thought, would not only damage the economy of the (ex-) British territories but quite possibly lead to the ‘political scission of Africa’.335 The French Ambassador warned the Quai that the issue was really the only point that might resuscitate Franco-British tensions over Africa. Cameroonian reunification would therefore bring the two European sides to confront views and the two Cameroonian parties to compare options. During the Franco-Camerounian talks336 that led to the temporary agreements of December 1959,337 Ahidjo had asked to remain associated to the European Community and association continued beyond the initial date of 1 July 1960.338 The President considered the EEC ‘as a wider outlet for [Camerounian] products and as a less exclusive source of technical and financial aid’,339 counterbalancing French links. As he stated clearly in September 1960, he had no intention of breaking association with the EEC.340 In parallel, relations with Liberia could also be interpreted as a sign, the British suggested, of Ahidjo’s ‘desire for cooperation among the independent African states’.341 However, although Cameroun did not seek to create or join political organisations that mirrored the French Community, geography and heritage led it to promote economic and financial links with the four Equatorial African states actively, with an initial meeting taking place in Douala in March 1960. As Ahidjo announced that ‘continued membership of the franc zone was still an open question, and that there could be no question of Cameroun rejoining the transformed French Community’,342 he also told the French that the forthcoming independence of his Equatorial neighbours

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might lead to a closer regional union with Cameroun – a more realistic goal than dreams of pan-African unity.343 His visit to Paris coincided with the first meeting of the mixed Commission, set up to discuss reunification issues and which advocated entrusting ‘a group of neutral experts who should “aim to create a monetary zone that could accelerate economic development”’ with comparing the franc and sterling zones. This was discussed by the French Embassy with Ahidjo on his return, and French diplomats reported to the Quai that the Camerounian President consequently emphasised around him the ‘conjectural character’ of the Commission and its potential findings. A meeting of French officials and representatives of the BCEAC later met in Paris to discuss the matter further and decided that the most competent Camerounian ministers should be alerted, ‘in detail but off the record’, about the consequences of leaving the franc zone.344 The 1959 agreements had provided for over 12,000 French civil servants to support Cameroun’s administration345 and the British themselves were under no illusion. As the British Ambassador told Foreign Secretary Alec DouglasHome, Camerounians depended on France for military aid, ‘medical services, almost all forms of technical assistance, and still for a considerable proportion of their administrative personnel’, which meant that ‘[e] conomically [they were] almost entirely dependent on France for marketing their principal products, coffee, cocoa, bananas, cotton, groundnuts, timber, etc., and for covering their budget deficit. They can hardly hope in the near future to manage their own currency or their own exchange control system’.346 In November 1960, France and Cameroun signed an agreement for economic and financial cooperation and confirmed that Cameroun would be part of the franc zone. The French Treasury would guarantee the value of the CFA franc. While the franc zone offered ‘stable exchange rates and currencies, integration, convertibility [and] looser external constraints’, it meant that African countries had no real sovereignty over their currency, it increased their dependence on France347– and it also encouraged ‘financial irresponsibility’.348 All franc zone reserves were concentrated in Paris, and power was in effect in French Treasury hands. No devaluation occurred before 1974, when the CFA franc lost 50 per cent of its value, but African countries were hit hard by the 1969 French franc devaluation, which underlined their dependence on the ex- colonial power.349 As a consequence of the 1960 agreements, Cameroun had ‘to consult France when drawing up her annual import programme, in which foreign exchange quotas [were] allocated for imports from different quarters of the world’.350 Admittedly, compared to other contemporary Franco-African conventions, the Franco-Camerounian agreements

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gave Cameroun relatively more independence and more guarantees of Consultations.351 However, less than three months before the plebiscites were due to take place, they dealt a harsh blow to any hopes that reunification negotiations would fatally weaken Franco-Camerounian bonds.

After the Plebiscites: political insecurities and diplomatic tensions The UPC rebellion and its violent repression dominated the plebiscite campaign in the Southern Cameroons. French diplomats and military personnel in Cameroun highlighted that, although order had been imposed in the Bamileke area, the situation remained potentially volatile. There seems to have been great uncertainty over UPC tactics and intentions during the plebiscite: would they see it as an opportunity to strike or would they refrain from compromising the reunification option?352 The French noted with satisfaction that British efforts against the UPC had been stepped up, essentially, as they saw it, in relation to Nigerian independence in October 1960.353 Security arguments were used abundantly by the pro-Nigerian parties for their ends, intensifying fear among the population. In a message to the nation, the CPNC asked: Who amongst you would like to live in a country where your life and property are constantly in danger? . . . a country where you may be shot at as you move along the street, or your wife killed as she toils on the farm? . . . a land where people’s houses and shops are burnt everyday and looted; where you can be arrested without a fair trial? . . . a country red with the blood of thousands of innocent victims killed by terrorists and the Ahidjo regime? A few months after Felix Moumié was poisoned in Geneva, the CPNC concluded: ‘In French Cameroons political differences are settled by guns and poison’.354 Similarly on 22 January 1961, the Nigerian Prime Minister likened reunification to ‘a life of poverty and hardship under the constant shadow of violence which the [Cameroun] Government cannot control[, in] a country which unfortunately has been torn in recent years by civil wars’.355 Unsurprisingly, these concerns over the state of Cameroun were reflected in many of the petitions contesting the plebiscite results. More broadly, fears of joining the Cameroun Republic often came from the conviction

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of irreconcilably distinct French and British traditions. Several petitions mentioned their strong links with their Nigerian ‘kinsmen’359 – but less to demand a Nigerian union, it seems, than to underline shared traditions within the ex-British Empire and the absurdity of the Cameroun option. In Bu,357 Fungom358 and Bum, linguistic, legal, judicial, economic and educational traditions, a ‘common outlook in life’,359 were highlighted. The petitions drew a clear opposition between prosperous peace in the British sphere and destructive terror in the French zone360 – not unlike comparative accounts of France and Britain at the time of the French Revolution. In Esimbi, women saw Elizabeth II as a symbol of hope for Cameroonian women, the Commonwealth as a guarantee of ‘Freedom, Security, Liberty and equality too’,361 while the Chiefs of Aghem considered that ‘association with the British throne’ would preserve ‘freedom and this system of Government and Justice’.362 Reunification was compared to a union between Elizabeth II and Charles de Gaulle – in other words, to an inconceivable project,363 where the British tradition of ‘Government of the people

Portraying a climate of fear, violence and indecision: Appendix to Petition to African States, 1961 (TNA, CO 554/2440).

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by the people and for the people’ would be trampled by the worst French authoritarian streaks, variously translated as ‘l’états Ce mois [sic] ou Ce moi Qui commands [sic]’.364 Seen as a form of ‘retrogression’, an ‘unnecessary backward move’,365 it would join ‘a peaceful land with a terrorist breeding state’.366 Memories of violence and repression on the Camerounian border, as UPC militants were tracked down by French and Camerounian forces, surfaced in many petitions: ‘it would be madness’, claimed a group of women, ‘to join them when they are continuously escaping from their country to be housed by us’,367 and others likened reunification to ‘Darkness fall[ing] in the Southern Cameroons’.368 In some petitions, distinct British and French traditions were used to undermine ethnic justifications for reunification: some Southern Cameroonian communities had bonds over in Nigeria or Cameroun but some had neither and Greater Kamerun was attacked as ‘a dangerous and deceptive theory’,369 a mere myth. In reality, insecurity in Cameroun further strengthened Ahidjo’s position as the West’s favoured interlocutor in the reunification debates. Ahidjo had struck the French as a cautious, moderate and realistic statesman, who disliked ideological positions. He would work for African unity, against colonial domination, and assert Cameroon’s independence, but there was no risk that he might side with the Casablanca group of Nkrumah and Nasser.370 French cooperation officials emphasised that support for the Ahidjo government was crucial, not simply for French interests but more widely for Western interests against Soviet and Chinese influence.371 British diplomats from West Africa meeting in May 1961 identified at least four reasons why renewed caution was necessary to protect ‘NATO’s southern flank’: the radical strands of pan-Africanism ‘favoured Soviet objectives’; ‘African politicians underestimated the danger of Soviet bloc penetration’; Africans might be seduced by massive Soviet assistance; and the cold war gave the Africans ‘more freedom of manoeuvre’372 in international organisations. As John Kent has argued, ‘by the time John F. Kennedy became President, the relative importance of Africa as a cold war battleground had dramatically increased and the future stability of the continent was more and more in doubt’.373 The Foreign Office doubted that Africans would let the Soviet bloc weaken the UN374 but the unfolding crisis in the Congo, which pitted the Eastern and Western blocs against each other at the UN after July 1960, highlighted the reality of the dangers. Should Britain – and the West generally – asked Sir Roger Stevens, support ‘regimes regarded as reactionary by African “progressives”’? The British High Commissioner in Accra, Arthur Snelling, emphasised ‘the danger of . . . becoming involved with reactionary and corrupt regimes’.375 In this context, security and stability in the Cameroons was paramount and French officials made their support for Ahidjo very clear.

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The plebiscites held on 11 and 12 February 1961 delivered markedly different results. While the Southern Cameroons opted for a future with their neighbours across the Mungo,376 the Northern Cameroons voted massively in favour of Nigeria, causing Ahidjo and his ministers to embark on a series of violent attacks against Britain. The UN report, which endorsed the elections under British organisation and supervision,377 was simply disregarded. On 20 February, Ahidjo denounced British partiality and irregularities in a press conference, stigmatising ‘the clever propaganda that had been orchestrated with a wealth of surprising means by the enemies of reunification’.378 In a speech to the Fourth Committee of the UN in April, Okala compared the United Kingdom to ‘a monster with entrails of brass and the head of an impenitent slave trader’379 Kemayou, the President of the National Assembly, threatening that Cameroun would leave the UN if it allowed ‘cowardice, turpitude, bad faith and lies’ to prevail over ‘right and justice’, accused Britain of favouring the ‘Nigerian colossus’ because it represented ‘an important market’.380 ‘Compared with the dismemberment of the Camerounian nation and the violation of the deep-felt wishes of more than 700,000 of [his] compatriots’, claimed Kemayou, events in Hungary, Korea and Cuba were relatively smallscale. As Camerounian leaders embarked on nation-building programmes and speeches, Britain and the UPC were both stigmatised as obstacles to national unity, and dangers for the preservation of an independent Cameroun. Britain’s colonial administration, blurring the boundaries between Nigeria and the Northern Cameroons, was in effect put in the dock when Cameroun decided to take the Northern Cameroons case to the International Court of Justice and sought to overturn the elections.381 Hostile manifestations were not restricted to the political elite in Cameroun, and leaders were able to gather popular support to their cause. The celebrations of Cameroun’s first anniversary as an independent nation were soon followed by angry street protests against the results of the plebiscite in the Northern Cameroons. On 15 February 1961, as Okala was threatening to break off diplomatic relations with Britain,382 a group of about 50 Camerounians organised a demonstration outside the British Embassy in Yaoundé, tore up the British flag and called for the ambassador to be ousted. Reports in the Camerounian press of riots in the Southern Cameroons, of Nigerian and British authorities looking on as personal safety and material security were compromised, fuelled resentment.383 Diplomatic and popular antagonism reached such a point that Sir Roger Stevens chose not to include Yaoundé in his African tour at the time because of the anti-British 384 agitation there.384 . The series of conferences which led to Cameroon’s reunification on 1 October 1961 – Buea on 16–17 May, Bamenda on 26–28 June, Foumban on 17–21 July and Yaoundé on 10–14 August – have been closely analysed by

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several scholars.385 The dynamics of Franco-British relations over this crucial period further highlight the progressive marginalisation of the Southern Cameroonian component over the making of the Cameroonian Federation. France valued both its Camerounian and British partnerships but made it clear that security requirements in early 1961 meant that the French Government had to support Ahidjo, even if it meant backing his claims in the Northern Cameroons case.386 Sir Roger Stevens was informed that the French Government would give Ahidjo all the necessary help towards reunification.387 Reactions across the wider Francophone region, and in the Ivory Coast in particular, point to fears that the international community was in reality encouraging the formation of powerful Anglophone territories in West Africa. Ivorian President Houphouët-Boigny and Ahidjo claimed that votes in the Northern and Southern British Togoland, which in 1956 had respectively voted for union with the Gold Coast and union with Togo, had been counted together, resulting in the inclusion of both territories within the Gold Coast.388 The Foreign Office was simultaneously worried by the fragile conditions in the Southern Cameroons, where the OK Party opposed the results of the plebiscite and might use their connections with Ghana and Guinea to seek to overthrow Foncha’s Government.389 This would undoubtedly be detrimental to the Cameroons but would also jeopardise security in Nigeria, which the French Ambassador to London had forecast as ‘the triumph of British policy in Africa’ if it remained a British and Western ally after independence.390 The British High Commissioner in Lagos, Lord Head, was adamant that the security situation, unless brought under control, would give the Eastern bloc ‘a first class opportunity to make trouble’.391 What mattered, Sir Roger Stevens had told the French in March, was that ‘the Southern Cameroons be absorbed by the Republic in conditions which guaranteed its political and economic links with the West’.392 This corresponded to French plans for the region: Ahidjo was perceived to be the only Cameroonian statesman with the determination and ability to maintain stability and resist Communist penetration. At a time when Ahidjo and his entourage had little faith in Britain’s goodwill – instability might prevent or reverse the reunification project that London had never really promoted – the French military attaché in Yaoundé gave his support to Ahidjo’s demands for the reinforcement of French military assistance to Cameroon. Prime Minister Debré backed these plans: if instability was allowed to develop in Cameroon, it was likely to spread to the countries of the former French Equatorial Africa; and it was highly important that the newly established African leaders in the region knew that they could count on French support for their security.393 Coupled with strong Franco-Camerounian relations and high levels of French

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assistance to the Republic, this gave Ahidjo’s government a strong hand in the reunification negotiations. As British officials shared French concerns regarding UPC involvement in Cameroun and rebellions in the region, they were thereby involved in supporting transfers of power on the French side of the border. As Mark DeLancey has demonstrated, ‘the French were able to determine who would not be the recipients’394 of power in Cameroun. But they were able to do so with British acquiescence. Presented as ‘one of the more moderate and intelligent statesmen in Africa’, having won a ‘long campaign against communist-inspired guerrillas’395 during his state visit to Britain in May 1963, Ahidjo was warmly congratulated by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan for ‘the defeat of terrorism in his country’ and reminded that before October 1961, Britain itself had been instrumental in securing victory.396 Yet contrary to the French, British security forces withdrew from the Cameroons when the trusteeship was terminated. Some Southern Cameroonians, including Bernard Fonlon, interpreted the move as a sign of irritation and a punishment for having rejected the Nigerian and Commonwealth option.397 In fact, as British officials unsuccessfully tried to put through to their Cameroonian counterparts, military withdrawal was a normal feature of British decolonisation – Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika were not treated any differently.398 While Britain would remain responsible for the internal security of any dependent territory, there would be no British troops stationed in independent African countries ‘solely for purposes of internal security’,399 except in extreme cases of emergency. Given the dynamics of Cameroonian reunification and tested Franco-Camerounian cooperation in defeating the UPC, there was not much of a security or economic case for maintaining a British military presence. Even before the plebiscites, Ahidjo had determined that if there was to be reunification, it would be through a federation400 and all leaders at the Foumban Conference in July indeed agreed that a ‘unitary and centralised’ state would be as dangerous for national unity as ‘a confederal system[, ]too loose’.401 Yet as the pre-reunification negotiations opened, Camerounians and Southern Cameroonians came to the table with strikingly different ideas of what the federation should be. Colonial Office reports on the matter highlight that Ahidjo and Foncha supported constitutional models that were based on their respective European legacies. Following the constitution of the Cameroun Republic, Ahidjo argued for what the Colonial Office defined as ‘a tight executive presidential system on the French model’: the President of the federation would be the pivotal figure, appointing ministers, able to take power in an emergency, and ensuring that ‘all the vital powers [would] be with the Federal Government’.402 Rumours circulated that ‘Ahidjo intend[ed] to tie the Southern Cameroons up “so tight that

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they [would] not even be able to kick”’.403 By contrast, Foncha argued for a bicameral system, with a federal President and two state governors to be given constitutional powers, making the Prime Minister the central figure, accountable to the legislature, even in cases of emergency, and preventing the federation from controlling regional or state assemblies. Ministerial quotas would be enforced so that no part of the federation was able to dominate.404 Foncha’s proposal, the Colonial Office concluded, owed much to the Nigerian model. In the contest that followed, Ahidjo’s bargaining power was strengthened by his dominance over Camerounian politics and internal dissensions among the Southern Cameroonians. Various coercion and co-optation strategies, which Victor Le Vine,405 Jean-François Bayart406 and Jean-François Médard have analysed in detail, had been set in motion even before Ahidjo expressed his wish for ‘a large party, a large unified movement’407 in November 1961. In effect, the reunification negotiations were a crucial period in which Ahidjo was able to present himself as ‘indispensable [for] the survival of the Cameroonian entity’408 and prepare the grounds for ‘the minority [to] abide by the opinion of the majority’409 in Cameroonian institution-building. By contrast, the Southern Cameroonian elite were torn by stark antagonism between the North West and South West, and within the government itself, which helped Ahidjo to achieve his objectives. An all-party conference on the Constitutional Future of the Southern Cameroons was held in Bamenda on 26–28 June 1961, bringing together the KNDP, CPNC and OK groupings, as well as representatives from the House of Chiefs410 and representatives of the Native Authorities. In the days before the Bamenda Conference, the British Ambassador in Yaoundé and President Ahidjo seem to have shared the view that the attitude of Foncha, who still believed that some degree of independence for the Southern Cameroons might be salvaged, was highly problematic.411 According to the French Ambassador, British officials feared an OK Party action against Foncha and believed that strong, assertive leaders were crucial for the security of the Cameroonian territories.412 British officials made it clear that the only possible interpretation of the results of the February plebiscites was reunification and after the withdrawal of Britain on 1 October, law and order would be guaranteed by Cameroonian forces – including troops from the former French territory operating west of the Mungo river. The British position was clear but the French ambassador in London, on Quai d’Orsay instructions, still suggested to the Foreign Office that the reality of the transfer of powers be repeated to Foncha in the starkest possible terms.413 While the Foreign Office emphasised that matters would have to be settled between Cameroonian politicians, France felt concerned that proceedings might be slowed down unless Foncha realised

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that sovereignty lay in the Republic and that his influence did not equal Ahidjo’s.414 Britain was reluctant to adopt positions that would give Ahidjo too strong a hand in the negotiations. Sir Roger Stevens told French diplomats in London that if a properly balanced federal constitution was to be achieved, safeguards against highly centralised Presidential powers had to be maintained – and in the negotiations, a similar balance should be achieved between the delegation from the Southern Cameroons and the representatives of the Republic of Cameroun.415 However, the British memorandum on the handling of security matters in the transfer of powers revealed the distinction between the two Cameroonian parties. Between the Yaoundé and the Foumban Conferences, British officials would liaise with the Republic of Cameroon on the handover of security, law and order in the Southern Cameroons, which emphasised, at least implicitly, that sovereignty indeed lay in Yaoundé. After Foumban, the opposition was kept away from the negotiating table even though they held as many seats in the house as the KNDP, following the defection of one KNDP member. The emergence of Anglophone separatism since the mid 1980s has thrown former Southern Cameroonian politicians into competing histories and memoirs. In the Cameroon Post, Foncha argued in 1994 that he had ‘acted in good faith, and as a Cameroonian patriot’ but an ‘unsuspecting and trusting people’ had been led by Ahidjo into ‘an arrangement for the annexation, subjugation and domination of one the partners by the other’.416 By contrast, N. Mbile, a prominent CPNC leader, claims that ‘the basic horse-trading had been done at Foumban’, enabling Ahidjo to push through his series of constitutional proposals, which had been fully written out. He further highlighted tensions within the KNDP, particularly between Augustine Jua, who thought it ludicrous ‘to write a constitution in two days’417 and John Foncha, ‘who stood for swallowing virtually hook, line and sinker’.418 ‘Personal positions and powers had been apportioned, the rewards and consolation prizes had already been shared out’, Mbile protested, with the two governments in power excluding ‘all shades of political opinion [from] the right to write the constitution’.419 In his reports to Paris in the course of 1962, the French Ambassador similarly suggested that Ahidjo had successfully used his ability to propose key positions to Southern Cameroonian politicians to gain the upper hand in the formative months of the Federation.420 Ahidjo did tell the French that he was most satisfied with the outcome of the Foumban conference and that it was no longer necessary to discuss the transfer of powers and the question of sovereignty with British delegations. Cameroonian negotiations in August would merely confirm what Foumban had secured and it would then be up to the National Assembly of the Republic of Cameroun to vote on it.421

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Virtually simultaneously, Ahidjo’s government requested that French military personnel with a good knowledge of English be supplemented to help in reunification processes in West Cameroon.422 There was therefore little doubt that the most sensitive and most important issues would be primarily analysed and decided in Yaoundé. Southern Cameroonian disunity certainly played in Ahidjo’s favour but does not fully account for his control over the pace and the content of the constitutional conferences, or for the prevalence of the Cameroun Republic over the form that the reunified state would eventually take. Diplomatic correspondence in 1961 reveals that both Britain and France saw Ahidjo as the key player in the negotiations and believed that the stability of the Cameroonian territories required hard-headed decisions to be made by an assertive figurehead. Milne saw Ahidjo as a deceptively calm leader, not to be underestimated423 and the Colonial Office knew him as ‘quick and wise, and quite cute’, ‘a good statesman’, with ‘good Ministers behind him too’.424 Ahidjo’s formidable presence dominated events both in and out of negotiations. At Foumban, Mbile compared the conference to ‘a diminutive anticlimax’, dwarfed by ‘[t]he tremendous trappings surrounding the President, the huge entourage of top civil servants, the army which had to make its presence felt wherever the head of state was’.425 Following the plebiscites and based on their own view that Ahidjo would be the more cunning negotiator, British officials prompted Southern Cameroonians to demand clear information from Cameroun. In his memoirs, Milne argued that both Sir Andrew Cohen and John Field, the special representative for the British Cameroons on the Trusteeship Council, pressed for early negotiations and attempted to convince Foncha to be more assertive.426 Milne’s retrospective statements seem confirmed by contemporary reports. The Colonial Office was informed that the Buea talks of 16 and 17 May showed Ahidjo’s worryingly strong ascendancy over his Anglophone counterparts. Not only ‘was [he] holding his hand on all major points until he ha[d] submitted his own proposals [and] gave no indication of what these would contain’, but Foncha and his fellow minister, Solomon Tandeng Muna remained very vague in the accounts of their talks and were even ‘at variance as to what had been said’.427 One of the main issues at stake was the legal birth of the reunified Cameroonian state. The option which the British favoured was ‘for Her Majesty’s Government, before it relinquishe[d] jurisdiction, to provide the Southern Cameroons with a Constitution’, enabling it to discuss reunification with the Republic with equal documents in hand.428 At the Colonial Office, Eastwood argued that there remained virtually no support for separate independence, and that reunification would not be consequently compromised. It would in any case be a safer proposal than what would otherwise amount

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to the Republic annexing the Southern Cameroons on termination of the mandate. This was in complete opposition to what Ahidjo wanted. As early as June 1960 and as he still faced strong UPC rebellions, he had informed Muna during private talks that reunification could not lead to constitutional amendments or new elections:429 the only possibility, Muna had confided to Milne, was ‘to make a hole in the CR Constitution to admit the Southern Cameroons’. In effect, Ahidjo’s preferred option for a transfer of sovereignty from the Republic to the Federation was accepted during private talks with Foncha in Buea.430 In return, Foncha would be made Vice President of the Federation, Jua Premier of the Anglophone state and Muna would get a ministerial portfolio.431 Cameroun derived its influence from its position as an independent country. Ahidjo later described the two so-called partners in starkingly realistic terms, outlining the imbalance that prevailed between ‘an independent, sovereign country possessing an international legal personality’ and ‘a territory with no international political status’.432 But Cameroun was also able to use French support and influence to its ends. France had no official role in the ongoing negotiations433 but French advisers did attend the various conferences as part of Ahidjo’s entourage and French diplomats in Cameroon acknowledged in September that reunification was not simply about ‘Cameroonian brothers’ – French and British interests were also at stake.434 British officials were keenly aware of this. During the Anglo-French talks of March 1961, both France and Britain welcomed the prospect of an enlarged republic being ‘a closely unified state which would be “affiliated” to France’435 but underlined that little was known of Ahidjo’s intentions. France ‘had no juridical right to influence’, officials agreed, but ‘the French could bring considerable influence to bear’ on the President.436 Camerounian officials kept their French counterparts informed of developments and showed them some of the documents which British or Southern Cameroonian officials were putting forward. Following Franco-Camerounian meetings, a French memorandum was given to the British Foreign Secretary in early July. The memo could leave him in no doubt that France considered that Cameroun was the leading actor, Ahidjo the key player and that good Franco-British relations depended on British support in this matter.437 It drew attention to the strong Franco-Camerounian links and to a common Franco-British interest in maintaining stability in the region. The French memorandum in effect made a clear case against Foncha: he was not to be allowed to believe he was Ahidjo’s equal and he was not to delay reunification in the hope that separate independence might be achieved. France had interpreted the UN resolution to mean that the modalities of unification lay ‘in the exclusive competence of the Camerounian Government’ and advised the British that

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‘it should be possible to lead him to compose with M. Ahidjo’. Following Britain’s official application to join the EEC on 9 August, France felt the Franco-Camerounian hand had been strengthened. The commercial attaché at the French Embassy in Yaoundé considered that an agreement between Foncha and Ahidjo was made possible because the British had backed off: their attitude in the negotiations hitherto, which ‘did not display a spirit of frank collaboration with the government of Yaoundé supported by France’438 would simply have been irreconcilable with their European ambitions. As far as the constitutional negotiations were concerned, the main effect of Britain’s EEC application seems to have been the greater confidence it gave the Camerounian side – and their French partners – in pushing forward their plans for reunification. At a time when Britain faced Yaoundé’s attacks about the Northern Cameroons, relations with the leading Southern Cameroonian negotiators were equally strained and Britain’s ability to influence events, if it wanted to, was small. As early as March, the British Embassy in Paris had identified a stronger position for Ahidjo in the future federation as a common Franco-British objective.439 Conversely, British officials had become increasingly convinced that Foncha could not be trusted, accusing him of ‘playing a dishonest and dangerous game’.440 Field informed the Colonial Office that Foncha was an ambitious man, determined to carve a comfortable political niche for himself and content to lull Southern Cameroonians into a false sense of hope while he had admitted to the British that he was ‘quite ready to accept Ahidjo’s terms substantially as they [stood]’.441 Ahidjo’s public assurances during a previous visit to Tiko, Victoria and Buea that negotiations would be held ‘in an atmosphere of absolute equality’442 contrasted with the reality of private talks. French pressure may not have led British officials to influence Foncha but it certainly comforted their opinion of the Southern Cameroonian leader as the lesser partner. Attending the Yaoundé Conference, British officials resented Foncha’s attacks on the security situation and his virtual suggestion that Britain ‘had deliberately allowed the terrorist threat to grow’,443 an accusation which would have damaged Britain’s relations with both Cameroun and France. Diplomats at the British Embassy felt they were being cast by all parties as ‘the wicked mother-in-law’444 in what had become a Francophone-dominated affair. At Foumban, the requirements of centralised nation-building prevailed over hopes of greater autonomy for the federated regions. Southern Cameroonian proposals for a dual nationality system were brushed aside. Ahidjo made clear that ‘the Federation [could] only give one nationality to its citizens’, meaning ‘that the members of the Federated States [would be] nationals of the Federation and citizens of the Cameroon’445 – neither

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federation nor reunification, he later repeated, ‘permit us to say that there are two Cameroonian nations’.446 At the Yaoundé Conference in August, AngloCameroonian talks on the transfer of powers were preceeded by inter-Cameroonian talks on the constitution. Foncha’s suggestion that the Parliament in Buea should approve the constitution, just as the Parliament in Yaoundé would, was equally rejected. Constitutional documents were very much in Francophone hands: they were shown to Southern Cameroonian MPs for information only447 and were drafted in the French tradition. French reports underlined that the ‘Anglo-saxon’448 Southern Cameroonians had struggled to make sense of the constitution that Ahidjo’s ‘advisers and experts’ had written, but details had been given and the proposals accepted. According to the French consul in Buea at the start of 1962, reunification was based on an ‘ambiguity, with Yaoundé seeing the Federation merely as a transitory phase, while on the other side of the Mungo, reunification meant consolidating a wide-ranging autonomy from all European or African metropole’.449 Ten years later, as Cameroon was transformed into a United Republic, Ahidjo admitted that the federation was conceived as a necessary means to cement African and European legacies in Cameroon but equally as a temporary stage in Cameroonian history,450 bound to be replaced. Conversely, the Southern Cameroonian interpretation had been wrong on both counts, as a strong federation was able to emerge through the combined influence of Yaoundé over Buea and Paris over London. In parallel, British European interests influenced the economic and financial transition in the Cameroonian federation. As the plebiscites drew near and Franco-Camerounian economic links were tightened, the future of a potentially reunified Cameroon raised another important matter: imperial preference in the Southern Cameroons. For timber, palm oil and rubber, imperial preference was important but not crucial, the Board of Trade and the Colonial Office agreed. Timber was already exported not only to Britain but also to West Germany and the Netherlands and as ‘rubber [entered] duty free both in the UK and the EEC Cameroons would not be affected by a withdrawal of preference’.451 Conversely, imperial preference was vital to the Southern Cameroonian banana production, which represented about twothirds of their total exports. In 1958, the Southern Cameroons was producing 85,000 tons of bananas, the vast majority of which452 was exported duty free to the British market – then importing a total of 310,000 tons.453 Bananas from outside the imperial preference area were taxed at £7.10.0, which the Southern Cameroons would have to pay if it left the preference area. The problem came from the fact that there were no other obvious markets for Southern Cameroonian bananas: all of France’s 345,000 tons of imported bananas, except for 0.3 thousand, came from its own preferential sources.454

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On the face of it, the issue had been settled in The Two Alternatives, and in January 1961, it was clearly understood that by joining Nigeria, ‘the Southern Cameroons would enjoy all the benefits of membership of the Commonwealth; being entitled amongst other things to the preferential treatment for its exports as at present enjoyed and to other sources of aid available to Commonwealth members’.455 The Colonial Office and Foreign Office were aware that for Nigeria reunification would mean exclusion from imperial preference – Southern Cameroonians ‘should pay the full price of their choice’.456 They also realised the deleterious effects that prolonging imperial preference would have on British colonies and Commonwealth members. Exports from the Southern Cameroons were in effect direct competitors for the West Indies Federation, whose French Caribbean neighbours benefited from privileged access to the French market: if Cameroon was to get the best of both worlds, it would create considerable tensions between Britain and the West Indies.457 Debates in the Commons in December 1960 and January 1961 focused on this specific aspect of reunification. A number of Conservative MPs were particularly anxious that voters should be made aware that economically speaking, it would be a choice between imperial preference within the sterling zone and common-market association within the franc zone.458 No preference should be allowed to a territory which had in effect left the Commonwealth – otherwise there ‘would be a large element of the Cameroons having their cake and eating it’.459 John Tilney argued that Britain should show ‘it does not pay to turn on one’s Commonwealth friends, such as Nigeria’,460 and that the Colonial Development Corporation, funded through British taxes, should cease all investments. As the Colonial Office had underlined in August 1960, the basic issue was legal. Ireland and Burma had both enjoyed imperial preference after opting out of the Commonwealth, creating precedents. But here, the question was different: could ‘preference . . . continue to be accorded to that part of an independent foreign country which was previously administered as part of the dependent Commonwealth’?461 At the Foreign Office, the case was made that imperial preference could be extended, with no set termination date, given the precedent of the Anglo-French condominium of the New Hebrides: France and Britain benefited from the same commercial rights and a special protocol of the Treaty of Rome stipulated that the islands could continue to enjoy preferential treatment in one area, provided no other special treatment was granted if goods were then re-exported.462 However, the New Hebrides were not considered an adequate precedent for a Cameroonian federation. Moreover, as GATT negotiations were underway, Britain intended to secure additional preference for Commonwealth bananas and trying to include the Southern Cameroons might play against British endeavours. Caution was therefore essential.463

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One reason initially given against continuing imperial preference was that the Southern Cameroons would then also benefit from French preference.464 As French diplomats in Cameroon later stated, France intended to follow reunification processes very closely as further subsidies would become necessary.465 French officials confirmed fears that Britain really was the only short-term outlet for Southern Cameroonian bananas – the franc zone already faced a surplus production of around 50,000 tons of bananas per year.466 France therefore expressed the wish that assistance should continue even if reunification was chosen and the economic and security impact of reunification on Cameroonian territories featured as the most crucial item in the Franco-British talks of December 1960.467 In the short term, British departments considered that there was little choice but to envisage continuing imperial preference at a time when EEC markets were saturated. Although the situation of the French market did weigh heavily in the balance, Britain’s decision was not simply based on French pressure. Ending preference would damage the Southern Cameroonian economy and have two major negative consequences for British objectives: foster instability and potential political insecurity;468 and draw an unsavoury comparison between British actions and de Gaulle’s ‘fit of pique’469 against Guinea back in September 1958.470 As one MP underlined, abruptly leaving the Southern Cameroonians would do little good to Britain’s reputation.471 If the vote favoured reunification, it would be vital to give the Southern Cameroons ‘a short breathing space’472 to negotiate new relations with Cameroun, France and the EEC.473 Ending imperial preference abruptly would also risk damaging British interests there – Cadbury and Fry, John Holt and Company (Liverpool) Limited, Pamol Limited, The United Africa Company of Nigeria Limited and its subsidiary, Elders and Fyffes, and of course, Camdev.474 However, the British government had no intention of advertising the fact that regardless of the choice of the Southern Cameroons, all assistance would not be terminated. Voters, the Colonial Office stated, had been informed that rejecting Nigeria would be rejecting imperial preference475 and British support for the Nigerians was made very clear: ‘nothing should be said now’, a Colonial Office note read, ‘to imply that H.M.G would be ready to grant any assistance, as this might encourage people to vote for the Republic’.476 During the Anglo-French talks of March 1961, a few days only after the plebiscite results, the economic stakes of reunification were further discussed. Both parties agreed that Cameroon would ultimately be wholly part of the franc zone but that Nigerian currency would be used during a transitory period.477 The matter was settled by Camerounian officials in the summer of 1961: the West African pound would be used beyond 1 October and as long as Cameroon wanted, while Southern Cameroonians still serving in

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the Nigerian administration could move to Cameroon if they so wished.478 Practical reasons aside, a monetary union would result in harmonised export prices across Camerooon, making Southern Cameroonian bananas far too expensive for the British market.479 British concerns were again expressed to French officials, and centred essentially on the interests of Commonwealth members. Britain was prepared to accommodate Southern Cameroonian interests as the federation took shape, but it could only be a temporary arrangement. As in the case of Somaliland, unification would lead the entire territory into Treaty of Rome arrangements.480 British officials remained extremely cautious throughout, stressing that the decision would ultimately lie with the British Parliament:481 unless new legislation was passed, imperial preference would end on 1 October.482 On 8 and 9 March 1961, British and Cameroonian officials from both sides of the Mungo met to discuss the issue. Foncha, Muna, Jua and Okala were unanimous: preference should be maintained.483 On 21 May 1961, JeanFaustin Bétayéné, who would succeed Okala as Minister of Foreign Affairs in October 1961, suggested extending it until 30 September 1963 and in June Southern Cameroonians were still trying to convince the British to grant a five-year extension, to be reviewed after four years.484 While British officials privately acknowledged that it would take about five years for bananas from the Southern Cameroons to be fully part of Common Market plans and receive similar advantages to those enjoyed under imperial preference,485 they rejected a medium-term commitment. While the Board of Trade underlined that Cameroon had no intention of granting any preference to British exports,486 the Colonial Office brief was extremely clear: preference could only be extended on the most temporary basis. Yet officials across departments knew that the economy of the Southern Cameroons depended on the British market absorbing its produce, that there was virtually no hope of the French market taking a surplus of Southern Cameroonian bananas and that therefore, ending imperial preference risked damaging British relations with both the French and the Camerounians, and even with the EEC. France was ‘prepared to undertake additional financial commitments and to extend the French preferential system to the products of the Southern Cameroons, except in the case of bananas’,487 and in the medium term, it would ‘assume the major burden of financial assistance to the enlarged Republic’:488 British support in the transitional phase was therefore essential.489 Britain’s application to the Common Market itself was only officially announced on 9 August 1961 and its influence was more keenly felt in the subsequent negotiations over imperial preference in 1962. However, the importance of not antagonising the French over Common Market issues was clearly emphasised during this early period and ending imperial preference seen as ‘a blunder vis-à-vis

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the French’,490 which could ‘prejudice’491 Britain’s European future and prove extremely costly. At the request of the Associated Territories, association protocols were under review and the British Cabinet held hopes that new agreements would lessen the divide between Anglophone and Francophone African countries and that Britain itself might be able to influence evolutions.492 Cameroun itself was to take part in the European Parliamentary Conference on 19–24 June to prepare for the new convention of association – to become Yaoundé I in 1963. On 31 May 1961, the new Republic of South Africa became the next territory to leave the Commonwealth and still be granted imperial preference – in exchange for reciprocal trade benefits and because of British concern over gold reserves, defence arrangements and the protection of their High Commission Territories, enclosed in South Africa itself.493 The extension of imperial preference to South Africa put Britain’s relations with other Commonwealth members at risk, as South Africa’s exit from the Commonwealth had been influenced by Commonwealth opposition to apartheid and intimations that an application from the new republic would be rejected. The Foreign Office repeatedly warned that ending preference to the Southern Cameroons in this context would seriously damage Britain’s international standing and compromise its position during on-going decolonisation processes across the Empire.494 The Colonial Office was equally aware of the effect it would have on Britain’s position in the UN.495 Maintaining imperial preference was advised as ‘the one action the United Kingdom [could] take to try to mitigate serious economic disruption in the Southern Cameroons’.496 As the Congo crisis still raged, African countries seemed eager to strike a balance between the two blocs at the UN and this could not be compromised. Fears of Soviet penetration in case of an economic breakdown in the Southern Cameroons also influenced the debate. The protection of the territory against communism at a time when a number of UPC militants remained active was a distinct priority497 – and at least as important was the risk that Soviet penetration in the Southern Cameroons would pose to Nigeria.498 Officials in London and diplomats in Africa voiced the same concerns. At the meeting of British representatives in West and Equatorial Africa in mid-May, Andrew Cohen pointed out that Britain should provide more financial assistance to ensure that Africa remained friendly to Western interests. Arthur Snelling, the High Commissioner in Accra, underlined that Ghana was a case in point: ‘Russia was looking for a toe-hole in the former United Kingdom territories of Africa and was prepared to spend very large sums on Ghana’s development’.499 Lord Head, the High Commissioner in Lagos, concurred: British ‘aid and information efforts were on a shoe-string basis and lacked urgency and drive. [The British] were engaged in a most important struggle with totally inadequate

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weapons’. As the British Ambassador in Mali concluded, Britain was ‘engaged in a defensive war and had to fight it on ground of the enemy’s choosing’.500 Ending preference abruptly in the Southern Cameroons would be in complete contradiction with these stated objectives. Concerns that termination would be read as resentment against the Cameroonian plebiscite choice were heightened by the conflict between Britain and Cameroun over the results in the Northern Cameroons. In many ways, tensions between the two states were an argument for extending Commonwealth preference beyond 30 September 1961. In Cameroun, official and popular actions came together on 1 June 1961, as the Northern Cameroons joined the Nigerian Federation and Cameroun went into an official day of mourning. UN Resolution 1608 (XV) of 21 April 1961 had confirmed the plebiscite results and Camerounian leaders were determined to show their disapproval. Following a cabinet decision, all diplomatic missions were sent clear instructions: all flags were to be flown at half-mast; no public or private activity was to take place before 12 p.m. (without wages and salaries being affected) and all religious communities were to organise a service between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.; information bulletins were to be broadcast on the radio, which would play no music; finally, there were to be no ‘public demonstrations, mass movements, parades or gatherings, nor speeches or declarations’.501 The day before, Ahidjo had mourned the ‘amputation’ of a great Cameroonian nation, lamenting the ‘empty space’ that Northern Cameroonians, who were and ‘should remain Cameroonian in their hearts’, had left but would one day occupy.502 As the Monrovia Conference met in June, Britain’s political difficulties over racial segregation in Southern Africa were also seized upon by the Cameroonians. Ahidjo, Senegal’s President, Léopold Sédar Senghor reported to the British, had shown himself bitterly anti-British throughout, and at one point demanded that the Conference should condemn British policy in the Rhodesias, on the ground that Her Majesty’s Government intended to retain colonial rule and racial discrimination by denying the African majority equal political rights with the white minority503. Although the British had initially thought that distance between Cameroun and Southern Africa would keep tensions low, they were aware of the strength of anti-colonial and anti-racist feelings in Cameroun.504 It was therefore little surprising that Ahidjo should bring the issue to the fore and Senghor, who was eager to develop strong relations with the British and present Senegal as a lead player in African politics, might have had his own reasons for

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advertising Cameroonian attacks. Nevertheless, the timing cannot go unnoticed and opposition over the Northern Cameroons was unlikely to soften Cameroon’s attitude towards Britain. Camerounian leaders had seemed anxious in 1959 ‘not to antagonise Nigeria’ and had expressed the wish that ‘some form of alliance’ might even serve as protection ‘against the future manoeuvre of other West African states such as Guinea and Ghana’.505 Yet the plebiscites altered the situation dramatically. While necessary steps were being taken to plan reunification with the Southern Cameroons, Cameroon’s national unity was being built on the perceived treachery of Britain and Nigeria, condoned by the UN, and an imagined future reunion with the Northern Cameroons. British and Nigerian diplomats in Yaoundé consequently joined forces against Presidential orders. Okala had ominously warned that ‘the Camerounian government would take a very grave view if missions did not comply’506 and that ‘in the absence of a flag the general public could not be expected to know that the premises in question were diplomatic premises and might resort to violence’.507 Yet both the British and the Nigerians refused to fly a flag at all. Cameroun’s silent mourning was met with equally silent disobedience. No violence occurred, but Cameroun’s suspicions of an AngloNigerian plot and Britain’s resentment at being stigmatised were mutually reinforced by the incident. Sour relations between Cameroun and Nigeria were therefore a source of concern for British diplomats in Francophone Africa. Cameroun was identified by the British Embassy in Dakar as the one Francophone state that showed open hostility to Nigeria and risked compromising all regional cooperation in West and Central Africa and, by extension, British interests in the area.508 French correspondence shows that British concerns were entirely justified. During the summer of 1961, Camerounian diplomats in Nigeria were urging France to set up an Embassy in Lagos, which they considered a useful move to ‘counterbalance the British influence which play[ed] against the interests of the French-speaking African States’.509 In Cameroun itself, the British Ambassador believed that only strong British support for national construction and increased possibilities for cooperation with Nigeria would sway Camerounian prejudice.510 Ending preference would therefore have damaged relations lastingly. In October 1961, the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund gave a gift of £575,000 to the Southern Cameroons and ceded a number of installations, including several military barracks.511 As far as imperial preference was concerned, the Colonial Office requested that it be limited to three years, that quotas be established and that Britain had the right to end the agreement at will in order to guarantee ‘(1) [Britain’s] own trading rights;

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(2) a change in banana markets [and] (3) political events in the Cameroon which could produce a neo-communist government’.512 The Board of Trade shared these views513 and after it was decided on 3 July to extend imperial preference in the Southern Cameroons until 30 September 1962, Reginald Maudling emphasised that it would be ‘a stopgap measure only’.514 Only the Foreign Office seemed prepared to look beyond a single-year extension, saying that ‘the whole situation [would] be properly studied with a view to continuing preference for some time’515 after 30 September 1962. Section 12 of the Import Duties Act enabled customs to reject specific Goods if their origin seemed dubious516 and section 2(5) allowed the British government to terminate preference at its discretion.517 However, Customs and Excise were concerned over the lack of control over the Southern Cameroons/Cameroun border and worried that produce from the ex-French territory might illegally benefit from imperial preference.518 Imperial preference would be extended, but temporarily, and British customs would be as vigilant as possible to prevent Cameroon from getting the best of both worlds, while British EEC membership and association for Commonwealth members were still pending. The 1961 constitution ensured that the economy, finance, justice, foreign affairs and culture rested firmly with the federal centre. As J-F. Bayart demonstrated, West Cameroon was able to deal directly with foreign missions on a number of technical matters until 1967, but hopes for independent international relations had been quashed early on in the post-plebiscite talks and the Yaoundé government remained the ultimate decision maker.519 Ahidjo was in fact anxious that the international community should be in no doubt that the federal government and Ahidjo himself were at the heart of foreign policy. The President’s wide-ranging powers in international affairs were inscribed in the 1961 constitution, and essentially confirmed in the 1972 constitution which transformed the federation into a united Republic. President Ahidjo was head of the armed forces, in charge of accrediting ambassadors and special envoys, initiating, maintaining and breaking diplomatic relations, negotiating and even ratifying international treaties520 – parliamentary control over foreign affairs remained subaltern, and Ahidjo himself declared publicly in 1963 that he had ‘the power to adopt, sign and enforce’ the OAU Charter without parliamentary approval.521 No changes were made to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which Ahidjo himself had headed until May 1960 and which decree 60/9 of 19 January 1960 had structured around European and African affairs, UN and US affairs, and administrative and social affairs.522 Its later reorganisation through decree 65/DF/349 of 5 August 1965 – political affairs, economic and technical affairs, administrative and cultural affairs, protocol – in fact further strengthened the President’s pivotal role.523

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The French Ambassador in Yaoundé acknowledged in June 1972 that ‘Cameroon’s foreign policy was entirely in the hands of President Ahidjo himself’.524 Narcisse Mouelle Kombi compares Cameroonian diplomats to the President’s ‘personal representatives’525 and I. W. Zartman defines African foreign ministers as ‘a department head, an adviser, and an administrative assistant’.526 After Foreign Affairs Minister William Eteki Mboumoua was dismissed by President Paul Biya in 1988 over disagreements on the Middle East, he claimed that African foreign ministers faced a stark alternative: ‘create nothing and execute; take initiatives and be frustrated’.527 The influence of West Cameroonians was further curtailed as only limited access to international decision making was made possible. Within the ministry, Nzo Ekangaki was made Deputy Minister in February 1962, followed by Bernard Fonlon in July 1964,528 while abroad, Martin Epie was appointed Ambassador in London, where he remained until 1965.529 In L.-M. Nkoum-Me-Ntseny’s words, reunification had been ‘a top-down construction’,530 and the marginalisation of the people, as J-F. Médard demonstrated, was later reinforced by the rise of the single party, depriving the people of votes to exchange against favours, building a clientelist state on ‘the elite or the would-be elite’.531 The British were fully aware of the general lack of information among voters. In the House of Commons, Conservative MP John Tilney had raised the issue in March 1959 and the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, had concurred that plebiscites should not be held until voters were fully informed of the implications of their choice.532 Yet in July, the Colonial Office was warned that the situation on the ground was hardly promising: ‘The electorate’s largely illiterate and unsophisticated . . . . There is no publicity machinery in the Southern Cameroons that would be effective. There is no organization that can prepare leaflets and publicity material save of the simplest kind. There are no cinema-vans or vehicles with public-address equipment. All will have to be brought in from outside’.533 For the 1961 plebiscites, information was in effect given to the voters by political parties,535 giving way to conflicts between local politics and the question at stake. Following the defeat of the Nigerian option it had campaigned for, the CPNC launched a series of attacks against the KNDP for having blocked popular access to information. Violence and coercion, it claimed, had ‘prevent[ed] illiterate masses and their Party supporters from attending’ information talks, and ‘the public from knowing the implications of the two alternatives’.535 – particularly in Foncha’s stronghold, around Ndop, Bafreng and Bafut. By March, British officials had ruled out the possibility of adding up total results, which they believed would have been contrary to UN wishes, and the option of letting each constituency join the territory they had voted for, which would have turned borders into a maze.536 Yet between

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February and August, a number of local elite petitioned the UN and the British Government in an attempt to reverse the plebiscite results. People in Modelle protested they had been told it was a choice between Nigeria or separate independence and had voted ‘very ignorantly and also under intimedations [sic]’.537 The same complaints were voiced in Aghem,538 Esimbi539 and Wum.540 Petitions from chiefs accused political parties of gross manipulations while other petitions blamed traditional authorities themselves for putting pressure on voters.541 As Mbile recalls, politicians failed to encourage the people to listen to UN information officers and consequently, ‘most Southern Cameroonians voted either for the green box [Nigeria] or the white one [Cameroun] more from what their tribal leaders said, than from their pure understanding of the question’.542 The petitions that were sent to the UN after the plebiscites clearly signal that the local elite, including the traditional chiefs, coordinated the protests. Yet evidence also suggests that they were more generally representative and a large number of people must have felt apprehension at the prospect of reunification. This was confirmed by the celebrations organised for reunification, when, the British believed, popular demonstrations remained more low-key than could have been hoped. Crowds had gathered at the airport and on the Buea road, but ‘the traditional palm and flower decorations were conspicuously absent and there was little show of enthusiasm, the tone was one of silent acceptance rather than of welcome or jubilation’.543 According to the British, this was partly due to poor planning by the KNDP but it did echo the feelings voiced in the petitions, the physical and cultural distance that still separated what were now West and East Cameroon. At the official level however, Ahidjo demonstrated both his determination to confirm his ascendancy and his ability to do so. Ceremonies to celebrate reunification and the departure of the British were most carefully planned and the Head of State intended to use the occasion to demonstrate his authority.544 On 1 October, the President arrived in Buea on the stroke of midnight – and would in fact have got there earlier had the British commissioner not objected.545 His main objective, in the eyes of the British, was to demonstrate that he was the recipient of Cameroonian sovereignty546 and ‘divert limelight from Foncha’.547 The whole affair was planned for ‘psychological reasons’ – and acted out very successfully. The federal President, rather than the local politicians, was the core of the reunified state. Internationally, diplomacy between January 1960 and October 1961 left British officials with the distinct conviction that any partnership would always be second to Franco-Camerounian links. On 6 December 1961, at the end of her tour of West Africa, Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Dakar, where she was met by Senegal’s poet–president, Léopold

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Sédar Senghor. This was the British Monarch’s first visit to Francophone Africa548 and recently reunified Cameroon had not been considered a privileged destination for the occasion. Two years before, Senghor had urged the French to ‘convert the Community into a Commonwealth à la française’.549 By contrast, Cameroun’s emerging diplomacy varied to show alternately tempered friendship, indifference, mild resentment and open hostility towards Britain. In other words, Cameroon seemed to most British officials to be both changing and unpredictable, and the dynamics of the federal state were likely to test British foreign policy choices.

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CHAPTER 2 OUT OF COMMONWEALTH DYNA MICS: CA MEROON’S R ETR EAT FROM BR ITAIN’S INTER NATIONAL LEGACY

Federal harmonisation at a time of uncontested French influence In January 1962, the French Ambassador in Yaoundé predicted that nationbuilding in Cameroon would lead to ‘the implementation of the language, administrative methods and economic structures of the former Republic of Cameroon in West Cameroon’.1 Six months later, the French Consul in Buea similarly remarked that an ex-French territory was undoubtedly about to ‘absorb’2 an ex-British territory. As Victor Le Vine has demonstrated, harmonisation throughout the Federation was primarily carried out ‘by absorption, much more than . . . by persuasion’, ‘through the processes of state-building and not nation-building’, with ‘stable administrative and economic institutions . . . rather than the development of a mass base of popular support’.3 In the first few years of reunification, public celebrations and ceremonies indeed demonstrated the challenges of nation-building. Unsurprisingly, 1 October mattered more to West Cameroonians than 1 January did,4 and this was not lost on the federal authorities. Celebrations held on 1 October in Buea were presided over by Ahidjo himself, taking West Cameroon into the core of Cameroonian life. Yet as British diplomats noted,5 his presence served as much to assert his authority over the whole of Cameroon as to establish some balance between the two federated states. Commemorations for Independence Day still celebrated 1 January 1960, a date which only really resonated for East Cameroonians and evoked a

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period of great uncertainty in Southern Cameroonian politics. The public and official presentation of Cameroonian history thus strengthened the weight of East Cameroon, constructed into the original birthplace of the Cameroonian state and nation.6 The greater symbolic supremacy given to the East buttressed the harmonisation of politics and the economy within the Federation along the Francophone model. In his address to the nation on 2 January 1962, looking back on 1960 as the year of independence and 1961 as the year of reunification, Ahidjo claimed that ‘political and psychological unity had been accomplished’, leaving the ‘fusions of the two economic systems’ as the main task.7 A few days later, the French Ambassador underlined that the gulf that still separated East and West Cameroon made daily federal administration extremely cumbersome and represented a serious threat ‘for national unity in the event of a crisis’.8 The emphasis on economic integration, however, was absolutely right. As institutions and ways of life were significantly modified after January 1962 along Eastern lines, the federal State was better able to exert its influence on popular interpretations of reunification. At the state level, distinct traditions remained beyond reunification. In West Cameroon, the House of Chiefs, which had been part of the British system of indirect rule, was preserved after reunification. West Cameroon’s Parliament therefore consisted of an Assembly and the House of Chiefs whereas there was only one Assembly in East Cameroon.9 At the federal level however, distinctions played against West Cameroon. With one representative in the Federal Assembly for every 80,000 citizens, West Cameroon had far fewer Members than the bigger and more populated East Cameroon – ten out of 50. Decree n°61-DF-15 (20 December 1961) also divided Cameroon into six regions, with a federal inspector ‘appointed to the post by the president and directly responsible to him [and] authorized to use the armed forces, gendarmes and police to reinforce his authority if he deemed such action necessary’.10 Security forces were also harmonised and again, practices in East Cameroon prevailed, distilling suspicion and fears in West Cameroon. Prisons came under federal authority and even before the police forces were fully federalised at the turn of the 1970s,11 the West Cameroonian police had found its jurisdiction ‘restricted to a few miles from urban centres, while the gendarmerie ha[d] taken over full police work and a special CID organisation connected with the courts ha[d] been formed’.12 Common law remained in place in West Cameroon but was excluded in the organisation of university degrees in law and economics through decree n°62-DF-211 (16 June 1962). Most police, gendarmes and army troops were French speakers, making communication with the population difficult. It also seems that forces from the East resorted more frequently to ‘heavy-handed methods’13 and made their presence seen, not

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simply felt. West Cameroonians refused to enter the Federal Assembly for its very first session on 24 April 1962, when they noticed armed guards at the entrance.14 This session was in fact particularly important because opposition parties in East Cameroon for their part boycotted it, leaving the floor to Ahidjo’s party. Following an open letter on 23 June 1962, asking Ahidjo to ‘conduct himself as an impartial arbiter and not as a partisan’,15 Charles Okala, Théodore Mayi-Matip, André-Marie Mbida and Dr Bebey Eyidi were arrested on subversion charges. Under decree n°62/OF/18 (12 March 1962), they were imprisoned for ‘inciting hatred against the Government and public authority, inciting conflict between ethnic and religious communities and disseminating news prejudicial to public authorities’.16 Political harmonisation was also facilitated through the relations between the Federal President and Vice President. Foncha expressed the wish to form a national coordination committee with the Union camerounaise on 27 April 1962 and Ahidjo declared in July that the Union camerounaise was indeed the only real national party in the country.17 By March 1963, British diplomats were convinced that Foncha would not stand against Ahidjo in the forthcoming Presidential elections: although as a Christian he would stand a strong chance in the South, he felt both that the majority of the voters would be Eastern Cameroonians and bound to vote for an Eastern Cameroonian, and that challenging Ahidjo was politically unwise.18 Financial harmonisation within the federation was used to launch a popular campaign to publicise the new national framework, with the support of the Minister in charge of federal finances at the Presidency, Charles Onana Awana. In April 1962, Nigerian currency, which had remained legal tender in West Cameroon and would continue to be used until all stocks disappeared, was officially replaced by the CFA franc. Posters advertising ‘One country, one flag, soon one currency’ were printed and teams of information officers concentrated their efforts on remote villages. Schoolchildren were also included in bolstering national identity, with conversion tables printed on the cover of new exercise books.19 On a journey to Bamenda in the Southern Cameroons before reunification, one US diplomat remembers taking over from his Camerounian chauffeur who found it impossible to drive on the left and wondered whether they had not in fact left Africa.20 Driving on the right was now being introduced in West Cameroon21 and unification was becoming a reality of daily life. Admittedly, as the British noted, changes had a lesser impact in the more remote areas but even then, indifference or mild satisfaction – with ‘the armed and occasionally rough gendarmerie prov[ing] of more use, in some cases, than the police’ – prevailed over hostility. Cameroonian politicians,22 French23 and British24 diplomats all emphasised the importance of these everyday-life changes on mentalities in the Federation, driving harmonisation on the Eastern model.

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Economically, the ability of West Cameroon to assert itself in the federation was limited by its weaker development, its large financial deficit25 and its reliance on federal subventions26 – up to 80 per cent in 196827. This, as the British Consul in Buea emphasised, meant that West Cameroon had to wait for federal budgets to be announced before making its own plans and that long-term planning was therefore severely restricted.28 French diplomats also underlined that cooperation projects in West Cameroon often suffered delays in Yaoundé.29 Reunification led to a rise in prices in West Cameroon,30 which further aggravated disparities between the two federated states. In early 1963, French diplomats still referred to West Cameroon as ‘Victorian’31 and the British described it as a ‘primitive and backward’ territory.32 The lack of infrastructure was particularly acute, both inland and in the ports of Bota and Tiko, hindering trade.33 During the ceremonies for the third anniversary of reunification in Buea, the low level of popular attendance contrasted with the lavish pomp displayed by Ahidjo’s federal delegation which exacerbated, the SGAAM told de Gaulle, feelings of inferiority among West Cameroonians.34 British and French diplomats35 were keenly aware of the tensions which stereotypical portrayals of ‘Easterners’ and ‘Westerners’ nurtured and which undermined national unity. The elite in East Cameroon, the First Secretary at the British Embassy in Yaoundé, Colin McGurk, reported from Buea, simply considered that ‘[they] were the federation’36 and the French Ambassador partly attributed the superior attitude of East Cameroonians to their conviction that French rule had given them the better means of governing, through widespread education and economic development. To British diplomats posted in Cameroon, many senior government officials were ‘often, in effect, Frenchmen with black skins’.37 Three years later, Lucian Heichler, the Commercial Attaché in the US Embassy, similarly described Cameroonian senior civil servants as ‘de facto black Frenchmen’, often recently returned from France and ‘more chauvinistically French than the French’.38 This imbalance was in fact aggravated by the contrast between a pervasive French presence and a much more restricted British presence. Admittedly, not all Britons left after reunification. A number of officials occupied ‘key administrative posts [while] British firms controlled over 70 per cent of the production’39 and took advantage of the extension of imperial preference to assert their domination. Britain’s development assistance to West Cameroon was partly channelled through the CDC and Camdev. As managerial positions held by Nigerian or British personnel were progressively handed over to Cameroonians,40 Camdev remained a source of valuable social cover and promotion in West Cameroon, providing ‘housing, medical services and educational and recreational facilities’,41 as well as a number of scholarships tenable in English-speaking countries.42 However, British officials were

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a rather limited group, who worked at the state rather than federal level and had decided to stay out of personal attachment to the territory rather than as the result of London-based pressure.43 The British themselves acknowledged that their assistance to West Cameroon was limited. Conversely, the federal services, largely subsidised by France, counted many French citizens.44 As the British consul in Buea underlined in March 1963: In East Cameroon the cultural influence of France is supreme, and jealously guarded. French advisers hold influential positions in nearly every federal ministry. According to one particularly forthcoming French adviser in the presidency, the French Embassy are too prone to turn to the conseillers techniques to solve their problems instead of tackling the Cameroonians direct.45 Both British and French reports on federal relations acknowledge that French presence in the federal services in Yaoundé strengthened Ahidjo authority over Cameroon and encouraged an Eastern-led harmonisation, which in turn encouraged French rather than British assistance.46 The federal inspector was perceived as a vital force driving Yaoundé’s predominance and favouring French businessmen and counsellors over other expatriates. Until 1974, when a French postal strike forced a reorganisation of the system, all airmail to and from Cameroon was sorted in Paris.47 Officials from the French Treasury were involved in aligning finances in West Cameroon on East Cameroon and supported Yaoundé in overcoming local resistance in the first three years of reunification. Quai d’Orsay–FO conversations in January 1963 revealed that while the French sought to retain a ‘guiding hand’ in Africa – albeit one that would progressively weaken as new generations of African and French officials took control – Britain was less involved in policy-making in its former territories.48 By 1965, a Frenchman had been given the task of drafting the development plan for West Cameroon.49 Britain, the French thought barely three months after reunification, had no wish to devote important resources to maintaining its influence in West Cameroon.50 In fact, the French Consul in Buea was struck by the sizeable presence of non-British foreigners in the local administration.51 At a time when ‘France and Britain transformed their colonial development apparatus into a foreign aid system’,52 the French knew they were key actors in the evolutions of the Cameroonian federation. The French Government and administration were determined to maintain strong links with East Cameroon and develop greater presence in West Cameroon. West Cameroon’s leading politicians were very much aware of the imbalanced involvement of the two European powers, Foncha and Fonlon recurrently asking the British for

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greater assistance, emphasising the extent of France’s economic contribution in East Cameroon. This, according to the French ambassador, credited France with a good reputation in the whole of Cameroon.53 In reality, it also gave rise to grave concerns about national balance in the Federation and Fonlon noted that West Cameroon’s heritage was endangered by the influence of the French, ‘thanks to their colonial cultural policy, thanks to their chummy attitude to the blacks, thanks to their vast economic interests, thanks to their numerous physical presence, [which was] very strong – and waxing stronger’.54 Members of the Buea Government blamed Britain for leaving ‘the territory without adequate roads, electric power or water supplies’,55 while concentrating on Nigeria and leaving West Cameroon isolated between two stronger territories. While the French appreciated the favourable comparison, cordial FrancoBritish relations were defined as a fundamental tenet of French policy and the French consul in Buea was advised by his Ambassador in Yaoundé ‘to avoid any statement or stand that would lead the British to believe that [the French] saw the referendum of 11 February as a French victory over Britain or that [the French] were encouraging the Yaoundé Government to delete all traces of British influence’.56 Good relations with the British Consulate were therefore essential. The Consul was also told that he, rather than the French agents from the Coopération, should be the main interlocutor for both foreign diplomats and Cameroonian politicians. However, it transpired that federal harmonisation on the Eastern model, seen by the Ambassador as ‘the determination of the Cameroonian government to allow the former British zone to benefit from the result of forty years of French administration’, was not only to be welcomed but actively encouraged. Among West Cameroonians, Vice President Foncha was singled out as the man who might have some influence on foreign-policy decisions and with whom regular contact should be sought. More generally, the Consul was asked to promote a positive image of French colonisation and decolonisation, emphasising developmental assistance both during and after empire as well as the rapidity of the transfers of power in 1960. The French Ambassador actually noted with obvious pleasure that the relatively greater economic power of East Cameroon had convinced some West Cameroonians that French rule had been better than British rule57 – overlooking distinctions in political development in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, the disintegration of the Central African Federation and the increasing radicalisation of white politics in Rhodesia, French arguments were an obvious criticism of British decolonisation in subSaharan Africa – or at least an unfavourable comparison.58 Close links were also sought with the federal civil servants posted to West Cameroon since, the Ambassador admitted, ‘the objectives that the

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Government ha[d] assigned to them [favoured] the expansion of French influence’.59 Although the Consul was advised not to interfere in conflicts between the federal and the local authorities, he was equally told that the ‘support he might be led to give [the federal agents] should always be discreet and should not appear likely to compromise them’.60 Finally, potential threats to French influence were to be monitored: diplomatic and commercial US and Nigerian movements were to be watched closely. The call seems to have been heeded, even though there was in fact little intention on the part of the USA to become closely involved in Cameroon: US diplomats thought it highly unlikely that Cameroon would fall prey to any Communist influence61 and considered that they ‘had neither the personnel nor the money to try to compete with the French[:] [n]obody in [Washington] wanted to supplant the French’.62 They reported that ‘very definite signs of [French] paranoia’ persisted, even though they ‘went out of [their] way’ to convince the French that they had no adverse intentions and ‘[d]on’t disturb them, don’t disturb them’63 seems to have been the motto. French financial and commercial presence in East Cameroon partly drove economic harmonisation in the Federation and scholars have demonstrated the role of French politicians, diplomats and businessmen in this respect. What needs to be emphasised further is the influence of French policies and Franco-Cameroonian relations on British policies in Cameroon and in the region more generally. Despite Ahidjo’s determination to reduce Cameroon’s dependence on external assistance,64 France’s dominance over markets, its budgetary aid and its assistance in equipment and personnel remained strong. For British policymakers, this meant that the Federation was primarily seen as a French partner, part of de Gaulle’s ‘chasse gardée’65 that the British were so aware of. During the ceremonies for the first anniversary of reunification in Buea, the military parade to the tune of La Madelon and La Marche de la 2ème DB (Leclerc’s division during the Second World War) accompanied by the use of French-built Broussards for the air show left the British in little doubt regarding France’s dominance.66 France’s average annual contribution in Cameroon stood at £18 million, divided into about £5.5 million for ‘the preferential margin paid for Cameroonian agricultural products[,] £3 million [for] direct budgetary aid, £4.4 million [for] development aid in the form of capital grants and loans, £2.5 million [for] military aid and £2.5 million [for] technical personnel and scholarships’.67 In April 1963, the British Ambassador in Yaoundé emphasised Cameroon’s dependence on France for trade and technical assistance.68 Indeed, France supplie[d] 58% of East Cameroonian imports and t[ook] 62% of her exports. Of the latter, 75% of East Cameroonian coffee exports

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(worth £7.4 million) [went] to France, 30% of cocoa exports (worth £10.3 million), 90% of aluminium exports (worth £7 million), 100% of banana exports, 85% of cotton, 80% of groundnuts, 75% of palm products, 25% of timber and 25% of rubber. Cameroonian coffee, bananas and groundnuts [were] bought by France at up to 50% above world prices. The preferential margin on cocoa, timber, and cotton [was] smaller69 but detracted little from France’s overall domination, which was reinforced by high agricultural subsidies and high exchange rates for the CFA franc. Despite the harmonisation of duties, France remained Cameroon’s primary EEC partner – East Cameroon imports from other EEC countries had only increased ‘from £2.6 million in 1958 to £3.5 million in 1962, out of a total of £36.4 million’, partly because imports from the franc zone were ‘exempt from import licensing and exchange control regulations’, giving France a strong comparative advantage in the bureaucratic meanders of transactions. The EDF contributed to development programmes in Cameroon, but this in turn favoured France and French firms, which had won more than 70 per cent of the contracts by 196370 and would on average win over 40 per cent of EDF projects in the first three programmes.71 Moreover, ‘local tastes, the franc zone arrangements and the fact that local markets are too small to attract the Five’72 gave France a considerable head-start in the region. While USAID, for instance, worked in cooperation with the EDF in building the Trans-Cameroon Railway, US officials were acutely aware ‘from the first that the role of the United States in the Cameroon . . . was really to be second fiddle to the French’.73 Scott Behoteguy, the Director of the USAID mission in 1961–63 believes that US presence led the French to increase their own programmes and contribution but acknowledges that it was never a US intention to compete with France in Cameroon. Although France’s stranglehold over Euro-African relations was progressively eroded,74 its influence remained preponderant75 and the preservation of good inter-European relations prevailed over African considerations among its European partners.76 By 1968, Cameroon applied a 17 per cent preference to EEC imports and France benefited from around 75 per cent of the subsequent commercial advantage.77 As scholars have demonstrated, French aid was ‘a powerful tool to oblige African states to spend the “aid” money on French equipment, goods and contracts with French firms, especially construction and public work firms’78 while the FAC and the CCE were ‘conduits for the transfer of French public capital to the beneficiary African state agencies, and from the latter to the French firms operating in these countries’.79 France, the British

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Ambassador noted, put ‘a lot of money into Cameroon and took a lot out’: in 1961, ‘private transfers from Cameroon to France totalled 17,800 million francs CFA (£25.8 million) and showed a surplus over transfers in the opposite direction of 14,700 million francs CFA (£21.3 million)’. Private foreign actors were thus favoured over the local population80 and contributed to the growth of Françafrique, ‘a nebulous circle of economic, political and military actors, in France and in Africa, organised into networks and lobbies and polarised on the monopolization of two sources of rent: raw materials and public development aid’.81 Thanks to the system, the British Ambassador concluded, ‘French money [came] in in the form of public funds and [went] out in private savings’.82 The debate over the extension or termination of imperial preference to West Cameroon brought all this to a head.

Neither Foreign nor Commonwealth: the long road to ending imperial preference Harmonisation in the Federation should also be read in the context of the political and economic partnerships which emerged at the regional and international levels between 1962 and 1964. Although political discourse transformed Cameroon into the microcosm of African unity, a number of practical constraints and political imperatives initially placed the Federation into primarily Francophone circles. Links with the Commonwealth remained scarce, even after reunification. Canada, Australia and New Zealand had sent representatives to Cameroun’s independence celebrations and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister visited Yaoundé but no real interest was shown.83 There were signs in 1962 that relations with India might blossom84 and in 196585 that trade and development partnerships might be established. But on the whole, IndoAfrican relations remained fairly low-key, and British Ambassadors across Francophone Africa noted the limits which India’s modest possibilities for economic assistance placed on its ‘anti-colonial struggle’.86 Cameroon entertained limited links with the African Commonwealth: diplomatic relations were established with the Gambia when it became independent in 1965 but relations with Tanzania, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Kenya only started in 1972, 1973, 1976 and 1977 respectively.87 Relations between non-Commonwealth West Africa and Commonwealth East Africa remained particularly distant, save for the Ivorian Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam. Distance and cost rather than antagonism accounted for the situation,88 but it still meant that ex-colonial divisions remained entrenched. The first Cameroun Republic essentially centred its diplomatic relations on ex-French or Francophone states in Africa. In 1960, contacts had

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been made with Upper Volta, Mauritania, Chad and Togo; Niger set up an Embassy in Yaoundé, and Cameroon did so in the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Morocco, the CAR, Senegal and the Congo, all of which were represented in Yaoundé. Diplomatic relations were also established with Tunisia in 1961 and Algeria in 1964. Ahidjo’s role as a mediator between Senegal and French Sudan in 1960 was facilitated by the presence of a Sudanese in his private office.89 Ahidjo, the British Ambassador had reported in August 1960, favoured ‘the reconstitution of the former French West and Equatorial Africas and the creation of an organisation composed of African foreign ministers and responsible for studying common social and economic problems’.90 Cameroon was in effect a full and active member of the UAM, which initially emerged in late 1960. On 24–26 October 1960 in Abidjan, the Presidents of Cameroun, Ivory Coast, Congo (Brazzaville), Dahomey, Upper Volta, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and the plenipotentiary representatives of Gabon, the CAR and Chad agreed to Consult on international affairs, in the hope of adopting as common a position as possible on key issues.91 The UAM Treaty was in effect drafted the very month the British Cameroons voted in the plebiscites and ratified between 25 and 28 March 1961, following the third Conference of the Brazzaville Heads of State in Yaoundé, which then included the Malagasy Republic. Its Charter was officially adopted at the Antananarivo Summit in September 1961 – again, shortly before reunification – and a number of areas for practical cooperation were determined: the OAMCE, the UAMPT, the Committee for Transport, Air Afrique and the African and Malagasy Union for Defence. In late 1961, Cameroon also joined the Equatorial Customs Union, which had been established between Chad, Gabon, the Congo (Brazzaville) and the CAR in 1959. Admittedly, the emphasis was on economic and technical rather than political considerations and regional groupings were envisaged as a first manageable step towards achieving African unity. In practice however, Cameroon’s French heritage was given rather more prominence than official discourse on reunification implied. Again, it showed the impact of the UN’s decision to allow the French and British mandates in Cameroon to be terminated at different times, as federal diplomatic relations stemmed from the Cameroun Republic’s initial diplomacy. The inclusion of the Cameroonian Federation in French and Francophone circles meant that the extension of imperial preference that had been granted to West Cameroon generated increasing hostility in Commonwealth circles. Fierce opposition to any sort of privileged status came from the West Africa branch of the Conservative Commonwealth Council. Opting out of union with Nigeria should end not only imperial preference but all form

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of Commonwealth-related assistance to the territory, including all investments undertaken by the CDC.92 The need to treat the former Northern and Southern Cameroons equally was also expressed in Cabinet. Cameroon, it was argued, was ‘a member of an entirely different club’ and it ‘obviously seem[ed] unfair to other Commonwealth countries to allow West Cameroon to stay in both the Commonwealth and the EEC preferential areas when no other under-developed African or indeed any other country [was] in the same happy position’.93 Strong opposition also came from the West Indies, whose share of the British banana market faced competition from West Cameroon and whose situation was worsened as combined climactic and economic difficulties in the early 1960s led to a fall in West Indian exports. In February 1962, the Governor of Jamaica, pointing out that ‘the green-boat price of Jamaican bananas reached the lowest point in many years in 1960 and 1961 [while] imports of bananas into the United Kingdom from the Cameroons [were] increased by about one-third’,94 requested imperial preference to West Cameroon to be ended on 30 September 1962. Similar calls came from the Windward Islands Banana Growers’ Association95 and the Acting Administrator of Saint Lucia.96 The dissolution of the West Indian Federation on 31 May 1962 only strengthened the resolve of all the territories involved and Jamaica took the lead in arguing that imperial preference for West Cameroon was causing political damage to the Commonwealth as a group and was detrimental to the livelihood and development plans of the West Indian people. However, British officials were keenly aware that the livelihood and development plans of West Cameroon also depended to a large extent on the extension of imperial preference, at least in the short term. Although Cameroon was an associated territory of the EEC and quotas were extended to the whole country, the FO knew that it made little difference in practice to West Cameroon producers, as there was no increase in the quotas themselves.97 Ahidjo had failed to secure preferential treatment for West Cameroon from the French in late 1961 and reports came from the British Embassy in Paris that there was no hope of any immediate change.98 As the British application to the EEC remained under consideration, Quai d’Orsay officials encouraged their FO counterpart in early 1962 to extend imperial preference further to provide the Cameroonian government a longer breathing space.99 British ministers themselves acknowledged that the West Cameroon economy was ‘bleak’ and ‘very much dependent on sales to the British market’:100 at a time when no increase in assistance was planned, it was argued that ending imperial preference would damage both Britain’s reputation and West Cameroon’s economy.101 In parallel, British investors were also likely to be affected by the end of imperial preference. Although the CDC no

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longer invested directly into new projects, it continued to support Camdev,102 employed many British nationals in West Cameroon103 and the British Treasury in effect benefited from the Corporation’s profits.104 CDC officials lobbied in favour of imperial preference105 and Conservative MP J. Tilney warned the Government that uncertainty regarding preference would inevitably damage British commercial interests.106 The Colonial Office therefore repeatedly used CDC interests as an argument in favour of maintaining imperial preference beyond September 1962.107 In parallel, the FO presented a number of strong political arguments in favour of imperial preference. Not all Commonwealth-based arguments played against preference and the FO drew attention constantly to the importance of Nigerian security. The spectre of ‘Communist guerrilla’ warfare in Cameroon meant that financial assistance of all types was crucial.108 By November 1962, after Cameroon had signed a commercial agreement with the Soviet Union and Poland, the British Consul in Buea argued that ending imperial preference ‘could provide the Russians with an economic target of opportunity’,109 a risk simply not worth taking. British diplomats in Cameroon in effect supported imperial preference as a means of preserving British heritage and influence in the country. ‘Don’t write us off’,110 the British Ambassador was told by a West Cameroonian during a reception in February 1962 while in May, Ahidjo himself expressed the hope that the British ‘would not wash [their] hands of West Cameroon’:111 the economy of West Cameroon would suffer tremendously if ‘the most important element of financial support which it had come to expect’112 was to be ended. The British Ambassador warned officials in London that the Cameroonians saw aid ‘as a moral obligation incumbent on the developed, particularly as between former colonies powers and their ex-colonies’.113 The Ambassador was indeed convinced that unless imperial preference was maintained, French influence throughout Cameroon would simply grow exponentially. Reports from the Board of Trade confirmed that the economic and financial dominance of East Cameroon remained strong: the average salary was 40 per cent lower in the West but local and imported goods were only respectively 34 per cent and 19 per cent lower.114 Maintaining imperial preference, the Cameroonians argued, and the British believed, would contribute to break ‘the closed circuit’115 of Cameroon’s commercial relations with the French. Preserving Britain’s reputation at a time when decolonisation had yet to be completed and when international organisations, from the UN to the Commonwealth, were used to scrutinise British policies was a crucial consideration. British officials had been aware of this but diplomatic correspondence reveals that Cameroonian pressure was influential in strengthening FO support for the extension of imperial preference. Personal

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interventions by the Cameroonian President, highlighting the post-imperial responsibilities of Britain and the nation-building constraints of a reunified Cameroon, had a definite impact. In this context, the shadow that the Northern Cameroons case cast over Anglo-Cameroonian relations in the early years of the Federation should not be forgotten. Admittedly, Bétayéné argued that the case at the ICJ should not tarnish bilateral relations,116 that it was ‘a question of principle and interpretation and not a dispute between the two Governments’.117 Yet the British were convinced that the whole affair was ‘political dynamite, [requiring] especially delicate handling’.118 Even after the case ended on 2 December 1963 and the results of the 1961 plebiscites had to be accepted,119 Britain remained the target of official attacks and the denunciation of British treachery one of the founding stones of nation-building – the parallel between the UPC and Britain as the destroyers of Cameroon still pervaded official discourse.120 British diplomats in Yaoundé strongly believed that Cameroonians refused to make any distinction between Nigeria, Ghana and Britain, collectively seen as a distant Commonwealth sphere that opposed non-Anglophone interests.121 Mourning ceremonies for the ex-Northern Cameroons on 1 June 1964 further delineated the gulf between Cameroon and Commonwealth members, as Nigeria shut down its Embassy temporarily while the British and the Canadian Ambassadors had gone away on a mission to enable them to leave the Embassy open but not fly the flag at half-mast – in fact not fly the flag at all given their absence.122 In his Contribution to National Construction, Ahidjo was still outlining ‘the manoeuvres ranging from intimidation and public bullying to all sorts of obstruction, gross falsifications’.123 Despite a few diplomatic incidents and niggling suspicion, the Northern Cameroons case seems to have worked for stronger assistance programmes in favour of the Federation rather than for the ex-British territory. As decolonisation processes evolved in the rest of British Africa, Britain was anxious not to be singled out as a damaging influence on national construction and institution-building in newly independent African countries. The federal centre, in this respect, was singled out as the key player in nation-building. The full weight of political arguments, however, can only be understood in the wider context of Britain’s application to the EEC. Throughout 1962, the main priority for Britain was indeed to secure membership of the EEC and this affected policy decisions on imperial preference for West Cameroon. Many British officials believed that Commonwealth opposition would die out after Britain’s admission into the EEC, which should have favourable economic consequences for a number of Commonwealth territories and the West Indies particularly.124 After the GATT rejected proposals to increase preference for the West Indies on the British markets in early 1962, officials considered that commercial security for the producers would indeed be improved by the

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enlargement of the EEC. Within Whitehall, even the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations argued eventually for strong measures to prevent East Cameroon from using imperial preference but accepted that the scheme should be maintained in West Cameroon until September 1963.125 Britain’s European policies meant that good relations with France and Cameroon were paramount. Both were prospective EEC partners – albeit of a different type – linked together by strong multiform cooperation agreements: disrupting Cameroon ran the risk of upsetting the French and jeopardising Britain’s European credentials. The FO made it quite clear in March 1962: ‘the people who really count here are the French [who] have it in their power to upset everything’ and ending imperial preference was simply ‘unacceptable from the point of view of the Brussels negotiations’.126 The FO was hoping that ‘a general pattern of freer access to the expanded community as a whole for tropical products in general’ might be secured but realised that extreme caution should prevail in dealing with the French and its ex-colonies. In this context, maintaining imperial preference was vital. Ending it would otherwise be taken as ‘a perfect example of British perfidiousness’ and the FO predicted the line the French would take: we had shown ourselves to have no real interest in the problems of independent African territories. The moment a territory had passed out of our sphere of interest we had forthwith washed our hands of it. In doing so we had disregarded entirely the fact that the beneficiary territory had become part of a state which was closely associated with the E.E.C, even though we ourselves were negotiating to join the very same Community.127 Soundings were made in Francophone West Africa but British diplomats were advised that ‘in view, in particular, of French sensitivity, [they] should not repeat not make special enquiries, which could be reported back to the Six and cause them to conclude that [they] were canvassing the associated states on behalf of Commonwealth interests’.128 Convinced that the end of the Algerian war and the progressive assertion of independence in sub-Saharan Africa provided new possibilities for cooperation with the French, the British Ambassador in Paris argued strongly against ‘ignor[ing]’ or ‘bypass[ing] the French over Africa’: for [the British], aspiring Europeans, to pursue a policy of direct contact with the Francophone states without regard to French susceptibilities would be far more reprehensible in their eyes than if the Americans

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did it. We must particularly avoid giving any ground for ever-present French suspicions of an Anglo-Saxon drive to replace their influence in Africa.129 British interests lay in preventing French African policies ‘from sinking further into a purely Francophone rut’ but neither confrontation nor underhand tactics would serve this purpose. In parallel, Britain’s position was influenced by Cameroon’s reasonably positive attitude to Common Market negotiations. In early 1962, the FO was aware that France was urging all its African partners to resist any change in the EEC-Associates relations that would alter the assistance they received.130 The FO was also aware that the African Commonwealth was very critical of the terms of association with the EEC. As the French Ambassador in London would later confirm, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanganyika rejected the principle of reverse preferences, dismissed the potential contribution of an EDF and concentrated their efforts on advocating ‘Trade not aid’.131 On both sources of tensions for Britain’s European policies, the Cameroonians adopted a moderate stance. In April 1962, Jacques Kuoh Moukouri, the Cameroonian Ambassador based in Washington and accredited to Canada, told Marcel Cadieux, the head of the African and Middle Eastern Division, that Cameroon favoured Britain’s entry into the EEC and the extension of association to its ex-territories as a means of ‘bringing about closer contacts between the French and English-speaking African states’.132 The FO in fact saw Cameroon as an ally in convincing the African Commonwealth that EEC plans for association with Africa were not a neo-colonial endeavour.133 Previous British missions to Anglophone Africa – including Conservative MP John Hare to Ghana in June 1961 – had failed to convince leaders that European intentions were not neo-colonialist.134 During their talks with Bétayéné in June 1962, focused on imperial preference, the British conveyed their intentions to bridge the gap between Anglophone and Francophone states in Africa, making a clear parallel with Cameroon’s own nation-building task after reunification.135 Although the British Ambassador in Yaoundé argued that imperial preference gave Britain ‘a strong bargaining lever’136 in the negotiations, France’s domination over the proceedings was clearly felt and derived from two major factors: the much larger amount of aid it provided to African territories generally, and Cameroon specifically; and its subsequent influence on the leaders of the EEC-associated territories. As British diplomats lamented French arrogance in Africa, they found their scope for action limited by the disparity in aid: Colin McGurk reported from Buea that the question, ‘How much aid are you offering?’,137 was a regular French weapon against any complaint

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or criticism. Anglo-Cameroonian talks in June 1962, however, demonstrate both the importance of Cameroon’s special status as a bilingual state and its influence as one of the African states that had asserted the greatest independence from France. Political discourse in Yaoundé, founded on Cameroon as a bridge-builder, did translate into concrete political opportunities in its relations with the ex-trustees. The official press was also used to buttress this image – producing detailed accounts of the potential association of Commonwealth countries with Europe in the course of 1962.138 On 26 June 1962, the Board of Trade accepted the extension of imperial preference until 30 September 1963 and the agreement was renewed the following day.139 For the Board of Trade, this was seen as the last possible extension of an exceptional measure. During a visit to Cameroon in June 1962, British Customs officials were ‘astonished and shocked to find a widespread ignorance, even among officials, of the prohibitions on the movement of such goods as bananas, coffee and cocoa across the internal frontier’.140 Although illiteracy among the population was seen as an aggravating factor, the British attributed these contraventions to the Cameroonian authorities – both state and federal. The Chancellor of the Exchequer reluctantly accepted ‘a strictly temporary continuation of the inclusion of West Cameroon in the Commonwealth preference area’ on the condition that the Customs problem of differentiating goods according to whether they originate in West Cameroon or elsewhere will be eliminated before the extension period runs out; that the whole position will in any case be reviewed immediately if there should be any significant change, e.g. unification of federal services generally, in the set-up of the Cameroons such as would make the risks of abuse altogether unacceptable; and that the Government of the Cameroon Republic will be required to cooperate effectively in ensuring that preference is restricted to West Cameroon goods, and requested to put forward, as a matter of urgency, concrete and constructive proposals to this end.141 In reality, a few days after the new agreement was signed, Britain’s commercial interests in Cameroon were hit by a series of adverse measures142 and hopes that imperial preference would lead to duty exemption for British goods were dashed.143 Unless Britain reacted, the Board of Trade argued, it would lose the confidence of British firms and the respect of its Cameroonian interlocutors. British and Cameroonian Customs therefore signed an agreement on 27 November 1962 to tighten the protection of British interests – greater powers were given to British officials to inspect registers, plantations were kept under closer scrutiny and violations were to be prosecuted more actively.

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Securing a customs agreement which would allow for the prolongation of imperial preference was a vital step, as FO support remained strong. In November 1962, the British Consul in Buea still maintained that Britain’s economic presence and political reputation in Cameroon needed to be supported because its forthcoming EEC membership would make Britain’s ‘economic beachhead in West Cameroon . . . invaluable.’ ‘It would be stupid’, the Consul concluded, ‘to take any action which could destroy it’.144 Two arguments were put forward against ending imperial prefer ence: it would damage Britain’s reputation in Cameroon and it would lead to bad relations with France, as any economic difficulties in Cameroon were likely to lead to pressure for additional French assistance.145 On 13 December 1962, British assistance and imperial preference to West Cameroon were discussed by departments across Whitehall in the context of Common Market negotiations.146 The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food wanted no difference to be made between Cameroon, as a foreign country, and the other Associated Territories but the FO argued forcefully that accession to the EEC should not lead to any downgrading of the preferences then enjoyed by Cameroon. Customs and Excise agreed that although imperial preference as such should cease, duty-free entry would have to be granted ‘to a quota of bananas from the Republic of Cameroun equal to the average of previous exports to the United Kingdom from the ex-British part of the Republic’, as long as France continued to refuse to import West Cameroon bananas. The Colonial Office proposed the duty-free quota to be set at 80,000 tons, with ‘a reduced duty quota for bananas from the remaining AOT’s of the Six covering the quantity which France and Italy [were] prepared to admit from Commonwealth countries which bec[a]me associated’. All other imports would be subject to the full tariff. This, the Colonial Office argued, would put Britain in a position of strength as EEC members would see that Associated Territories received a more favourable treatment than they were prepared to grant Commonwealth countries. Moreover, it would improve relations with the French: Britain’s protection of the Commonwealth West Indies only derived from France’s own protection of its territories there and the French ‘would be relieved’ that duty free quotas from Cameroon were not abruptly ended. The CRO agreed reluctantly, provided Cameroon did not benefit from ‘more favourable treatment than [was] afforded’ to Commonwealth countries. However, on 14 January 1963, President de Gaulle’s veto put a decisive end to Britain’s hopes of EEC membership: Anglo-American relations remained too central a pillar in Britain’s foreign policy and contradicted European construction in the direction favoured by the French. One consequence of the French veto was to transform the balance of power within

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Whitehall on the issue of imperial preference in West Cameroon. The British Ambassador in Dakar seemed willing to use ‘several stout sticks with which to beat general de Gaulle’ and tarnish the French image in Africa. But this, the High Commissioner in Accra argued, would serve little purpose: it would undoubtedly fail to loosen Franco-African relations and would conversely reinforce the African Commonwealth’s perception of the EEC as a neo-colonial institution.147 The French veto, however, did not alter the fundamental position of Whitehall departments on West Cameroon and the FO remained adamant that ending imperial preference would be a political and economic mistake. The veto, officials argued, had dealt a fierce blow to Cameroon by ending hopes that the British market would become part of the Common Market and facilitate their economic transition. Production would have to be diversified – products other than bananas would have to be planted and more varieties of bananas introduced, as the British pointed out that taste in bananas differed between EEC countries.148 Not only did the FO argue for the extension of imperial preference but considered that ‘a phasing out of the preference over three years’149 was the option which would do the least damage to the Cameroonian economy. Officials in London based their views on the reports they had received from British diplomats in Yaoundé and Buea. J.J. Balmain in Buea warned that ‘the impact of termination upon this small and povertystricken country [was] bound to be crippling’.150 Admitting that imperial preference had always been presented as a temporary option, Balmain still argued that the Cameroonians had not been told in September 1962 that this would be the last renewal. If the French veto had come as a shock to Britain, it had also come as a shock to Cameroonians who had expected that ‘the two preferential systems would be merged’151 in a Common Market, solving most difficulties. Ending preference on 30 September 1963 would not only ‘be regarded as a breach of faith’ but lead politicians and the people to ‘regard themselves as the innocent victims of Britain’s resentment with France over the failure of the Common Market negotiations’.152 The FO emphasised that resentment and disappointment would be particularly strong among West Cameroonian politicians, with Foncha and Muna expecting British assistance to contribute to their influence in the federation.153 Discussions occurred at a time of great tension between the Foncha government and British diplomats in West Cameroon. Blundell-Pound and his deputy Jay were dismissed from the government’s official press for mismanagement, a charge that the accused, supported by their Cameroonian employees, denied, but in vain. The incident was reported by the French Consul in Buea, who praised Blundell-Pound and Jay’s personal and professional integrity, as evidence of an increasingly strong anti-British bias

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among Foncha’s entourage.154 A few weeks later, the British General Financial Director, Paterson, who was then eight days away from retirement, was fined and given a one-month prison sentence for having blocked Foncha on a tour of Buea. The accusation, the French believed, was really a political manoeuvre against Paterson’s opposition to federal harmonisation, which caused much hurt to the British community in West Cameroon.155 West Cameroon’s government acted independently in both matters and demonstrated to the British that although their special historical relationship was to the ex-Southern Cameroons, current interests might be more secure with the Federal authorities. West Cameroon’s economic difficulties were squarely attributed to British firms and French diplomats do point to a clear anti-British campaign at the time.156 Elders and Fyffes was accused of imposing Leonean contracts on Cameroonian producers,157 and of seizing the best lands in the Kumba division,158 and Camdev of opposing the Cameroonisation of managerial staff.159 By November 1962, Camdev’s budget was twice as important as that of West Cameroon and the company, which still employed around 250 British senior technicians, controled ten per cent of the production.160 British experts, the French Consul reported, felt very bitter against Foncha’s government, which they considered ‘ungrateful, malicious and acting in bad faith’.161 French diplomats themselves thought that Foncha’s behaviour could greatly prejudice West Cameroon’s chance of seeing imperial preference extended162 after the French veto. Interestingly, Edward Warner, the new British Ambassador, visited West Cameroon for the first time in mid June 1963, at a time when it had become clear that imperial preference would end. His visit was therefore unlikely to change the course of events but his reception no doubt did little to encourage British officials to consider Cameroon as a major partner. As foreign diplomats were invited to the House of Assembly, the French Consul was seated between Mrs Foncha and the Bishop of Buea while a policeman at the door motioned the British ambassador to sit between a casually-dressed representative of the American Peace Corps and the Nigerian consul.163 In reality, Foncha seems to have taken the view that West Cameroon’s bananas would still have access to the British markets without imperial preference – and that new markets would become available, in Switzerland, Germany and the USA particularly.164 Two additional factors might have played a role: the knowledge that imperial preference had always been an exceptional, temporary measure, which was more likely to be stopped now that Cameroon was negotiating new terms of association with an EEC which had just rejected Britain’s application; and the realisation that the British would have to maintain some form of commercial assistance to the country to maintain their reputation as decolonisation in

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the rest of Africa proceeded. In fact, British diplomats in Cameroon reported on Britain’s persistent standing in West Cameroon among the population. McGurk emphasised an ‘eager[ness] to cultivate the acquaintance of members of the English-speaking missions’ and a definite attachment to ‘traditions and practices inherited from Britain, although this [did] not mean that they [were] essentially pro-British’.165 To some extent, past imperial links seemed a defining feature for West Cameroonians: beyond undeniable tensions with the Nigerians, prompt to look on their neighbours ‘rather condescendingly’,166 key bonds remained which helped the West Cameroonians to mark their individuality within the federation. Over the same period, French diplomats mentioned a rising feeling in the British community in West Cameroon that Foncha’s opposition derived from underhand manoeuvres between the French and the Federal authorities,167 notably the Federal Inspector in post there. Resentment at greater levels of French assistance in Cameroon and anger at being shut out of Europe by de Gaulle contributed to rising tensions between the French and the British West of the Mungo. However, the details of French correspondence and evidence from British diplomatic papers show that resentment essentially came from British experts, who were being replaced by Cameroonians of various degrees of competence, and not from the British diplomatic community. Reports of British paranoia against French plots are simply not supported by high-level exchanges between Whitehall departments, or between Whitehall and British posts abroad. There was also a contrast between tensions in Africa itself, Cameroon included, and high-level consultations between the Quai and the FO over the same period, including after de Gaulle’s veto. During a meeting on 30 January 1963, Sir Roger Stevens and Jean-Marie Soutou, in charge of African affairs in their respective administrations, agreed on the need to improve relations in Africa, particularly against ‘[s]ome old Africa hands [who] tended to think that their raison d’être was to limit, as the case might be, British or French influence in Africa’168 and were transforming past tensions into present rivalries between Anglophone and Francophone countries. Obstructive behaviour, both diplomats argued, should be checked and the absence of French diplomatic representation in Nigeria was lamented as a ‘barrier’169 to open relations across West Africa. However, friendly relations between the Quai and the FO failed to translate into concrete policies or more openness in Africa. Back in May 1962, Pierson Dixon, the British Ambassador in Paris, had defined French policy in Africa as a ‘go it alone’ adventure which, ‘despite the obvious common interests, and despite the fact that the Foreign Office and the Quai d’Orsay form appreciations of the African scene that are on the whole strikingly similar’,170 left Britain to work more closely with the USA

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than with the French. This, the Ambassador believed, could be attributed to de Gaulle’s ‘personal conception of France’s role in the world [which] tend[ed] to perpetuate self-reliance rather than nurture the habit of cooperation’ and to the dominance of French commercial lobbies with an interest in Africa, which had so far overcome Cartierist tendencies. Focus within administrations on either French-speaking or English-speaking Africa, with very few officials commanding good knowledge of both, further complicated matters.171 A year later, de Gaulle’s anti-British veto had confirmed to the British Ambassador France’s ‘exclusive and inward looking’172 policies. Negotiations also occurred at a time when British diplomats noted France’s determination ‘to tighten rather than relax [its] grip on the franc zone’173 and Common Market associates, and that the ex-colonial divide ‘had been widened further’174 by de Gaulle’s veto against British EEC membership. British diplomats in Africa also emphasised the desire ‘to keep French Africa as a preserve for French business’ and ‘French cultural imperialism’.175 The resolution of the Algerian war might have given France confidence – a clear feeling of superiority over Britain’s slower retreat from its African Empire emerges from the correspondence. But the progression of the English language and growing Anglo-American cooperation simultaneously made French officials aware of the erosion of their influence.176 Cooperation with the British, particularly in the cultural and commercial fields, was therefore undesirable while the preservation of the West African divisions resulting from French and British colonial traditions was encouraged.177 Only major crises likely to escalate into regional conflicts might lead France and Britain to discuss African affairs in detail and openly – and the Ambassador in fact argued for more exchange of information on arms. Even anti-communism failed to mobilise French cooperation.178 Portraying discussions with the French as ‘a slow and thankless task’, the Ambassador predicted that only a change of government in Paris would open possibilities for greater cooperation. British diplomats across Francophone Africa concurred179 and so did Canadian diplomats. The reports of the Canadian Ambassador in Paris by 1966 centred on de Gaulle as a ‘cavalier encore plus altier’,180 influencing French foreign policy. FO support for the extension of imperial preference therefore rested essentially on British relations with Cameroon rather than on a desire to accommodate the French, with whom there was little hope of securing better cooperation. Renewing imperial preference in West Cameroon would certainly serve Cameroonian interests and therefore improve Anglo-Cameroonian relations. But it would also potentially counter divisive trends in the African region. The reunified state of Cameroon was seen as a particularly important experiment in building bridges across ex-imperial divides, at a time when British diplomats were arguing for greater regional cooperation in West Africa.

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Views at the CRO were markedly different. Officials emphasised that there might be ‘a reduction of existing quantitative restrictions on dollar products which benefit[ed] Jamaica’181 and that ending imperial preference to Cameroon would therefore give Britain ‘a tactical advantage’ in Jamaica. Conversely, FO concerns also rested on fears of open conflict with Cameroon within trade organisations. Ahidjo was perceived as an influential African leader, particularly among Francophone African economic groupings: his opposition to Brazilian plans for a world-trade organisation was extremely valuable and could not be compromised.182 the FO case was backed by British investors in Cameroon. The CDC and Elders and Fyffes saw little opportunity in the EEC market and lobbied the British government for imperial preference to be extended.183 Their schedule coincided with the FO’s prediction that three to four years would be necessary for the economic transition to be made.184 The British Ambassador in Yaoundé admitted that Britain’s commercial prospects in Cameroon were slim, all the more so as ‘the French stranglehold over East Cameroon was being extended to the West’185 but that ending imperial preference would only accelerate this trend. However, the conversion of plantations in West Cameroon had already started – on the Pamol Estate in Bwinga and Lobe 9,600 acres had been given over to rubber and in Bai 400 acres were to be added to the 1,600 acres of rubber. Cadbury and Fry Limited had also increased its 1,200-acre cocoa plantations by 400 acres and plans to plant an extra 120 acres a year had been approved.186 Moreover, in the wake of the veto, the French had extended duty-free entry to their market to all West Cameroon produce on 1 March 1963. The accusation that Britain would be ‘leaving West Cameroon out in the cold’187 was simply no longer valid. Although this was true to some extent, the argument disregarded one of the concerns underlined by the FO: political and economic balance of power between Britain and France played in favour of East rather than West Cameroon and reinforced the harmonisation of the Federation on the Eastern, ex-French model. By April 1963, only the FO continued to make a case for the extension of preference beyond September. The decline in British exports to Cameroon since October 1961 – from £950,000 to £600,000 – was partly attributed to administrative inefficiency,188 which Customs repeatedly emphasised as an argument against prolonging preference. The only longer-term solution to administrative problems, the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated in June 1963, would be to extend preference ‘by legislation to the formerly French East Cameroon’, and this was ‘politically out of the question’.189 The greatest opposition, however, came from Commonwealth interests, both within Whitehall and in the Caribbean. J.P. Gyles, the Jamaican Minister of Agriculture and Lands, told British officials during a visit in March 1963

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that with the end of EEC hopes, a clear distinction had to be drawn between Commonwealth and European ‘clubs’.190 As a strong supporter of the Commonwealth and as ‘the most stable country politically in the Caribbean area’,191 Jamaica had to be given priority in Britain’s international relations. The Caribbean Commonwealth was aware of strong competition from other producers, particularly Ecuador, and feared potential decisions taken in the GATT towards liberalising trade. A surplus of bananas in 1962–63 had led to a dramatic fall in prices –from an average of £60–70 per ton to just over £45 – and Jamaican reserves had been considerably depleted. In effect, Gyles hoped that the end of imperial preference would enable West Indian production to replace West Cameroon’s exports and provide a wider outlet for a growing production. Prolonging imperial preference, he warned, would lead to serious political and social consequences in key Commonwealth partners.192 Back in 1961, British officials had told the Southern Cameroonians that reunification ‘had left no trace of ill will’193 or ‘resentment’194 and that privileged links with Britain would be preserved.195 There may not have been any emotional reaction to the Southern Cameroons’ decision but the political reality was that Cameroon was not in the Commonwealth: its historical links with Britain meant that it would not be treated as a completely foreign country but it could not benefit from the advantages that the Commonwealth enjoyed. As discussions on imperial preference continued, Cameroon strengthened its relations with other European countries, particularly with West Germany. On 28 January 1963, agreements for trade, economic and technical cooperation, and the promotion of investments were signed; DM 40 million were given as financial assistance. Ahidjo made an official visit to West Germany at the end of April 1963 – and would welcome the German President and his wife in Yaoundé in February 1964. As early as June 1960, the French Ambassador in Yaoundé had described Ahidjo as a realist who would avoid rigid ideological positions.196 Development requirements and political nonalignment went hand in hand. Cooperation agreements were signed with the USSR in April 1963, Ahidjo declared in the press in July that Cameroon would collaborate with all countries, regardless of political or economic alignments,197 and made the fundamental diversity of Cameroon’s relations repeatedly clear to Western diplomats in Yaoundé.198 Although the end of imperial preference did contribute to the overall aim of harmonising the Federation, it was not a policy objective that was actively sought by the Yaoundé authorities, at a time when West Cameroon remained the weaker economic component of the Federation. Discussions came to a head as Ahidjo made his first state visit to London in early May 1963. The British Ambassador informed him on the eve of his departure that imperial preference

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was likely to be terminated on 30 September 1963: the Cameroonians were therefore aware that talks in London would be vital and that the burden of proof had been placed on them. A Jamaican delegation had in fact preceded the Cameroonians to London, first in March199 and again on 3 May, only a few days therefore before Ahidjo and his officials were due to arrive – and the Windward Islands had almost done the same. On 8 May, Bétayéné asked for ‘a further year’s grace’200 and Ahidjo warned that the end of preference was ‘a bombshell’ that would have ‘a catastrophic effect’ on the economy and social fabric of West Cameroon, as ‘the small farmers in particular would be hard hit’.201 Macmillan pointed out that Cameroon had been an exception from the start, that Somaliland for instance had never benefited from imperial preference after its union with ex-Italian Somalia and that the breakdown of EEC discussions left Britain little choice but to end imperial preference.202 Expressing sympathy for Cameroon during the meeting, Macmillan in fact asked the Cabinet the following day to consider again the possibility of extending preference for an additional year203 and was prepared to announce extension before Ahidjo’s departure.204 Bétayéné emphasised that Cameroon, with its unique position in Africa as ‘a bridge between anglophone and francophone’205 countries, was prepared to support Britain in a number of multilateral forums. Shortly before the Addis Ababa conference, which founded the OAU, Cameroon’s Foreign Minister enquired whether there were any particular issues on which Cameroonians could help Britain. A new constitution for Kenya, which would facilitate power-sharing between communities, and the Central African Federation were mentioned as the main issues and Cameroon reaffirmed its stand for ‘a transitional period without external interference . . . to help in securing this period of calm’.206 Cameroon’s moderation and unique experiment in nation-building put the country in a position to reverse roles with the former power and offer its assistance on the international stage. However, no general support for the extension of preference could be secured outside the FO. The West Indies department urged the Secretary of State not only to oppose prolongation but to oppose any immediate public announcement while the Jamaicans and the Cameroonians were still in London. Their concern was all the stronger as senior Board of Trade ministers would be unable to attend Cabinet and therefore provide support.207 A handwritten note added: the Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations, ‘[t]the Duke of Devonshire feels “violently” that we will have a major row with the Jamaicans if this FO proposal is allowed to go through, and that our position with the Jamaicans – particularly if President Ahidjo is told tomorrow, i.e. without any consultation with them – will be totally indefensible’.208 Although it was eventually crossed out in red, a paragraph

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read: ‘It is now up to France and the European Common Market to help the Cameroons. Why should we help the French?’209 The only concession the FO obtained was that the end of imperial preference would only be signified to the Cameroonians after Ahidjo’s official visit,210 to avoid transforming the occasion into a humiliating, or at least embarrassing, affair. Publicly therefore, suspense prevailed. At the end of May, Warner continued to argue that Britain would ‘run the risk of shattering’ Cameroon’s economy ‘by abrupt changes in its economic policy’.211 The Jamaican High Commission in London phoned British officials regularly to find out when a decision would be officially made on West Cameroon bananas.212 A meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association was used by Jamaican MPs to lobby their British counterparts. Jamaicans were particularly incensed that their former Governor, Sir John Huggins, had become involved with Camdev and was now pressing for the extension of imperial preference.213 The British High Commissioner in Kingston also warned that ‘Jamaicans may well feel particularly sore that, when they have for once tried to modernise a traditional industry, [Britain] should permit British market to continue to be glutted out of tenderness to foreigners’.214 By June, West Indian representation and the conviction in the Treasury and the Board of Trade that British trade with Cameroon would inevitably decline,215 regardless of imperial preference, weighed heavily on decisions. Political evolutions in the African Commonwealth and empire also played against Cameroonian interests. Following the parliamentary victory of the Rhodesian Front in December 1962, the survival of the Central African Federation was under threat and it had become clear by March 1963 that Rhodesia and Nyasaland would go their separate ways. The intensification of racial segregation in Rhodesia increasingly raised the spectre of a Commonwealth breakdown, if African or Asian leaders left the organisation in protest. The Southern Cameroons had chosen to leave Commonwealth circles in February 1961 and it seemed vital to show to others that Commonwealth membership still had profound economic meaning.216 Parallel negotiations between the EEC and its Associated Territories only reinforced arguments that ‘West Cameroon should now look to the EEC to find a solution to their difficulties’.217 British diplomatic correspondence following the French veto was rather critical of the terms of association, attributed to French influence over its European partners. In February 1963, the British High Commissioner in Accra considered that ‘AOT status was conceived by France as a means of maintaining the Communauté française [and] forced upon the other members of EEC’.218 However, Commonwealth Relations Officials held the conviction that Germany and the Netherlands had in fact

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come to see association as ‘a laudable attempt’219 in favour of development and that there was no immediate prospect of change. On 24 June 1963, the Jamaican High Commissioner in London220 and other West Indian representatives221 were the first to be told that imperial preference for West Cameroon would cease after 30 September. Although they were warned that it was unlikely to provide a wider market for them, it sent a clear message that Commonwealth links superseded all other British relations in the developing world. The following day, the Cameroonians were told and Ahidjo denounced Britain’s ‘unilateral suspension of preference’.222 As the West Indians rejoiced223 and the Cameroonians were ‘very worried and subdued’,224 Lord Derwent, then Minister of State for Trade, introduced a resolution in the House of Lords on 16 July 1963 and West Cameroon’s exclusion from imperial preference as of 1 October 1963 was approved by the House of Commons on 22 July. The only mitigating factor was that no quotas would be imposed225 and commercial negotiations between Britain and Cameroon were finalised in the first trade agreement of 29 July 1963. The Treasury had already decided to grant a £200,000 loan to Cameroon, over a period of 15 years and with a five-year grace period, yet decided not to tell the Cameroonians so that they would not interpret it as compensation or replacement for imperial preference.226 Imperial preference after October 1961 had always been a privilege and Britain could in no sense be guilty for terminating it.227 At their meeting at the end of May 1963, British representatives posted in Africa had concurred that ‘economic aid and technical assistance’ was, more than ‘the usual channels of diplomacy’ or ‘information services’,228 the most efficient way of promoting British interests in Africa. Cameroon was no exception to its Francophone neighbours. French influence prevailed, Cameroon did not belong to the Commonwealth and it could not therefore occupy a more favourable position than its Anglophone counterparts. Cameroon would therefore occupy an unusual position in British diplomacy until 1995, as neither truly foreign nor Commonwealth. The Treasury admitted this counted in decisions to allocate assistance.229 This special link was emphasised during various state and diplomatic occasions230 and repeatedly acknowledged by the FO231 as a ‘moral obligation’232 of the kind that bound Britain to its ex-colonies. It is therefore hardly surprising that West Cameroonian politicians resented the end of imperial preference most keenly, as the British consul in Buea was still reporting in July 1964. There was no ‘immediate compensatory access to the French market’233 and only in late 1966 did West Cameroon obtain part of the quota for Cameroonian bananas.234 Although Foncha and his ministers partly blamed the Yaoundé authorities for failing to secure extension, they essentially took it as a punishment for leaving

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the Commonwealth.235 The idea of punishing Cameroon never surfaces in British correspondence but the result of the February 1961 led to similar consequences after the French veto blocked British accession to the EEC. Since the Commonwealth and European circles could not be reconciled, British support for Cameroon had to differ from the assistance given to close Commonwealth partners. By the middle of the summer of 1963, Cameroon and Britain had therefore moved further apart. Yaoundé itself was in fact chosen as the capital for the signature of the new Convention of Association on 20 July. The Yaoundé Convention (I) brought together the European Six and the Eighteen Associated African and Malagasy States (AAMS): although reciprocal preferences remained, some provisions were made to protect emerging African industries from European competition and facilitate trade with third parties.236 No mechanism for the stabilisation of tropical production markets was created however and power remained very much in European hands, as I.W. Zartman has underlined: ‘At $730 million, the new European Development Fund (FED I) was 25 percent larger than the FEDOM, but it was almost 25 percent smaller than the combined total of the FEDOM [European Overseas Development Fund] and the now-abolished French price supports, and 60 percent smaller than the African original demand of $1.77 billion’.237 In Anglophone West Africa, EEC and franc zone relations were dismissed for impinging on African sovereignty.238

Principles and limits of a bilingual state: language as diplomatic influence Foreign affairs and diplomacy were central to official political discourse as part of the nation-building project and particular emphasis was placed on reunification, Cameroon’s unique experiment in decolonisation. As early as July 1960, Ahidjo had likened a future reunified Cameroon to a sort of ‘United States of Africa’:239 successful nation-building would support continental unity and put Cameroon in a prime position as an African leader for peace, stability and prosperity. Ahidjo therefore placed Cameroon at the heart of African unity as advocated by the moderate leaders of the Monrovia group. Shortly before reunification, the President had announced that Cameroon would contribute to all initiatives to improve understanding across Africa.240 National unity, Ahidjo told Cameroonians in July 1963, was ‘an imperative both domestically and internationally’.241 Only strong countries survived international turmoil and Cameroon’s power would only be achieved through federal harmonisation and political unification. As Ahidjo told the Federal Assembly in 1970, foreign policy tended to reflect domestic concerns and

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Cameroon’s strategy was built on ‘the continuous strengthening of national unity[,] the collective quest of a common ideal[,] the achievement of a common aim [and] the fulfilment of a common destiny’.242 Cameroonians gathered in Buea on Reunification Day in 1964 were told that they did not ‘belong to a village, or a tribe, or a region or even a State but to a Nation’ and that Cameroon should be ‘a pilot nation in Africa’.243 Cameroonian unity across geographic, religious, linguistic and cultural differences, even as it was being built, was presented as the reflection of the greater internationalist awareness that had led to the creation of the UN244 and as the forerunner of greater international cooperation. Foreign affairs and diplomacy were therefore a powerful tool to create and consolidate a Cameroonian imaginary that would transcend national differences. Disunity would endanger Cameroon’s territorial integrity from within and make it more susceptible to attacks from without.245 Simultaneously, a divided Cameroon would lose prestige, international influence and miss ‘the chance of bringing something new to Africa and the international community’.246 Official discourse therefore established a strong parallel between the need to bridge differences across East and West Cameroon and the projection of Cameroon’s international image as a ‘bridge between French-speaking and English-speaking Africa’.247 The construction of the ‘Reunification Roads’ in the 1960s, which linked Bafoussam to Bamenda and Douala to Tiko,248 were seen as the concrete expression of new Cameroonian communities seeking political, economic and linguistic integration. Ahidjo often emphasised reunification, a constitutional reality, rather than harmonisation, a process which was proving an unsurprisingly complex task. Cameroon could be an African bridge because ‘the success of Reunification [had] demonstrated the possibility of a fruitful cohabitation’249 between Anglophones and Francophones. Cameroon, he also told non-aligned countries in Cairo in 1964, was ‘concrete proof that arbitrary divisions could disappear’,250 that African unity could overcome European colonial divisions. However, ‘cohabitation’ implicitly showed that nationbuilding was still on-going and further emphasised the need for Cameroon’s international commitment to support the national project. Cameroon’s early relations with West Germany partly derived from the broader context of EEC–African links and the ability of Germany to contribute to Cameroon’s development projects – and therefore give national construction financial assistance. However, they should also be read in a more symbolic light, with Germany providing Cameroon with important symbolic assets for nation-building. As Victor Le Vine251 and Ndive Kofele Kale252 have shown, Germany mattered because it represented the myth of a united Cameroon before Franco-British rule had divided the territory. There was, Ahidjo claimed, ‘a single historical unit – the Cameroonian Nation, a single

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moral identity – the Cameroonian motherland’253 and the Speaker of the Bundestag was in fact invited to Yaoundé even before reunification was official. British diplomatic correspondence regularly referred to the importance of German symbolism for Ahidjo’s national project at a time when German was still spoken by some of the older generations254 – albeit a small minority. In 1966, the Cameroonian President would define the Berlin Conference as ‘the origin of the present Cameroonian State [and] the opening up of the country to Western progress’ and talk about his visit to Germany as a ‘family reunion’.255 The post-war and cold war context also enabled Cameroonian leaders to give greater poignancy to their relations with Germany, presenting the African and European countries as mirror images. As Ahidjo expressed his wish that the Germans, divided into separate blocs, would one day exercise ‘the free operation of their right to self-determination’, he was praised as ‘one of the master builders of the new Africa’ by the German President who hoped that Cameroonians, ‘having successfully established their own position, would understand the situation in Germany and lend the Germans their moral support’.256 This served to reinforce Presidential projects as it proved to Cameroonians the value of a united, reunified nation, which former imperial powers looked up to. Official bilingualism was both the means to build national unity on an all-embracing Cameroonian identity and the symbol of Cameroon’s specificity in the concert of nations. A key tool in the normalisation and legitimisation processes within a single political unit,257 Cameroon’s pursuit of bilingualism has been fundamental to both state- and nation-building, to domestic balance, political integration and international influence. Bilingualism, Ahidjo told Cameroonians in Buea on several occasions, was ‘a privilege[,] a great opportunity’258 that would turn Cameroon into a ‘catalyst for African unity’,259 at the crossroads of Africa – Central and West, Anglophone and Francophone. Bilingualism, Ahidjo would explain in 1980, made it possible ‘to build a national culture as a real cement for national unity, assimilating all [Cameroonian] historical legacies’.260 Ahidjo repeatedly emphasised the stakes of nation-building in a country whose population had lived under two very different European traditions for over 40 years,261 and so did a number of Anglophone leaders.262 Nation-building was defined as the primary objective of Cameroonian politics and policies,263 informing every decision. In this context, Ahidjo portrayed French and English language and culture ‘not as the property of such and such a race but as an acquirement of the universal civilisation’264 which Cameroon should appropriate and build on. They should not, he told Cameroonians in Buea on 1 October 1966, be ‘a reason for controversy and still less for dissension [or] a reason for division’.265 Bilingualism would therefore give Cameroonians the means to ‘refuse any

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cultural alienation [and] forge [their] own destinies [themselves]’.266 Calls for the promotion of bilingualism came from the Federal authorities and the individual federated states.267 Bilingualism was inscribed at the heart of the Constitution268 and translation was given a central place in the Cameroonian administration, which was required to publish every official document in both languages. Ten translators worked at the Presidency; the Vice Presidency and the Federal Assembly in particular housed specialised translation services;269 and interpreters translated debates in the Federal Assembly. Admittedly, the system favoured French, as both the 1961 and the 1972 Constitutions acknowledged that the French version took precedence over the English270 – only in 1990 was it made clear that treaties and agreements should be published in both languages promptly, with equal value attributed to each version.271 Most texts were first written in French and their translation into English could take months.272 Francophone ministers, representatives and politicians far outnumbered their Anglophone counterparts, with very few truly bilingual people on each side.273 By 1970, British diplomats noted that apart from Ekangaki and Fonlon – ‘a rare bird’274 – ministers spoke only one official language and interpreters were indispensable to communication275 between them. Ahidjo had started to receive private tuition in English shortly after reunification and worked on audiovisual equipment lent by the Coopération276 but he hardly spoke English in public – partly out of shyness according to some277 but also because his command of English was not sufficient to carry out government business with English-speakers,278 particularly in the initial years of reunification. This meant he often addressed West Cameroonians in French, with an attaché translating.279 Foncha similarly found carrying on politics in French extremely difficult while ministers were sometimes unable to understand the reports and minutes of their officials,280 if they happened to favour the other language. Specific tuition was given to officials, partly through the Federal Linguistic and Cultural Centre based in Yaoundé, founded by decree n°62/DF/108 (31 March 1962). The Centre also gave free classes to Cameroonian adults, with a focus on oral expression and comprehension through the use of audio-visual equipment and a language laboratory. Centres were also opened in Douala and Buea, as well as in the Northern and Eastern parts of East Cameroon, partly with the support of the Committee for Technical Cooperation in Africa.281 Reunified Cameroon thus embarked on a vast national education programme to promote bilingualism, although primary schools were initially left out. The West Cameroon Government argued against teaching French to people ‘who ha[d] not acquired a solid foundation of English, as this would lead to a maladjustment, and might well result in Pidgin becoming the lingua franca of a large section of the population’.282 By early 1963 however, Cameroon’s

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Education Minister, William Eteki Mboumoua, possibly influenced by Ahidjo,283 informed the French Ambassador that early foundations in French were indispensable if bilingual secondary and higher education was to flourish and that support for the teaching of French in primary schools in West Cameroon would be highly appreciated – a request which the Ambassador prompted the Coopération to answer favourably, before American and British influences could take over.284 At the secondary level, French, which had only been an optional module in the Southern Cameroons, became compulsory and English remained one of the core compulsory classes in East Cameroon. At the Federal Bilingual Grammar School in Victoria (now Limbe),285 equal numbers of Anglophones and Francophones followed a seven-year course in preparation for A-Levels and Baccalaureat exams. A Federal Bilingual University was established in Yaoundé in 1962, which offered a bilingual degree with parallel teaching in English and French and the opportunity for Anglophones to spend a year in France and for Francophones to study in Britain for a year. As Eteki Mboumoua told the French in May 1962, the objective of the government was truly to found a bilingual University for Africa, which would involved West Cameroonians, and not ‘a French University in Africa’.286 The second five-year plan required the law and arts faculties ‘to adapt their programmes to the different cultures which exist[ed] in the two Federated States’287; language teaching288 and teacher training289 throughout the territory were stepped up; and official speeches supported the promotion of both Anglophones and Francophones to the higher administrative echelons.290 In practice however, most institutions only offered parallel English and French rather than integrated bilingual courses: there were intensive classes in English or French as a second language but the second language itself was not used as a means of tuition291 and ‘bilingual schools’ often united two distinct schools in one place. French therefore remained the predominant language within educational structures and in state business. The government of West Cameroon insisted on paying half the salary of a new cultural delegate, appointed by the federal authorities to supplement the director of education, in order to retain some control over his activities, and regular disputes occurred between Foncha and federal officials.292 Harmonisation proceeded on the Francophone model – with the introduction, for instance, of a seven-year (rather than eight-year) schooling time in West Cameroon’s secondary school system in 1965.293 The initial greater number of French speakers in the Federation, the dominance of Ahidjo, his close collaborators and his party over national politics partly account for this. But the different policies adopted by France and Britain in relation to their ex-territories in Africa, and Cameroon specifically, also had a major influence on developments. There simply was no British

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equivalent to France’s cultural diplomacy, which was given pride of place in official discourse and budget. In the late 1960s, French continued to dominate the Federal University, which had been essentially ‘run in accordance with the decrees of the French Minister of Education in Paris’.294 This, British officials admitted, was partly because the French government was the university’s main source of funds and personnel, as Ahidjo clearly acknowledged.295 Lack of Cameroonian funds296 meant that the country would rely on external partners to finance the bilingual project. With the exclusion of language training from the remit of EDF funding,297 it was left to Cameroon’s individual partners to contribute to the promotion of their own language. Germany thus founded a Goethe Institute in Yaoundé, which counted around 300 members by 1963.298 However, the imperatives of nation-building emphasised the promotion of French and English and made relations with each of the ex-trustees highly important. What resources France and Britain were prepared or able to devote to language teaching in Cameroon, their relations with the federated states and the Federal authorities, and their overall political and cultural policies in their more global retreat from empire would therefore have considerable bearing on nation-building in Cameroon. In discussions about the future of post-colonial Africa, British officials generally considered that breaking down the language barrier between the former European empires, and particularly between Anglophones and Francophones, was a desirable objective. The Colonial Office, FO and CRO agreed in mid 1961 that language teaching should be given due consideration as a factor for stability in Africa: not only would it facilitate communication between neighbours and support ‘unity and cooperation’ but it was also singled out as ‘one important field in which there w[ould] be little or no Communist competition’299 and from which Western reputation could therefore gain. Initiatives, however, should not seek to counter French culture and language. Indeed, British officials believed that there was no wish on the part of the leaders of independent Francophone Africa to turn their backs on ‘their French speech and culture’.300 They were simultaneously keenly aware that France would interpret British initiatives in its former territories – or any other initiative that would risk promoting English to the detriment of French – as a direct attack. The British Ambassador in Paris confirmed the intensity of ‘French cultural fears’ and France’s reluctance ‘to facilitate, let alone encourage’,301 relations between ex-British and exFrench territories in West Africa: ‘Eurafrica’ was understood as close association between Europe and ex-French Africa, to the definite exclusion of Commonwealth Africa,302 as a vector for the promotion of French language and interests.303 Conversely, Britain believed that the emergence of a strong moderate African grouping was essential and that strength would derive

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from size rather than cultural affinity. British officials were therefore keen to facilitate relations between Nigeria and its Francophone neighbours304 at a time when diplomatic relations between France and Nigeria remained broken, following the French nuclear tests in the Sahara,305 and French officials nurtured suspicions of Nigerian intentions in the region. Nigeria’s size, overall influence – politically, economically, diplomatically – and firm membership of the Commonwealth was central to British thinking. Improving communication and circulation in Africa, creating better facilities for regional trade and political groupings was also intended to give Britain a clear commercial advantage. The British Ambassador in Dakar noted how ‘the general superiority of the English-speaking areas’306 played in favour of British interests. By mid 1961, British officials across Whitehall had concluded that Britain should seek to promote English throughout Africa, from the African Commonwealth where English still remained the preserve of the elite to French-speaking Africa, and should encourage interAfrican exchanges for language teaching.307 On the French side, calls for greater communication across West and Equatorial Africa remained few until at least the autumn of 1963, when Quai officials reported to FO diplomats that ‘influential French circles’ had begun to consider English-speaking African states as potentially valuable commercial associates and important partners for the interests of the West as a whole.308 A number of key British diplomats complained about the aggressiveness309 of French cultural initiatives, which the British Ambassador in Paris attributed to a ‘complex about [France’s] shrinking sphere of cultural and political influence’.310 The requirements of reunified Cameroon brought these differences into sharp focus, as the Federation was indeed one of the few places in Africa where the use of French was likely to expand. On the broad policy level, there was therefore a fundamental distinction between French and British policies in Africa, as Britain sought to increase contacts between English and French speakers on the continent and bring down the barriers developed during the colonial period. The determination to prevent Communist penetration largely accounts for the British position. Increasing contacts across ex-empires would contribute to ‘general stability in Africa’311 and pre-empt charges of neo-colonialism against the former imperial powers and Western bloc members. France’s ‘ingrown relationship’ with a restricted clique of ex-colonies was seen to pose a long-term threat to Western influence and reputation in Africa. Another consideration centred on Britain’s ‘shortterm (e.g. commercial) advantage’, although the reality of trade patterns across Africa showed that Britain had in fact little opportunity to encroach upon France’s domination of the Francophone African market. Within the Quai, a number of officials also supported increasing contacts between Anglophones

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and Francophones but British policy-makers found that in African affairs, the French President and the SGAAM wielded the greatest influence and did not share British intentions.312 The cultural agreement signed by France and Cameroun on 13 June 1960 was later renewed, with minimal changes, on 31 July 1961 and 21 February 1974 and ensured wide-ranging cooperation in education, research and cultural activities. Diplomas would be recognised by both countries, French teachers would be sent to Cameroonian institutions, Cameroonian teachers and students would be sent to France for training sessions, scientific cooperation would be encouraged and French funding would contribute to a large number of libraries, cultural centres and artistic programmes. By the end of the 1960s, the French Ambassador stated proudly that French investment in cooperation, including education, supported social mobility.313 A clear determination to support the promotion of French in West Cameroon matched support to federal projects. French assistance to West Cameroon, the French Ambassador stated in 1962, remained limited but language was very much part of it: a very small number of civil servants for technical and medical assistance, a contribution to roadworks and an audio-visual centre for French language teaching.314 The potential for French to spread in West Cameroon was improved by the comparative ignorance of English – by 1966, the French Ambassador put the number of English-speakers at a few hundreds and no more than 1,500, emphasised that English remained secondary to national languages and that pidgin was in fact most commonly spoken.315 The relative absence of firm British plans also encouraged this trend: as the French Ambassador told the Coopération less than three weeks after reunification, Britain’s inertia in its former territory should be read as encouragement for France and it was crucial that teachers be sent to Buea as soon as possible.316 By the mid-1960s, the Francophone school in Buea, established in 1963 for the children of East Cameroonian gendarmes in post there, counted only 70 Francophones out of 250 pupils: the West Cameroonian elite had realised that learning French mattered.317 In October 1962, the French ambassador in Yaoundé encouraged the French Coopération Minister to respond favourably to all West Cameroonian demands for assistance.318 Between 1961 and 1971, the number of French teachers and researchers in Cameroon increased respectively from 180 to 709 and from 8 to 90.319 In 1963, the French Ministry of Education had 350 French teachers in Cameroon, while an additional 250 private French teachers were also in the country.320 By 1965, France provided five out of the 12 teaching staff of Buea’s bilingual school – including the director and three military coopérants.321 As the British Ambassador in Yaoundé underlined in 1963, the French set and marked the papers for both brevet and baccalaureat examinations,

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resulting in essay questions such as ‘Describe the spring’322 being given to young Cameroonians. Although no problems were raised over the ‘Cameroon’ item during the Franco-British discussions of 30 January 1963, relations in Cameroon were raised in the context of cultural cooperation. A French Coopération official had told a British Council representative that the Franco-Cameroonian agreement did not allow ‘a British Council nominee to fill the chair of English’323 at the Federal University of Yaoundé – there was only one English lecturer until a second one was appointed in 1964.324 The Cameroonian authorities had denied this but British officials remained convinced that French officials in Cameroon deliberately sought to obstruct British initiatives – and the objective of the Coopération and French Ministry of National Education was indeed to place the chair of English directly under French control.325 Again, Quai–Foreign Office conversations remained cordial – supporting earlier views that Consultation on African matters was important326 – and Quai officials hinted at the Coopération as the source of friction and as a powerful actor in African affairs. The matter, however, remained a concern: at their May 1963 meeting, British representatives in Tropical Africa again discussed the resentment of French teachers in Francophone Africa against British presence there.327 While French officials remained determined to preserve close, virtually exclusive, relations with French-speaking Africa, did not favour cooperation across ex-colonial boundaries and consequently provided Cameroon with strong support for its federal and state plans in the promotion of French, the implementation of British policies proved more complex. By May 1963, the British Ambassador in Dakar lamented that Britain ‘did not have a policy in relation to British and French culture in Africa’.328 At a time when plans for a Federation between Senegal and the Gambia, still under British rule, were being formulated, Ambassador John Peck noted that Britain was yet to decide ‘whether [it was] prepared to see this pocket of English culture swamped or whether [it] hoped to promote a bilingual society in that part of Africa’.329 This was all the more striking as a FO memorandum had made clear in October 1962 that communication between Francophone and Anglophone Africans was a ‘recent phenomenon’ and that ‘mutual understanding [was proving] more difficult than either party foresaw’.330 Initial language assistance to Cameroon was provided through scholarships tenable in Britain – 40 were renewed and 21 created in 1962331 – and the contribution of the English-Speaking Union Ranfurly Library Scheme, which donated 1,300 books to West Cameroon in 1962,332 even though its activities were generally restricted to Commonwealth members. This was very much welcomed by the Cameroonian authorities in Yaoundé, who had been pressing the British government to provide more scholarships,333 and by the West

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Cameroonian authorities, who seem to have shown much goodwill towards British assistance projects.334 VSO, founded in 1958, complemented other channels of assistance: 236 British volunteers served in Cameroon, often as teachers, between January 1964 and December 1973.335 An important feature of Britain’s scholarship system in Cameroon was to fund studies in neighbouring English-speaking West Africa. This, they believed, would contribute to the overall British objective of increasing contacts across the region. In 1962 for instance, 41 Cameroonians benefited from this scheme.336 However, two major factors seem to have impeded African collaboration in the early 1960s: lack of material and financial funds to offer assistance to immediate neighbours; and in Cameroon’s case, reluctance to seek help from the Nigerian giant and risk.337 French correspondence devotes more space to details of British assistance than British policy documents do, revealing how much attention French diplomats paid to monitoring British cultural policy in Cameroon. A few months after de Gaulle’s veto, the British Ambassador in Paris argued for a more forceful British policy in Francophone Africa and urged London to respond to the demands that came from the Africans338 – still limited, but which he thought bound to increase. In Cameroon, plans for a cultural agreement were finalised in 1963 and ratification was completed on 15 July 1964. While formal arrangements with Britain occurred more than three years after the Franco-Camerounian agreement was signed, they also remained looser: the Anglo-Cameroonian mixed Commission that was established would meet when required339 and contrasted with the dense network of professional and personal relations on the French side. Bernard Fonlon hailed it as a means of ‘strengthen[ing] and foster[ing] [the British] heritage in West Cameroon’ and securing something of the privileged bonds which Commonwealth membership provided to the English-speaking world, through a number of dedicated scholarships. Simultaneously, Fonlon hoped that the agreement would have an impact ‘throughout the bilingual Federation’340 and contribute to the emergence of a truly Cameroonian culture, able to build on its many legacies. However, there seems to have been a discrepancy between Cameroonian ideals and the pragmatic assessment British officials made of the situation. The British Ambassador in Yaoundé sent critical reports to London, about administrative delays in Cameroon which blocked British aid to the Federal University341 and the secondary importance Federal ministries seemed to give cultural relations with Britain. One instance illustrates this rather well. Under Article Five of the agreements, the exchange of publications between museums would operate on a paying-basis – but British officials considered the availability of Cameroonian publications or a real Cameroonian interest in British publications highly unlikely and the issue of money consequently unproblematic.342

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Back in 1960, Cameroun had courted the USA ‘as a source of public and private investment capital’ and the British Ambassador warned London that the USA might in effect become ‘the standard-bearers of English culture’.343 Limited British assistance prompted Foncha to request US support for the promotion of English in West Cameroon in the early months of the Federation.344 Religious voluntary agencies had played a key role in education in the former British Cameroons and continued to do so in West Cameroon – a distinct difference with East Cameroon where the French had left behind an education system which put the state at its centre.345 The American Peace Corps sent teachers to West Cameroon,346 which the bulk of their assistance targeted – 40 out of 50 Peace Corps volunteers were posted in West Cameroon by 1965.347 By 1967, their number had risen to 90, while a number of American teachers on governmental salaries had also been sent.348 Although French officials cast a rather condescending glance at American teaching methods, they acknowledged their easy manners and success with the population349 and the French consul consequently urged the Coopération to see to the current delays in sending French teachers to West Cameroon.350 As the French realised, US support was all the more valuable as it targeted Cameroonian masses and was markedly less elitist than the French or British schemes.351 British diplomats similarly had to recognise the importance of US help to West Cameroon352 – from the provision of books and equipment to several hundred scholarships tenable in the USA.353 There was a general feeling among the elite that Britain ‘ha[d] rather let them down’354 and Foncha himself stated that only US help had prevented teacher-training institutions in West Cameroon from closing.355 The Americans had indeed started assistance programmes when they realised that most British civil servants and technicians had left West Cameroon after reunification356 – and would report a few years later that the British having ‘given up’ in West Cameroon, the region could offer good opportunities for ‘American culture and influence.’357 Fonlon attempted to convince the British to ‘do more’ to support West Cameroon’s ‘heritage’ and argued that the people themselves were ‘reluctant to see [them] supplanted by the American Peace Corps’.358 British diplomats noted that he himself was ‘rather anti-American’ but his concerns reflected wider preoccupations about persistent French involvement in Cameroon, which gave added weight to East Cameroon’s heritage within the Federation. As Fonlon put it, ‘while man did not live by bread alone, he needed some bread, and possibly a little butter’359 and West Cameroon needed Britain to step up its assistance programme. According to the French consul in Buea, British diplomats in Cameroon did not so much resent US presence as lament London’s refusal to devote

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more funds to West Cameroon, particularly given the size of French assistance.360 US assistance was in any case limited by at least two major factors: the United States would not provide any budgetary aid, and there was only limited interest in those countries of the ex-French empire where French assistance remained predominant – the Americans felt that their own contribution would make a minimal impact and that direct Franco-African contact constituted a rather opaque screen which made it impossible for the United States to control the situation.361 In West Cameroon, American activities were limited by a third factor, as they told the French: Peace Corps volunteers would operate in development programmes in West Cameroon but in education matters, priority would be given to linguistic unification and to the Federal centre – the specificity of West Cameroon was therefore not to be encouraged.362 In parallel, conversations with the British consul rightly convinced his French counterpart that Britain would remain a step behind in West Cameroon – and that the growing use of French, in a Federation where most government and trade business was carried out by Francophones, was unlikely to be checked. In his speech to mark the third anniversary of reunification in Buea, Ahidjo mentioned a number of key projects that would support Cameroon’s bilingualism: the College of Arts and Sciences in Bambouis would be funded by the USA and the Bilingual Lycée in Buea itself by the French.363 Simultaneously, Germany and the EDF were commended for a series of technical schools and medical centres throughout the country. New schools in Tiko and Bamenda, linguistic centres in Buea, Kumba, Mamfe and Bamenda were equally mentioned. Britain, however, did not get a single mention in Ahidjo’s list of friendly contributors. A few days after the February plebiscites, British diplomats in London and Yaoundé agreed that a greater Canadian presence in Cameroon should also be sought, to complement British assistance.364 The CRO in fact hoped that France would take on most of the task for the emerging reunified Cameroon365 but simultaneously asked the British Ambassador in Ottawa to persuade the Canadians to open an Embassy in Yaoundé and provide increasing assistance to Cameroon. Britain would obviously ‘lend a hand – both financially and over the provision of trained staff [but] essential, budgetary aid, finance [would] not be easy to find and finance for development purposes [would] even be more difficult’.366 Bilingual Canadians would be ideally placed to serve ‘as technical experts or as administrative staff’367 in the new Federation – much better than any Frenchman or Briton would be. In effect, Canada’s involvement in Africa had started to expand after Ghana’s independence in 1957, just as the end of the Indian Empire in 1947 had prompted Canada to take an increasingly active part in development in South Asia, within the sphere of Commonwealth relations.368 As

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independence was being negotiated in most parts of the British and French sub-Saharan empires, Canada was taking an increasing interest in the continent. This stemmed from two major considerations: ‘peace and security as a Canadian interest’ in the context of the cold war; and social justice, following from the activities of Christian missionary societies.369 In these early stages, trade and economic interests played a much smaller part.370 The Canadians, the French Ambassador in Ottawa had reported in May 1960, felt an increasing sense of ‘responsibility and guilt, and simultaneously unease and concern’371 over the contrast between the poorer areas of the world and their vast, under-populated, developed and rich territory. This had prompted Canada to participate actively in the Colombo Plan for South Asia and had led Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker to propose similar dispositions for Africa during the Commonwealth Conference of May 1960. Following the start of a Canadian bilateral aid programme for Ghana in 1959,372 the Dupuy mission, sent to Africa the following year, recommended extending assistance to other newly independent African states. A technical assistance programme therefore began in early 1961, amounting to 0.6 per cent of the total budget allocation for Canadian aid until 1964.373 However, Canadian assistance to Cameroon was in no way focused on West Cameroon, where Britain had hoped that a Canadian input might prove valuable. Months before reunification, the Republic of Cameroun had in fact first been singled out by Canadian officials as the most obvious country for Canadian assistance outside the Commonwealth. Although in 1960 only a few missionaries374 were stationed in Cameroun and a limited number of scholarships were offered to Camerounian students,375 assistance to the Federation stemmed from an initial impulse to cooperate with Francophone Africa. Cameroun was included in Canada’s programme for education to Francophone Africa, which offered training and scholarship, with the support of UNESCO. Cameroun had been included in the tour the Canadian Ambassador to Paris had made of the Community states: even though Cameroun did not belong to the Community and its specificity was acknowledged, its heritage was simultaneously deemed close enough to Community member states to be included in the tour.376 Reports in the Presse du Cameroun emphasised Canada’s unique position as a developed country in North America with a substantial French-speaking minority that could bring valuable support to Africa.377 Reunification intensified comparisons between Canada and Cameroon and strengthened the idea of a special relationship between two bilingual federations that found their roots in the French and British empires. Cameroon’s special place in Canadian diplomacy at the time was demonstrated when in December 1961, the Canadian

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Cabinet decided to open an Embassy in Yaoundé. The Canadian Ambassador, who arrived in the country the following June, was also accredited to CongoBrazzaville, Gabon and Chad. Until a Canadian Embassy was opened in Dakar in July 1966378, Cameroon was the only partly ex-French territory to have permanent Canadian representation. The High Commissioner in Accra was accredited to the Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Togo and Guinea, while the High Commissioner in Lagos dealt with Dahomey, Niger and Senegal. Only in Léopoldville did the Canadians have a General Consulate, transformed into an Embassy after the independence of the Belgian Congo. In February 1962, five out of six Canadian teachers sent to non-Commonwealth Africa went to Cameroon.379 As Arnold Smith, the first Secretary-General of the Commonwealth stated in 1965, ‘Canadians, being both French and English speaking’ were ideally placed to ‘contribute something to the training in cooperation of the French and English speaking elites of new African countries’.380 At the symbolic level, Canadian relations buttressed Cameroon’s dual heritage, given its status as ‘a bi-lingual and bi-cultural country’,381 as KuohMoukouri told Cadieux in April 1962. Ahidjo himself favoured relations with Canada, not simply because of the economic and cultural assistance he believed would follow, but because it would introduce competition in France’s domination.382 In practice however, diplomacy between the two countries remained initially very much a Francophone affair. Beyond cold war concerns and moral imperatives, Canadian involvement in non-Commonwealth Africa rested on Canada’s own domestic affairs and particularly on the need to satisfy French Canadians that their country’s diplomacy also represented their interests.383 In the spring of 1961, Jean-Marc Léger had founded the Comité d’Action pour l’Afrique de Langue française, an apolitical grouping devoted to stimulating exchanges between Africa and French-speaking Canada,384 and which was followed in September 1961 by the creation of the AUPELF in Montreal, to complement the Commonwealth university network. In the minds of the Commonwealth Relations officials in London, Canada would send bilingual experts among the French-Canadian population385 but the department for external assistance had in fact ‘no bilingual staff able to manage a programme in Francophone Africa’386 and most Canadians sent to Cameroon were in fact French speakers. Kuoh-Moukouri, himself a French speaker, had in fact been the Cameroonian Ambassador in Paris between 1960 and 1962.387 His French counterpart tellingly described him as ‘the first ambassador of French-speaking black Africa’388 to Canada. After 1963,389 Cameroon was part of Ottawa’s plans to reflect Canada’s biculturalism in international relations and of the Liberal drive, under Prime Minister Lester

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Pearson and External Affairs Minister Paul Martin, to encourage Quebecois to become increasingly involved in the foreign policy and development projects of the federal authorities.390 To a large extent, Cameroon mattered more to Canada because of its large Francophone community than because of its official bilingualism. French diplomats in Cameroon emphasised the limits of British assistance, of which language teaching was only one aspect. Repeated references were made to a thin British presence in Cameroon, from the early days of the mandate to the post-colonial period. This, the French Ambassador would state in 1980, explained why memories of British rule in West Cameroon were not unpleasant and why accusations of neo-colonialism hardly ever concerned Britain: from the main base in Nigeria, British rule had been minimal and so had British assistance since reunification.391 In fact, while French policy rested on well-established links with Ahidjo’s Federal Government and increasing contacts with West Cameroonians, British relations also gave priority to the Federal centre while operating on a much smaller scale, thereby accentuating the marginalisation of West Cameroon. As early as November 1961, Board of Trade officials argued that formal commercial agreements ought to be signed with Cameroon’s Federal Government in order to protect British investors against France’s growing influence. Whilst it would confirm Britain’s connection with West Cameroon, it would more importantly be ‘an indication that [British] interest [was] not confined to the Western part of the Federal Republic, which could have the effect of a unifying factor and of reducing possible resentment in the East’.392 Overseas Development files show that technical assistance was not confined to West Cameroon.393 As the Anglo-Cameroonian commercial agreement was signed in 1963, the French Consul in Buea noted that mutual suspicion prevailed between part of the British community in West Cameroon and the Federal authorities in Yaoundé, who feared that British presence in the former Southern Cameroons would hinder national integration.394 By 1965, British influence remained pervasive in West Cameroon, particularly in the traditions and lifestyle of the elite.395 Yet in reality, the British diplomatic community gave great attention to the stakes of national construction in Cameroon396 and knew that British involvement in West Cameroon was seen ‘as an obstacle to assimilation and an encouragement to separatism’.397 British assistance in West Cameroon thus faced two converging limitations: it was limited in size and its implementation was sometimes delayed by the federal authorities. By December 1965, Yaoundé was yet to approve Britain’s assistance programme for 1966–67 in West Cameroon398 – the whole programme was eventually abandoned and replaced by Federal cooperation initiatives only.

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Beyond their economic dominance over the larger part of the Federation, French officials also intended to extend their influence to the smaller part of the territory and their British counterparts were ‘under no illusion’399 in West Cameroon where French exports increased and British exports fell.400 British policies have to be read in the light of wider official support for a French presence in Africa. This was made clear during the meeting of British representatives in Tropical Africa in May 1963. French aid, argued the Ambassador in Lomé, was used ‘too obviously as a “neo-colonialist” weapon’ and diversification within friendly Western sources would just as easily ensure Africa’s indifference to communism. The Ambassador in Dakar did state openly that French policy ‘was not in the interests of the African countries’ but joined his counterparts in Bamako and Brazzaville in praising the value of the Franc zone for providing stability in Africa. ‘France’, they admitted, ‘was doing a very great deal to keep Africa afloat’ and the economic and financial risks to the West of any reduction in aid were too great. The Ambassador to Cameroon put it even more bluntly: ‘there would be a complete collapse if the French were to walk out’401 of Cameroon. CRO officials were also convinced that ‘the French military presence in West Africa was a valuable, stabilising force’, while the British Ambassador to Cameroon emphasised to the FO that ‘French assistance in the field of security [was] indispensable’.402 Admittedly French domination served Britain’s short-term political objectives in the context of the cold war. The British did point to the longer-term problems associated with neo-colonialism and held a more positive view of the Commonwealth, more prompt to criticise the ex-imperial power.403 But just as the British were reluctant to get involved in national policy-making in Africa, they were equally reluctant to interfere in Franco-African relations.404 They were even more reluctant to do so publicly and officials reiterated that ‘the survival of Western influences require[d] that Britain and France manifestly st[oo]d together in Africa’.405 There was moreover, as the Ambassador in Lomé acknowledged, no realistic chance that other Western powers, ‘least of all the United States,406 would match the level of French assistance. Britain itself did not have the political will or the economic means to do so. At the Quai, Soutou had argued forcefully that close Franco-African relations were a clear source of political stability across the Francophone region.407 Despite the French veto on Europe, the conclusion of the ambassadorial meeting in May 1963 on the French position in Africa argued that ‘the maintenance of the French position is on the whole a Western and indeed and African interest’.408 What the British saw as a French lack of ‘respect for the strong forces of African nationalism’409 might prompt the Africans to look East – but the risk was smaller than if French aid was suddenly and dramatically reduced.

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British support to the Federal centre: the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association impasse A few weeks after reunification, some opposition politicians in West Cameroon contemplated ending reunification, joining Nigeria – and therefore the Commonwealth – if they won the next elections, as the British Consul learned during a dinner party in Buea.410 The Consul, who was also asked for a financial contribution to the party, believed the project had more to do with personal ambitions than real party policy and paid it little attention. However, Canadian diplomats acknowledged, albeit in very general terms, that Ahidjo had faced pressure from West Cameroonians to take Cameroon into the Commonwealth after reunification.411 Commonwealth membership would therefore have been not a return to Nigeria but a completely new direction given to Cameroonian and Commonwealth politics. Very little information could be found on the matter, and there seems to have been no in-depth debate of this issue in British circles. One can assume that support for Commonwealth membership in Cameroon remained confined to a small elite, that British interests in Nigeria would have been damaged if London had supported Commonwealth membership for those who had opted against Nigeria and that relations with the French might have suffered even more. But above all, what little information there is tends to demonstrate that Ahidjo himself opposed any talk of Commonwealth membership. Admittedly, Cameroon seemed increasingly aware of the growing influence of the African Commonwealth. Following the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meeting in London and the OAU conference in Cairo in 1964, Cameroon’s Foreign Secretary told Edward Warner, the British Ambassador, that ‘he had been most impressed by the strength of feeling in favour of the Commonwealth among the representatives’, and Warner believed that Ahidjo and the Cabinet were beginning to ‘realise that the Commonwealth [was] a reality and apparently warmly supported by its African members’.412 There is however no evidence that Cameroon’s Federal leaders envisaged applying to the organisation and their interpretation of the Commonwealth remained vague, stereotypical and ill-informed, dominated by ‘the Nigerians, whom they fear[ed] as an overwhelmingly large neighbour, and the Ghanaians, whom they strongly dislike[d], on account of the part Ghana ha[d] taken in supporting’413 the UPC. Federal views of the Commonwealth and the fact that there simply was no federal application for Britain and the Commonwealth to discuss most likely influenced British assessments of West Cameroon’s relations with the CPA. In January 1963, French diplomats were sending reports to the Quai outlining the increasing discontent of a small number of the West Cameroonian British-educated and Protestant elite against Ahidjo, ‘a foreign conqueror, a

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Muslim autocrat who violated the most sacred local liberties under the cover of legislation and a stifling federal apparatus’.414 Foncha was criticised for having given in to the authorities in Yaoundé and the French noted increasing separatist claims, voiced by a small apolitical group of around 12 people, who held various administrative and governmental posts. British diplomats also noted the mood of discontent that had seized ‘the English-speaking, rather thin, upper crust’415 in West Cameroon. This, they concluded, essentially stemmed from the resentment the economic and social elite in Endeley’s party felt at having been ‘outvoted by the bulk of the rural population who, hoping to be released from their debts to the hated Ibo money-lenders, followed Foncha’.416 The British felt much respect for Fonlon, who lamented the marginalisation of West Cameroon at the hands of Yaoundé and called on East Cameroonians ‘to make the giant effort necessary to break loose from the strait pocket of [their] French education [and] show proof of [their] intellectual probity and admit candidly that there are things in the Anglo-Saxon way of life that can do this country good’.417 Essentially however, the British saw the West Cameroonian elite divided into two groups: those who supported Foncha and Muna418 and hoped that power and prosperity for West Cameroon would be achieved within federal structures – and even within a unified party; and those who followed the West Cameroon Prime Minister, Jua, in his belief that West Cameroonian specific rights and traditions had to be upheld forcefully.419 The determination of West Cameroonians to maintain links with other former British territories manifested itself in February 1964, when the Speaker of the House of Assembly, P.M. Kale, contacted the Secretary General of the CPA, Robin Vanderfelt, requesting associate membership.420 This was not a surprising development. The Southern Cameroons Assembly had been a branch of the CPA between 1956 and 1961 – albeit hardly ‘an active branch’421 according to Vanderfelt – and in the course of the summer of 1961 had enquired about remaining linked to the CPA after reunification. There had been no collective move to support association, the CPA constitution was due to be revised at its conference later in 1961 and links were therefore broken on 1 October 1961. In theory, provisions existed to enable West Cameroon to become an Associated Group of the CPA in 1964: the American Congress and the Irish Parliament both fell in this category, allowing them to attend annual conferences and participate in some of the debates, subject to a membership fee. Clause Seven of the CPA constitution indeed stated: ‘The Members of a Legislature of a country which is not part of the Commonwealth, but which is closely associated with it by reason of such matters as common parliamentary practice or tradition, common language and interest, or past political or historical relations, may

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be invited by the General Council to form an Associated Group’.422 The CPA management committee welcomed Cameroonian interest in the CPA423 and would not block any application process. Whilst Vanderfelt himself saw no reason to reject West Cameroon’s application provided it paid its fees, he nonetheless sought FO advice on the case, before replying to Kale. Initial reactions in the FO were positive, resting on two major reasons: association ‘might not lead to any regular contact with the Commonwealth world’ but it would serve British reputation in a territory that often complained of minimalist British assistance; and it would drive ‘prominent members’ to London and facilitate relations between Britain and Cameroon. However, these advantages were offset by a more crucial concern, on which the opinion of British diplomats in Cameroon was sought: would ‘the Federal Government . . . be liable to misinterpret this renewal of an old alliance’?424 Caution prevailed among British officials. The British Ambassador in Yaoundé took the view that CPA association would indeed ‘be misinterpreted and be regarded as an encouragement of separation’425 and pleaded for a delay on the decision, pending Federal elections in May. Vanderfelt simultaneously argued ‘that since the question of West Cameroon membership [was] of such novelty a final decision could not be taken by the management committee in London but would have to await the full assembly in November’.426 As the Federal elections confirmed the ascendancy of Yaoundé and Ahidjo’s party, British diplomats became increasingly convinced that granting CPA associate membership to West Cameroon would be a mistake. The West Cameroon case was problematic because the applicant was not the national, Federal assembly, but only one of the constituents of the Federation. This difficulty was further compounded by Britain’s belief that the West Cameroon Assembly was unlikely to last beyond a few years – in fact, the Ambassador wondered whether a unitary state might not be imposed as early as 1965, provided the Presidential elections confirmed and strengthened Ahidjo’s dominance over Cameroonian politics.427 Through conversations with the West Indian Clerk of the Buea Assembly, the British had also learnt that members were increasingly eager to discuss Federal, rather than state, affairs and that eyes focused on Yaoundé.428 British politicians and diplomats in effect considered Ahidjo and his immediate entourage of Eastern politicians to be more competent and more powerful than their Western counterparts – and therefore better partners. While the French entertained Foncha in case an occasion arose when he could be a useful ally on the international stage, the British were aware that good relations with Ahidjo were indispensable: ‘all important decisions affecting the Federation [were] taken by him’ and he was ‘in a position to bring

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about an improvement or deterioration in Anglo-Cameroon relations’.429 The Consul in Buea made Ahidjo’s supremacy even clearer: no decision of any importance can be made without [Ahidjo’s] approval, and even many trifling matters require his sanction. The federal system of administration has permitted him to cast his mantle over West Cameroon [and] his every official action and word receives the maximum publicity combined with the most extravagant praise.430 The French also commented on Ahidjo’s political flair and psychological astuteness in dealing with opponents.431 British opinion was shared by US diplomats, who as early as March 1962 predicted the eventual demise of the Federation and partly put on the blame on West Cameroon’s politicians who showed more interest in their personal ambitions than in the national interest and failed to propose any united policy.432 By 1966, the British Ambassador in Yaoundé attributed West Cameroon’s declining influence to Ahidjo’s political manoeuvres, ‘aided by the incompetence of the rustics in the Buea Government’.433 This firm belief in Ahidjo’s superiority as an individual and in a Yaoundé-centred Cameroon as the most viable option largely explains the lack of support for West Cameroonian association with the CPA. It should also be noted that British officials thought Ahidjo very much his own man and there were signs that his perspective on African politics differed from the accepted French positions of the Coopération and SGAAM – although he did rely on their assistance. Relations with the UAM seemed a case in point. In Ahidjo’s mind, the main objective of the UAM was to progress towards African unity and if interests conflicted, continental, rather than regional, requirements should prevail. British diplomats were therefore aware that stronger relations with the Anglophone moderate states, Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone in particular, were not opposed.434 Following the creation of the OAU in May 1963, Ahidjo emphasised that the UAM had to evolve in order not to block the work of the larger organisation.435 Cameroonian aspirations were admittedly restricted by the fact that France’s African policies very much favoured the grouping, whose reputation among Anglophone and more radical Africans was that of a pro-French, if not neo-colonial, organisation. French and Cameroonian policies in this respect seem to have been at variance. In May 1962, Georges Gorse, who had headed African and Malagasy Affairs at the Quai and was now the new Coopération Minister, admitted to British diplomats in Paris that France supported a closely-knit UAM and welcomed delays in the establishment of a pan-African organisation in the hope that the ex-French states would ‘join any larger grouping as a unit, thus preserving their identity’.436 The size

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of Nigeria – both in terms of territory and population – and its resources, with exports virtually amounting to the UAM total, were a considerable source of concern for France and the ex-French states in the region. More than Ghana, ‘the Nigeria colossus’437 was the reason behind de Gaulle’s opposition to European association with the ex-British states, before the issue of Britain’s membership itself became irremediably problematic. Members of Foccart’s Secretariat also admitted to British officials that France counted on the UAM becoming ‘a supranational organisation of real importance’438 which would contribute to greater French influence, by providing support at the UN for instance. As talks between de Gaulle and the Upper Volta President, Maurice Yameogo, demonstrated, the French wanted Francophone multilateral organisations to strengthen ties between France and its ex-African territories.439 Although more idealistic or large-scale plans – involving for instance ‘us[ing] the Union Africaine et Malgache as the first constituent of a great new francophone union which would include France and all her former African dependencies, both Arab and black’440 – soon died down, French caution, if not suspicion, towards regional cooperation across ex-colonial divides in Africa remained. By April 1963, France was still hostile to Francophone but non-ex-French territories, such as Rwanda, joining the UAM.441 As Ahidjo told French officials442 before leaving for the UAM Conference in Dakar in 1964, the UAM was extremely valuable as a forum for African countries with similar traditions to consult and concert their views on continental and international affairs. However, the Cameroonian President was increasingly focused on the OAU and his determination to preserve Cameroon’s image as a bridge between various parts of Africa favoured his reputation among British officials. One of the seven heads of state (out of 14) who attended the Dakar UAM conference in 1964, Ahidjo contributed to driving the focus of the organisation away from Francophone politics, which seemed obsolete in the wake of the creation of the OAU, and redirect it towards ‘economic, technical, cultural and social’443 cooperation. In April 1964 at Nouakchott, the UAM was transformed into the UAMCE, open to any independent African state that wished to join and cooperate for economic and social development.444 Admittedly, the fact that the headquarters of the transformed body were located in Yaoundé and headed by a Senegalese Secretary General confirmed Cameroon’s stronger links with Francophone Africa – and in fact, Francophone Rwanda was the only country not to have been under French rule.445 For French officials, the OAU had forced a transformation of the UAM but had not fundamentally altered the strong links that bound together ex-French territories. The new emphasis on economic cooperation and the multilateralisation of Francophone relations were positive developments that still rested on regular

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ministerial meetings and left the door open for France to play a key part.446 However, British diplomats were simultaneously impressed by the ‘surprising adaptab[ility] and pragmati[sm]’447 of the grouping and interpreted it as a hopeful sign for regional cooperation across West and Equatorial Africa. Cameroon’s relations with Nigeria were also seen as evidence of this determination. Following the plebiscite results of February 1961, Cameroonian governments on both sides of the Mungo had repeatedly emphasised that there was no ill-will against Nigeria. In the Northern Cameroons case, British diplomats felt that Britain and the UN were used as ‘scapegoats’ while Camerounians were ‘go[ing] out of their way to be nice to [the Nigerian ambassador] and to assure him that there [was] no quarrel between Cameroon and Nigeria’.448 Simultaneously, Foncha insisted that reunification had been ‘a positive [choice], dictated by [a] sense of national pride for and loyalty to [the] nation, Kamerun, and not a negative one dictated by hatred against Nigeria’.449 Following bilateral meetings between Cameroon and Nigeria in the margins of the Monrovia Conference450 in May 1961, cooperation agreements in economic, trade, technical, scientific, education and cultural matters were signed in February 1963.451 Judicial and security cooperation were also reinforced and an extradition treaty was signed while migrations were facilitated with the introduction of looser immigration regulations. The creation of the Commission for the Lake Chad Basin in May 1964 brought together Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, as the one country with the common point of contacts between Anglophones and Francophones in the group. By 1965, relations between Nigeria and Cameroon had therefore markedly improved.452 Cameroon’s position partly derived from a realistic assessment of Nigeria’s power and belief in its manifest destiny – Abubakar Tafawa Balewa had once claimed that Nigeria was Africa.453 Ahidjo was keenly aware that strong cultural affinities – family relations in some cases – across the Cameroon Nigeria border were potentially threatening for the Cameroonian state. There was increasing cooperation across the Muslim North of Cameroon and the Northern Region of Nigeria, with emerging agreements for Islamic studies for instance,454 and Nigerian migrants often shared the political orientations of Ahidjo’s fief.455 However, mass Nigerian migrations were feared, particularly in West Cameroon where the populations of the Cross River, Calabar and Ogoja in Nigeria shared much history and tradition with the populations of Ejagham, Boki, Korup and the Efik communities in what had once been the Southern Cameroons.456 The Cameroonian nation was therefore also built against Nigerian identity. Cameroon’s focus on Equatorial Africa457 and its central place in the transformed UDEAC in December 1964 can be seen as a means of countering

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Nigerian dominance in the West.458 Cooperation within UDEAC was centred on industry, agriculture and investments, based on common custom duties and a privileged tax system for companies operating in the zone. Although the actual implementation of the treaty remained limited in the mediumterm,459 UDEAC did represent a channel for asserting Cameroon’s economic power and Ahidjo’s personal authority:460 Douala and Yaoundé were the most important economic centres while a Cameroonian was traditionally elected as Secretary General of the organisation. Cameroon was therefore seen as part of a predominantly Francophone diplomatic sphere, but not exclusively so. Interestingly, British officials were aware that there still prevailed in West Cameroon ‘general goodwill and interest [and] intense admiration’461 for Britain. British political traditions were particularly discussed and there were even suggestions that cooperation should be initiated in local government practices. On CPA matters however, the reports of McGurk, sent from the Consulate in Buea, were even more radical than the position of the Ambassador. McGurk argued that ‘British interests in West Cameroon would be best served by the abolition of the Buea chamber’,462 given its diminishing political power in the federation but also in the light of commercial tensions between British and West Cameroonian businessmen. Negative impressions formed of West Cameroonian politicians therefore weighed heavily against CPA association. Ahidjo’s federal plans, Warner noted, should attract ‘the few remaining intelligent West Cameroonians into central government service’ and further unification would save Cameroon from ‘a duplication of administration’463 it could hardly afford. Widespread corruption and clientelism, affecting the competence and efficiency of public services in West Cameroon, were also noted by the French diplomatic services.464 Admittedly, East Cameroon was not free of corruption but it seems that both the French and the British felt that the problem was more acute in West Cameroonian circles. Jua was dismissed by both European countries as a man of little influence, presiding over a cabinet with little power or competence.465 Whatever the reality, these impressions mattered because they drove Franco-British support away from Buea and towards the Federal Government in Yaoundé. As the French Consul in Buea noted, the colonial past of a number of British diplomats in West Cameroon, including the Consul himself, might have had an impact on British interpretations of Cameroonian evolutions. Attempts by West Cameroon politicians to request British assistance while publicly criticising their presence and activities, as had happened in early 1963, left a number of officials both bitter and convinced that British influence was bound to become increasingly eroded.466 In reality, if emotions might have played some part, it seems that Britain’s support for the Federal authorities also rested on a realistic assessment of Britain’s commercial interests,

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partly influenced by the views of British businesses operating in Cameroon. ‘Virtually every responsible member of the British business and commercial community’, the Consulate in Buea reported, ‘long[ed] for the day when the West Cameroon Government ceases to exist and the state is completely absorbed by Yaoundé’.467 As CPA affiliation seemed increasingly unlikely, British officials feared that the independence of the tiny Gambia might damage Anglo-West Cameroonian relations. While the Southern Cameroons had been denied separate independence in the Commonwealth in the late 1950s, the FO468 feared that the Commonwealth’s likely acceptance of Gambian membership would trigger resentment in West Cameroon. Beyond size and economic development, the parallel between the two territories lay in their projected association with a bigger Francophone neighbour, as the Gambia was planning some form of common arrangement with Senegal on defence and foreign affairs. The British Consul admitted that West Cameroonians might consequently ‘press for more autonomy’ and see it as confirmation that Britain had ‘treat[ed] West Cameroon as the most naughty of [its] fledglings’ but thought ‘significant repercussions’469 rather unlikely. West Cameroon representatives did indeed warn a delegation of Gambian politicians against the dangers of association with Senegal. They emphasised that they themselves had been ‘deceived by the slick boys in Yaoundé’470 and advised the Gambians to insist on very specific guarantees to protect their political traditions and way of life. Just over a year later, as Ian Smith proclaimed Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, members of the West Cameroonian elite thought nothing of it ‘compared with their predicament as a minority likely to be colonised by other Africans’.471 This provocative statement underlined West Cameroon’s further political marginalisation. By then, the FO had argued against CPA association for West Cameroon and no specific incident or representation in relation to the Gambia’s independence appears in diplomatic correspondence. In fact, the Ambassador in Yaoundé and the Consul in Buea both argued in the summer of 1964 that only one solution for association existed: association between the CPA and Cameroon’s Federal Assembly, where ten West Cameroonian representatives sat.472 The FO’s suggestion to Vanderfelt and the CPA Committee was therefore to see whether ‘past connexions with West Cameroon should find expression in an association with Cameroon Parliamentarians’, in which case ‘the Parliamentary status will be found in the Federal Assembly and not in the House of Assembly in West Cameroon’.473 Little additional information is available on the final correspondence before the issue was dropped. CPA correspondence demonstrates that the organisation remained very British-centred and the FO certainly dissuaded it from pursuing the matter: it

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would be open to misinterpretations from the Federal authorities, the central political force in Cameroon, and it would risk compromising the CPA when (rather than if) the West Cameroon Assembly was eventually disbanded. It was never said that CPA membership might in fact give greater weight to West Cameroon, buttress its traditions or prevent the Federal Government from seeking its termination. Its ongoing decline at the time was seen by the British as an irreversible trend and there certainly was no desire, as was also clear in other African countries friendly to the West,474 to alter trends in Cameroon’s domestic politics.

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CHAPTER 3 FR ANCOPHONE DIPLOM ACIES: OPPORTUNITIES AND DANGER S FOR THE CA MEROONIAN STATE

Advancing integration in Cameroon In November 1967, Britain’s Labour Commonwealth Secretary George Thomson told ambassadors and high commissioners based in West Africa that Britain had three overriding interests in Africa, including West Africa. The first was that African countries should manage their own affairs in such a way that British trade could flourish, British investments be safe and British citizens, including businessmen and those serving under technical assistance arrangements, go safely about their work. Secondly, [Britain] wished to avoid Africa becoming a centre of great power confrontation. Thirdly, [Britain] wished to help the countries of Africa to overcome their poverty of trained and skilled manpower’. Thomson added that in order ‘to achieve these three aims, [Britain] sought political and economic influence but had no wish to involve [itself] in the internal affairs of these countries’.1 Admittedly, the conference concluded that there was in effect no overall British policy in West Africa, so diverse a region that choices had to be made on a case-by-case basis. However, Thomson’s statement remains significant when

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considering Britain’s relations with Cameroon and assessing the influence of West Cameroon’s historical connection to Britain. The Cameroonian Federation was a moderate African power, committed to non-alignment but in reality rather more sympathetic and better connected to Western middle powers, and where the size of French assistance – its form and channels were another matter – seemed to make a British financial contribution a secondary necessity to overall stability. In fact, Cameroon seemed engaged in trying to overcome on a national level the same divisions that the British saw at the regional level, a legacy of ‘absurd frontiers which looked like lasting’: ‘an area riven by the French and English language barrier and by the trading interests of the former colonial powers; [and] an area where the political divisions between the states ought to be subsumed by economic necessity’.2 To some extent, the political unification that was being undertaken by the Yaoundé Government, coupled with the promotion of official bilingualism, partly answered some of Britain’s own concerns for the region. A few months earlier, the British Ambassador in Yaoundé had likened Ahidjo to a skilful ‘Chicago ward-boss’, who had managed to strengthen his political power by creating a single party ‘from the ground up’, allowing time for ‘his creatures [to] take over the basic cells and structures’.3 Warner also compared Ahidjo to ‘a firm and fair-minded headmaster’, ‘unhampered by the board of governors’ and supported by Paul Biya, the Secretary General at the Presidency in charge of ‘supervis[ing] the activities of the school prefects.’4 Warner’s successor would also describe Ahidjo as an ‘equable, reasonably enlightened, modestly competent and unobtrusively adroit northerner’,5 a ‘helmsman [guiding] one of the most purposeful [boats] of any that they see bobbing about in adjacent water’.6 Inscrutable in public, Ahidjo ‘reveal[ed] considerable humanity, intelligence, good humour, commonsense and even charm in private conversation’,7 British diplomats thought. Ahidjo, the American Ambassador told his Canadian counterpart, was ‘an amazing man’.8 The Canadians themselves agreed.9 As Jean-François Médard has argued, Ahidjo’s political power rested on political clientelism, which Alex Weingrod has defined as ‘the ways in which party politicians distribute public jobs or special favors in exchange for electoral support’,10 recalling the anthropological form of clientelism, ‘a relationship of personal dependency, excluding kinship ties, maintained by reciprocal exchanges of favors, between two persons, the patron and the client, who control unequal resources’.11 The conjunction of political patronage and co-optation forms what Médard calls the underdeveloped state and buttresses the political centre, by personalising power and turning politics into business.12 The West Cameroonian elite was co-opted into the federal political system, as Ahidjo’s offers of ministerial, administrative and business positions played on historical divisions between the South-West and the North-West.13 The 1961 Constitution did give the Prime Minister of West Cameroon more independence than his counterpart

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in East Cameroon but in reality, as Jean-François Bayart has demonstrated, this signalled Ahidjo’s intention to ‘conquer West Cameroon through local politicians who favoured centralisation’.14 Similarly, the appointment of an Anglophone to the Supreme Court in 1966 can be read both as proof of the relative marginalisation of West Cameroon until then and as evidence of the progressive cooptation of the elite.15 Divisions within the smaller parties in East Cameroon also served Ahidjo’s purpose. His own party, the Union Camerounaise, was presented as the only truly national party in East Cameroon, whose power had to be supreme in order to prevent partisan divisions – from ethnicity to religion.16 Nation-building was inseparable from the creation of a unified party17 that would transcend former divisions. As the two major parties in the Federation formed a common working committee in 1965, Foncha decided not to stand in the Presidential elections and remained Vice President while Ahidjo was re-elected. De Gaulle’s reaction to the results emphasised the marked difference in status between the two men: congratulations were sent to Ahidjo but no contact was made with Foncha, dismissed as a mere subaltern official.18 The Canadian Ambassador also confirmed that Foncha ‘wield[ed] very little influence in the present order of things’.19 On 1 September 1966, all four legal parties in the Federation merged into a single unit, the CNU. In his speech to the first national council of the CNU, Ahidjo argued that nation-building would progress now that multipartism, which carried the risk of ethnic strife, had ended.20 The supremacy of the single party over all other allegiances was confirmed in unambiguous terms by the President in May 1969, in the course of his very first visit to Bamenda, in West Cameroon’.21 The general elections of 1967, to quote Verkijika G. Fanso, were ‘strange and undemocratic’,22 with one single list and one single candidate to choose from in each constituency. Although the rise of ‘politicians by decree’,23 as Luc Sindjoun has called them, occurred across Cameroon, the impact was particularly striking in West Cameroon, whose leaders were simultaneously co-opted and marginalised. Even though Muna had not taken part in the elections, he was chosen by Ahidjo to replace Jua, a long-time defender of Anglophone rights24 who was dismissed on corruption charges amid financial scandals. Canadian diplomats in Yaoundé25 emphasised Ahidjo’s successful electoral and ministerial manoeuvres and predicted a long Presidential career – as did their French and British counterparts. Ahidjo publicly confirmed in September 1969 that the President was entitled to appoint the Prime Ministers, who derived their power from him as the ultimate representative of the nation, rather than from general elections.26 Only two Anglophone Ministers sat in the 1967 government, respectively in charge of Public Health and Transport, Posts and Telecommunications. A further two Anglophones

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were Deputy Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Justice, bringing the total representation of West Cameroon to four out of 15 Ministers. Admittedly, the overall numerical balance between the two federated states was respected, but the actual power of West Cameroon had considerably dwindled. Back in December 1965, British diplomats had stated that ‘the elimination of British influence seem[ed] sadly inevitable’.27 They now confirmed that ‘Federal evolution [was] almost 100% former East Cameroon absorption of West Cameroon institutions’: the Buea Parliament, they predicted, was ‘unlikely now ever to move out of line with the major political decisions of Yaoundé’.28 Their French counterparts considered that harmonisation was facilitated by the fact that British traditions and influence had essentially remained confined to the elite, both during the mandate and in its immediate aftermath.29 In May 1966, the French Consul in Buea failed to see much evidence that there had ever been a British presence in West Cameroon,30 even though he conceded that the West Cameroonian elite remained closer to Britain than to France.31 The British themselves admitted that ‘all these revolutionary changes, and many more ha[d been] accepted with little more than a shortlived grumble’.32 Canadian diplomats shared these views. Criticism of harmonisation on Eastern practices was ‘usually subdued [and] limited to individual aspects of the trend’, with the gendarmerie being a strong point of resentment. In any case, there was no sign that West Cameroonians regretted choosing reunification.33 This, the British noted, gave an incremental importance to the French language in the country: some members of the elite may have taken bilingualism very seriously but to most East Cameroonians, learning English remained a theoretical perspective – and not a very useful one.34 The greatest incentive to learn English was in fact the desire and/or need to communicate with Anglophone Africans outside Cameroon and more generally, with an outside world that increasingly used English as the medium of communication.35 The best that could be hoped was for all Cameroonians to understand each other and not necessarily be able to converse in both official languages. In 1964, the federal customs system extended Eastern practices and rates to the whole of Cameroon,36 with Camdev being progressively taken ‘towards the French aligned system of East Cameroon’37 over the next four years. By 1966, the Federal penal code had marginalised the power of the West Cameroon Attorney General, giving the new Federal Procurator-General in West Cameroon ‘power to prosecute on behalf of the Federal Government, including cases of a political nature’.38 The unification of labour on both sides of the Mungo also gave further weight to the elite in Yaoundé. While each state originally had its own Ministry of Labour, these were replaced by a Federal Ministry. A West Cameroonian was appointed Minister but the Ministry itself functioned on the basis of the 1962 Labour Code of East Cameroon,

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itself adapted from the French Code of Overseas Labour of 1952,39 until a very slightly modified Code came into force in 1967. British diplomats reported on fears that West Cameroon would ‘be steam-rolled into blindly agreeing to introduce the whole of East Cameroon’s labour practices’40 and Ahidjo did see labour harmonisation as a ‘strategy for unification of the two territories’ and ‘trade unions [no longer] as a danger and potential source of alternative power [but] as elsewhere’, bodies that could be ‘domesticated and harnessed to and by the Party’.41 In East Cameroon, the rivalry between ‘the Federation des Syndicats du Cameroun (FSC) and the Union des Syndicats Croyants du Cameroun (USCC) [and] within the leadership of the FSC itself’ 42 facilitated the objectives of the ruling party. By 1970, Ahidjo was able to announce to the Federal Assembly that the same legislation applied to all workers throughout Cameroon.43 Ahidjo repeatedly stated that there could be no political sovereignty without economic sovereignty44 and five-year plans, ‘instrument[s] of national cohesion’,45 put development imperatives at the heart of state and nationbuilding.46 One major objective of the second development plan (1966–71) was to re-energise West Cameroon and integrate it within the national economy,47 and the extension of key infrastructure, roads and railways between the two states did facilitate both communication and harmonisation in the Federation.48 Equilibrium should be the guiding principle of Cameroonian politics, Ahidjo told the Federal Assembly in August 1970: ‘equilibrium of regions[,] equilibrium through social justice[,] equilibrium between towns and countryside, agriculture and industry, manual workers and civil servants[,] equilibrium between adults and youth, between the past and the future’.49 The Ministry of Planning and Development was in fact given extra powers in the reorganisation of Foreign Affairs which occurred on 12 June 1970. The authority of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over a number of key issues was reduced: political affairs went to the Presidency, foreign trade to the Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development, while the Ministry of Planning and Development could look for foreign funding directly and the Ministry of Finance could negotiate with foreign countries and international financial bodies.50 Ultimately, the reorganisation strengthened the powers of Ahidjo: the Ministry was responsible for executing Presidential directives; the post of Deputy Minister, traditionally held by an Anglophone, was abolished; and foreign powers, Western European powers particularly, saw Ahidjo as the best interlocutor for a stable Cameroon. Technical Ministries were not allowed to negotiate directly with foreign representatives in Yaoundé, but as Narcisse Mouelle-Kombi has asserted, there was undeniable confusion as to what powers the Ministry of Foreign Affairs actually had.51

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In 1965, Ahidjo had predicated Cameroon’s internal development on the extension of foreign trade and the diversification of international agreements for economic, cultural and technical cooperation, which would ensure Cameroon’s independence.52 A signatory to the UN Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty (Resolution 2131 (XX), 21 December 1965), Cameroon emphasised the importance of interdependence and multilateralism for economic development. Ahidjo considered that combining bilateral relations with Western European countries and multilateral relations within the wider Common Market was essential.53 Referring to the replacement of ‘charity’ with ‘a real international public service against poverty’,54 Ahidjo maintained that true solidarity could only emerge through multilateral diplomacy. As imperial preference ended and CPA association failed to materialise for West Cameroon, the President reaffirmed that Cameroon sought assistance from all countries, regardless of political orientations, the only condition being the full respect of Cameroon’s national sovereignty.55 This was again reiterated during Ahidjo’s speech to the nation for the anniversary of reunification in Buea on 1 October 1964,56 to the Cairo Conference on 20 October 196457 and during the first National Council of the Cameroon National Union in November 1967.58 Admittedly, ‘special affinities inherited from history’59 gave Western Europe priority in Cameroon’s international relations, and Ahidjo later acknowledged that he was ‘a man of the West and [that his] non-alignment [was] not equidistant’.60 However, Cameroon simultaneously multiplied contacts with the Eastern bloc,61 recognising its increasing importance in world affairs.62 Diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia63 were established in 1965 and several cooperation agreements were signed with the USSR in April64 and July 1966. Soviet funds went to the construction, equipment and staffing of an agricultural college in Dschang, a forestry school in Mbalmayo;65 student exchanges, information visits were planned, a delegation from the Education Ministry and two Cameroonian journalists were given permission to travel around the Soviet Union and Soviet officials came to Yaoundé.66 Seven million roubles were granted and further Soviet visits took place in 1967.67 However, the Cameroonian authorities constantly emphasised the balanced diversity of their international relations. Ahidjo visited Moscow, Belgrade and Brussels in June and July 1967 before going to Canada and the USA in October, prompting the British Ambassador in Yaoundé to praise his national and international ‘statecraft’.68 At the CNU Congress a month later, Ahidjo portrayed Mali, the Ivory Coast, Belgium, Yugoslavia, the USSR, Canada and the USA equally as friendly countries.69 Cameroon distanced itself from bloc politics and this, French diplomats concluded in the mid 1970s, explained why relations between the

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USA and Cameroon had been cordial but had never really blossomed: the USA did provide valuable assistance in Cameroon but Ahidjo’s government rather privileged relations with middle powers.70 The diversification of Cameroon’s foreign relations, Ahidjo proclaimed, was evidence of the determination of the Cameroonian government and people to strengthen ‘mutual contacts and participation within [Cameroon’s] national confines’,71 and was in effect the mirror image of Cameroon’s national diversity. In reality, the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of Cameroon’s (in reality Cameroun’s) independence further underlined that state-building had given more weight to the bigger part of the Federation. Lavish ceremonies were organised in Buea and reported on at length in the press72 while official speeches applauded the choice of February 1961 that had made West Cameroon ‘part of a big and stable country’: ‘unification and independence’, Muna told his fellow citizens, ‘have brought peace to Cameroon and great economic and social advantages to West Cameroon’.73 Beyond ‘inefficiency and corruption’,74 West Cameroon’s dependence on federal subsidies to prop up its economy in effect accounted for its role as the junior partner in the Federation. As the single party dominated politics in the Cameroonian Federation after 1965, economic development in West Cameroon, Britain’s legacy and assistance programmes came under increasing scrutiny.

The French partner: triangular dynamics in Anglo-Cameroonian relations Among non-Commonwealth sub-Saharan African countries, Cameroon benefited from the greatest levels of British assistance.75 Technical assistance was organised through three major channels: scholarships tenable in Britain; the provision of British experts; and the provision of education and research material and equipment.76 In 1965–66, £100,000 was given for technical assistance and a further £22,000 for a governmental training centre in West Cameroon; a £350,000 interest-free loan was given ‘for the purchase of telecommunications equipment’;77 books in English were donated to the Federal University, the Presidency and a number of key departments in both East and West Cameroon; and 130 Cameroonians were trained in the United Kingdom.78 Between 1966 and 1971, a total of 248 Cameroonian students graduated in Britain – in agriculture, medicine or economics.79 By 1967, virtually 60 per cent of British disbursements to non-Commonwealth West and Central Africa went to Cameroon.80 This, however, was seen as quite insufficient by the Cameroonian authorities, a pale reflection of Cameroon’s historical links to Britain. In 1967, only 37 Britons were sent over to Cameroon,

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including 26 volunteers, subsidised by the British government but in effect part of private organisations and often linked to missions.81 Given Ahidjo’s repeated references to East Cameroon’s economic superiority, his portrayal of West Cameroon as ‘essentially the work of the United Kingdom’82 was ambiguous at the very least. British Ambassador Alan Edden reported Ahidjo’s conviction that the era of British trusteeship had given Britain a moral obligation towards Cameroon and that the discrepancy between Commonwealth and Cameroon assistance was shamefully vast.83 France’s considerable involvement in Cameroon continued to disrupt the balance of powers in the country. When transport equipment was delivered to West Cameroon in 1969, French diplomats admitted that the Anglophone part of Cameroon had so far remained off France’s economic radar.84 Although French assistance to West Cameroon was comparatively small compared to East Cameroon, it was still more important than what other foreign powers contributed. Excluding volunteers, France had sent the greatest number of technical assistants to West Cameroon by 1966: there were 30 French teachers and experts, compared to 20 Americans, one Israeli, one German, three Swiss – and only three Britons. If volunteers are taken into account, the number of Britons rises to 24 – still less than France’s 30 personnel or Germany’s 32 volunteers, and far less than the USA’s 102 volunteers.85 According to the French consul in Buea, the influence of British experts was further curtailed by their lack of access to key influential figures in the Buea government.86 Only the Procurator General, a British citizen of West Indian origins, was said to have influence over Jua but favoured ‘reasonable solutions’ with the Federal State, which he represented in his post. It was generally thought that the Ministry of Overseas Development had no intention of replacing agents whose contract was due to expire within the following three years, thereby limiting the interest and weight of these experts. Contrary to what French visitors to West Cameroon expected, the French consul was firmly convinced that ‘Britain no longer [had] any influence on the desires, intentions and decisions of the local government’ and that the Cameroonian ‘intelligentsia’ knew there was very little to expect from the British.87 French diplomats recurrently reported that West Cameroonians of all stations felt that they had traded their secondary status as part of Nigeria under the British for an equally secondary status as part of a Francophone-dominated Federation.88 Self-confidence and satisfaction pervade French correspondence from Cameroon in the mid 1960s: the speed, quality and volume of French contributions, the Consul in Buea noted, meant that there could be little competition.89 However, Whitehall was keenly aware of Cameroon’s need for economic support, particularly in the West: awarding grants rather than loans for

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one-off projects ‘would be both realistic and politic’,90 the FO advised the Treasury, while reports from Buea to Overseas Development emphasised that assistance would be needed in the long term.91 In effect, British diplomats in Cameroon repeatedly wrote to London in support of Cameroonian requests for additional assistance. West Cameroon’s anxiety at being ‘gobble[d] up’ by more powerful neighbours was also emphasised.92 Claims that funding was not used as efficiently as possible could not fully justify the limited amounts that Britain gave93 and diplomats lamented that Britain, given ‘its outstanding traditions in helping with infrastructure’94 did not do more for Cameroon. Divergence of opinion between the FO and diplomats in Cameroon surfaced on the occasion of the 1967 independence celebrations, when London seemed tempted not to send a FO minister to attend.95 Britain’s neglect of Cameroon, diplomats argued, was harmful to wider British political interests in international affairs: ‘that Cameroon’s policy of non-alignment [was] benevolent towards the West; cool and cautious towards the East’ was little to do with Britain, who only did ‘just enough to keep good will alive’96 and remained a distant relation rather than a trusted and valued partner. Infrastructure was essentially financed by the IBRD, the EDF, the USA, Germany and France. Again, the Trans-Cameroon Railroad got most funding from the USA and the EDF.97 Britain lagged behind all other Western middle-power donors of aid to Cameroon.98 One of Britain’s major channels for investment in Cameroon was the CDC, which contributed to Camdev99 and whose role in Cameroon’s development Ahidjo acknowledged.100 Camdev was Cameroon’s biggest employer and tax payer, providing in effect 9 per cent of West Cameroon’s budget in 1965,101 and giving a large number of people access to ‘basic medical and social services’102 as well as education and training. The Swynnerton Report, commissioned by the CDC in 1965, presented a favourable assessment of ‘the financial position of the Corporation [which] was stabilised, credit terms tightened and labour more efficiently employed’.103 Whilst Camdev promoted the local peasantry,104 it also gave increasing prominence to Cameroonian managers: the last British General Manager left in 1968 and the proportion of Cameroonians in the top managerial positions increased from 60 per cent in 1964 to 72 per cent by the end of the sixties.105 However, Britain was not the only source of funding for Camdev’s projects. The Swynnerton Report had argued for the replacement of bananas by rubber on some of the plantations and advocated the use of World Bank funds for the project. While the Association for International Development contributed $11 million and the EDF CFA 1600 million, the World Bank gave Camdev a $7 million loan.106 In parallel, the

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CDC argued that it would reduce investments in Camdev, since Cameroon was not a Commonwealth member.107 It also opposed Cameroonian plans to take over the full management of Camdev, unless the £1 million loan of 1959 was repaid, leading Fonlon to enquire whether like Shylock, Britain was demanding a ‘pound of flesh’.108 British reports in 1968 hinted at the Federal authorities’ ‘appreciation of the role of the Commonwealth Development Corporation and of the “quiet cooperation” of H.M. Government in the country’s development’.109 A new three-year cooperation agreement was signed in 1970, whereby the CDC accepted further investment in Camdev.110 Although there had been hopes that Camdev would sustain West Cameroon’s influence in the Federation by strengthening its economy, a number of key British departments believed that West Cameroon’s prosperity lay in greater integration with the Federal whole: Overseas Development officials – who simultaneously admitted that West Cameroon had been ‘something of a Cinderella province in its mandate days of administration from Nigeria’111 – as well as FO staff in London and in Cameroon itself. Following the creation of the single party and the quickening pace of harmonisation in Cameroon, British officials stated that ‘it [was] certainly in [Britain’s] interest to do anything that [it could] to facilitate the transition’112 in West Cameroon. Two years later, increasing Federal involvement in development in West Cameroon had brought funding for infrastructure, tourism, light industries and services. The new political dynamics in Cameroon, the British Consul in Buea believed, favoured the economy of West Cameroon: as Ahidjo would no longer ‘fear the consequences of disruptive political forces in West Cameroon, [he would] be more amenable to diverting a greater share of economic development’113 to the Anglophone state. A report from Overseas Development concluded in September 1970 that if the British established ‘a programme for Cameroon for the first time [they] would obviously consider the country as a whole, relating [their] aid to the development plan and [they] would probably conclude that on economic grounds most of [their] aid should go to Federal and East Cameroon’.114 Britain’s relatively small economic interests115 in Cameroon, essentially centred on Camdev,116 also played against any large-scale involvement. Edden argued that Britain ‘had something to gain in UDEAC in the investment field’117 and Camdev did constitute economic opportunities ‘not normally available in the franc zone states of Africa for the purchase of British equipment and expertise’.118 Edden described Cameroon as a ‘minor, but in Africa and in its present form unique, point of contact between French and British civilisation’119 and thought Cameroonian goodwill worth cultivating. However, Cameroon was essentially seen as a French partner, with two-thirds of its total imports coming from France120 and 80 per cent from the EEC as a whole in

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1965 and 1966.121 This further limited support for investment in the country as profitability looked slim. The USA drew very similar conclusions. Business with Cameroon was ‘next to impossible to do, because the French had it sewn up, completely’. Cameroon, Lucian Heichler, the Commercial Officer at the US Embassy, noted, ‘formed an integral part of the French economic empire, and behind a mile-high tariff wall it was almost impossible to sell any American product at less than 150 percent of its French price’ – with the exception of ‘Caterpillar earth-moving equipment because they liked it and were willing to pay the tariff-inflated price’.122 In early 1964, Ahidjo had referred to ‘the primacy of Cameroonian ties with France’123 and a year later, his acknowledgement of EEC, UN, USA, German and British assistance was superseded by the emphasis he placed on the incomparable contribution of France’s bilateral assistance to Cameroonian projects through the FAC.124 French diplomats were confident that the dominance of the French language as well as the legal and economic system gave France a valuable comparative advantage when it came to commercial influence in Cameroon.125 The British Ambassador admitted that ‘internationally, [Cameroon was] in the Francophone camp’.126 Imperial legacies left ex-French Africa ‘still largely closed to British business [and] the strong local French commercial and cultural influence in Africa’127 gave little hope of any immediate change. The same assessment was made by Canadian diplomats in Paris at a time when the Canadian Ambassador considered Franco-African relations to be better than ever.128 The nature of the EEC–Africa association further convinced Britain that there was little to be gained in Francophone Africa. The Yaoundé Convention, the West and Central African Department of the FO argued in 1966, ‘was essentially a political, not an economic settlement’,129 intended to serve French interests. Although the British representative to the European Communities suggested ‘that “l’Afrique de papa est morte” and that the paternalism of the EEC [was] out of keeping with the late 1960s’,130 reports from Africa itself suggested otherwise. The Cameroonian Government was said to ‘take a hard-headed, short-term view of the Association’ and value both EDF aid and support for their commodities in the European markets.131 On the whole, African associates ‘believe[d] that they receive[d] tangible benefits from both the trade and aid provisions of the Convention’132 and a number of officials in the FO133 and Overseas Development134 expected what they defined as ‘French “neo-colonialism”’ to survive for at least a few more years. As de Gaulle for the second time vetoed British membership of the EEC on 27 November 1967, the pattern of Africa’s trade relations with Western Europe further emphasised the divide between Francophone Africa and the rest of the continent.135 The provisions of Yaoundé I were essentially confirmed by Yaoundé II, signed in July 1969136 and due to run until 31 January 1975. Fourteen of the

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18 associate states were members of the revamped UAM/UAMCE – Mali, Burundi, Mauritania and Somalia being the exceptions – and their coordinating council in Brussels provided a separate multilateral diplomatic outlet for their common concerns to be articulated. By contrast, Commonwealth states were offered association with the EEC but under terms that safeguarded the advantages of the Yaoundé states, with no general agreement that applied to all and with no access to the EDF. In July 1966, an agreement was signed between the EEC and Nigeria but quotas were imposed ‘on four sensitive products (cocoa, plywood, groundnut oil and palm oil)’. Similarly, the Arusha agreement between the EEC and Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, signed in July 1968, set restrictions on ‘unroasted coffee, cloves and canned pineapple’137 which would have competed too harshly with the production of Yaoundé states. Distinctions in theory were compounded by practice as neither agreement was ratified during the 1960s: by March 1970, Commonwealth Secretariat officials underlined that there was no prospect of the Lagos agreement being renegotiated and that the second Arusha Convention, signed in September 1969, still awaited ratification.138 As Arnold Smith stated, it was essentially ‘a defensive act to avoid being squeezed out of the European market for agricultural products by the Yaoundé group’ and which imposed reverse preferences on the African countries without awarding them any of the EDF benefits – ‘worth $730 million during the Yaoundé I period of 1965–69 and a prominent $930 million during Yaoundé II’139 – that the Yaoundé group could access. The British Ambassador in Paris considered that Francophone Africa’s ‘common administrative and cultural heritage from France and [its] common economic problems’140 would bind it together beyond fluctuating political and economic groupings. Britain’s further exclusion from Europe also made it easier for France to nurture close relations with its own ex-colonial territories through the EEC. In Cameroon itself, greater attention was paid to the drive for federal harmonisation on the East Cameroon model than to the potential advantages that could be derived from greater British involvement. The personal, political and business ties that bound French and African officials limited other relations in the ex-French African sphere. Canadian diplomats in Paris were struck by the regularity with which African leaders went on ‘pilgrimage’141 to Paris and thought that the capacity of the French to influence African politics was much greater than officials actually let on. They also commented on the regular holidays these same leaders took in France.142 American diplomats believed that French influence in Cameroon ‘was as great, if not greater than it had ever been in the colonial period’, supported by their omnipresence: first of all in the commercial area; secondly at the University; then there were some technical advisors at the Foreign Ministry–strictly

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technical; there were French military officers assigned throughout the Cameroonian Army and the Gendarmerie–they were a significant force; there were French in the security forces[, with] Foch[i]ve–a Frenchman running the secret police.143 US diplomats also emphasised the importance of the personal relations fostered throughout Africa by Foccart’s Secretariat.144 This, the USA argued, emphasised the dangers of stereotyping relations between France and its exterritories: they deemed the French approach to Africa to be ‘opportunistic and often very personal’, and for this reason precisely, ‘less static and coherent than [sometimes] portrayed’.145 British officials came to realise that de Gaulle’s personal diplomacy found favour among a number of key Commonwealth African countries, whose politicians admired his sense of leadership, his insistence on national prestige and in some cases, his antiAmericanism – even though they might disagree on other policies.146 From Yaoundé, British diplomats noted that most wealthy Cameroonians flew over to France whenever they could.147 In his valedictory despatch of 1970, British Ambassador Edden emphasised the extent to which French culture remained embedded in the region – ‘French bread, French cheeses, Caravelles (and French pilots for all air journeys)’148 and, of course, the French language. Not that Edden minded: he rather considered it essential ‘for keeping up [British] morale [through] what [was] after all in many ways still one of the better ways of life next to [their] own’.149 Diplomatically, however, it reinforced the conviction that France would remain Cameroon’s primary partner for years to come. The celebrations of the tenth anniversary of Independence on 1 January 1970 further enhanced the special relationship between France and Cameroon. Ahidjo officially thanked France, and de Gaulle particularly, for ‘facilitating Cameroon’s accession to international sovereignty after a reasoned and concerted evolution, in keeping with the aspirations of the Cameroonian people and the objectives of the United Nations and who, since then, ha[d] continued to support, through sizeable and multiform assistance, its efforts for progress’.150 West Cameroonians found themselves engulfed in a very Francophone affair, celebrating an event that in effect reinforced Eastern preponderance in the Federation. Children chosen to participate in the official parades had all been born in 1960151 and commemorative stamps reproduced the speech that Ahidjo had given in French on 1 January 1960. The Heads of Chad, Upper Volta, Mauritania, Gabon, CAR, Niger, Senegal and the Ivory Coast gathered in Yaoundé. Outside these ex-French African territories, the leaders of Equatorial Guinea, Congo-Kinshasa and the Vice President of Liberia attended: no Commonwealth African leader was present, although the Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania were represented at ministerial level.

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Parliamentary Undersecretary at the FCO Maurice Foley attended but the focus remained on the French representatives: Yvon Bourges for the Coopération and, as special guests, Jacques Foccart and Jacques Kosciusko Morizet, then the French Chief Delegate to NATO in Brussels.152 At Ahidjo’s request, the African Francophone leaders had in fact been invited by the French Ambassador, Philippe Rebeyrol. Annual celebrations of the independence of 1960, from the French and in French, emphasised recurrently that East Cameroon had been the first to access the concert of independent states and that West Cameroon’s independence had only ever existed through the Federation.

Commemorating independence, from France, in French – stamp for the 7th anniversary of independence, 1967.

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In the mid 1960s, the British Ambassador in Paris noted that France was taking more distance from African affairs. This evolution, he argued, rested on three major factors. First, de Gaulle had been disappointed by the inability of the UAM to assert itself as a strong political Francophone grouping.153 Secondly, France had grown more confident in its international standing after the end of the Algerian war and its stand against the Americans, feeling that it ‘ha[d] grown while [its African partners] shrunk’154 and that French influence could usefully be extended to other parts of the world. Thirdly, French politicians and businessmen, and Foccart’s Secretariat in particular, had become increasingly interested in the rich and strategic areas of Africa outside France’s old colonial empire.155 French interests there, the Americans concurred, rested on two major concerns: ‘significant (especially mineral) resources’, as in Zambia or the ex-Belgian Congo; and threats of regional hegemony, as in Ghana or Nigeria.156 However, the French had no intention of losing influence in Francophone Africa,157 politically, economically or culturally.158 In January 1964, the Jeanneney Report recommended redirecting aid away from Francophone Africa, but the EDF enabled France ‘to stabilise the amount of bilateral aid they gave to the Associates and channel any increases in their total aid programme to other areas of the world’,159 thereby maintaining a strong presence in Francophone Africa. The modalities of aid were reworked in the mid 1960s, with greater emphasis on training Africans and less on filling vital executive positions with Frenchmen; on the development of local universities at the expense of training in France, and on economic development in the best interest of the recipient state with less regard to prestige or the complementary integration of the local economy with that of France.160 However, the general level of assistance remained untouched and most importantly, France ‘continue[d] to supply the lion’s share of aid’ to Francophone Africa.161 In Cameroon, direct budgetary aid was discontinued after 1966 but more assistance was in fact given on fewer yet bigger production and infrastructure projects.162 France’s relations with other Western partners over Africa demonstrated greater confidence in its position. In August 1964, British Ambassador Pierson Dixon considered that greater Franco-British cooperation would become increasingly possible as ‘French disengagement from her former colonies [was] slowly bringing greater detachment’ and Quai d’Orsay pressure against ‘the chasse gardée’163 was being felt in executive circles. During the de Gaulle–Wilson talks of 1965, the French President seemed open to Franco-British coordination on Africa provided no undue American influence was to be exercised – or

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attacks against ‘its handmaiden, the French language’ made, Dixon’s successor, Patrick Reilly – while French Prime Minister Pompidou pledged support against Communist infiltration of the African continent.164 In reality, the French were less concerned about encroachment on their sphere of influence than the British thought and the French Ambassador in London had made clear to Paris officials that the British approach to subversion was not only sensibly close to French policy but also focused on its own ex-Empire.165 France was content to see other powers engaged in Francophone Africa, not because it wanted to disengage fully but because interested parties were in fact French partners who seem to have placed their own limits on their presence in Africa. The increasing Canadian presence was closely monitored by French officials in Canada, Paris and Africa, and they welcomed new Canadian policy because it was seen to support French endeavours. The French Ambassador in Ottawa noted that Canadian involvement derived from French Canadian pressure, would combat the dominance of Commonwealth interests in Canadian foreign policy, give French officials easier access to Quebec officials and generally promote Francophone relations. Canadians carefully sought French discussions on a number of matters, making their involvement financially helpful and politically unthreatening – at least in the shorter term.166 French diplomatic correspondence in the mid 1960s shows that Britain was not perceived as a threat to French interests in Francophone Africa. Only in Senegal, Upper Volta, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville and Madagascar did Britain have a resident Ambassador, whose role, as far as the French could tell, was more observation than action.167 Only these same countries, plus the Ivory Coast and except Congo-Brazzaville had a resident Ambassador in London. Economic and cultural activities remained extremely limited – even in Cameroon itself. For Francophone Africans, the French Ambassador in London concluded, Britain was ‘a second-zone power from whom there was little concrete action to expect’.168 No tensions over Africa were expected to drive any sort of wedge between France and Britain: the transition in Cameroon had been managed satisfactorily and French officials predicted that relations over Gambia and Senegal would be equally unproblematic.169 During the Anglo-French talks of July 1966 which brought together the two Prime Ministers, Pompidou and Wilson, and the two Foreign Secretaries, Couve de Murville and Stewart, discussions centred on Southern and Central Africa, particularly on the Congo, Rhodesia and Uganda.170 West Africa did not figure in the list of items on the agenda, strengthening the impression that a modus vivendi had been found there. Reports from French Embassies across West Africa confirmed these impressions. In 1969, the French Ambassador in Dakar emphasised the lack of British activity there, which he attributed to two factors: deference to the French in their former territory

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and the conviction that all British action was rendered pointless by France’s ‘tentacular presence’.171 If there may be doubts as to the real importance of the first motive, economic and financial considerations did have a major influence on British decision-making. The redefinition of French assistance which occurred in the wake of the Jeanneney Report can only be fully understood in relation to African agency: the Africans themselves had driven a reassessment of French policy by taking more distance with France and initiating contacts across the colonial divides. In 1968, Francis Huré, a former Coopération official, now the French Ambassador in Yaoundé, warned the Quai that France should not seek exclusivity in Cameroon, an ‘impatient and ambitious country’172 where France would be held responsible when problems occurred. Conversations with the Cameroonian President had made this very clear.173 Huré told visiting Canadian officials that Cameroon was not ‘the country where [France] wanted to be the most active’174 and welcomed greater Canadian participation in technical cooperation. While this was in keeping with greater financial constraints in France itself, it also reflected the increasing assertion of an independent Cameroonian international policy and diplomacy. French officials were keenly aware that Ahidjo’s attachment to African unity, independence and non-alignment led to ‘a more discreet, albeit sincere’175 attachment to France. Admittedly, Franco-Cameroonian relations remained extremely close and cordial. France was welcomed as Cameroon’s major partner176 and Ahidjo was prepared to take French interests into account when making a number of political and diplomatic appointments. In 1967, Foreign Affairs Minister Bindzi voted in favour of a UN resolution that urged France to accelerate its retreat from French Somaliland, leading France to threaten to suspend military material to Cameroon. According to French diplomats, Ahidjo had not been aware of Bindzi’s intentions, had himself been opposed to the resolution and in the event, dismissed him from his post.177 However, French officials emphasised Ahidjo’s susceptibility – which they partly attributed to his Fulbe origins – and were aware that they could never hope to be on as intimate terms with him as they were with Senghor in Senegal, Houphouët-Boigny in the Ivory Coast or Tsiranana in Madagascar.178 Many foreign diplomats, including the British and the Canadians, noted Ahidjo’s independence from France in foreign policy. Ahidjo refused to recognise Communist China long after France had done so and resented press comments or questions which implied in 1964 that French support for Communist China would influence Cameroon’s position.179 Contrary to France, Cameroon abstained on UN resolutions over the Israeli–Arab conflict – at a time when bilateral relations with Israel, which provided some assistance to Cameroon,180 were good. Even more strikingly different were reactions to the Ibo secessionist movement of Odumegwu Ojukwo and

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the Nigerian civil war, which broke out on 6 July 1967. One of the mediators chosen by the OAU to support peace in September 1967,181 Ahidjo was keenly aware of the dangers that the Biafran secessionist attempt presented for Cameroon. The outcome of the conflict was crucial for Cameroon, which shared a border with both the Eastern and the Northern regions of Nigeria and for which the continuation of good political and economic relations eastwards was essential. Although this led to some caution in the initial stages of the conflict, Cameroon promptly adopted a firm stance on the Nigerian issue and supported the Nigerian authorities in Lagos. The border with Biafra was closed down in November 1967. Nigerians who had remained in post in Cameroon had often gone back to their original region182 but Ibo refugees from Northern Nigeria could no longer get to the Eastern region via Cameroonian territory. It also meant that no arms, medicine or foodstuffs were allowed through to the rebellious Ibo region. Ahidjo had become ‘more Nigerian than the Nigerians’,183 the French Ambassador in Yaoundé noted. In reality, the major factor behind Ahidjo’s decision was the fear that successful Ibo secession might prompt secessionist tendencies in reunified Cameroon itself.184 Cameroonian authorities referred to the sanctity of African borders, as upheld by the OAU resolution of 1963, and the need for political and social stability at the national, regional and continental levels. The Government’s intense concern stemmed from its awareness of widespread public support for the Ibo cause in West Cameroon.185 Admittedly, at a time when around 200,000 Ibos lived in Cameroon, there was resentment186 against ‘smuggling and illegal migration’ and the wealth of the Ibo traders.187 But the testimonies collected by Jacques Benjamin show that the vast majority of West Cameroonians supported the Ibo secession. The newspaper Cameroon Express188 clearly supported the forces of Ojukwo. While key Anglophone politicians upheld the Federal policy, there also seems to have been some more private sympathy for the Ibos.189 The British Consul in Buea was convinced that a number of West Cameroonians ‘might easily have got involved in the conflict’190 while there were signs that students in Yaoundé itself sympathised with the Ibo cause.191 The French Ambassador in Yaoundé similarly reported on the support the Ibo secession found in West Cameroon.192 Ahidjo did not simply fear for the future of West Cameroon in the Federation but for the entire foundations of the Cameroonian nation, comparing the Ibo claims over Port Harcourt to the Bamileke suddenly demanding ownership of Douala.193 In reality, the violence of the Nigerian civil war was used to demonstrate that reunification had been a blessing for West Cameroon in 1961, saving it from traumatic warfare.194 By the end of the war, more West Cameroonians had become convinced by Ahidjo’s ‘mature handling of the situation [and] the effective control which the federal services maintain[ed]’195 and pledged

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their support to the Yaoundé authorities. The Nigerian civil war enabled Ahidjo to reinforce his control over the Federation and secure greater French support in order to do so. While Foccart reacted most cautiously to suggestions that Biafra would succeed in July 1967, he did support Huré’s plans for renewed French cooperation and action in West Cameroon. While France had accepted Cameroonian requests in June 1967 to protect Cameroonian borders,196 the start of the Nigerian civil war provided Ahidjo and the French with an additional motive to accelerate infrastructure work between East and West Cameroon and accentuate the influence of Douala over Buea and Tiko.197 As French correspondence suggests, Ahidjo himself was fully aware of the opportunities which the regional situation afforded and he, rather than any French official, was behind the re-invigorated French involvement.198 Simultaneously, Ahidjo was able to mark a clear distance between Cameroon and the Francophone heavyweights, including France itself, which also strengthened his power and influence. Quai officials were opposed to intervention in support of Biafra, whose forces they thought unlikely to prevail,199 but the Elysée and the SGAAM determined otherwise. According to the British, three major factors accounted for France’s support for Biafra. First, supporting the secession would limit the influence of the Nigerian giant, whose dominance of the West African region had been a source of concern since the eve of independence. Canadian diplomats also gave great importance to this in their interpretations of French motives.200 Secondly, small Biafra ‘appealed to the General’s instincts’. And thirdly, it ‘presented an attractive opportunity to assert France’s independence of the great power blocs’, who all supported the central Nigerian authorities. As the British emphasised, French support appeared after the Ibos had lost control of ‘the main oil producing areas, which [were] largely inhabited not by Ibos but by minority tribes’201 and made it impossible to attribute French policy purely to hard-nosed gain-seeking motives. All three factors were highly political rather than economic. On 12 June 1968, France announced that humanitarian aid would be sent to Biafra and the Government published statements in support of the self-determination of the Ibo people on 31 July.202 Senegal, Gabon and the Ivory Coast supported French moves, with Houphouët-Boigny encouraging de Gaulle to demand that the French company Elf should deal with Ojukwo directly and stop payments to the Nigerian government.203 Both Abidjan and Libreville airports were used by French planes to transport military equipment and weapons to the Ibo secessionist movement. The Red Cross delegate in Libreville, who was also the French military attaché at the French embassy, gave key support.204 Some limited military assistance did reach Biafra via Cameroon but both French and British diplomats put it down to clandestine, not official,

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activities and to the incapacity of the Yaoundé authorities to maintain an absolute control over all traffic across the border.205 The Cameroonian Red Cross sent £2,500 to the Nigerian Red Cross in Lagos in 1969, making its lack of support for the secession clear. The dismantling of Nigeria, the Cameroonian Ambassador in Ottawa told the Canadian Department in charge of African Affairs, was a greater concern than apartheid in South Africa and there could be no support for a movement which threatened the foundations of the whole of Africa.206 Ahidjo officially and publicly condemned the policies of his Francophone partners in no uncertain terms. Support for Biafra did not come exclusively from Francophone Africa: within the Commonwealth, Tanzania and Zambia recognised the Ibo government. But the Nigerian civil war did demonstrate that Cameroon’s foreign policy was its own, that there was no Francophone or OCAM consensus on the matter. France liaised with the Cameroonian authorities regularly, views and information were exchanged but no change in Cameroonian policies came from these exchanges.207 Tensions also surfaced on other issues over these months – French military assistance to Cameroon was temporarily suspended between 20 December 1967 and 16 January 1968, on de Gaulle’s order, following Cameroon’s vote against France at the UN on Djibouti, and adverse reports came from Brussels where the Cameroonian Ambassador was said to be rather anti-French.208 Were France not essentially Christian, Ahidjo told Rebeyrol in August 1968, its position on the Nigerian conflict, the mostly Christian Ibos and the Muslim Head of State, would undoubtedly be very different.209 Throughout, the French seem to have been anxious to preserve relations with Yaoundé and instructed to act cautiously where Cameroon was concerned. The Quai d’Orsay asked the French Ambassador in Yaoundé to make clear to President Ahidjo that support for Biafra was not founded on antiBritish or anti-Anglophone policies, and that it should not pose a risk to Cameroon’s position. If, despite Ahidjo’s lack of support, Biafra succeeded in becoming an internationally recognised independent state, it was likely to seek to establish good relations with Cameroon after the conflict, for geopolitical reasons. And while some may fear the effects of the Biafran secession on West Cameroon, the redefinition of territorial and constitutional dynamics in Nigeria might well lead Northern parts of country to look eastwards.210 As Michel Debré encouraged the Quai to discuss with Foccart the possibility of sending a special envoy to Cameroon, his main concern was that Ahidjo should not believe France to be acting, ‘even indirectly’,211 against Cameroonian interests. National unity, Ahidjo proclaimed, was a key factor for progress,212 compromised by foreign intervention in Nigeria’s domestic affairs which not only violated international law213 but prolonged the war

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itself and the suffering of the Nigerian people. All the countries that had recognised Biafra and provided its leaders with military or humanitarian assistance were directly responsible, Ahidjo proclaimed in Garoua in 1969, for the deaths that were recorded daily in Nigeria. The end of the Nigerian civil war strengthened Ahidjo’s position as an influential statesman in African affairs. Quai officials had noted in 1967 that African leaders now considered French assistance no longer ‘compromising’:214 Cameroon’s obstruction of French activities in Biafra for reasons of national interest showed a new pattern in Franco-Cameroonian relations. In early 1970, Edden thought that ‘the French paid a good deal of attention to Cameroon opinion’215 and Cameroon’s stand in the Nigerian conflict played no small part in this. Relations between Nigeria and Cameroon also improved markedly. Ahidjo and Yakubu Gowon met in Nigeria on 25–29 September 1970. Private talks were ‘conducted in Hausa with no advisers present’216 while in public harmony also prevailed: the Nigerian Head of State thanked Cameroon for its essential contribution to Nigerian unity and independence,217 both Presidents emphasised common historic ties between them as positive bonds rather than sources of tension, and articles in the Nigerian press further publicised Cameroon’s international stature.218 In March 1972, Ahidjo was awarded an honorary degree by Lagos University for his ‘personal contribution to African unity and improved relations between Nigeria and Camero[o]n’.219 Like Gowon, Ahidjo believed that there should be no crackdown on the Ibo after the end of the war and while he refused to establish refugee camps in Cameroon, the Cameroonian State made a financial contribution to refugee relief.220 Gowon was all the more grateful to Ahidjo as the characteristically moderate Cameroonian President used his good offices to restore relations between Nigeria and those who had favoured Biafra. Ahidjo acted as a mediator between Yakubu Gowon, Omar Bongo and Felix Houphouët-Boigny and assisted in the repatriation of the Ibo children who had been taken to Gabon and the Ivory Coast.221 This was another instance when French diplomats in Paris saw Ahidjo as an irreplaceable moderator between France, Francophone Africa and Nigeria.222 Finally, the Biafran episode brought Cameroon and Britain closer. It demonstrated to British officials the illusion of any real Franco-British cooperation on Africa because ‘as soon as a concrete case like Nigeria emerged, not only did the French do their utmost to work against [British] interests, but, when [the British] spoke to them, dissimulated about what they were actually doing’.223 The West African Department of the FO held the French, or rather de Gaulle and Foccart,224 ‘responsible for keeping the Nigerian civil war going for its last year’ and responsible for supplying ‘the Biafran “minicons” [that] attacked ‘British-owned oil installations’225 in

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the region. British officials had noted in 1967 that Governments across Francophone Africa had been surprised ‘that neither [Britain] nor the Commonwealth had been more active in the Nigerian dispute’226 and consequently thought little of the Commonwealth association. There seems to have been little doubt in Francophone countries that similar events in their sphere would have led to strong collective action, most probably led by France itself. However, Cameroon held a distinct position: its policy and objectives in the context of the Nigerian civil war had in fact been very close to Britain’s and diplomatic correspondence shows that it led to warmer relations between Cameroonian officials and British diplomats by early 1970.227 Relations between Cameroon and Britain in African affairs also faced the test of Southern Africa, where the inability of successive British governments to deal with apartheid and racial segregation put British reputation under considerable strain. As British officials acknowledged in 1967, the tables had turned for Britain, leaving France in a much stronger position: France had decolonised unwillingly and with bad grace, against the background of the Algerian war [but] present relations between France and her former colonies were good. The British colonies, on the other hand, had come to independence in an atmosphere of euphoria and mutual congratulations but, thanks to Rhodesia, [Britain’s] relations with them had become increasingly difficult.228 By 1972, British officials still emphasised the ‘poison of racial suspicion’229 that events in Southern Africa instilled in Britain’s relations with sub-Saharan Africa. Evolutions in Britain’s remaining colonies, British diplomatic initiatives and foreign-policy choices in the Commonwealth context not only influenced Anglo-Cameroonian relations but, more generally, Cameroon’s interpretation of the Commonwealth, as the association demonstrated increasing influence over African affairs and exercised increasing pressure to end resistant pockets of colonialism. In early 1963, British officials based in Cameroon voiced their resentment that ‘inexperienced countries [should] feel able to advise [Britain] on the settlement of difficult residual colonial problems’.230 The summer of 1963 confirmed that Ahidjo intended to play a clear role against colonialism and racism in international, and particularly African, affairs. Back in 1960, the British Ambassador in Yaoundé had predicted that although anti-apartheid sentiment was widespread in Cameroon, it was ‘not likely to have any practical results’,231 given the physical distance from South Africa. But Ahidjo had condemned Portugal

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and Spain in September 1962232 and supported a stronger UAM stand in these matters: a motion requesting the exclusion of Portugal and South Africa from the UN was passed while Spanish Guinea, Fernando Po and other dominated territories were put on the UAM agenda.233 Cameroon itself went further, particularly in the wake of the foundation of the OAU: contributions were made to the special fund for African liberation movements; trade with South Africa and Portugal – admittedly minimal – was suspended, their ships barred from Cameroonian ports and France was officially asked to stop representing Cameroon in both countries.234 Over the years, Cameroon would support all OAU resolutions against Rhodesia and South Africa.235 Seen as a determined yet moderate African leader, Ahidjo represented a useful mediator, acting in the negotiations between the Spanish authorities and nationalist forces in the Rio Muni and Fernando Po.236 During the celebrations for the third anniversary of reunification in Buea, Ahidjo opposed African unity to bloc power politics,237 with Cameroon as a force for peace in the world and a symbol for continental cooperation. Cameroon’s own independence, Ahidjo stated to the First CNU Congress, was predicated on the unity of a liberated African continent: events in Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia, South Africa and Equatorial Guinea were ‘not only an insult to the dignity of the black man but also a permanent threat against the security of the African continent’.238 In Contribution to National Construction,239 Ahidjo made it quite clear that the international harmony sought by Cameroonian diplomacy was subordinated to the total liberation of Africa and called on colonial powers to take the necessary steps to bring empire to a rapid end. In December 1963 at the UN, France and Britain voted for the Norwegian draft resolution prohibiting the supply of weapons and other material that could be used against South Africa’s black population but made a number of reservations.240 In reality, neither country intended to enforce a total embargo on weapons to South Africa. Britain argued that it could not afford such policy and that consequently, no ‘new contracts for the supply of military equipment would be accepted [but] current contracts and commitments would be fulfilled’.241 Despite strong general condemnations in African political fora, Ahidjo adopted a fairly moderate position in the bilateral discussions with Britain and France. The British Ambassador reported to the FO that ‘it look[ed] as if [Ahidjo] would not mind’242 if Britain honoured its current contracts. France was condemned for agreeing to sell South Africa 16 Mirage 3 jets in 1965243 but there were no public protests when submarines were also sold in 1967. France’s sizeable economic, financial and technical assistance to Cameroon, British officials concluded, explained Ahidjo’s silence.244 The crucial problem for Britain lay in reality not in its South African policy but in the events then unfolding in Rhodesia. The new constitution

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of February 1961, which further reduced hopes of African majority rule, the election of the nationalist and racist Rhodesia Front in 1962, the official break-up of the Central African Federation in January 1964 and the replacement of Winston Field by the more radical Ian Smith as Prime Minister in April 1964 initially prompted little official reaction in Cameroon. Until 1965, the Cameroonian government maintained a fairly moderate, even conciliatory attitude towards the Rhodesian situation, partly supported by a general ignorance of where Rhodesia was – according to Warner, some Cameroonian officials still believed Rhodesia to be on the coast.245 On 30 October 1965, Harold Wilson’s public admission that Britain would not be using force against Rhodesian settlers if they proclaimed unilateral independence precipitated events. Whether force should and could have been used in Rhodesia has been the subject of intense academic debate.246 What Wilson’s statement certainly did, as Philip Murphy has stated, was to deal ‘a concrete blow to the hopes of its African opponents that Britain would intervene on their behalf’.247 Rhodesia’s UDI, proclaimed by Ian Smith on 11 November 1965, pitted the OAU and the African Commonwealth against Britain. In Cameroon itself, UDI also led to strong condemnation. Ahidjo violently criticised Ian Smith and the white minority who had ‘crossed the Rubicon [and] left to the majority the choice of acquiescence and perpetual slavery, or revolt and battle to win their rights’.248 His speech at the Party Congress on 1 December 1965 clearly condemned the policy of the Wilson government, while more positive comments were made on the Spanish decision249 to grant autonomy to Fernando Po and Rio Muni. On 3 December, OAU foreign ministers met in Addis Ababa and advocated breaking diplomatic relations with Britain if Ian Smith’s rebellion had not been ended by 15 December. Cameroon itself subscribed to the declaration, opening what the British Ambassador in Yaoundé defined as ‘the biggest setback to Anglo-Cameroonian relations’250 and Cameroonian ministers made clear that they would follow a OAU majority on the matter.251 AntiBritish sentiments and open hostility resurfaced in Cameroon, bringing back memories of the post-plebiscite period in 1961. ‘Who do you think you are, Ian Smith?’, one Briton was asked in a club, while a British lady was told by a gendarme at the post-office: ‘This isn’t Rhodesia you know’.252 The African debate over the possibility of breaking relations with Britain coincided with the end of Warner’s posting in Yaoundé, which could potentially precipitate Cameroon’s decision to suspend diplomatic links. Warner himself noted that his ‘innocent farewell visit to West Cameroon was viewed with dire suspicion by the Minister for Foreign Affairs’253 and that a number of Federal officials envisaged the Rhodesian crisis ‘as a means of

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hastening the exit of British influence from West Cameroon, thus enabling this inconvenient anglicised fifth of the population to be more quickly absorbed by the Gallicised majority’.254 However, British correspondence reveals that Cameroon’s relations with Britain cannot be interpreted on simple East/West Cameroon or Francophone/Anglophone lines. In fact, a number of Anglophone ministers were among the fiercest British critics. Fonlon believed that Britain should have adopted ‘a much firmer line’255 in Rhodesia from the start and expressed his concerns to members of the diplomatic community in Yaoundé. By contrast, Ahidjo adopted a far more moderate stance in private. He seems to have been particularly eager to reassure Britain that the severance of diplomatic relations would really only occur as a last resort and that the more radical policies advocated by top officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not have his full support. On 15 December, Guinea and Tanzania broke links with Britain; on 16 December Ghana, Congo-Brazzaville, Mali, Mauritania, Egypt, Algeria and the Sudan followed suit. On 31 December 1965, Ahidjo used his private audience with the British Ambassador to admit that he had no strong intention of breaking diplomatic relations.256 Portrayed by Warner as a leader who liked ‘to keep his feet on the ground’257 and by Huré as a reflective man who abhorred pressure,258 Ahidjo refused to condemn Malawi, attacked by the East African members of the Commonwealth during the October 1965 OAU conference, for failing to adopt economic sanctions against Rhodesia and getting involved in secret talks with Ian Smith. Malawi could hardly afford the consequences of economic sanctions and its decision, Ahidjo considered, was therefore fully justified.259 It seems that the Rhodesia crisis made Cameroonian politicians more aware of the Commonwealth as an influential body in international politics. Although there was little sympathy for its more radical members, and virtually none for Ghana, the Cameroonian government considered the Nigerian initiative for a Commonwealth Conference devoted to Rhodesia260 in line with the type of multilateral diplomacy which Cameroon itself favoured. Cameroonians therefore interpreted the Commonwealth Conference held in Lagos in January 1966, the first Commonwealth meeting to be organised in Africa, as a favourable development for the organisation. During the party conference of August 1966, Ahidjo told his supporters that ‘he did not believe a break in relations with the United Kingdom would be of any effect [and] saw no reason to deprive the British Ambassador of the pleasure of living in Yaoundé’, a comment which was ‘greeted (as [were] all of his sallies) with appreciative laughter and applause’.261 This reinforced the conviction of British diplomats that

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Cameroon would not advocate a break with Britain at the forthcoming OAU Conference in November, unless perhaps there was a very strong majority in favour of it.262 Talks between the British Ambassador, the Cameroonian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ahidjo himself in September 1966 further confirmed this. Ahidjo saw past successes in British decolonisation as a sign of hope263 and while he made Cameroon’s opposition to the Rhodesian situation clear, promised not to create any additional difficulties for Britain.264 As African anger increased in mid December 1966, following the failure of the Wilson–Smith talks aboard HMS Tiger, Cameroonian politicians continued to display the same contrast between public condemnation and conciliatory private discussions. British diplomats reported ‘great consternation and disgust [at Britain’s] incredibly patient and accommodating policy’265 and the Cameroonian Government issued an extremely damning statement in early 1967. Although the statement itself could not be found in the archives, the lengthy comments and analysis that followed testify to its severity. In private though, the Cameroonian Minister of Foreign Affairs had held fairly friendly talks with the Ambassador shortly before the publication of the text and Ahidjo himself, then on a visit to Garoua, emphasised on his return that ‘he had not himself approved the text and he had [expressed] some “reproches” on its terms, some of which were not well chosen for a “pays ami”’.266 In any case, Cameroon’s position remained in all circumstances far more moderate towards Britain than most comments coming from the OAU as a whole and from the African Commonwealth in particular. In his speech to the First National Council of the CNU in November 1967, Ahidjo condemned those who ‘violated their obligations to man and the international community’267 but no specific countries were mentioned. In October 1969, Ahidjo was entrusted with the task of presenting to the General Assembly of the UN the Lusaka Manifesto, or Manifesto on Southern Africa, as the President of the OAU: unless the international community heeded the call, there would be little option for African governments but to resort to force in order to end racial segregation and establish democratic majority rule.268 It would only be a last resort, and Ahidjo emphasised their preference for ‘negotiation over destruction, and talking over killing’. But it would be used if necessary.269 Cameroon’s diplomatic initiatives on the African stage, from West to Southern Africa, were seen as evidence of the country’s pivotal role as a bridge-builder, predicated on its own ability to unite the two parts that had once been administered by two European powers. However, official discourse contrasted with the realities of nation-building and bilingualism in Cameroon itself.

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British and Canadian linguistic policies in Cameroon: a French-driven bilingualism? The political, administrative and economic harmonisation driven by the Yaoundé authorities meant that there were initially more incentives for non-French speakers to learn French than there were for non-English speakers to learn English. As the French Ambassador noted with undisguised satisfaction,270 French was the dominant language of both the political capital, Yaoundé, and Cameroon’s economic centre, Douala. In fact, the only domestic incentive to learn English concerned those who wanted to reach ‘the higher echelons of the Federal administration, where bilingualism [was] now being taken seriously’;271 no other daily-life situation could possibly convince the Francophones that English was a requirement. Although ‘all Ministers and Secretaries of State, all deputies and members of the National and legislative assemblies’272 were publicly urged to learn both official languages, actual practice was another story. The British Consul in Buea in 1968 noted that French was virtually compulsory for anyone who wished for political, economic or social promotion and that an increasing amount of information was published in French only.273 The British believed that external factors had a greater impact on East Cameroonians: the domination of English as the main international language and its official status in neighbouring Nigeria were more convincing reasons to learn the language than was the need to converse with West Cameroonians. Canadian diplomats drew the same conclusions.274 As Jean-Pierre Yetna has demonstrated, programmes on national radio stations also favoured French. While it was compulsory for Radio Buea to broadcast a third of its programmes in French and to include a French teaching module, Radio Garoua gave more importance to national languages than it did to English between 1962 and 1968.275 In fact, national radio gave increasing priority to French programmes: while they represented 68.07 per cent of all programmes in 1964, they accounted for 95.82 per cent by 1973.276 British diplomats noted the incomparable impact of Radio Buea in promoting the use of French in West Cameroon.277 Admittedly, Cameroon’s official bilingualism gave the country enhanced international prestige. Ahidjo emphasised the continental and even international reputation of Cameroon’s bilingual publications and particularly Abbia,278 first published in 1963 under the impulse of Bernard Fonlon, whose words prefaced every issue: ‘Not merely to recount/what has been,/but to share in moulding/what should be’; ‘Ne pas se contenter de relater/ce qui a été,/mais contribuer à modeler/ce qui devrait être’. The Cameroonian President proudly announced in Buea in 1966 that ‘many African countries env[ied] [Cameroon’s] situation’ and that ‘various Heads

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of State ha[d] congratulated and complimented’279 him on Cameroon’s bilingual experiment. However, a number of publications soon suffered. The bilingual Revue Camerounaise de Pédagogie was no longer published after 1967 and when the Government-controlled Cameroon Tribune first appeared on 1 July 1974, the French edition was published daily but the English edition was only printed on a weekly basis. Cameroon Outlook readers also complained that adverts produced by national companies often appeared in French only.280 The foundation of Yaoundé’s bilingual primary school in 1967 was a key achievement. Originally devoted to the children of West Cameroonian officials posted to the capital and run by a majority of English-speaking teachers, the school accepted 50 per cent of French-speaking pupils three years after its creation.281 However, in West Cameroon itself, the Secretary of State for Primary Education urged people to use radio programmes to ‘learn [their] French as [they] learn [their] English, in order to prepare [themselves] for the great battle in the World today of the survival of the fittest’.282 Officially meant to publicise bilingual Cameroon as an international bridge-builder, the comment can also be read as a warning that there would be no future in Cameroon for non-French speakers. While British officials understood that Cameroon’s historic ties with Britain put it in a category of its own,283 the overall British policy elaborated in London consciously favoured giving the bulk of its assistance to Commonwealth countries.284 West Cameroon did stand out as the only nonCommonwealth area where British assistance had any substance285 but even then, it remained minimal. French diplomats in Francophone Africa, who constantly monitored Britain’s activities in the area, reported that there was not a single place where ‘British influence’286 seemed to gain ground and the consensus in early 1965 was that only isolated operations were undertaken, confirming Britain’s wider international decline. Back in June 1963, the French Consul had reported that the British Ambassador, then on a visit to West Cameroon, looked rather bored and reserved, seemed little eager to engage in conversation and showed no particular enthusiasm for his posting287 – further strengthening the French conviction that it was up to them to act in Cameroon. After 1965, several British teachers and experts were posted to West Cameroon: a British adviser to the West Cameroonian Government oversaw the organisation of summer schools for teachers and radio presenters; 288 one teacher and two instructors were sent respectively to the Faculty of Arts, Sciences and Technologies in Bambili and the Telecommunication School in Buea,289 while the Director of the teacher-training centre in Kumba was a British citizen whose salary was essentially provided by the British Government. In language teaching, the British made the decision to

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pursue ‘a middle course’,290 which in effect meant giving some support for bilingual policies without accelerating the process. British correspondence in May 1967 clearly shows that relations with the French were a decisive factor. The British Ambassador welcomed interest in the English language, which he also saw as a potential advantage for Britain’s ‘longer term commercial interests’. However, he insisted that ‘in a country so dependent on France [Britain] might not wish, even if [it] could so afford, to do more than respond to needs already felt and expressed by the Cameroonians themselves, since anything more would involve in effect pushing English against French’. The French Ambassador was in fact directly and explicitly told by Edden that Britain had no intention to go beyond ‘the existing institutional framework, beginning with the bilingual Federal University and the bilingual grammar schools’.291 There would certainly be no pro-active promotion of English, and even less of British culture. British representatives in West Africa meeting six months later agreed on the need to send more English teachers ‘to promote closer relations between Anglophone and Francophone Africa’292 but no dramatic change was noticed in practice and no clearly energised effort targeted Cameroon. British officials acknowledged that the bilingual degree at the Federal University was a unique experiment293 and by 1968, the FO had taken steps to improve Britain’s contribution to the scheme.294 Cameroonians pro-actively sought British cooperation and contacted Leeds and Liverpool Universities for assistance in designing courses and exams and in recruiting British teachers.295 However, initiatives remained limited in scope, reactive rather than pro-active and decisions were taken on a case-by-case basis, with no concerted, integrated overall policy. Edden was absolutely right in assuming that ‘[o]f the East and West Cameroonians, the French and [the British], it [was] the French whose sentiments [were] most strongly committed’.296 Sir Roger Stevens’ prediction in May 1963 that ‘it was unlikely that any competition from [Britain] would discourage the French [who] would probably be stimulated’297 was equally prescient. Sir Pierson Dixon in Paris had also warned that in the event of France having to reduce spending in Africa, funding for culture was likely to be maintained as one of the privileged means of French influence.298 By 1965, France had established diplomatic posts everywhere in Anglophone Africa except Nigeria and was in the process of extending its cultural network through Alliance Française offices, scholarships and French teachers.299 This was partly a reaction to Britain’s limited assistance to language training in its own ex-empire. French officials noted with horror that there were only about 80 teachers of French in Anglophone Africa in 1963, compared to 1,000 teachers of English in Francophone Africa and the risk was high that English would impose itself as the preferred language of African diplomacy, as well

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as trade. Two factors would limit France’s cultural activity in Anglophone Africa: financial resources, as Francophone Africa was to remain France’s privileged sphere; and rivalry with Britain, as the British should be given no excuse to intervene too directly in Francophone Africa.300 As a predominantly English-speaking area within a predominantly French-speaking state, West Cameroon seemed a perfect target. Among Cameroonian politicians, Fonlon clearly saw the dangers of Franco-British competition taking place on African territory and had warned his compatriots of the likely consequences of French hegemony: French imperialism, especially in things cultural and economic, is of the exclusive, jealous type. Frankly speaking, therefore, I do not expect any Frenchman to glow with enthusiasm at the prospect of cultural integration in Cameroon; rather, it would be more in line with his bent and with his past to resent the Anglo-Saxons, and even the West Cameroonians, here, as intruders. I expect him to strain every nerve to foil our national enterprise and to use his overwhelming ascendancy in this country to Frenchify us.301 Difficulties in securing coordinated multilateral funding further hindered the development and use of English within national structures. In the late 1960s, delays in securing multilateral cooperation over plans for an International Bilingual Institute in Yaoundé that would train government personnel in both official languages302 were a case in point. Contrary to their British counterparts, the French authorities adopted an extremely pro-active approach to bilingualism in Cameroon, through the promotion of French in West Cameroon. Perhaps more than any British influence, it was ‘the overwhelming size and potential power of Nigeria and even the restless energy of Ghana’303 which prompted de Gaulle, his government in Paris, and the diplomats in Cameroon to support an assertive French cultural diplomacy. When de Gaulle and Ahidjo met in Paris in June 1965, the French President made clear that generalising the use of French, rather than promoting English learning, seemed to him to be a sensible policy.304 From Buea, officials repeatedly emphasised France’s ‘determined effort’ and the danger of English being ‘swamped by the new influx of French culture’305 in West Cameroon. Two days earlier, the French Ambassador had written to Couve de Murville, arguing that four-fifths of the Cameroonian Federation were Francophone and that France had to put all resources behind teaching French to the remaining fifth. Bilingualism, he noted, ‘should not be an obstacle for France [here], since [its] position is initially the stronger’.306 Referring to ‘the battle of bilingualism’, the Ambassador emphasised the importance of

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teaching French to the Anglophones – or at least the ‘pidginophones’,307 echoing de Gaulle’s supposed suggestion to Ahidjo over the same period to avoid national divisions by focusing entirely on French.308 Indeed, Huré argued that France should contribute ‘if not to the total integration of West Cameroon at least to the multiplication of concordances and adjustments, and therefore progress’:309 massive assistance to French teaching in West Cameroon would therefore contribute to a unification process which would benefit both the French and the Federal authorities. In Buea, Michel Moreux, the French Consul, was equally determined to promote not simply the French language but French culture and extend the French legacy in East Cameroon to West Cameroon, dismissing Britain for failing to secure West Cameroon’s economic future.310 Moreux advocated targeting the younger generations and predicted that education in the French language would simultaneously result in political approval for the Federal institutions which owed more to the French than to the British legacy. It was therefore essential to increase the number of French teachers sent to West Cameroon, all the more so as the British themselves seemed to devote much smaller resources to their own activities. By 1965, French linguistic and cultural activity in West Cameroon was being built on four main institutions: a bilingual lycée, with 60 per cent of Anglophones out of a total of 595 students,311 a Language Centre and a French Cultural Centre in Buea, as well as a special programme, ‘Le Français par la Radio’, which targeted the population of West Cameroon outside the confines of the state capital.312 The French Cultural Centre offered access to 3,500 books, including 2,700 in French.313 The other books were in fact the only library fund available in English,314 emphasising the clear comparative advantage of the French, supported by Radio Buea broadcasts and the provision of ‘many teachers, about a dozen of them “militaries” teaching French to West Cameroonians’.315 Courses at the Language Centre started in February 1967, providing classes to adults and civil servants in particular.316 Senior civil servants in West Cameroon were also eligible for courses in France, in partnership with the audio-visual centre of the University of Besançon and the Alliance Française in Paris, in preparation for work in the federal services.317 The Coopération also sent several French researchers to the Camdev centre at Ekona in West Cameroon, at a time when local resources – and other sources of international assistance – remained slim.318 In December 1969, France declared that its assistance was devoted to both the federated states319 yet the balance remained doubly unhinged: French assistance was still more important in East Cameroon while British assistance to the Federation as a whole and to West Cameroon specifically remained far smaller. Linguistically, the numerical superiority of the Francophones, the political and economic dom-

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inance of East Cameroon and the greater French involvement in the country played against West Cameroon and further eroded its specificity. However, there is evidence that the Federal authorities increasingly sought to find assistance for language teaching from other partners than the French. Diversification would lead to the firmer assertion of Cameroon’s independence but it would also enable the state to dissociate French language from French culture and therefore achieve Ahidjo’s stated aim of creating a specific Cameroonian culture born out of reunification. While Cameroon’s Federal authorities pressed the British to cooperate and contribute more to educational structures in the Federation320 in order to redress some form of balance, they also appealed to the Canadians for additional support in education. In May 1967, the Cameroonian Government told a Canadian visiting mission ‘that their interest in French was not for “cultural” reasons but for practical ones’.321 Ahidjo was one of the 13 non-Commonwealth African leaders who visited Ottawa in 1967. Canada’s anti-colonial reputation (despite the native Indian issue) and official bilingualism accounted for much of the country’s popularity in Cameroon – as in much of Africa. Press reports322 in Cameroon in October 1967 built on the Presidential visit to emphasise Cameroon’s national unity beyond multiple legacies and its similarity with Canada as a bilingual country that could act as a bridge-builder in international affairs. At the time, Canada was giving increasing attention to cooperation with non-Commonwealth African countries in response to Quebecois claims that part of Canada’s cultural identity was being forgotten by Canadian foreign-policy makers.323 In 1966, Francophone African students, including those from North Africa, represented only 9 per cent of all African students in Canada, while only 30 per cent of Canadian teaching staff were sent to English-speaking Africa.324 By 1968 however, Canadian assistance to Francophone Africa had increased by 50 per cent per year to represent ‘over 16 percent of the total Canadian bilateral aid to developing countries’325 and Federal officials were fairly confident that the relative balance achieved would ward off Quebecois attempts to replace Ottawa in French-speaking Africa.326 The creation of the CIDA in 1968, which predicated a general expansion of Canadian assistance on ‘a policy of expediency and pragmatism’,327 also served to sustain Canada’s interest in Francophone Africa and continued the Federal drive to recruit more French-speaking Canadians into both External Affairs and Development. Assistance to nonCommonwealth Africa increased from $12 million in 1967/68 (7 per cent of Canada’s total contribution to assistance to Commonwealth countries), to $22 million in 1968/69 (12.5 per cent), $32 million (18 per cent) in 1969/70 and $47 million in 1970/71 (25 per cent). By then, it also represented 19 per cent of Canada’s total bilateral assistance.328

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In the wider context of its Federal African policy, Canada’s contribution to bilingualism in Cameroon was limited by two major factors. First, it was precisely Cameroon’s Francophone component that explained Canada’s keen interest in the country. Cameroon was identified as a priority country, with a focus on education, and by 1967 around 350 Canadians were present in Cameroon, on top of the 150 missionaries who had been there.329 Virtually all Canadian assistance to Cameroon concerned the provision of scholarships, teaching personnel and equipment for education,330 with a strong focus on East Cameroon. While all five medical doctors sent to Cameroon in 1968 were in West Cameroon, all but two of the 60 Canadian teachers were based in East Cameroon, and most taught French or in French.331 Scholarships were attributed in relation to population distribution, which meant awarding many more to Francophones, even when applicants were not as good as West Cameroonian candidates.332 Canada provided most of the funds for the Bonabéri school in 1966 (near Douala), initially a Francophone school333 run essentially with Canadian staff, including the Director, and which functioned with Canadian equipment. During his visit to Canada in 1967, Ahidjo secured additional technical assistance, from the provision of audio-visual equipment to a financial contribution for the construction of a bridge in Akonolinga.334 However, his request for further assistance to transform the Bonabéri school into a bilingual institution produced no immediate result. By 1971, Bonabéri was still a Francophone institution and Canadian staff in fact requested French assistance to run the school.335 The focus on Cameroon’s Francophone components did not simply derive from Ottawa’s domestic agenda. The dominance of Francophones in Cameroon’s diplomatic corps, which preparations for Ahidjo’s second visit to Canada in 1970 confirmed, comforted the Canadian federal authorities in their belief .336 Secondly, Canada remained in the shadow of the French in language teaching. The Canadians’ experience in Francophone Africa since the early 1960s had made them keenly aware of France’s cultural domination, which went far beyond language in Francophone Africa. French and Canadian officials met in March, April and October 1966 to discuss aid to Africa and reports show that French advice on the matter, and even approval, was sought. The issue was also discussed during a meeting between Maurice Couve de Murville and Paul Martin in September 1966. Cameroon (along with Senegal and Tunisia) was specifically mentioned as a priority country for the Canadians, and the French Minister agreed with such plans.337 During the same month, around 20 Canadian staff received French training in preparation for their posting to Africa.338 Canadians were aware that France’s colonial past and present soft policy in Southern Africa might compromise Canada’s reputation in Africa if the two states were perceived to be too close.

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The Canadians themselves had no desire to identify with France. But they acknowledged that there was a strong ‘national imperative’ for Canada to participate actively in the expansion of French language in the world and that no relations with French-speaking Africa could be developed if France was bypassed.339 France’s own support for Quebec – which found its most extreme expression in de Gaulle’s ‘Vive le Québec libre!’ in 1967340 – meant that relations with France, including in Africa, should be handled with the utmost care. Cooperating over assistance to French teaching in the exFrench empire therefore seemed to offer a double advantage: satisfy French Canadians that Canada’s dual heritage now pervaded foreign affairs; and satisfy the French that Ottawa contributed to the survival, and even the expansion, of the French language in the world. In practice, there seems to have been a discrepancy between the rather conciliatory approach from Ottawa officials and complaints from Canadians in Cameroon. Reports from Cameroon emphasised the difficulties Canadians encountered in a country where French traditions dominated. The intricacies of the metric and the legal systems341 were mentioned but so, more importantly, were equipment and industrial norms,342 making Canadian equipment extremely difficult and costly to use, with everything, including spare parts, having to be brought in from Canada.343 Canadian officials noted with disheartened realism that given France’s massive assistance in all areas, there could be no competition: commercially, this meant that Canadians were often left with ‘the less interesting projects’.344 But Canadians also found some active resistance coming from their French counterparts and reported that it was rather difficult to engage in good working relations. Education was a case in point. French officials noted marked animosity between Francophone and Anglophone Cameroonian teachers345 but the Canadians underlined that the condescending and disdainful attitude of French coopérants actually had a detrimental influence on the attitude of the African population.346 In January 1968, the Canadians argued that US diplomats were failing to realise how important cultural diplomacy was for France. France, the Canadian Ambassador in Paris wrote, ‘considers it highly important that dozens of millions of Africans should speak French. Political relations, trade, the exploitation of mineral resources, assistance and culture all go hand in hand. One of these aspects cannot suffer a setback without causing concern’.347 This was confirmed by the Chevrier mission, which toured Francophone Africa in 1968348 to observe political evolutions, assess Canadian involvement in the region and, as John Schlegel has stated, ‘forestall the implementation of a distinct Quebec presence and program’349 in French-speaking Africa. In Cameroon, Canadian teachers expressed concern that too many school inspectors were French nationals who disapproved of any teaching that did not follow

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French methods and that too many French coopérants in the Federal Ministry of Education exercised undue influence over domestic affairs. One of them was said to have joked that one recognised French teachers because they had both science and method – Canadians had only science and Cameroonians had neither.350 Canadian teachers requested the support of their Government in this matter but the archives give no information on whether an explicit decision was made to take action as a consequence. Canadian diplomats in Ottawa requested consultative meetings with the French, which were held in January 1967, April 1967 and February 1968. Throughout, the French noted that the objective of the Canadians was to gather more information on French intentions and projects before making their own plans and, most importantly, to avoid compromising French activities.351

No Francophonie? The problematic emergence of the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT) Relations between Cameroon and Canada and their implications for statebuilding and national unity can only be understood in the wider context of the progressive emergence of the Francophonie idea in the 1960s, which gave birth to the ACCT in 1970. Both Canada and Cameroon were signatories to the founding Niamey Convention in 1970352 but both also held deep reservations about what the implications of such a body might be for their respective Francophone and Anglophone minorities. In August 1967, the French Consul in Buea had predicted that West Cameroon would reach ‘bilingualism’ first but that ‘its full integration in the francophonie [would] be long’.353 Relations with the emerging Francophonie had the potential to threaten the fragile balance between French and British legacies. The decisions taken by the Federal Government of Cameroon regarding the Francophonie project are indeed fundamental to assess the influence of international relations on nation-building and national unity in the postindependence period and the impact of globalisation and multilateralism on national policies. When African leaders first called for the creation of an organisation of French-speaking states, Ahidjo remained very distant and made sure that Cameroon was not seen to be associated with the movement in any way. In 1959, Senghor had encouraged the formation of what he called a ‘Commonwealth à la française’354 and in March 1962 he had seized the opportunity of the UAM conference to promote the creation of ‘a vertical organisation, solidly structured yet flexible, able to promote exemplary African cooperation’.355 While France and the majority of its African partners

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welcomed the proposal, a number of African leaders remained coldly suspicious. Along with Mauritanian President Moktar Ould Daddah, Ahidjo was the most strongly opposed to Senghor’s project. French archives give one unique hint that Ahidjo might have seen value in the proposal356 but all other documents point to his intense caution357 and offer a glimpse into the painstaking diplomatic skills that had to be employed to convince the Cameroonian President to participate in the endeavour. In effect, Ahidjo’s distance matched the complex relations that Cameroon entertained with Francophone African groupings: a distinct caution, which nonetheless stopped short of boycotting the French-speaking bodies. In February 1965, Cameroon attended the Nouakchott Conference that saw the creation of OCAM out of the remnants of the UAM/UAMCE. Although Senghor was entrusted with liaising with the moderates of Englishspeaking West Africa, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia, very little came of it in the short term358 and OCAM seemed to reinforce divisions between Anglophone and Francophone Africa. Ghana attacked the new group359 ferociously. Nigeria did admit that the OAU was not a perfect organisation and indeed, Nigerian leaders considered that the OAU had performed fairly poorly on the issue of the Congolese civil war. However, they feared that the permanence of ‘closed shop[s]’360 in Africa would only impede African unity. Britain itself considered it an extremely dangerous move which would divide African moderates along ex-colonial lines361 and saw the extension of OCAM’s membership to the Congo (Leopoldville) as an equally problematic step362 for Africa’s overall balance. When the British Ambassador in Dakar stressed the dangers of OCAM as a Francophone club that would further divide Africa, Senghor replied that the ultimate objective was regional cooperation and that ‘the Anglophones had their Commonwealth’.363 However, the Commonwealth was a very different organisation which, despite its imperial origins, had come to represent a great diversity of opinions and cultures, and which above all was not confined to one region. Former British African territories did meet in the Commonwealth but the fundamental identity of the association lay in its international diversity, across continents. As decolonisation proceeded and newly independent members joined, a distinct African Commonwealth did emerge – with Sierra Leone in 1961, Uganda in 1962, Kenya in 1963, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia in 1964, the Gambia in 1965, later followed by Lesotho in 1966 and Swaziland in 1968. But the Commonwealth itself was not African and its African members represented less than half the membership. Conversely, OCAM was a purely African body and Nigerians believed it would hinder the ability of all Africans to act efficiently in continental affairs. As OCAM took shape, Commonwealth states were working out plans for a Commonwealth

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Secretariat to be established, under the strong impulse of the Ghanaian Government. While its headquarters were located at Malborough House in London, the new Secretariat took the Commonwealth further away from purely British hands, as management procedures were handed over to a variety of Commonwealth civil servants.364 The parallel creation of the Commonwealth Foundation, an intergovernmental organisation focusing on the people’s Commonwealth rather than on Commonwealth member governments and striving to support non-governmental groups, also broadened the scope of the association. Contrary to Britain, France not only welcomed the formation of a new Francophone grouping but approved of the Congo’s new membership, finalised in May 1965 – even though French officials argued that they had not actively encouraged the move365 – and supported OCAM’s restriction to Francophone states. The Direction for African and Malagasy Affairs at the Quai argued that contacts between Francophone and Anglophone African moderates were valuable, and indeed noted that Nigeria often sided with the Francophone moderates in the OAU, but that any form of institutionalisation would risk splitting the OAU further politically.366 A more fundamental reason behind French policy was France’s desire to see ‘its former colonies united in a bloc’.367 French officials acknowledged that OCAM was a fairly modest affair, with an increasing number of military heads of state who caused concern among their civilian counterparts and no grand future was predicted. But precisely because OCAM was essentially centred on technical cooperation, it gave a central role to France, whose technical assistance in all its former French sub-Saharan territories (except Guinea) was high and pervasive. For this reason, it was an ‘essential’ development.368 Cameroon’s attitude to OCAM was a mixture of cautious distance and determined leadership. Ahidjo approved of the Congo’s membership but disagreed with the handling of the issue, resisted French pressure on the matter369 and did not attend the OCAM meeting of May 1965. When the meeting decided to boycott the forthcoming OAU meeting in Ghana in 1965 to protest against Nkrumah’s support for various opposition movements in OCAM countries,370 Ahidjo strongly disagreed.371 Personal conflicts with the Ivorian President also heightened tensions.372 However, as Fonlon confirmed to the British Ambassador in Yaoundé,373 Ahidjo was determined to maintain OCAM374 and wanted the various political and personal trends within it to cooperate. Yaoundé itself became the heart of Francophone groupings when Heads of State chose it to host the headquarters of the Organisation. The birth of OCAM coincided with renewed calls among Cameroon’s partners for a Francophone organisation, with Presidents Léopold Sédar Senghor and Habib Bourguiba leading the movement. Tunisia’s desire to improve relations with France in the aftermath of the Bizerta crisis375 and the determination of

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OCAM states to foster closer links with North Africa376 certainly motivated these renewed proposals. More generally, however, Francophone African leaders were worried that the pattern of Franco-African cooperation might be significantly altered to the benefit of other areas of the world. As British diplomats noted, the Francophone idea was strongly driven by suspicion that the Evian settlements had reduced the strategic importance of the African states of the Algerian hinterland; concern about the future re-deployment of French aid within the existing totals (as recommended by the January 1964 Jeanneney Report); de Gaulle’s narrow victory in the November-December 1965 Presidential elections and fear that his successors might be less solicitous to African than the “Man of Brazzaville”; the new French initiatives in Latin American and South-East Asia with the danger that wider horizons might mean less concern with Africa; and the series of coups in Black Africa in 1965–6 which had provoked a French warning that aid could only be effective in conditions of order and legality.377 On the French side, concerns over the galloping domination of English that accompanied the French retreat from empire prompted interest in the scheme, particularly among ‘certain super-patriotic clandestine groups’ that sought involvement in foreign affairs.378 The Francophone idea went beyond Franco-African relations to include all French-speaking regions of the world. It generated keen interest among French Canadians, particularly, as British officials noted, ‘after the coming to power in 1960 of the Lesage Government, the beginning of the ‘quiet revolution’ and the deterioration of Quebec-Ottawa relations’.379 In September 1966, President Hamani Diori of Niger, then head of OCAM, submitted a proposal, nurtured by President Senghor, which envisaged Francophonie as three concentric circles: [T]he most far-reaching cooperation would have been in the inner circle labelled ‘francophonie A’. This would have comprised France and the OCAM States and would have been based on economic, educational and cultural arrangements. ‘Francophonie B’ would include this inner nucleus of State plus the countries of the Maghreb and Lebanon, Haiti and the Indochinese succession States. Cooperation in ‘B’ would take the form of conferences of Heads of State and Government and of Ministers responsible for education, youth, culture and economic affairs. The outer circle ‘C’ would comprise all the States of ‘A’ and ‘B’, plus Canada, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg, and would be solely concerned with cultural cooperation.380

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Cameroon was among the states that favoured closer cooperation with the North African states but Ahidjo remained adamant that there should be no institutionalisation of multilateral Franco-African relations. His main concerns appear to have centred on the inner circle of the Francophonie grouping. His initial opposition rested on fears that, conceived as such, the Francophonie would merely be a revival of the French Community. Cameroon had never been part of the Community and Ahidjo had in fact used this distance to assert his power in the face of UPC opposition, to demonstrate Cameroon’s independence and, in the face of Anglophone concerns, to manifest an apparent balance in Cameroon’s attitude to the Community and the Commonwealth. The fact that Senghor repeatedly referred to ‘a sort of Commonwealth, a sort of Community’,381 was hardly likely to gain Ahidjo’s support. Had he liked the idea, the very formulation of it made Francophonie a clear political problem in Cameroon’s domestic context. Cultural and economic cooperation could and should be promoted and Cameroon already participated in the technical meetings between education and finance ministers. In the eyes of Ahidjo, a Francophone organisation would be merely an unhelpful replica of such gatherings.382 Only if it could be demonstrated that a formal organisation would be more efficient was there a case for investigating the matter further on the technical level. On the political level however, the Cameroonian President could see no future for a Francophone association. Any form of ‘political organisation’ between France, Cameroon and other African countries was unthinkable: this, Ahidjo argued, would replicate the Commonwealth, which remained seen as an imperial remnant that would not have been created in 1960 had it not existed.383 Any mention of meetings between Foreign Affairs Ministers or Heads of State only drew hostile comments from the Cameroonian President.384 French diplomats in Cameroon were keenly aware of Ahidjo’s double objection to the Francophone idea – inefficient, and dangerous for national unity – and predicted that in Africa, Cameroon would most likely show the greatest opposition to the plans. Unlike Gabon or Dahomey, it certainly did not seek to use Francophonie plans as evidence of attachment to France.385 Ahidjo approved of strong Franco-Cameroonian links on a bilateral basis but warned French diplomats that anything remotely resembling the French Community, far from strengthening the partnership, would have serious detrimental consequences and be seized upon by the more radical and younger generations.386 Ahidjo therefore opposed what he considered to be hasty plans for a Francophone grouping, precisely because it would expose Franco-African relations, and Franco-Cameroonian relations specifically, to criticism from radical national and continental opposition if institutions failed to succeed. According to the French Ambassador in Yaoundé, Ahidjo was in effect in favour of closer

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Francophone cooperation but without haste or publicity and moderated the more enthusiastic response that other OCAM members expressed.387 To some extent, Senghor’s project in 1966 was cautious in that it centred cooperation on cultural affairs,388 emphasised its compatibility with the OAU, expressed friendship with the Arab League and the Commonwealth of Nations.389 However, key elements conflicted with Cameroonian priorities. Senghor mentioned the creation of a Secretariat in Paris, on the Commonwealth model in London390 and the ‘mouvance française’391 would be a common denominator in a Francophonie whose ‘irrefutable link’ Senghor defined as ‘French language and culture’.392 This was hardly compatible with the foundations of the bilingual Federation of Cameroon. French Ambassadors indeed emphasised Ahidjo’s fears that the creation of a Francophone institution would lead to a militant Anglophonie in Cameroon and generate separatist tendencies in West Cameroon.393 The Federal Constitution made provisions for a bilingual state that acknowledged Cameroon’s dual heritage and it was ‘neither desirable nor possible’394 to alter it. Cameroon might be an essentially French-speaking state but its federal, rather than unitary, status in this context was given great prominence.395 Moreover, Ahidjo resented Senghor’s public initiative while OCAM states had only entrusted him with collecting opinions in preparation for private discussions in restricted OCAM circles. In November 1966, Ahidjo informed the French Ambassador that he had complained to Diori in writing and would not attend the Abidjan meeting that Senghor intended to organise in December396 – and which in fact did not take place.397 While Ahidjo publicly emphasised Cameroon’s bilingual character, French diplomats painted a more complex picture of the Cameroonian President’s motivations. Admittedly, the ‘West Cameroon’ argument was not a ‘pretext’ but neither was it the ‘fundamental reason’398 behind Ahidjo’s opposition, Huré said. Of greater importance were fears of a French, and particularly of a Gaullian, stranglehold over the organisation399 and Ahidjo opposed institutionalised meetings that would give the impression that African leaders gathered around the General-President.400 French interpretations therefore gave more influence to nationalist sentiment throughout the Cameroonian Federation than to specific Anglophone resentment in policy-making in Yaoundé. Some Quai officials were in fact concerned that fierce anti-French criticism worldwide, quite possibly led by the Communist bloc, would accompany the formation of a Francophone grouping.401 British diplomats noted that ‘Cameroon’s conception of francophonie seems to be limited to considerations of its own particular relations with France’, which they believed to be ‘very realistic’402 – different, the French said, from Senghor’s idealism and Bourguiba’s personal calculations.403 It is however undeniable that the pledge

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made in The Two Alternatives on the eve of the reunification plebiscites greatly influenced the position of Ahidjo, who made repeated comparisons with the Commonwealth. To some extent, the Commonwealth was in itself a useful multilateral forum for ex-colonies to scrutinise and criticise British policy. After the creation of the Commonwealth Secretariat and Foundation in 1965, and under the firm leadership of the first Secretary General, the Canadian Arnold Smith, the Commonwealth was becoming less and less of a British creature – if it had ever really been one. However, a survey of Commonwealth relations in 1967–68 showed that bilateral relations with Britain still remained the common most important raison d’être of the organisation for the majority of African countries.404 Should Britain leave the Commonwealth in protest at criticism over its Southern Africa policies, the report concluded, the organisation would most probably die out.405 Canadian diplomats similarly reported that Ahidjo’s reservations about the Francophonie project stemmed from a distinct feeling that France was behind the scheme, that those African leaders who supported it were seen to be too dependent on France and that the reputation of the Francophones on the African continent would suffer as a consequence.406 Cameroon’s refusal to approve high-level Francophone meetings between Heads of State did not affect its participation in further Francophone cooperation. In late 1965–early 1966, as France founded the Haut Comité pour la Défense et l’Expansion de la Langue Française under the authority of the Prime Minister, plans were made for a Francophone parliamentary association.407 Back in June 1965, the President of Cameroon’s National Assembly, Marigoh, and two of his fellow parliamentarians, had made a visit to France408 and shown interest in the project. Less than ten days before the first international conference of Francophone parliamentarians was due to open in Luxembourg on 17 May 1967, Ahidjo was yet to confirm Cameroon’s participation.409 Eventually, both Marigoh and Banag attended and Marigoh was elected on 18 May to the association’s ninemember board, as one of three African representatives.410 The APLF, which was constituted at Versailles a year later and on whose board Marigoh remained,411 was depicted by the British as a vehicle for French interests, a body that ‘could both cloak and facilitate activities by French militants’.412 No comment on Cameroon’s participation has been found in the archives and there was no analysis or even mention of the definite contrast with the very different fate of West Cameroon’s application to the CPA in 1964. Regardless of the respective natures of the Commonwealth and the burgeoning Francophonie, Cameroon’s unequal participation in what were two parliamentary associations gave further powers to the political federal centre and to the Francophone political elite.

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At the end of 1967, French Minister Jean de Broglie gave vibrant speeches at the Journée de la Francophonie and at the Académie diplomatique internationale in Paris. British officials interpreted these activities as a rallying cry to fight not only for the French language but for the maintenance of symbiotic links between France and Francophone countries or regions.413 The Francophonie project was useful in that it would encourage stability in sympathy with the West in the global South but the political Francophonie could also exercise very disruptive powers by exacerbating differences between national communities. In reality, British officials seem to have focused on the Western countries of the Northern hemisphere, particularly on the French communities of Canada and Belgium, and not on Cameroon, where the danger concerned the Anglophone minority.414 Ahidjo himself, keenly aware of these potentially disruptive forces in his own country, was highly concerned by the negative influence it might have elsewhere. While attempting to play down Cameroon’s involvement to preserve some balance within the Federation, he was equally and consistently supportive of Canada’s Federal Government against Quebecois separatist claims. Following the creation of the interministerial committee for external relations in the Quebecois Government in August 1965, Archbishop Lussier had toured 18 Francophone Asian and African states in September and a mission of Quebec engineers travelled to Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon and France in November and December 1965. Ahidjo, Senghor and Houphouët-Boigny seem to have shown no desire to deal with Quebec to the disadvantage of Canada’s federal authorities, and Bourguiba adopted a similar position.415 But a number of others, including the Gabonese and Rwandan Presidents, did privilege direct links with French Canadians. The invitation of Quebecois representatives to Libreville416 and the signature of a cooperation agreement between the Rwandan and Quebecois governments in 1967 created a worrying precedent for the Federal authorities in Ottawa, all the more so as African, French and Quebecois officials discussed African affairs jointly417 and France helped Quebec set up modest assistance programmes in the smaller, more dependent African countries.418 Ottawa in fact broke off relations with Libreville when Omar Bongo invited Quebec to the Education Ministers’ conference in 1968, thus warning other potentially like-minded states of the consequences of such actions.419 By contrast, Ahidjo’s visit to Canada in 1967 raised few Federal fears as his dislike of centrifugal forces was well-known.420 The French Ambassador in Yaoundé emphasised that the separatist issue in Quebec and France’s involvement in the matter was a major reason behind Ahidjo’s reticence towards the Francophone project – which the simultaneous events in the Nigerian civil war only heightened.421 During the negotiations for an aid and trade

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agreement between Canada and Cameroon in 1969, following the Chevrier mission, both parties accepted a clause for compulsory consultation with Ottawa before any Quebecois assistance could be provided.422 Ottawa was therefore able to use cooperation with Cameroon to integrate the Canadian provinces, primarily Quebec,423 into the Federal diplomatic framework in the knowledge that there would be no attempt by Cameroon to incite separatist claims within the Canadian nation. Ahidjo repeatedly voiced his support for a strong federal centre in Canada.424 In May 1970, the Canadian Ambassador in Yaoundé would report with much satisfaction that Ahidjo had followed the elections in Quebec and showed much relief at the defeat of the Parti Quebecois – and of René Lévesque particularly.425 Despite Cameroon’s participation in the APLF, Ahidjo remained wary of plans for a wider, more institutionalised Francophone organisation. Reports from a former French colonial administrator who worked for Diori at the OCAM Secretariat highlighted Ahidjo’s resistance426 and the Cameroonian President did block Diori’s plans for a general Francophone meeting in Niamey in December 1968. As French diplomats rightly predicted, Cameroon would eventually participate in the Francophone project but its contribution would be minimal and very much kept in the background.427 In mid November, the President of Niger sent his Deputy Private Secretary to Yaoundé428 with a personal letter for Ahidjo, making the case for Cameroon’s representation at Niamey. Again, the Cameroonian President sent a negative reply that emphasised the dangers of a hasty construction and required that any decision be postponed until after the regular OCAM meeting of January 1969 in Kinshasa.429 Ahidjo remained highly wary of large multilateral groupings – and similarly tried to convince Senghor in the spring of 1969 that a grouping between disparate West African States had no future.430 French diplomacy worked to secure Cameroon’s approval for a Francophone organisation. The French Ambassador in Yaoundé, Rebeyrol, pressed Ahidjo to change his mind and even argued that participation in the Francophonie would make it easier for Cameroon to diversify its relations and for instance, secure Canadian assistance for its bilingual projects.431 Rebeyrol confidently told his counterpart in Niamey that Ahidjo had accepted to send a senior official from the Ministry of Education to a Francophone gathering,432 but Ahidjo had no intention of allowing a delegation to attend any proceedings before the following year. No ministerial meeting, Ahidjo told Diori during a telephone conversation, should take place before the OCAM conference in Kinshasa had taken a collective stand on the Francophone project. Cameroon would indeed send a representative but only as an observer, with no decision-making powers, eventually forcing Diori to postpone the meeting until February 1969.433

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The Cameroonian delegation to the Niamey Conference on 17–20 February comprised Zachée Mongo Soo, the Education Minister, as well as an inspector and an official from the Office of the President.434 As Mongo Soo told Rebeyrol, Ahidjo had given ‘very cautious, if not restrictive instructions, that would lead him to put forward Cameroon’s bilingualism and the special dispositions that the Federal Government needed to take for the Anglophone Cameroonians’.435 Caution remained Cameroon’s main approach to the ACCT. External Affairs in Ottawa noted how difficult it was to get any firm idea of where the Cameroonians stood on the Francophone project: the Cameroonian ambassador to Canada argued that he was not in charge of the dossier but Canadian officials felt his reluctance to discuss such a politically sensitive matter.436 In education, Mongo Soo referred to the benefits that ‘a serious, modest and concrete’ body could bring to existing cooperation. The work of the provisional executive committee set up at Niamey, and particularly the diplomatic skill of Canada’s Jean-Marc Léger and Niger’s Hamani Diori, proved crucial in securing Cameroon’s continued participation in the Francophone project, finalised with the birth of the ACCT during the second Niamey Conference in March 1970. The first decisive factor was that it was made clear that Ahidjo’s fears that the Agence would replicate the Commonwealth were unfounded. As Léger repeatedly stated, there would be no regular Heads of Government Meetings and early Francophone manifestations of a Francophone community had indeed emerged in non-governmental cultural contexts.437 He used his visit to Cameroon in May 1969 to emphasise that there would be no political high-level discussions but cultural and technical multilateral cooperation that would use the opportunities offered by a common language rather than seek to promote that same language.438 Cameroon would therefore be able to remain within the confines set by official bilingualism and publicly emphasised by Ahidjo.439 In the report he submitted to Diori, Léger forcefully argued against using ‘the terms “francophonie” and “francophone community”’440 to counter fears and susceptibilities, demonstrate that the organisation was no crusade, and ensure the participation of the widest possible range of countries. What Cameroon had rejected before reunification and continued to reject, Ahidjo told the national press, was all forms of formal political association with France or Britain.441 What then made the strength of the Commonwealth in the eyes of its African members, the regular Heads of Government Meetings that allowed high-level political discussions and confrontations, was precisely what still made it an impossible forum for Cameroon. Conversely, participation in the ACCT built on existing economic and cultural relations with foreign partners, short of multilateral meetings at the highest level, making it a more acceptable sphere. Admittedly, the

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presence of the 14 OCAM states, as well as Burundi, Seychelles, France and Belgium, reproduced the ex-imperial spheres. The membership of other territories that had once been under French rule, in North Africa (Tunisia), Asia (Vietnam), the Indian Ocean (Mauritius) and the Caribbean (Haiti),442 also strengthened this impression. However, the participation of Luxemburg and Canada, which despite its historical connections with France could no longer be primarily defined as an ex-French colony, lent the first Niamey conference greater diversity. This was in effect the second factor which made it possible for Ahidjo to justify Cameroon’s presence at Niamey and in the ACCT. As Léger insisted, the Agence would not centre on Franco-African bilateral relations but would promote multilateral cooperation beyond this initial circle. Strong emphasis was put on the additional contributions that Canada and Belgium would make to the project443 – in effect, France provided 45 per cent of the budget, Canada 20 per cent, Belgium 10 per cent, while the rest of the members funded the remaining 25 per cent,444 with Cameroon being among the first countries, with Senegal, Tunisia and the Ivory Coast, to pledge a contribution to the new organisation.445 Through the ACCT, new patterns of cooperation would therefore emerge and help developing countries break the ex-imperial mould in two directions: North–South relations would not be restricted to a primarily ex-territory/ ex-metropole channel; and most importantly, South–South relations would be given further impetus, within Africa and between Africa, the Caribbean and Asia.446 In this respect, the ACCT sought to perform a similar mission to that played increasingly by the Commonwealth, as it became less British-centred and as Canadians pressed for new directions in both these worlds. In 1967, Paul Martin had praised the Commonwealth for being ‘perhaps the most important political institution today for communication between the white ‘have’ countries and the non-white ‘have-nots’”, adding that ‘it ha[d] a major role to play in overcoming the division between the [low development countries] LDCs and the industrialized countries’.447 Taking the changing Commonwealth as an example, the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs had portrayed the Francophone project as a means of both deepening and diversifying the pattern of Francophone relations. A few months later, British West African Heads of Mission had agreed that Commonwealth Africa and Francophone Africa clearly failed to entertain steady relations. The British lamented the fact that with the possible exception of Cameroon and Congo-Kinshasa, Commonwealth ‘ambassadors cut no ice and spoke little or no French’448 and that most regional African meetings continued to reflect an Anglophone/Francophone divide. As Paul Martin emphasised and as Jean-Marc Léger confirmed, the objective of the Francophone project would also be to stimulate relations with the Anglophone world, and the Commonwealth in particular. Among the

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projects mentioned were the creation of a hotel chain in non-Francophone capital cities, which would provide facilities for French-speaking diplomats and businessmen, and the provision of ACCT funding for language teaching in Anglophone West Africa by Francophone Africans from Senegal, the Ivory Coast or Cameroon.449 The first budget provided CFA 450 million for education, 400 for youth programmes, 250 for technical cooperation and 100 each for information, sports, arts and administrative costs.450 Cameroon was a founding member of the Conference of Youth and Sports Ministers in 1969 – which became the Conférence des ministres de la jeunesse et des sports des pays d’expression française (Confejes) in 1973 – and it maintained its participation in the Conference of Education Ministers451 – first formed as the Conférence des Ministres de l’Education des pays africains et malgache d’expression française in 1960. A number of factors had allowed Francophone diplomats in France, Canada and Africa to persuade the Cameroonian Head of State that ACCT involvement would be an advantage for Cameroon. General de Gaulle, whose international ambitions Ahidjo had been concerned about, was no longer in power; the Nigerian civil war had seen the victory of the central authorities in Lagos; Quebec would not overshadow Ottawa in Francophone circles;452 and French diplomats had assured Ahidjo that the ACCT would rest on ‘modesty and realism’.453 At Niamey in February 1969, Mongo Soo had predicated Cameroon’s participation on the ‘respect of national originalities and therefore, respect of national sovereignties’: ‘the agency’, he emphasised, would ‘have to resist the temptation to transcend states, to play the role of a supranational recruitment or placement organ for the citizens of member states’, which would remain fully in control of decisions. Just as crucially, there would be ‘no aggressiveness against other cultures’: it would be ‘an instrument of complementary solidarity[,] devoid of all supranationality[,] a flexible, cheap yet useful and efficient working instrument’.454 Like Canada, Cameroon emphasised these elements partly for the benefit of its Anglophone community. As Schleger has emphasised, the key role given to Léger, first as a temporary executive secretary after Niamey I and then as the first Secretary General of the ACCT after Niamey II, was essential in demonstrating that the new multilateral organisation was not a French puppet. Contrary to his early pro-Quebec stance, Léger had eventually supported ‘the participation of non-sovereign governments in the activities of the ACCT’455 provided they did so with the agreement of the sovereign authorities. Léger’s stand provoked intense resentment among French officials and he was elected against French preference. His election therefore reassured Ahidjo – as well as other leaders – that the ACCT was not what he had always opposed, the

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recreation of the French Community, the resurrection of a dominant France unquestioningly courted by its former territories. Two major bodies were to oversee ACCT work: a bi-annual conference, where each member would be represented and have one vote, with decisions taken by nine-tenths of the present members; and an administration board, which would act as the organisation’s executive organ, propose programmes to the conference, provide financial advice and implement the general policies and specific programmes determined by the conference. The emphasis remained on technical cooperation: relevant ministerial departments would be represented in the national delegations at biannual conferences but these would not be, as was the case in the Commonwealth, Heads of Government – or Heads of State – Meetings. Unlike Canada however, Cameroon was not part of an alternative Anglophone grouping that would provide this community with an international outlet for representation and discussion. If the difference between the politically charged discussions of the Commonwealth and the purely technical concerns of the ACCT accounted for Cameroon’s unequal relation to these organisations, it also largely limited Cameroon’s involvement in the ACCT, in the interest of national unity. While Canada increasingly made its presence felt in both the ACCT and the Commonwealth, Cameroon confined itself to a more marginal engagement in the joint initiatives that started to emerge, as ACCT representatives initiated regular meetings with a Commonwealth to which Cameroon still did not belong. Commonwealth officials were keenly aware that several states which recognised French as one of their official languages had opted out of the new ACCT: the Lebanon, North Africa (except Tunisia), Laos and Cambodia, and in Africa itself, the two Congos, the CAR and Guinea. They did not believe the French argument that strong parallel cultures, particularly ‘Arabic and Islamic’, impeded their full participation: the most important common denominator, in their eyes, was that these countries’ ‘internal politics [were] the least affected by the Quai d’Orsay’.456 The Cameroonian Government was keenly aware that the ACCT might be perceived by outside observers as an essentially French organisation and that Cameroon should therefore tread most carefully in all Francophone matters and set its participation in the ACCT at a fairly modest level. Tellingly, neither Edden nor his successor Anthony Golds, in their annual reviews for Cameroon in 1969 and 1970, saw Cameroon’s Francophone links as worth more than a mention. It might have betrayed their conviction that Cameroon had always been first and foremost in the Francophone camp but it also demonstrated that the birth of the ACCT was not seen as an ominous event for the future of Cameroon’s national politics or for its international position.

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CHAPTER 4 NEW PARTNER SHIPS: THE STAKES AND LIMITS OF INTEGR ATION IN CA MEROON AND EUROPE

A new lease of life for Franco-British political consultations on Africa Franco-British plans for consultation and cooperation to break the linguistic barrier in West Africa first emerged when Michael Stewart and Maurice Schumann met on 23 January 1970. The British were encouraged by the friendly attitude of the new Director for Africa and the Middle East at the Quai, Bruno de Leusse. Michael Palliser sent a series of encouraging reports from the British Embassy in Paris and there seems to have been a real determination on both sides for renewed cooperation. De Leusse suggested holding meetings at least twice a year and spoke at length about the need to bury past rivalries, particularly in view of Britain’s prospective EEC membership.1 Misrepresentations in the press of Franco-British relations exaggerated conflicts and ought to be checked, he argued, by giving the media more information – the British agreed but pointed out that the BBC or Reuters were unlikely to be influenced by governments.2 Although de Leusse gave personal rather than official views, British diplomats were encouraged by the fact that strong arguments for Franco-British cooperation were voiced at all. However, immediate consultation was hindered by the legacy of the Nigerian civil war and the French diplomatic debacle after the defeat of the Ibo secessionist movement. French and Francophone support for the Biafran

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movement, coupled with initial French opposition to economic cooperation in West Africa,3 had generated much resentment in Lagos. The French invested much energy in bolstering cooperation and, as one official in the West African department put it, France felt the strong ‘wish to “tourner la page”’.4 Conversely, the British were extremely cautious about dealing openly with the French in West Africa. The FCO agreed that Franco-British consultations should resume with added vigour but in the very short-term, Nigerian sensitivity was its primary concern. Nigerian suspicions against imperialism of all shapes went far beyond France and British diplomats certainly ‘worried at the prospect of talking, now, with almost anyone on West Africa’.5 In reality, the FCO acknowledged that the end of the Nigerian civil war had lifted the only real political problem in Franco-British relations in African affairs6 but warned against showing it in the public sphere.7 ‘The French standing in Lagos at present’, P.T. Hayman, the Deputy Undersecretary for the Middle East argued, was ‘very low indeed’, and even more so as ‘the Ibos [were] now apparently spilling the beans to the Federal authorities on the help they got from abroad’.8 FCO officials were encouraged by reports from the British Embassy in Paris that the French themselves were willing to keep any meeting secret in the short term.9 The British position was itself ‘finely balanced’, after a military leak and Wilson’s comments on Nigeria during his visit to the USA threatened to undo the consistent support given to the Federal forces.10 Talks with the French on the UN and on the Middle East were planned but talks on West Africa postponed.11 Even when they did take place, on 17 June 1970, the French were told that they should remain secret, because of ‘African sensitivities in general and Nigerian sensitivities in particular’:12 British officials feared that information would be leaked to the press and damage their African relations, as several letters and notes demonstrate.13 The FCO took comfort from the fact that the French were equally unlikely to want publicity and be seen to be ‘going to Canossa’.14 In the event, the talks were described as cordial and friendly and both parties agreed that after all, close allies could be told about them.15 The main driving force behind the Franco-British talks of the early 1970s seems to have been Britain’s EEC membership, which looked an increasingly likely prospect. British departments showed renewed interest for Francophone Africa and for consultations on African affairs. The promotion of language learning which took shape in the early 1970s was grounded in economic motives. British officials highlighted the need ‘to increase the number of people sympathetic to English and to Britain so that [the British] had an “interest base” which could help [them] in the commercial world, for example, and act as an “information base” as well; and to help development, as English was the basic language for aid and development’.16 West African Heads of Missions,

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meeting in London in January 1970 shortly after the Stewart–Schumann talks, pointed out that European presence in Africa was more welcome than American or Russian activities. They unanimously argued that ‘[it] would be possible for bridges to be built across national borders in West Africa if the European countries from which West Africa had taken her heritage became more closely associated’.17 Diplomats were also under the impression that Francophone countries ‘were anxious to extend their interests beyond the Francophone sphere’.18 The Deputy Undersecretary of State, Sir John Johnston, emphasised ‘what a large factor in our thinking of West Africa our possible entry into the EEC was becoming’ and that British membership of the EEC would itself contribute to breaking down barriers in West Africa.19 The British were all the more concerned as France’s links with Francophone Africa were far stronger and closer than their own relations with Anglophone West Africa. Officials also noted that economic and linguistic barriers were mutually reinforcing: as the FCO brief for the Anglo-French talks of July 1972 underlined, France’s economic dominance over its former territories remained ‘[t]he principal barrier’20 to regional cooperation in Africa between Anglophones and Francophones, but no regional cooperation could occur before the linguistic problem was tackled.21 The British diplomatic mood in 1970 was reasonably optimistic on these issues. The overall conclusion in early 1970 was that ‘the French chasse gardée was not so impenetrable as [the British] had once thought’22 and this was very much welcomed. Once in the EEC, Britain would have to contribute to the EDF but this would in turn open up possibilities ‘to compete on equal terms with the Five for trade and also for the projects financed’ by the Fund.23 It seems that three major objectives guided British support for more frequent Franco-British consultations on West Africa in this context: the teaching of both English and French in both Anglophone and Francophone countries to improve mutual understanding and thereby extend commercial possibilities;24 the exchange of information on individual countries, particularly useful for Britain at a time when it only had five resident missions in the whole of Francophone Africa;25 and once British EEC membership was confirmed, to ‘pave the way for close and cordial relations in the Africa field’.26 Cooperation was not an end in itself and should only occur where ‘interests coincided’.27 British diplomats believed that ‘British and French interests in Africa [were] more than ever complementary’:28 the importance which all British ministers gave to Franco-British cooperation29 as EEC membership materialised accounted for the continuity of exchanges. The prospect of EEC membership therefore had a dual impact on British interest in Francophone Africa: consultations with the French needed nurturing for political reasons; relations with Francophone African states needed

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strengthening, essentially for economic reasons. There was no real intention to fully replace a well-established French presence which admittedly represented economic competition but which also ‘encourag[ed] political stability and a pro-Western orientation’.30 But it provided a favourable context for economic and commercial exploration. Businessmen, exporters particularly, were prompted to visit a number of key countries: Senegal, Mali and Mauritania, noted John Tahourdin, the British Ambassador there, ‘wished to develop relations with the UK and to build bridges with their Anglophone neighbours’31 while the Ivory Coast and Gabon were also identified as places of ‘growing opportunities’ for Britain in the new EEC context.32 On the French side, a number of officials in both the Quai d’Orsay and the Coopération33 echoed de Leusse’s views. All were aware that economic integration in Western Europe would necessarily lead to more consultation over African policy. Beyond this, three major factors seem to have been prominent: the increasing importance of the OAU,34 economic integration in the West African region35 and the wealth of Anglophone Africa,36 which meant that Paris increasingly saw Commonwealth African states as attractive potential partners, or at least as growing international actors which would have to be engaged with. The objective of Franco-British consultations remained very much national self-interest. As the Direction for Africa at the Quai openly admitted, Franco-British collaboration was essential if either power intended to keep some influence over its ex-territories.37 Ten years after the first cooperation agreements were first conceived, Coopération officials remained convinced that France should preserve its role as the link between Western Europe and Africa. Strong caution also came from the SGAAM, who thought that within the Quai, the department in charge of relations with Anglophone Africa under Pierre Carraud was too much in the pockets of the British.38 A united Francophone bloc was said to have preserved French interests after independence and given it a sizeable influence in Europe – there was no reason why the ‘Mouvance Française’ should not continue and even extend.39 The Coopération therefore pleaded for a comprehensive approach to Africa with the objective of safeguarding both the French language and the CFA franc in the zone and control, or at least attempt to monitor, integration processes in West Africa.40 As the budget for Coopération shrunk from 1.6 per cent of the budget in 1960 to 0.71 per cent in 1970,41 Coopération officials called for a general reassessment of French aid in the summer of 1970. France, they argued, should give greater importance to multilateral assistance. They did not suggest increasing French contributions to multilateral assistance but did advocate more coordination. They also called for additional French aid for countries outside the Franc zone and the AAMS, even if it meant reducing the amount of gift-in-aid to the ex-French empire.42

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They also gave great importance to private assistance and investments on the continent, which would favour French firms, to the concentration of aid on key projects, to the combination of ‘investment, technical assistance and training’ for long-term sustainability. Focusing on telecommunications and infrastructure, for instance, would give French firms a clear advantage and support the French economy in the process.43 While it is undeniable that self-interest remained very central, the change in Franco-British relations did provide a favourable context for other bilateral partnerships and multilateral diplomacy to penetrate the exclusive Franco-African relationship. The British also attributed the improvement of their relations with the French to ‘the end of the de Gaulle era’ – and the USA recounted a similar experience.44 The demise of the French President General was in fact one of the major items on the agenda of the West African Heads of Mission meeting in January 1970.45 The British Ambassador in Abidjan acknowledged that in the short term France would ‘continue to do her best to retain her chasse gardée’46 and that the Ivory Coast remained politically and economically marginal to British interests.47 But he also reported that the Ivory Coast, Niger and Upper Volta ‘look[ed] forward to better Anglo-French relations now that de Gaulle ha[d] gone’.48 Similarly, his counterpart in Freetown considered that ‘so far from pulling in their horns in Africa, the French [were] quietly going about extending their influence beyond the bounds of Francophone Africa’.49 However, they now had no wish, he argued, of ‘over-extending themselves in the Gaullist manner’.50 In his diaries, Foccart acknowledges that during a dinner in late October 1970, he had very pleasant exchanges with a number of Western Ambassadors, including the British and the Canadian Ambassadors, but ‘somehow’ forgot to make it clear that France did not seek a ‘chasse gardée’ in Africa.51 Reserve and Caution were yet to be fully lifted. Following the initial talks between Stewart and Schumann and meetings between Palliser and de Leusse, it was agreed that the consensus between London and Paris needed to be translated in Africa itself, between French and British representatives there. There would of course be commercial competition and the British, like the Canadians and the rest of France’s Western partners, were very much aware that the Franc CFA severely limited opportunities in the countries of the zone, including Cameroon. The Banque de France and the French financial services still controlled the currency, which meant that any large transaction would be scrutinised not just by the African countries but by the French as well.52 There was no suggestion ‘that French and British Embassies should “walk hand in hand together through Africa”’ but ‘sniping’53 had to be stopped and advantage had to be taken while ‘the barometer’ of Franco-British relations, to use Christopher Soames’ expression, was ‘set to fair [after] many a long year of disagreement and mistrust’.54

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Exchanges between Ambassadors on the ground would be particularly important for the British,55 who remained very much under-represented in West and Central Africa, with only five embassies in the capitals of nonCommonwealth countries: Dakar, Abidjan, Lomé, Yaoundé and Kinshasa.56 The return in Britain of a Conservative government under Edward Heath, following Labour’s defeat in the general election of June 1970, did not alter Franco-British plans for consultation on Africa. As early as July 1970, DouglasHome and Schumann met and confirmed previous objectives.57 Instructions were sent by the Quai and the FCO for Heads of Mission to cooperate – as much as circumstances and personalities permitted.58 A number of British Ambassadors sent very positive reports back to London, which showed that Franco-British relations on the ground were in fact better than imagined. From Sierra Leone, High Commissioner Moynihan welcomed the arrival of a new French Ambassador, who had emphasised that ‘the General had been someone but those days were past. France had never really been far from Britain and was now closer again [and] wanted Britain in Europe’.59 From Nigeria, High Commissioner Leslie Glass intimated that the days when Paris ‘expect[ed] Britain to “deliver” the Nigerians, in the way that they can “deliver” their own African clients’ seemed to be coming to an end.60 Glass did wonder whether his good relations with French diplomats should be attributed to the much smaller scale of French missions in Anglophone West Africa. Indeed, Ambassador Peter Murray in Abidjan was under the impression that Quai directives to cooperate with the British were rather grudgingly accepted.61 But positive reports came from Senegal, Mauritania and Mali, where Tahourdin underlined his excellent relations with the French Ambassadors, both during and after the de Gaulle era.62 During Franco-British consultations in London in September 1970, the Secretary General of the Quai d’Orsay reiterated his belief that Franco-British coordination in Africa was essential and should lead to increased relations between Francophone and Anglophone Africans.63 The emergence of the ACCT may also have been a factor behind France’s favourable disposition to Anglo-French talks. In Yaoundé, British Ambassador Edward Given was not ‘convinced of the total harmlessness of Pompidolian francophonie so long as he continue[d] to employ the unspeakable Foccart’64 but he argued against any British action that might ‘knock francophonie or the prestige of the French language’.65 What The Times called ‘French speakingness’66 could never have ‘a proper English equivalent’, the Cultural Relations Department of the FCO had noted in December 1968. In November 1969, one British official had argued that France ‘would probably regard [Britain’s] attitude that the British Council is a purely cultural organisation, the purpose of which is not to spread British political influence, as both illogical and hypocritical’ and language was seen as one reason why the French might oppose

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British – and Irish – membership of the EEC.67 The French welcomed the fact that the headquarters of the ACCT would be located in Paris and that a number of French officials would work there. This, they argued, would enable Paris to ‘ensure efficient control’68 over evolutions. However, the ACCT had left the damaging political conflicts of the late 1960s behind and this, the British Ambassador in Kinshasa noted, provided a better framework for Franco-British cooperation in Africa.69 The ACCT had given France ‘confidence’ in the power of its language and in its own international position and ‘confidence’, argued the Western and Southern European Section of the FCO, was ‘likely to make France a more flexible and reliable partner than weakness’.70 The FCO was encouraged by the fact that the French Coopération under Yvon Bourges participated in the talks and considered that even in Foccart’s Secretariat, the need to breach the language barrier was beginning to make progress.71 René Journiac himself, Foccart’s technical adviser, told the assistant head of the West African Department, John de Courcy Ling in November 1972 that ‘attitudes about the Mission Civilisatrice and francophonie did not make [English language teaching by Britain] in the least objectionable to the French Government’.72 By the time of the Anglo-French talks of December 1974, the FCO reported that ‘[c] onflicts between British and French policies in Africa [were] few’, essentially centred on economic competition where West Africa was concerned.73 However, despite de Leusse’s support for ‘increasingly close co-operation between [France and Britain] across the board’,74 French resistance came from fears that British membership of the EEC would dilute French political and economic influence in the Associated Territories. France’s position as the ‘privileged interlocutor’ of the Associated Territories had to be preserved as much as possible.75 As French – Coopération predicted, British entry in Europe would draw Anglophone and Francophone Africa closer and it was crucial that France should not lose out as a consequence.76 However, political and economic motives forced a reorientation of France’s African policy. By 1970, at ‘the end of the first ten years of aid programmes’, de Leusse told the British, ‘France had sent 10,000 technical assistants to the 14 countries with which she was concerned, and in that time NF[New Franc] 200m. on them’.77 France had no intention of looking away from Francophone Africa but it would have to ‘reduc[e] its activities in the world including Africa’78 and consider reorienting its activities.

Pompidou’s West Africa Trip: interpretations and consequences During his tour of West Africa in February 1971, Pompidou publicly promised Cameroonians, as he did the other African countries he visited, that

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France would not allow EEC enlargement to affect their advantages79 – and the Council on Cooperation re-emphasised the point behind closed doors in October 1971.80 But Pompidou’s tour of West Africa also served to promote diversified relations on all sides. Whilst Pompidou promised that French aid to Cameroon would not be curtailed – and might even be increased81 – he also made two points clear. Pompidou argued that private, rather than essentially public, investors should take a more active part in Africa.82 In parallel, he emphasised that only about one-sixth of the French coopérants present at independence remained in Cameroon83 and stated that France would not seek to monopolise cooperation. In other terms, economic constraints made assistance from friendly Western countries welcome.84 Canadian diplomats reporting back to Ottawa gave great importance to this new trend, which favoured their interests. Among Britain’s partners in the developed Commonwealth, Australia also noted the new French trend85 but Africa as a whole – and even more so, non-Commonwealth Africa – still remained very much outside the sphere of privileged Australian diplomacy. For the Canadians, these changes were promising opportunities for their country’s international influence. In Yaoundé, the Canadian Ambassador saw Pompidou’s new approach in a positive light for Canada’s relations with both France and Africa.86 The Foreign Policy Review of the Trudeau Government in 1970 had identified four main areas of action in Africa: national unity; sovereignty and independence; social justice; and economic growth.87 Promoting these objectives, the Direction for Africa argued, would in return promote a fairer society in Canada itself, while assistance to French-speaking Africa would strengthen Canada’s national unity.88 Canadian officials were also increasingly aware that they were a powerful and valuable partner for African countries, because they were neither a former colonial power in Africa nor one of the superpowers but still had the means to provide assistance and, initially to a lesser extent, trading links for Africa. While the British High Commissioner in Ottawa could have done without the ‘self-satisfaction’89 of Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs Mitchell Sharp, African politicians and diplomats did court Canada. Not only was it an alternative partner to France or Britain, and therefore a major contributor to the diversification of international political and economic relations. It was also committed to multilateralism, as evidenced by its growing engagement in both the Commonwealth and the ACCT,90 which would also help to break the more constricted patterns inherited from the imperial era. In a memorandum to the Prime Minister in late 1969, Mitchell Sharp argued that Africans saw Canada as a means of asserting their independence from France and that Canada should respond favourably.91 By 1972, External Affairs noted with satisfaction that African countries now saw Canada as an

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important international actor, possibly not quite as important as European countries, but nonetheless a key partner in balancing relations with former imperial powers.92 Developments on the African continent itself, led by African leaders, and the assertion of non-European middle powers, also gave renewed vigour to the Franco-British consultation process. There had been Franco-Canadian consultations on development assistance in October 1970 in Paris – followed by alternate meetings in Ottawa and Paris in successive years. Discussions confirmed that France remained ‘suspicious of the intentions of other developed countries towards their Francophone African clients’,93 as Canadian diplomats told their British counterparts. In practice, this meant that Canadians would ‘await African initiatives in aid requests’94rather than pro-actively and openly initiate projects. French officials acknowledged to suspicions between experts and teachers on the ground and reported intense commercial rivalries,95 as happened over the construction of an earth station in Cameroon.96 However, discussions also confirmed to Canadian diplomats that France would no longer be able to sustain a monopoly over Francophone Africa. As Mitchell Sharp told External Affairs on his return from Africa in November 1971, ‘Canada’s role in Francophone Africa [was] to dilute French influence and by providing an alternative source of modern technology, educational and capital assistance to offer these countries an element of diversification that [could] reduce their total dependence upon Paris’.97 In the education sector for instance, Canada contributed to ‘the teaching of French, and the building-up of polytechnics and schools which were not based on the French system of education but on one which the Canadians had worked out in conjunction with African governments’.98 As André Couvrette, the Assistant Undersecretary of State for External Affairs, told his British counterpart in March 1973, Canadian policy was neither ‘to “frenchify” Anglophone Africa [n]or to “anglify” francophone Africa’.99 Lack of personnel meant that programmes remained on a fairly small scale but intentions were clear. While External Affairs opposed any aggressive policy against French interests in Africa, department officials did seek to assert Canada as ‘a serious partner in Francophone Africa’, which was no longer ‘under the direct influence of France’.100 It would be a grave mistake, they emphasised at length, not to give Francophone African countries the individual consideration they required. Within non-Commonwealth Africa, Cameroon stood out as the main country of interest for Canada and fitted in with what the Direction for Africa had identified as essential criteria for action: economic viability; regional influence and Presidential leadership; independence from former colonial powers (although Canadians realised that full economic independence remained an on-going task); and international openness. Officials therefore

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recommended that technical and economic assistance programmes as well as private Canadian investment be actively promoted. The Ivory Coast, Senegal and Zaire were also identified as key targets for Canadian international action.101 Relations with the Ivory Coast were no longer managed from the Canadian High Commission in Ghana after 1970, as a resident Ambassador, also accredited to Upper Volta and Niger, was sent to Abidjan. Canadian assistance to Cameroon quadrupled between 1968 and 1973.102 Following Ahidjo’s visit to Canada in 1970, an agreement for economic and technical cooperation was signed in Yaoundé in September 1970. Assistance to schools in Bonabéri and Douala, for water supplies in West Cameroon and for an airborne geophysical survey103 were among Canada’s major projects in the country in the early 1970s. The French Ambassador reported to the Quai that Cameroonian officials constantly requested more assistance from Canada and that Canadian diplomats in Yaoundé were only too happy to lend a favourable ear. Cameroon, French Ambassador in Yaoundé, Jacques Dupuy, believed, was Canada’s most valuable partner in non-Commonwealth Africa.104 Even more significant perhaps, was the negotiation of a military training agreement, which began in 1969 on a Cameroonian initiative. Canadians tread carefully, partly because they feared their equipment, manuals and techniques were ill-adapted to Cameroon, partly because they feared this would provoke adverse French reactions.105 But the Director of Economic and Technical Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Yaoundé left no uncertainty about Cameroon’s ‘eagerness to diversify the source of aid it was now receiving in various fields’.106 The modest programme for military cooperation that was initiated demonstrated these new dynamics. Cameroon was the only country where Canadians believed it was possible for a foreign power to engage in such activities without incurring French wrath. The purchase of Canadian airplanes by the Cameroonian air force was a clear sign that it sought more distance from France.107 Elsewhere, Canadian diplomats argued against trying to extend offers of military cooperation to Francophone African countries where France retained the power to hinder, or worse, discredit Canadian programmes if they wished.108 At a time when plans for increased Franco-Canadian military cooperation were being made, this could potentially be very harmful: nothing could or should be undertaken without first seeking France’s consent.109 Talks with the Americans in March 1970 in Yaoundé also encouraged the French in the belief that even if relations with Africa opened, they would remain the dominant and most influential partner. William Rogers, in charge of African Affairs at the State Department, had visited Cameroon in February but, the US Ambassador told his French counterpart, there was no intention to replace or alter French assistance in Cameroon: US assistance

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would merely complement it and an increase in funding was in any case very unlikely.110 In August 1970, USAID chose to establish a regional office for Cameroon, Chad, the CAR and Gabon. Officials in USAID saw Ahidjo ‘as a stabilizing force in the region’111 and Cameroon as a much more peaceful prospect than any of its Francophone neighbours at the time: Yaoundé therefore imposed itself as the best place for a regional office. Most USAID programmes were concentrated in East Cameroon,112 the USA’s ‘commercial efforts were targeted on Douala and the eastern part of Cameroon’113 but Cameroon’s ‘joint “parentage”’114 also seems to have counted. Its FrancoBritish past and the fact that Franco-Cameroonian relations were looser than relations between France and most of its former territories made it a more diverse and open place. However, US assistance did remain modest115 and the presence of a regional office did not change the situation much.116 The French also made sure that their supremacy among external partners was respected. In the late 1960s, the US Consul in Douala had to fight French opposition to Peace Corps activities in West Cameroon: French contacts in Yaoundé had led to the suspension of the operations. The Consul was eventually successful in overturning the decision but French susceptibilities had been clearly demonstrated.117 Close Franco-Cameroonian elite relations left fairly limited opportunities to other partners. US representatives noted that most officials in the Cameroonian administration, including in the Foreign Ministry, ‘had been French educated’. Social interaction between US and Cameroonian officials was said to be very amicable but in official spheres, ‘[t]he method of interacting with [the Americans] was quite formal, often ranging from touchy to resentful of [their] cultural approach to getting business done as quickly as possible with as little formality as possible’.118 The State Department told US ambassadors in Central Africa in May 1971 that US involvement in the region should be designed in close cooperation with the French. And as the French Ambassador in Yaoundé noted, there was little to fear from US initiatives – for instance, the introduction of US training schemes for African pilots on a paying basis made it a rather unappealing prospect for the authorities.119 In any case, the Coopération in Yaoundé knew that three main factors limited US involvement in the country: the USA had no historical link with Cameroon, there was no strategic interest there, and they realised that other Western powers, France particularly, provided reasonable levels of assistance.120 There was therefore, the French concluded, little prospect of the USA seeking to compete with French activities. On occasion, the USA even contributed to funding construction work undertaken by the French, as happened in the case of the University Centre for Health Teaching.121

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On the whole, despite persistent French susceptibilities, Canadian diplomats formed an overall positive and encouraging assessment of Pompidou’s tour of West Africa. By contrast, British diplomats remained focused on the signs that singled out France as Cameroon’s dominant partner and Cameroon as part of a greater Francophone whole.122 Ahidjo’s power, Edden had said in his valedictory speech in March 1970, was ‘underderpinned in one way or another by France, whose neo-colonial hand was self-interested but accommodating’. Edden had discussed his ‘four francophone countries’ together, tellingly ‘calling Cameroon francophone, for convenience, rather than francophone/Anglophone’.123 Having been told before his posting that ‘these countries ha[d] a French polish’, he now confirmed that ‘they also ha[d] a French grain’.124 During the Anglo-French talks of June 1970, France was left to lead on Cameroon, in a way that hardly differed from the Francophone countries of West Africa.125 The British press saw Pompidou’s trip as the confirmation of strong Franco-African relations.126 The Ambassador in Dakar recounted the affair as ‘a success for the French, and a personal triumph for President Pompidou’, as ‘a striking [illustration of] the continuing strength of French influence and how firm her hold over her former colonies in Africa still remains’.127 A few days later, his counterpart in Yaoundé was sending similar reports of Pompidou’s ‘royal progress round the First Division of former French possessions in Africa’.128 By the end of the year, the French noted that France and the EEC’s share in Cameroon’s trade was diminishing, albeit very slowly, in favour of a slight increase in trade with UDEAC countries and Britain,129 but British officials hardly seemed to notice it and no particular action was taken to encourage it. During a visit to Niger and Chad in January 1972, Pompidou stated: ‘Yes, we are neo-colonialists. The proof of it is that we help the development of this country, that we train its administrators and managers, that we help it to govern itself. If that is neocolonialism, then we are neo-colonialists’.130 This, at a time when Britain faced the wrath of the Commonwealth over arms sales to South Africa and over Rhodesia, was clear evidence that France had retained a unique influence over its former African empire. Australian diplomats in Paris also commented on the contrast between the two former colonial powers.131 Warner, who had left Yaoundé for the UK Mission to the UN, thought there was no parallel to the degree of political and economic influence which France retained in Africa, while former British colonies took ‘a neurotic pleasure in bugging [Britain] on every occasion’,132 including at the UN. The official ceremonies and celebrations which punctuated Pompidou’s visits to West Africa in 1971 and 1972 were, for the British, ‘in rather painful contrast to the picture in Anglophone Africa [when] the Secretary of State [was] not able to go to Nigeria at all, let alone have a rapturous reception’.133

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While British diplomats thought that this influence derived from military cooperation and from the French upbringing of a number of African politicians and administrators, they also saw the franc zone network, which had always tied the former colonies to France, as the main strength behind French dominance.134 It was also attributed to the fact that ‘[t]he French (unlike the British) defend[ed] themselves when attacked’, as de Gaulle’s decision to suspend all aid to Guinea in 1958 had demonstrated. In reality, British correspondence reveals that feelings of superiority were stronger than envy in relation to the French. This entailed two major consequences. French policies in Africa were never considered as a possible or desirable model for Britain, whose officials thought long term results would prove them right. As noted during the West African Heads of Mission meeting in January 1970, Britain benefited from a good reputation ‘as a country genuinely trying to decolonise with consideration and care’,135 which should be nurtured. British diplomats saw their confrontation with the African Commonwealth as a sign that Britain was a more truly democratic country than France136 and that its capacity for reform and adaptation was greater. In the short term however, these same British officials thought that France had a clear advantage in the implementation of its policies in Africa. Attitudes to the sale of weapons to South Africa in 1970, several British diplomats believed, clearly demonstrated the short term positive results of de Gaulle’s legacy for French international interests. Britain faced international condemnation following the decision of Edward Heath’s government to resume arms sales to South Africa in July 1970, in violation of the UN arms embargo of 1963. From the UN to the OAU and the Commonwealth, African governments led violent attacks against Britain, denouncing the deleterious impact that renewed deals with the South African government would have on the non-white population. Cameroon itself issued fierce condemnations: Ahidjo ‘stress[ed] Britain’s entire responsibility for the increased tension which its decision [would] provoke’,137 at a time when Cameroonians felt very strongly about apartheid.138 Ahidjo was then President of the OAU and Raymond Ntheppe, Cameroon’s Foreign Minister, was part of the OAU mission139 sent to France, West Germany and Britain. In fact, Ahidjo’s prominent role in the OAU at the time seems to have accounted, at least partly, for his decision to issue public statements against British policies. Cameroon rejected the dialogue policy favoured by other Francophone leaders, including the Ivorian and Gabonese Presidents – in his annual review for 1971, Golds considered that Cameroon was probably the most ‘vociferous’ antidialogue state in Francophone Africa.140 In his speech to the Federal National Assembly in August 1970, Ahidjo made his support for the liberation struggle in Southern Africa unambiguous, lambasting ‘diehard forces trying

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to impose their sway’.141 Far from siding with the majority of his OCAM counterparts, Ahidjo issued a common communiqué with General Gowon in September 1970142 and again in March 1972.143 However, British diplomats were convinced that it would not truly affect relations with Cameroon and private talks with Ntheppe confirmed this. Stressing Britain’s overall ‘liberal policies towards the world’ and condemning ‘exaggerated criticism by Black Africans [that] helped no-one’,144 Ntheppe thought it unlikely that the sales envisaged by Britain would further destabilise the region. In June, Ahidjo himself had praised the form of British decolonisation and portrayed Rhodesia as a ‘tragic exception’ in an overall successful process.145 The British Ambassador in Yaoundé thought Ahidjo ‘cautious, pragmatic and moderate’, wary of ‘wild words and threats of violence’,146 and encouraged in his stand by the attitude of the Cameroonians themselves. The pursuit of ‘material rewards and domestic peace’ naturally led the majority of Cameroonians to support their leader’s moderation, Golds assessed, and the absence of a free press accounted, at least partly, for national lethargy. As Golds later noted in relation to events in Rhodesia, there could only be outrage among ‘the limited number of Cameroonians who read or listen[ed] to foreign news’: ‘genuine interest ha[d] been minimal’, there had been ‘no student demonstrations [and] not even any spirited exchanges at cocktail parties’.147 While British diplomats were struck by such limited reactions, they also realised that the moderate policies adopted by the Cameroonian state suited their own interests. Ahidjo’s ‘willingness to judge the policies of other nations – including those of the former colonial powers – by facts and performance, instead of prejudice and slogans’ made him a very valuable partner for Britain.148 What had prompted the Cameroonian President to react against Britain in July 1970 was ‘not what [the British were] doing or even saying but that [they had] got [themselves] into the news in a context where moderates like himself [could not] publicly approve’.149 The British also predicted that ‘if West African Commonwealth Countries (particularly Nigeria) were to decide to break off relations it [was] just possible that Ahidjo would feel obliged to follow suit’.150 If not, relations with Cameroon would remain unaffected by events in Southern Africa. Ahidjo, Golds concluded in January 1971, would never ‘get seriously out of step when he judge[d] that an African consensus exist[ed] on any major issue’.151 What the British could not but notice, however, was the different treatment reserved for France. Admittedly, France’s policies in Southern Africa had escaped the international limelight. De Gaulle’s opposition to the USA, British diplomats argued, had ensured that the USSR avoided criticising the French at the UN, particularly on African matters, and concentrated ‘heavy attacks on [the British], the Americans and

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the Federal German Republic’ instead.152 De Gaulle’s legacy had also provided a favourable context for France’s persistent sway over its former African territories: French sales to South Africa accounted for more than British sales yet Cameroon had issued no clear public condemnation against them.153 In fact, Cameroonian officials adopted opposite strategies with France and Britain: while British policies were publicly denounced and British officials privately assured that Britain remained an ally, silence prevailed over French policies and French diplomats were privately and politely told that their actions ran counter to African interests.154 Discussions with the French Ambassador over this confirmed Golds’ belief that France was Cameroon’s dominant partner. Institutions and personalities continued to influence both the internal balance of power in the making of France’s African policies and in the opinions that British diplomats formed of them. In particular, British officials saw Foccart’s inclusion in Pompidou’s team during his West African tour in early 1971 as confirmation that the Secretariat for African and Malagasy Affairs would retain supremacy over the Quai in African affairs. Pompidou had reinstated Foccart following his brief absence from power during Poher’s interim Presidency and the transition seemed hardly noticeable in large parts of West Africa.155 In early 1970, the British had thought that Franco-British cooperation would be attacked by ‘M. Foccart and his minions’156 and de Leusse was indeed anxious to keep Foccart out of the talks.157 De Gaulle was gone but Foccart, his ‘semi-clandestine African hatchet man [was] still firmly in the saddle and maintain[ed] his tight grip on French Government policy in Africa’, and his influence ‘in an old-fashioned Gaullist (and anti Anglo-Saxon) direction’.158 SGAAM officials were kept informed of FrancoBritish discussions, the main interest of which, in their eyes, was to make clear to Britain that British activities on the continent should not ‘seem to oppose’159 French plans – clearly not the same as a reflection on possible integrated programmes. While de Leusse warned the ODA that African leaders might read plans for closer collaboration in assistance programmes as a neo-colonial entreprise, he also intimated that persistent feelings of rivalry might lead ambassadors and high commissioners in Africa to resist integrated programmes.160 One British official commented in June 1974 that ‘[t]he Foccart era [had] probably ended in about 1970’.161 Yet the fact had not been perceived at the time – nor did all officials agree with this interpretation. According to John Wilson at the FCO, Foccart truly was the central actor in French African policy,162 and the presence of strong Gaullist ministers, from Pierre Messmer to Michel Debré, would only reinforce this trend.163 Quai officials also reported their frustration at Foccart’s persistent influence in Africa to diplomats at the British Embassy in Paris. Foccart’s Secretariat remained an unavoidable intermediary between the

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Quai and French Ambassadors in Africa and the two heads for Francophone and Commonwealth Africa reported that ‘the Quai’s proposed instructions [were] substantially altered’164 on a number of occasions. By June 1973, Quai officials were still lamenting the fact that rumours of Foccart’s departure were ‘still “unfortunately” without foundation’.165 Foccart, ‘this withdrawn, unlikable and sinister customer [sitting] on top of a putrescent past’,166 remained a considerable, albeit decreasing, influence in African affairs. Positive reports about Franco-British Ambassadorial relations in West Africa were overshadowed by the opposition shown to British initiatives by ‘French expatriates working for African governments’, reducing opportunities for real cooperation to ‘slim’.167 In other terms, ‘President Pompidou ha[d] been able to go on quietly cultivating the French garden in Africa’,168 the de Gaulle era had not truly ended,169 and most resistance still essentially came from outside Quai d’Orsay staff. In Lagos, the French Ambassador told John Wilson during his visit in early 1972 that France’s mix of suspicion against Nigeria and low-key presence in the country stemmed from Foccart’s Secretariat. He himself sought to extend relations with the ‘the colossus of Africa’ but ‘although he had influential friends in the Elysée, the Quai d’Orsay and elsewhere, he was unable to have any significant resources put at his disposal to further French interests in Nigeria’.170 Just over a year later, reports from the British Embassy in Paris recorded that Foccart ‘ha[d] lost his intelligence functions inside France, and [that] in Africa his role nowadays [was], mercifully, almost entirely restricted to the Francophone countries’.171 But ingrained attitudes in African affairs did not rest solely on Foccart. By 1974, both British and Canadian officials commented on persistent French susceptibility where Africa was concerned.172 Although prospects for increasing trade with Cameroon remained limited, some more optimistic appraisals surfaced in the early 1970s. In January 1970, the Board of Trade had expressed no certainty that EEC membership would make it easier for British exporters to deal with Cameroon, where ‘buying houses [were] largely run by French expatriates’.173 Britain essentially did well where there was no direct competition, as in whisky. But a number of Cameroonian decisions also demonstrated that relations with France were being remodelled and Ahidjo made clear that the diversification of cooperation was high on the political agenda. By June 1970, Ahidjo was telling the British ambassador that Cameroon increasingly looked to the EEC as a whole and would welcome greater British engagement with the whole of Africa as part of the Common Market.174 Golds emphasised ‘the steadily expanding economic potential of Cameroon’, ‘a small but interesting market for the really enterprising British exporter’ and for ‘France’s present partners in Europe’. His report identified Cameroon as ‘one of the most rewarding targets for British

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enterprise in Francophone Africa’.175 In August 1970, Ahidjo admitted that ‘it was no longer possible to ignore, or feign to ignore, [the] massive existence and rapid development’176 of the People’s Republic of China, which held the promise of more valuable assistance and cooperation than what Taiwan had provided.177 In March 1971, a goodwill mission from the People’s Republic of China visited Cameroon and relations at Ambassadorial level were established. As Golds argued, this was further evidence of Ahidjo’s pragmatic approach to international politics: eager to avoid clandestine Chinese operations in Cameroon, particularly in the wake of the UPC trials, he also ‘recognise[d] a lost cause when he [saw] one’178 and realised that Communist China would have to be engaged with. Politically, these new relations with China were presented as evidence of Cameroon’s independence, as Ahidjo stated during his visit to Beijing in March 1973,179 when he obtained CFA 18 billion in technical assistance.180 Cameroon’s non-alignment remained primarily friendly to the West, and French, British and US diplomats in Yaoundé agreed that there was little to fear from the acceptance of a Romanian resident mission or talks with Poland to the same ends.181 American officials, for instance, emphasised that they were always able to have ‘easy access, even to the president’182 and the US Ambassador in Yaoundé in the mid-1970s also believed that Cameroon was ‘genuinely’ and ‘honestly non-aligned’.183 Relations between the Cameroonian Government and Soviet representatives in Yaoundé, albeit ‘cool, cautious and distant’,184 were to be read as proof of what Ahidjo later called ‘a more independent posture internationally’.185 Pompidou’s visit to Cameroon in February 1971 was also the opportunity for Ahidjo to reiterate that there could be no unique partner in Cameroon’s development objectives.186 In 1971, Cameroon left Air Afrique, citing the financial and fiscal troubles as well as the Franco-Ivorian domination of the company,187 and founded its own airline, Camair, which would operate national and international flights. French diplomats failed to persuade Ahidjo to remain part of Air Afrique188 and the subsequent partnership between Air France and Camair, British officials noted, demonstrated that the Cameroonian President had had the upper hand in the negotiations.189 In May 1971, British officials seemed more hopeful that membership of the Common Market would give British goods a better chance against French goods in Cameroon – and the rest of the AAMS.190 In early July 1971, a slightly puzzled Foccart noted, following a visit to Ahidjo’s French villa in Grasse, that the Cameroon President seemed to have become far more distant.191 French diplomats also thought that the UPC trials of early 1971192 had given Cameroon the ability to renegotiate cooperation in two directions: replace French coopérants by Cameroonian managers at a swifter pace, and diversify relations across the international board.193

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The publication of the Gorse Report in June 1971 marked a fundamental rethinking of French policy. The enlargement of the EEC – which ultimately would include Britain – regional integration in West Africa and France’s own economic constraints following the devaluation of 1969 suggested that non-Francophone developing countries should be given far more prominence, and West African Anglophone countries were singled out as the priority.194 The Gorse Report also took stock of the fact that an increasing number of African countries were themselves looking to diversify relations and sources of assistance and that France should publicly propose diversification, and thereby enhance its reputation.195 Given the fact that there would be no general increase in assistance, redeployment could only occur through the multilateralisation of aid in Africa, if France was to extend its activities elsewhere. Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi had already been included in French assistance plans in 1964. Further enlargement followed the Gorse Report, with Mauritius (1971), Haiti (1973), Seychelles, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Sao Tome (1976). By 1975, the British Ambassador in Senegal confirmed French support for a more multilateral provision of aid.196 In October 1971, the Interministerial Council on Cooperation supported French language teaching in those Anglophone African countries that might join their Francophone neighbours as EEC Associates.197 Cooperation initiatives were therefore a real French offensive to preserve interests in Francophone Africa and extend influence to Anglophone Africa if possible: it was ‘necessary to begin now to try to counterbalance the economic and cultural rapport of the Anglophone world in the Eurafrican space: an effort in investment, aid, technical assistance and cultural penetration should be undertaken without delay in the African Commonwealth’.198 Teaching French to Anglophone Africans was part of this new policy and it was even suggested that some of the teaching assistance to North Africa might be redirected to Commonwealth West Africa if necessary.199

Persistent barriers in linguistic diplomacy Throughout the period, British ministers and officials across departments emphasised their support for better communication between Anglophone and Francophone African leaders. African members of the CPA meeting in Lusaka in April 1969 had stated their support for the promotion of French and English teaching throughout Africa.200 Anglophone and Francophone students meeting in Europe had realised the gulf that separated them and the necessity of learning each other’s language so that they would ‘understand the situation in, or the policies of,

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other countries’201 in much more subtle ways. To a large extent, the focus was on ‘the top elite, the professional and university classes, and the more important business people’, even though the ‘largely illiterate’ population was also targeted within the wider objective of ‘assisting the economic development of the area’.202 At FCO Sir John Johnston emphasised the growing importance of top-level communication between all African governments if programmes of horizontal cooperation were to take off. Agriculture was mentioned as one area where the ability of African ministers to discuss common concerns was increasingly vital.203 Both British204 and French officials acknowledged that English was essential as the language of technology and diplomacy in Africa, particularly at the OAU. Language teaching was therefore extremely important to the French side since, as de Leusse pointed out, ‘the francophones were little heard’ and this detrimental position had to be redressed.205 The French emphasised that barriers were ‘as much a question of civilisation and culture as of language’ and reported on the difficulties that different educational and intellectual traditions between French and English speakers had created in Africa.206 However, it was not simply that there existed a gulf between Anglophone Africans and the French or between the Francophone Africans and the British but that Africans knew very little about other Africans who had lived under distinct colonial systems. As Ronald Fredenburgh, the Director of the Commonwealth–American Current Affairs Unit (part of the EnglishSpeaking Union), reported in early 1970, ‘the highly-educated person from, say, Dahomey, will know a great deal about the geography, history and culture of France, but will probably know little or nothing about neighbouring Nigeria. Similarly, the well-educated Nigerian will know much about Britain, but probably nothing about Dahomey or Niger’.207 He emphasised the need to help bring down one of the major obstacles to good inter-African relations – the other two being, in his view, poor telecommunications and transport infrastructure and ‘political divisions and ambitions’, deriving partly from the colonial era.208 Sir John Johnston underlined the paucity of ‘regional thinking’ in an increasingly tense climate, where the Nigerian conflict, local xenophobic episodes and increasingly authoritarian regimes hindered cooperation.209 West Africa, he concluded, ‘continue[d] to reflect European cultural and political divisions’210 – UDEAC and OCAM were seen as evidence of the colonial legacy which still influenced regional relations on the continent. The FCO consistently supported language teaching and wrote memorandums for the Secretary of State’s talks with the French to that effect. It was essential ‘to facilitate communication between officials, technicians, experts and so on in the two parts of Africa’211 and DouglasHome publicly supported ‘a lowering of the language barrier’ during his official trip to Senegal in early 1973.212

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In 1970, Cameroon was the only country in Francophone West Africa to host a British Council office,213 thereby signalling its unique status on the continent. Cameroon was included in the West African tour of the Director General of the British Council which also took him to Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Ghana – all Commonwealth countries and key British interests in the region. Cameroon was, the Director stated, the best placed territory to ‘break down the barriers between Anglophone and Francophone West Africa’.214 In 1969/70, all seven British Council scholarships for non-Commonwealth Africa went to Cameroon, and £1,500 and £390 were allocated to Cameroon for books and periodicals – compared to £2,000 and £300 for Francophone Africa.215 The only other major initiative was the British Institute in Dakar, an educational aid project which had first been set up in 1968 as part of the development plan of Senegal – and still operated in temporary buildings by 1970. The 18 teachers whom the Council had recruited to work in Cameroon with ODA funding seemed a much greater commitment than efforts in most other non-Commonwealth African countries – four teachers sent to the Ivory Coast, three to CAR, two to Togo, one to Chad and one to Dahomey.216 Plans were underway to build an English Language Centre in Kinshasa and Antananarivo but nothing had yet been decided.217 However, the British Council in Yaoundé had only been established in December 1969 and was a one-man operation. Golds lamented the ‘inadequate and inconspicuous premises’ and the generally small size of the operation – all the more striking as English language teaching, along with telecommunications and cooperatives, was Britain’s main contribution to development in Cameroon. Under these circumstances, Golds argued, there was little hope that Britain might be ‘making anything like the impact of its French, German and United States counterparts’218 in Cameroon. While France, Canada and UNESCO all provided some support to the Federal Linguistic Centre in Yaoundé, only one British teacher worked there in 1970.219 Britain contributed to building and equipping of English Department in the Federal University, recruiting ten teachers to staff it and sending another five teachers to various education centres in West Cameroon.220 It still compared unfavourably with the size and resources of the French Department, and teaching in English remained essentially confined to law, literature and English studies – only when a post in agriculture and two in science were specifically reserved for English speakers in the early 1970s was some slow change progressively noticed. As Given later stated, French projects happened on so large a scale that British initiatives in the field of education were bound to remain unnoticed.221 A small donation was made to the library of Buea College where two additional teachers were sent in 1971222 but the Director remained a French national and Golds again lamented how little was being

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done by Britain in Cameroon.223 Audiovisual resources and radio equipment were under-utilised. Few Cameroonians visited the library of the British Cultural Centre in Yaoundé. This, British diplomats noted, did not come as a surprise given the ‘shabby’ appearance of both the Centre and the books, most of which were offloads from the old British Council library in Accra, now refurbished.224 The poor location of the Centre did little to encourage Cameroonians to visit it frequently. Between 1969 and 1971, the number of British technical advisers and volunteers sent to Cameroon remained fairly constant – 25 technical advisers, around 30 volunteers and an additional ten teacher trainers. By comparison, there were just over 60 American Peace Corps Volunteers in Cameroon, including 37 in West Cameroon in the 1970s.225 Golds also judged the standards of British teachers at Yaoundé University to be ‘distressingly low’ and not worthy ‘of an English Grammar School, let alone a University’.226 Golds consistently advocated increasing the activities of the British Council, arguing in the summer of 1970 for a second British officer227 and for ‘the supervision of teachers in Chad and the CAR’.228 Giving more support to Cameroon’s policy of bilingualism would achieve a triple objective: improve communications in Cameroon, enhance Britain’s reputation in the country and relieve the morale of British teachers who would not be left isolated.229 The British Council Director himself referred to ‘long homilies about [the] neglect of the former British territory of West Cameroon’230 and the consequent need for Britain to deliver more assistance. Repeatedly, Golds emphasised the determination of the Cameroonian government to turn the ideal of a bilingual Cameroon into reality231 and insisted on the personal dedication of the Cameroonian President,232 who spoke very warmly of the need to nurture Anglo-Cameroonian links.233 Members of the British Council also reported that the Cameroonian authorities seemed truly committed to extending bilingualism.234 Bilingualism, Golds argued, was altogether ‘essential to the promoting of national unity[,] one of the symbols of Cameroon’s independence of both the French and [the British] and at the same time an earnest of the country’s desire to continue to build on both its inherited cultures’.235 Pompidou himself praised Cameroon’s unique experiment when he visited Yaoundé in February 1971,236 thereby proving that the bilingual project did enhance Cameroon’s international standing. Students in English at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Yaoundé spent a year in Britain as part of their degree while those studying for the bilingual degree at the Federal University went to France or Britain, depending on the language they most needed to work on.237 Britain offered a fairly constant number of scholarships and training placements, around 55 and 5 respectively.238 Scholarships were in fact given increasing importance: the major objective of the British Government was

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to replace expatriate British staff with local Cameroonian teachers. In 1970, eight lecturers were supplied to the Federal University. The workload for teaching what was referred to as ‘Service English’ was so heavy that volunteers were sent to assist but this, the British warned, could only be a stopgap measure.239 British and Cameroonian officials both welcomed initiatives to improve teacher training and recruitment, which was the focus of Mbile’s visit to Britain and Germany in November 1971.240 However, the implementation of cooperation in education and culture proved a rather complex matter, causing divisions within Whitehall. Archives reveal a conflict between the FCO and Overseas Development, no longer a separate ministry after the Conservative victory of June 1970, on the finances to be allocated for language teaching, in Africa as a whole and in Cameroon in particular. Golds made it quite clear that ‘no one could guarantee that [bilingualism would] succeed one hundred per cent – or even fifty’ but it was a certainty ‘that [British] political stock in Cameroon [would] plunge to zero overnight’ if nothing more was offered.241 The Ambassador emphasised that Ahidjo was determined that East Cameroonians – and particularly the governmental elite – should speak English fluently.242 Ling agreed that it was ‘certainly in the interests of both Cameroon and Britain that English should continue to be spoken in Cameroon’ and that Britain ‘should be on friendly terms’243 with the only country in Francophone Africa with which it shared a common history. Whilst the West African Department of the FCO focused on the political consequences of British language policy in Cameroon and the British Council was ‘concerned to maintain an on-going presence and to create a permanent two-way understanding and relationship with a country’,244 Overseas Development concentrated on the economic and financial side of the operations. In other words, it intended to undertake ‘projects which [were], in general, intended to solve particular problems of a non-recurrent nature within a limited period, leaving the country in a position to continue a new or revised system staffed by its own nationals’.245 In 1971, Overseas Development argued against increasing aid to Cameroon because of the absence of ‘clear-cut expressions of policy and measures . . . with which to gauge either the effectiveness of past and present aid programmes, or the size or form of any future assistance’.246 The British Council considered that Britain needed to support the ‘enormous fund of goodwill and sincere intention to succeed with bilingualism’ which prevailed in Cameroon but simultaneously acknowledged that the whole initiative was ‘a gamble’.247 Bureaucratic difficulties in Cameroon delayed the construction of a new English Department building at the Federal University in Yaoundé for which Britain had provided funding,248 making it problematic for Cameroon to argue forcefully for more funds when the AngloCameroonian Commission met in 1971.

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Overall, Cameroon did remain more French-speaking than Englishspeaking. French was still the preferred language for communication and social mobility249 while the dominance of pidgin English in West Cameroon, both real and exaggerated in the minds of East Cameroonians, was ‘a persistent obstacle’ to bilingualism.250 The promotion of bilingualism had remained virtually absent from the primary school system. Only three schools taught French in West Cameroon and only one taught English in East Cameroon in 1970:251 so-called bilingual schools were essentially established for the children of Anglophone or Francophone Cameroonians having to work in the other state.252 With most places of higher education in East Cameroon, Francophones benefited from easier access to them: only 105 West Cameroonians – including five women – attended the Federal University, slightly fewer than the 130 foreign nationals, mostly Frenchmen, who also enrolled. By contrast, there were 1,767 East Cameroonian students, including 88 women.253 East Cameroon had four times the population of West Cameroon but was still vastly overrepresented in education. This, Overseas Development officials argued, meant that ‘“bilingualism” [was] much applauded but barely practised’ and that ‘British businessmen [would] make no headway in East Cameroon unless they treat[ed] it as purely francophone’.254 They were also aware that French still prevailed in the top administrative echelons, as showed the courses offered at ENAM. Customary courts continued to exist in West Cameroon and Common Law, which still prevailed in the region, was taught in English. However, the co-existence of two different systems meant that students graduated in either English or French law and, as Charles M. Fombad has argued,255 Francophone judges remained both suspicious and dismissive of Common Law practices. Administration was taught strictly in French.256 Although British funding helped set up a course in public administration and economy for senior civil servants, there was no consultant in English law and all post-graduate courses were taught in French. Finally, Anglophone students were often left little option but to spend their semester abroad in France rather than Britain. In reality, British policies for funding in-country projects and student exchanges in West Africa differed from the French. Officials in London argued that any funding for language teaching had to be centred on a number of limited and targeted regional projects – not spread thinly over all countries. In 1970, Britain was sending staff to universities, colleges of education and schools, giving ‘assistance with curricula and equipment’ and offering training in Britain itself.257 Three English teaching centres were established in Francophone Africa – in Dakar, Antananarivo and Kinshasa, which by 1973 employed about half of all ELT personnel to the Associated Territories,

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excluding Cameroon and Somalia.258 It was increasingly thought that training in Britain was a costly scheme with no multiplier effect and that Britain should seek to provide assistance for language training in Anglophone Africa, thereby increasing the contacts between regional neighbours and keeping costs under control.259 Plans to ‘take advantage of the presence in Europe of African students at the “Institut des Hautes Etudes d’Outre Mer” in Paris to bring some of them to England’ were dismissed in 1969: the French might oppose the scheme, African states would be deprived of some of their elite for a longer period and ‘the double “culture shock”’ of visiting France and Britain (with their two very different cultures) in such quick succession’ would be tremendous.260 Two years later, the Cultural Relations Department admitted that the first reason had probably lapsed but remained convinced that the other two remained as valid as ever.261 The FCO overruled the opposition of a number of British Ambassadors who thought that Francophone Africans looked down on the standards of English of their neighbours and that the elite would much prefer being taught in Britain262 – ‘the Ghanaian accent’, the Ambassador in Abidjan argued, was ‘frowned on by Ivorians, and the costs saved by an English language centre in Ghana would not compensate for the political kudos lost by not sending students on courses to UK’.263 The priority at the FCO, ODA and British Council was ‘to devise a practical and cost effective (in terms of manpower as well as money) system for teaching to a much larger number of Francophone Africans locally’.264 Two major objectives were outlined in June 1971: ‘teach English to teachers of English [and] set up “crash courses” for Ministers, senior civil servants, administrators and businessmen in the countries concerned, where the gains would be immediate’.265 Moreover, British officials were anxious that cooperation on language training should not be seen as ‘colonialist or paternalist arrangements between former metropolitan countries telling them what [was] good for them’.266 The Department for Cultural Relations at the FCO warned that joint projects could not be used as substitutes for bilateral assistance267 and British Council officers stressed the importance of consulting individual African countries first on new schemes.268 The British government was also advised that given France’s persistent dominating presence in Francophone Africa, the success of English teaching by British teachers would remain limited.269 African regional centres were therefore seen as ‘the most valuable longterm investments’,270 which would enable Britain to respond more and impose less. This largely explains why Britain very much welcomed the news in early 1971 that OCAM intended to set up a training institute for teachers of English, which would be open to both English and French speakers. While some favoured Ibadan in Nigeria for its existing facilities, the Cameroonian

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government had received widespread support to establish such a centre in Cameroon, and particularly in Buea: this ‘Anglophone corner’271 would place trainees in a favourable environment that only Cameroon was able to offer, Falilou Kane, the Senegalese Secretary General of OCAM, emphasised. It would also ‘avoid foreign exchange problems and would get round the fears of Nigerian “imperialism” which [were] so near the surface in this part of the world’.272 For Golds, Cameroon’s linguistic policies were not simply ‘a necessary extra window into the world at large [but] a means towards closer regional cooperation – especially with Nigeria’.273 In 1970, Cameroon and Nigeria had set up a Permanent Committee to drive cooperation between the two countries.274 Part of its role was to increase exchanges between secondary school students, university students and teachers, a scheme which essentially involved West Cameroonians. OCAM therefore had the potential to serve nation-building in Cameroon: the specificity of West Cameroon would be acknowledged and placed at the heart of OCAM’s drive to open to non-Francophone Africa. The University of Yaoundé was certainly an attractive pole for Francophones in Central Africa275 but Cameroonian academia could build the country’s reputation outside purely Francophone circles. British projects focused on the same concerns. Initially, Ghana, Nigeria and West Cameroon were considered as the most promising locations for a regional teaching centre – an Anglophone environment would provide students with more opportunities to improve their English outside the classes themselves.276 Senegal was briefly considered but the Director of the Institute there showed little support for the project. By October 1971, Ghana had been picked as the most promising location: it was Anglophone, the Director was extremely enthusiastic and relations with its neighbours were good – so were its relations with France, a very positive point in British eyes.277 Interestingly, the October briefs still refer to the Cameroonian option but the proposal concerns the English Language Institute in Yaoundé – no doubt a less attractive prospect than an Anglophone-based centre in Buea.278 In practice, French and British support for language teaching was carried out independently – in Cameroon as elsewhere. Although France opened a number of Alliances Françaises in Anglophone West Africa,279 activities remained on the whole focused on respective ex-imperial zones. Tahourdin’s calls to redress the British bias in favour of Commonwealth Africa for assistance280 were taken into account, but only to a limited extent. Martin Le Quesne, the Deputy Undersecretary responsible for Africa and the Middle East, emphasised that Britain’s links with Francophone West Africa were partly limited because of France’s strong presence in the area281 while Foreign Secretary Douglas-Home confirmed during his visit to Senegal that British bilateral assistance would essentially be directed to Commonwealth Africa.282

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In 1970, 82 per cent of coopérants served in ex-French territories – including 57 per cent in North Africa.283 By 1973, the bulk of French assistance remained centred on the French-speaking region, with over 13,000 technical assistants in ex-French West and Central Africa.284 The proportion of teachers among the coopérants had also increased tremendously in Francophone subSaharan Africa, from 23.96 per cent in 1960 to 62.73 per cent in 1969. This was particularly striking in Cameroon: while between 1959 and 1970 the number of French technical assistants dropped from 483 to 75, the number of teachers increased from 180 to 700.285 The French were told that Britain ‘thought that “la mission civilisatrice de la France” had been of immense benefit to West Africa’286 and added that the high levels of French assistance were the major factor behind France’s close relations with its ex-territories in the region.287 Consultations between Paris and London did not translate into joint programmes in Africa. De Leusse argued for French involvement in English-speaking countries and British involvement in French-speaking countries in language teaching.288 The Cultural Relations Department of the FCO understood that the French conceived of British involvement as the provision of personnel in higher education institutions.289 Separate programmes in ‘educational aid to Africa in the fields of language teaching and cultural studies’290 had also been intentionally excluded from the activities of the EDF, which meant that bilateral assistance programmes prevailed at EEC level too. In fact, there was so little European policy or cooperation that the Canadians commented in March 1972 the EDF seemed torn apart by internal rivalry.291 As far as the British were concerned, separate schemes suited them. Both Overseas Development and the British Council emphasised the differences between the French and the British educational systems and argued against any integrated programmes.292 These reservations did not simply concern France. Overseas Development proved equally reluctant to engage in joint ventures with the Canadians in Africa. Briefs for the Anglo-Canadian talks of March 1972 warned of the Canadians’ ‘out-dated’ teaching methods.293 Officials also argued that ‘[t]he Canadian interest was much smaller’ and that teaching French probably mattered more to them than teaching English.294 A later FCO brief also doubted the reality of a concerted and coherent Canadian policy in Africa, beyond bilateral relations.295 Moreover, French and British policies differed in two fundamental aspects: French resources were much greater296 and France still intended to rely on expatriate teachers at a time when Overseas Development and the British Council were looking to rely increasingly on local teachers.297 As an FCO official commented during the Anglo-French talks of March 1971, ‘teach[ing] the language teachers’ and phasing out the

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involvement of British nationals was the best way of improving literacy in West Africa.298 Teacher training, the FCO hoped, would additionally ‘build up pressure in favour of British methods of teaching English’.299 In October, it was confirmed that ‘there [was] little or no scope for direct co-operation in ELT projects with the French’ and that Franco-British consultations ‘had not yet been felt in Africa’:300 the fact that Chief Inspectors of language tended to be French when the French were involved seemed an absurd and out-dated position which the British were very disinclined to follow. In April 1972, the missions of French coopérants in Africa were reviewed in response to growing demands by African governments: missions would now last no longer than five years and the remit of the coopérants would be more strictly delineated. This would in effect curtail their power of influence over local affairs and provide better conditions for the Africanisation of managerial positions. As Canadian diplomats noted, they would finally have to abandon ‘the general role of colonial administrators’ that formal independence had failed to end.301 In the short-term however, it did not seem to improve relations with nonFrench technical assistants on the ground.

French and British perspectives on 20 May 1972: a welcome unitary state? However much the reasoning might have differed between the political and development components of the FCO, all gave priority to the political centre of power, at a time when Ahidjo was in the process of creating a unitary state that would replace the Federation. For Overseas Development, promoting bilingualism seemed a senseless and wasteful effort: West Cameroon, the Overseas Development brief argued before the Anglo-Cameroon mixed commission in 1971, which has little to offer economically and with its need for Federal subventions, may well one day become part of a more centralised system, which suggests that it might seem more logical (in development terms) for the French language to be taught to the inhabitants of West Cameroon, especially since we understand that the standard of English there is appalling too.302 In complete contradiction with the structuring pillars of the Cameroonian state, some considered that English should be abandoned in favour of French.303 To some extent, bilingualism was indeed ‘a political gambit aimed at keeping the West Cameroons happy [and] restricted to senior

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civil servants and professional people’304 at the turn of the 1970s. However, Cameroon had been built on bilingualism – far more so than on biculturalism, seen as a potentially dangerous questioning of national unity – and ending the Federation would only make official bilingualism a more important ingredient of Cameroon’s exceptionalism in Africa. Officials were aware that each of the two Cameroonian federated states retained its linguistic practices305 and French diplomats themselves noted in 1971 that there was little hope that the French language would replace English in West Cameroon.306 In his valedictory despatch, Edden emphasised that neither Cameroon nor the neighbouring states to which he had been accredited were ‘countries where by and large the pursuits of British interests encounter[ed] deliberate discourtesy or ill will from the local Governments’.307 Golds forcefully opposed ‘lett[ing] the English language die a natural death in Cameroon and spend[ing] no more money on it’.308 FCO diplomats agreed that nothing should be done to undermine Cameroon’s unification process. This meant that teaching English was about promoting bilingualism – not promoting West Cameroon’s particularism. Consequently, Britain offered limited funding to promote English as part of Cameroon’s bilingualism policies. In 1967, the British Ambassador in Yaoundé had specifically told his French counterpart that Britain would ‘not “campaign” for English’ but provide support within Cameroon’s Federal institutions and argued against launching any scheme which ‘would involve in effect pushing English against French’.309 The ODM gave no support for ‘education and training programmes and institutions that duplicate[d] facilities available within the country and [found] their sole rationale in the use of the English medium’.310 British support for bilingualism therefore operated within the perimeter defined by the Yaoundé Government and under limited resources. There was no British equivalent to France’s cultural diplomacy and officials across the board acknowledged that Britain would never ‘match the capital expenditure of the French’311 and that there was simply no competing with them.312 In fact, French Coopération sent French teachers of English to Francophone Africa – 198 out of 311 language teachers in 1970 – and 15 were in Cameroon itself, about as many as British-funded teachers.313 British initiatives in any part of Cameroon were shameful and ‘puny’, Gold said, compared to what the French had done for teaching and even for school buildings in Buea, Douala or Yaoundé.314 Imbalance in numbers also meant that Britain essentially targeted the elite when France was able to target both the elite and the population through schools. British assistance policies also continued to be firmly directed by the need to serve the Federal authorities. Trainees sent to Britain had to be bilingual and were increasingly chosen on a Federal basis, rather than in West Cameroon.315 In 1970, Maurice Foley, the Minister for Africa, gave a speech at the Royal African Society – of which he was then the Director – citing Cameroon as a successful experiment in ‘welding together

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people divided not only by tribal differences but also by linguistic and cultural ones’.316 Compared to war-ravaged Nigeria, Cameroon seemed driven by a genuine bilingualism which had made ‘remarkable progress’.317 A few days later, the Director of the Commonwealth–American Current Affairs Unit singled out Cameroon as the only part of Africa where ‘a genuine effort [was] being made to make the country bilingual’.318 The reality was rather different from what the British publicly proclaimed – and from what some of them privately thought – but Britain’s political and economic interests in stability, as well as a desire to see bilingualism succeed, acted in favour of the Yaoundé Government. Relations between Britain and Cameroon over developments in Rhodesia in late 1971 also encouraged the British in their belief that Yaoundé was really the centre of power. Connections with West Cameroon mattered because of their shared history but belonged almost exclusively to the sphere of idealised sentiments. By contrast, British interests lay in cultivating relations with the authorities in Yaoundé. On 24 November 1971, Alec DouglasHome and Ian Smith signed an agreement which predicated a settlement in Rhodesia on five principles: unimpeded progress to majority rule[,] guarantees against retrogressive amendment of the Constitution[,] immediate improvement in the political status of the African population[,] progress towards ending racial discrimination [and British satisfaction] that any basis proposed for independence was acceptable to the people of Rhodesia as a whole.319 The British Conservative Government considered their approach more fruitful than Labour’s NIBMAR (No Independence without Black Majority Rule): less intransigent on the pace towards black Africans’ rights, it meant some evolution rather than a complete deadlock. However, for most African governments this new British strategy seemed to give the Smith regime a legitimacy denied to the black-African parties, who were absent from the proceedings. On 1 December, Ahidjo publicly condemned British policy for ‘consecrating the independence of [Rhodesia] under an authoritarian regime’.320 However, this statement was preceeded by a series of meetings with the British Ambassador, leaving Golds in no doubt that Britain had little to fear from Cameroon. Foreign Minister Pascal Biloa had been rather moderate during discussions with the British Ambassador in August 1971321 and in November, Paul Biya, then Secretary General at the Presidency, had ‘personally welcomed the news’322 of the Salisbury Agreement as a sign that Ian Smith was prepared to compromise. After his press conference, Ahidjo himself explained to Golds the difference between what he thought in his personal private position and

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what his official capacity required him to say. Rhodesia was a case that was ‘épouvantablement épineux’323 and although Ahidjo himself explained to Golds that he ‘could not possibly commend the grant of independence to a white minority government’, he did tell the British they ‘could count on his sympathy and understanding’.324 Rhodesia was repeatedly mentioned in official declarations – as was the case in March 1972 when Ahidjo and his Nigerian counterpart issued a joint declaration325 – but as predicted by the British Ambassador,326 relations with Cameroon remained largely unaffected by Southern African issues. What the events of November and December 1971 had confirmed though was that Ahidjo and his immediate entourage at the Presidency were truly in charge of foreign affairs. Vice President Muna, whom British diplomats had met in Buea on 11 December, seemed to them to hold more radical views on Rhodesia but to be also ‘noticeably less well informed about [the situation] than the President himself’.327 The period also coincided with ‘the abrupt sacking’, as the British saw it, ‘of Dr. Bernard Fonlon, very much the most distinguished of the Government’s West Cameroonian members’.328 This was again perceived as evidence of the weight of the Francophone, centralised and centralising forces in Cameroon. If the British wanted to maintain good relations with the country, let alone improve political connections or commercial prospects, they would have to support the Yaoundé Government and demonstrate that their policies posed no threat to national unity. Nothing should be done to resurrect earlier accusations that they had attempted to block the reunification of Cameroon. The current balance of power in Cameroon, in any case, gave them little incentive to act otherwise. On 20 May 1972, the climax of the unification process which both British and French diplomats in Cameroon had long predicted, was given concrete legal existence. A national referendum called on Cameroonians to decide whether they favoured transforming the Federation into a unitary State. A unitary State, Ahidjo stated publicly a few days before the vote, would be ‘the apotheosis of total national unity’,329 ‘another historical act’330 that would foster progress and stability. In teleological fashion, Ahidjo presented 20 May as ‘another historic act [in Cameroon’s] irresistible onward movement’ and in the Cameroonians’ ‘indomitable will to progress to acquire maximum force and effectiveness’.331 On 1 January 1960, Cameroonians had demonstrated their triumph over ‘years of colonisation’; on 1 October 1961, they had overcome ‘the accidents of history’ to embrace ‘a common destiny’; a positive result on 20 May would now symbolise the nation’s ‘profound unity’. In West Cameroon, the Government’s plans received strong support from a number of Anglophone politicians whose past nationalist credentials gave added weight to their discourse. The news bulletin published by the Ministry of Information on

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the eve of the referendum publicised the approval of all of the major West Cameroonian figures, from Foncha and Jua to Endeley and Fonlon. Some re-interpreted the plebiscite of February 1961 as a vote for a single Cameroon and argued that the Federation had only ever been intended as a transitory solution. Vice President Muna stressed that only through the advent of a unitary State would ‘the colonial amputation of Cameroon by the British and the French’332 be finally overcome. Minister of Labour and Social Welfare Nzo Ekangaki promoted ‘a salvation constitution [which] remove[d] the psychological impression of second class citizenship and absorption of a special Anglophone culture’.333 While they portrayed the unitary State as the best framework for full national unity, they criticised Federal institutions for encouraging ‘headaches [and] blackmail, gossip and unnecessary expenditure’: Muna himself openly favoured the abolition of his own function as Vice President. Ending the Federation would therefore achieve two simultaneous objectives: bind Cameroonians closer together and make more resources available for development. The cost of maintaining a Federal State might indeed have counted but as Piet Konings and Francis B. Nyamnjoh have argued, fears of regionalism and particularly of secessionism in West Cameroon, heightened by the Nigerian civil war, certainly played a greater influence on the government’s decision.334 Results revealed that 99 per cent of voters had chosen to abolish the Federation, in a referendum which, the British Embassy stated, had left them no other choice: voters were handed out ‘yes’ bulletins and it would have taken a very ‘brave (or silly)’335 man not to use them. The new Constitution, to quote Victor Le Vine, was ‘octroyée (handed down from on high)’ rather than ‘évoluée (the product of some sort of political development)’.336 East and West Cameroon were divided into five and two provinces respectively (Decree n°72/349, 24 July 1972) and each province was put under the authority of a Governor appointed by the President. The division of West Cameroon into a South-West and North-West Province within the greater unitary State further minimised its overall political influence. West Cameroon’s Second Chamber was also abolished as one single assembly for the whole of Cameroon was formed. While the 1961 Constitution had ensured that there would be a Vice President originating from West Cameroon if the President himself was an East Cameroonian, the 1972 Constitution abolished the post. Cameroon’s ‘historical act’, Maurice Schuman wrote to Ahidjo on 24 May, would ensure Cameroon’s indivisibility.337 Pompidou and Foccart approved wholeheartedly.338 The new constitution, officially presented on 2 June 1972, was hailed by Ahidjo as the symbol of ‘a common Fatherland, free and independent [and] proud of the rich diversity of its unity’339 – unity being the all important term. Cameroon’s transformation, however, was not brought about by the referendum itself, French and British diplomats argued: 20 May 1972 had merely

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enabled a new Constitution to give new legal value to Ahidjo’s political manoeuvres, to his patience and determination.340 The UPC trials of January 1971, which had resulted in the execution of Ernest Ouandié and life imprisonment for Mgr Ndongmo, had put an end to real UPC threats against Ahidjo and provided favourable conditions to reinforce his power. In all this, the British described his attitude as ‘prudent and statesmanlike’341 and his appeal as a pillar of stability remained strong for Western partners. Ahidjo, the French Ambassador noted the day before the referendum, knew that unification would give added weight to the cultural and linguistic habits of the East.342 The powers of the President were strengthened as it became impossible for ministers to hold any other public function.343 Back in 1960, 19 ministers out of 20 had been chosen from members of the National Assembly but this was no longer the case. The new constitution truly reinforced Presidential powers.344 Seven ministerial posts were given to Anglophone members of the Party and the Governor of Buea was also chosen within the Anglophone community. There were reports that a number of people had protested in Bamenda and at the University of Yaoundé but incidents remained few and isolated. Resistance, most foreign diplomats believed, would remain passive, controlled, to some extent, by the increase in salaries which followed unification. In June 1972, the police was sent to break up a meeting of Anglophone politicians, including Foncha and Muna, on the grounds that its restricted character endangered national unity, under article 4 of decree n°67/LF/19 (June 1967).345 While 1 January and 1 October remained official bank holidays, celebrations were no longer organised: in September 1972, a Presidential decree stipulated that 20 May would be Cameroon’s new National Day, symbolising the unity of the nation.346 Celebrations took on more formal, more grandiose – and according to the French, less joyful and popular – tones. By 1974, Chinese instructors were advising on the schoolchildren’s parade and both the masses and the elite were made to feel the weight of central authority.347 Plans were made to build a monument to reunification in Yaoundé, inaugurated in 1974: two winding staircases run in opposite directions and join at the top of the monument, as the two federated states merged into a single one. As the French Ambassador noted, the symbolism of 20 May was extremely strong: contrary to independence and reunification which had been negotiated with foreign countries, the referendum of 1972 had been a purely Cameroonian affair.348 However, just as 1 January had emphasised Cameroun’s early independence, 20 May underlined Presidential, Francophone and Eastern domination within the unitary state. The end of the Cameroonian Federation led French and British diplomats to reassess the importance of the promotion of the country’s two official languages. A few days before the referendum, Ahidjo had guaranteed that official bilingualism, one of the ‘original features of Cameroon’s international

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Paths intertwined: The Reunification Monument in Yaoundé, pictured on the commemorative stamp for the 20th anniversary of Reunification in 1981

personality’349 would be maintained. Bilingualism, he argued, was at the very heart of Cameroon’s ‘authentic national culture[,] at once unique and enriching’.350 Five days after the vote, French Ambassador Dupuy noted that there were genuine fears among the Anglophone population that in the socalled ‘unitary, bilingual and pluricultural’ state,351 the bilingual component

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would be increasingly under attack, or at least that unified political institutions would further reinforce the weight of French. Dupuy himself admitted that the new constitution made “the pre-eminence of French” quite clear. In many ways, it was seen to confirm what the French Cultural Counsellor in Yaoundé had said: publicly cautious on the Francophonie, the Yaoundé authorities welcomed all French contribution to the use of French in the country.352 Less than a year later, French diplomats confirmed that with the end of two distinct states that each represented a clear linguistic heritage, bilingualism as a political project had become more blurred. They considered that France itself should give great importance to the promotion of French at a time when international and regional trade links favoured English.353 This was inscribed in the overall plans which the French Coopération made for its programme with Africa in early 1973. As the head of Coopération Pierre Billecocq told Quebecois politicians, the expansion, even more than the maintenance, of the French language on the international stage was essential if France did not want to turn into Greece or Italy. The African continent represented the best hope in this respect. This meant that while France was neither able nor willing to provide all aid to Africa, one major objective of the Coopération was to ensure that Africans spoke French, were educated in French and that projects would therefore be undertaken in French. Closer relations with Britain in the European context would lead to more rapprochements in Africa itself: Commonwealth Africa’s greater human and economic weight made it all the more important that there should be no let-up in the promotion of the Francophonie. By early 1976, the French Foreign Minister was protesting that France did not consider Francophone Africa to be its ‘chasse gardée’354 and virtually accused Canadian officials in Ottawa of imagining tensions and exaggerating French susceptibilities. There was however every suggestion that fruitful cooperation would rest on the recognition of the importance of the French language. While this concerned the whole of French-speaking Africa, Cameroon presented a very favourable environment for French to progress over English. Billecocq seemed to make no distinction between Senghor, Houphouët-Boigny and Ahidjo, whom he all considered ‘pure francophones’,355 and whose support should be used before a new generation of African politicians took over. Eighteen additional technical assistants arrived in Cameroon in 1975 to contribute to the drive for French teaching in primary schools, while a Franco-Cameroonian team focused on teacher training, with the cooperation of the university of Besançon and Buea for conceptualisation and implementation.356 By contrast, the British seem to have considered that the advent of the unitary state had given bilingualism renewed impetus and reports emphasised the goodwill of the Yaoundé authorities, with specific references to ‘strong

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Presidential pressure’.357 Shortly after unification, Ahidjo sought the cooperation of the Canadians, through the CIDA, to participate in the bilingual project within the civil service and in the translation work of the central services. It was not about language, Couvrette noted, but about policy-making and implementation.358 A few days after the referendum, Given noted that most Cameroonians West of the Mungo ‘would rather speak English than French, would rather buy British if they could, and . . . [thought] the oldfashioned village policeman was a better man than the gun-toting gendarme who has replaced him’.359 However, in his annual review for 1972, Given noted that on the whole, West Cameroonians had been happy to trade ‘the cumbersome federal apparatus’ for ‘the imposition of the ways of the French-speaking majority’.360 In practice, schemes remained modest. If Cameroon’s heritage meant ‘moral obligations’ for Britain, it also meant ‘a built-in advantage which [could] pay valuable dividends in political and commercial terms’361 if support was provided to the bilingual projects of the Yaoundé authorities. FCO officials were convinced that Ahidjo wanted ‘unification rather than a take-over’362 and that Britain’s cultural activities should not undermine, or be seen to undermine, nation-building in Cameroon. When she visited Cameroon in January 1973, Lady Tweedsmuir herself, then Minister of State at the FCO, emphasised that Britain needed to promote English throughout the territory and should not ‘single [the ex-West Cameroonians] out’,363 despite their requests for more specific programmes and greater assistance. The USA presented similar arguments and their diplomats in Yaoundé believed that while Francophones did dominate political institutions, Anglophones ‘had more than proportional representation’.364 Briefs for Lady Tweedsmuir had also emphasised the prevalence of French in Cameroon365 and her attitude followed fairly accurately the recommendations of Given, in his annual review for 1972: ‘the time [had] come’, he argued, ‘to look more to Cameroon as a whole [and] not favour [the English-speakers] beyond the extent needed to ensure that the Westerners in the Central Government remain[ed] favourably inclined to’366 British interests. Contrary to what Given implied, Britain had in fact long based its policies on the wishes of Yaoundé rather than Buea. The abolition of the Federation seemed to confirm that they had made the right prediction and that there was therefore little reason to change course. A second post was added to the British Council in Yaoundé in August 1972 and the opening of an English bookshop367 was one of the early successes of British Council activity in Cameroon in the early 1970s. However, the addition of a second officer seems to have been part of the planned ‘transfer of the administration of the Technical Assistance Training Programme from the Embassy to the Council in November 1972’368 rather than an indication of much greater funding to come. A mixed Anglo-Cameroonian Commission was set up in

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December 1972, on the impulse of Mongo Soo, the Cameroonian Minister of Education, to introduce English to primary schools in the French-speaking parts of the country and to extend the use of telecommunications for learning purposes.369 BBC Africa also sent a representative to Yaoundé in November 1973 as part of a visit to English-speaking Africa and the appointment of an Anglophone – and Anglophile, according to the French Embassy – Director to Radio Cameroun shortly before certainly facilitated contacts.370 In 1973, there were ten British ELT teachers at the University of Yaoundé, one adviser to the Ministry of Education, one tutor for Government officials and only two teachers in secondary schools.371 In the reorganisation of the University in October 1973, following a decree signed in August, the Chancellor, who had been a French national until then, was replaced by a Cameroonian, thereby completing the Cameroonisation of the University’s management.372 However, despite growing demands from the Anglophone community, no Anglophone was appointed to any of the senior administrative posts.373 Only in 1975 were there reports of a concerted British effort in primary schools.374 Limited resources also meant that British aid remained focused on bilingualism rather than biculturalism. By early 1976, Saunders lamented Britain’s inability to support the Cameroonian Government’s desire to give ‘British culture in the broadest sense’ a larger place in the country but foresaw no real solution and underlined the lack of impact of Britain’s minor contribution.375 British assistance, he told his US counterpart during an official reception, did not even amount to the value of Cameroonian imports of champagne per year.376 Maintaining existing programmes was in itself an achievement. The constraints of limited funding were felt throughout non-Commonwealth Africa: the building of an English Language Centre in the Ivory Coast was postponed in 1974 and the offer of agricultural equipment withdrawn;377 in Senegal, ‘the disproportionate returns, at least in terms of goodwill, which [the British were] able to harvest in return for a modest investment’ were largely attributed to Senghor’s known sympathy for them. The Senegalese Government was about to take full charge of the British Institute and the British Ambassador hoped that Overseas Development would not use this change to reduce funding further.378 However in Cameroon, the situation was far more problematic and potentially dangerous given the country’s heritage and the increasing centralisation in Yaoundé. English was not simply about opening new avenues into the world but about fulfilling the promises made by the Government at independence that all citizens would find a place in a balanced, reunified Cameroon. As Golds had pointed out in 1971, regional cooperation and international diplomacy were certainly very important for Cameroon but bilingualism mattered first and foremost as one of the most essential foundations of the state – ‘one of the symbols of Cameroon’s

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independence of both the French and [the British] and at the same time an earnest of the country’s desire to continue to build on both its inherited cultures’.379 Bilingualism remained an ideal but as Given acknowledged in his valedictory despatch of July 1975, ‘while a French-speaker [could] attain the higher ranks of the administration without any knowledge of English, the opposite [was] not true’.380 At a time when Canada was sending 80 technical assistants to Cameroon, including 60 teachers, Britain’s contribution was found to be lacking.381 Shortly after the last UPC trials, the tenets of independence and reunification remained crucial and the first three years of the United Republic rested on the same principles. Britain, French officials argued in mid 1976, had failed its ‘moral contract’382 with Cameroon for the equal and symmetrical diffusion of French and English in the country.

Beyond the ACCT and Commonwealth: tentative engagements with the Commonwealth Foundation The influence of the 1960 pledge and what the French Ambassador called Cameroon’s ‘diplomatie d’équilibre’383 had not kept Cameroon out of Francophone institutions but it now limited the scope and depth of its relations with the ACCT. There was of course little in common between the highly political French Community and the ACCT, which had consciously left politics out of its immediate remit. There was equally little in common between the ACCT and the Commonwealth, which dealt with highly sensitive political issues and sought to be a privileged forum for high-level diplomacy. But for all these differences, the ACCT did pose a threat to Cameroon’s nationbuilding. Senghor might well have claimed that ‘the Francophonie was neither the submission to some form of French imperialism nor a war weapon against other cultural worlds’.384 But it was still the case that the ACCT promoted the French language and that most of the states and governments it brought together had had former colonial links with France. Accusations of neo-colonialism against OCAM, whose members constituted the bulk of the Francophone grouping, were a source of intense irritation for Senghor. Why, the Senegalese President asked, could the Commonwealth, by contrast, ‘hold a meeting in Ottawa opened by the Queen, conducted in the language of the ex-colonial power and no one accused them of being dominated by London’?385 Recurrent public attacks against British foreign policy in Southern Africa or the increasing influence of the Secretary-General of the organisation seemed at least part of the answer. In fact, the Commonwealth of the early 1970s was going through some profound changes. At their summit in Singapore in January 1971, Commonwealth Heads issued the Declaration of Commonwealth Principles, which, for the first time, gave a clear definition of pan-Commonwealth values.

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The Commonwealth of Nations was ‘a voluntary association of independent sovereign states’, which ‘believe[d] in the liberty of the individual, in equal rights for all citizens regardless of race, colour, creed or political belief, and in their inalienable right to participate by means of free and democratic political processes in framing the society in which they live’.386 The Commonwealth, the Declaration further stated, was united in fighting racial prejudice, colonial domination in all its forms, poverty, ignorance and unequal terms of trade. Of course, interpretation and implementation of these principles varied greatly: Britain’s relations with South Africa at the time or Idi Amin’s coup in Uganda, staged precisely during the Singapore Summit, showed the wide disparities between principles and reality. But the major significance of the Singapore Declaration was that it expressed Commonwealth membership primarily in terms of values, rather than in relation to the British imperial past. For many in Whitehall in the early 1970s, two simultaneous definitions of the ACCT prevailed. First, the ACCT was a French-driven organisation. The British Ambassador to Zaire suggested calling it ‘The French Package’ or ‘The French Paquet’.387 Officials at the FCO believed that France, ‘the only major wholly French-speaking country in the world’, had wanted the Francophonie to be yet another instrument for anti-Americanism and for opposition to EEC enlargement – and it particularly incensed the British that France should look to expand its international influence precisely when it was asking London for clear signs that its international interests rested essentially with continental Europe. British officials viewed the Francophonie as a French strategy to delay complete decolonisation, by ensuring that at least the elites continued to ‘look primarily towards France’.388 Francophone groupings, the argument ran, encouraged discrimination ‘in favour of French policies, products, techniques, and advisers’. Secondly, British officials also saw the ACCT as a failure of French diplomacy. Contempt was shown for ‘the routine functioning of relatively powerless institutions’: ‘a community based essentially on a language (of limited value) and sentiment, and which for all its members [was] at best likely to take second place after other often competing economic, political and strategic commitments, [was] unlikely to achieve very much political importance or cohesion’.389 The Francophonie, officials concluded, was ‘unlikely to add notably to France’s influence on Europe or elsewhere in the foreseeable future’.390 Two consequences flowed from this. First, the Francophonie had been set up to serve France’s interests: with the exception of Canada, ACCT members were primarily seen as French, rather than British partners. This was particularly true of sub-Saharan Africa, where the OCAM and ACCT blocs virtually coincided. Second, the British believed that the Francophonie had had very little impact on ‘[t]he Franco-African special relationship’.391 In many ways, whether the Commonwealth served British interests was irrelevant. It did one thing which, in British eyes, the ACCT did

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not: it questioned patterns of decolonisation openly, from Britain’s immigration policies to the Southern African conflicts. This meant that, implicitly at least, relations between the African ACCT and France were much closer, and far less conflictual, than relations between the African Commonwealth and Britain. It seemed beyond doubt that France would remain the most influential partner in the medium term in ACCT countries. In 1970, only Canada and Mauritius belonged to both the Commonwealth and the ACCT. In both countries, ACCT membership followed Commonwealth membership. Canada considered itself as the co-founding member of the Commonwealth idea and association, dating back to its dominion status of 1867, and Mauritius had joined the Commonwealth at independence in 1968. Canadian officials saw their country’s participation in the ACCT as a key engine for the promotion of Canadian domestic harmony and African stability. Like the Commonwealth, it was a major forum that Canada should use to promote its interests actively and publicise its new relations with the French-speaking world, in Africa particularly.392 During his visit to the Ivory Coast in March 1971, Mitchell Sharp thus told his Ivorian counterpart: ‘le caractère bilingue de notre pays fait que c’est aujourd’hui un ministre anglophone qui vous parle de francophonie. N’est-ce pas là un signe de son rayonnement?’393 The stakes in reunified Cameroon, where nation-building had rested from the very start on distance from the Commonwealth, were therefore totally different. The Canadians seem to have understood Cameroon’s concerns better than any other country – or at least, seem to have taken Ahidjo’s intentions to maintain national balance seriously. For instance, Cameroon was included in the External Affairs report on Francophone Africa, written in November 1971, but it was not listed as one of the countries where Canada should get involved because of their ‘francité’,394 defined as the importance granted to the Francophonie and the French language. Both French and Canadian diplomats395 noted in the course of 1970, shortly after the ACCT projects really got off the ground, that the Francophonie would remain on the margins of Cameroon’s international interests: Ahidjo kept his distance, often preferring to be silent on the subject and it was clear to all concerned that Cameroon would not be a driving force for the new organisation. This, however, still seemed to contradict Cameroon’s diplomatic pledge. On the one hand, it was a clear fact that Cameroon did not belong to the Commonwealth; on the other, its relations with the French-speaking world seemed much more elusive, and possibly even more elusive than in the past. In June 1972, the French Ambassador in Yaoundé predicted that the end of the UPC rebellion would enable Cameroon to embrace a more active role in international affairs.396 This was confirmed a few months later by Cameroon’s Ambassador to Canada, François-Xavier Tchoungui, during talks with Couvrette.397 The reorganisation of Cameroon’s diplomatic services in

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Yaoundé, following the end of the Federation, reinforced Ahidjo’s Presidential powers over foreign affairs. Decree 73/671 (27 October 1973) established an interministerial Committee for the coordination of international relations,398 supervised by Paul Biya, the Secretary General at the Presidency before his nomination as Prime Minister in 1975. Within the ACCT, however, Cameroon kept a consistently low profile, in order not to compromise the diplomatic balance that the authorities in Yaoundé had used as a tool for national unity. ACCT meetings did not involve heads of state, Cameroon did not send foreign ministers and the emphasis remained very much on technical affairs, particularly on education. When diplomats attended, they did so as part of Cameroon’s cultural services. This was the case in 1971 with Benoit Akam, the Head of Cultural Affairs at the Ministry of External Affairs, in 1973 with Jacques Albert Ndongo and in 1975 with Raymond Kouma, who were both Cultural Counsellors at the Cameroonian Embassy in Paris. Never was the delegation entirely composed of diplomats. A Technical Counsellor from the Ministry of National Education and the Director of the Agence de Presse Camerounaise attended in 1971 and Rostand Mvie, the Secretary General at the Ministry of Information and Culture, led both the 1973 and 1975 delegations.399 While official, governmental dealings with ACCT spheres remained limited, isolated but significant multilateral, non-governmental ventures emerged in Cameroon to provide some link with Anglophone Africa, thereby demonstrating the attraction of official bilingualism for continental projects. One significant case was the Du Sautoy College in Buea, founded in 1969 by the Government of West Cameroon and PAID, ‘a private, non-profit international association’400 established under Swiss law and run from headquarters in Geneva. The major objective of the association was ‘to train intermediate-level staff to undertake, mainly in rural but also in urban areas, essential tasks in the implementation of integrated economic, social and cultural development’. Most students at the PAID were therefore ‘seconded public officials whose age average[d] between 25 and 35 years’401 and the focus was very much on middle-management. While the Pan-African Institute in Douala, which dated from 1965, welcomed Francophone officials, Buea was chosen as the centre for the training of West African Anglophone personnel.402 The two Cameroonian centres were important ventures – the Centre for the Sahel in Ouagadougou was only established in 1978 and the Pan-African Institute for East and Southern Africa in Zambia in 1979. PAID had consultative status with the UN as a non-governmental organisation and also sought close relations with all the major organisations in Africa. While training in development was the major aim of PAID, another fundamental objective was

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‘the promotion of pan-African dialogue’, which accounted for its location in Cameroon: bilingualism ‘as a symbol of unity’ was in keeping with the aims and ideals of the Institute. By September 1972, PAID officials congratulated themselves on their choice and praised Cameroon’s ‘Government [for] consistently promot[ing] PAID’s progress and its co-operation with all French and English-speaking countries in Africa’.403 Around 300 graduates from Douala and 80 from Buea worked across Africa,404 testifying to the success of the PAID enterprise, and they were expected in turn to contribute to the transfer of skills and knowledge within their own administrations. In the short-term, while PAID activities served a useful purpose, they also upset immediate plans for local government training in Buea. The Du Sautoy College was in fact housed in ‘the (very luxurious) building’405 that had recently been completed for a LGTC and had received funding from three sources: local councils (72 per cent), the West Cameroon Government (11 per cent) and Overseas Development (16.5 per cent). This left the LGTC ‘confined to 2 offices, one of which [was] a part of the entrance hall just now being partitioned off, and the use of one lecture room when PAID [did] not need it’: the result, Given deplored, was ‘an appalling muddle’, made worse by the fact that the newly unified Cameroonian government had extended PAID’s lease by another three years. Given was convinced that ‘lavishly financed’ PAID could have afforded its own building but that the rent was a way for the Cameroonian authorities to recoup their investment. Power, as Given saw it, lay with the central authorities: local authorities were ‘kept on a tight rein by the prefectoral system’ and the limited funding which Overseas Development had provided made it impossible for Britain to exert any major influence. For the long term, Given recommended that contracts with Cameroon should include clear procedures in case either party fell foul of their engagements. In the short term, British officials gave up on residential courses at the LGTC and recommended the allocation of additional funds to increase the mobility of the LGTC team, particularly through the purchase of Land Rovers. Two main reasons justified this demand, and ultimately secured the extra funds. First, Overseas Development had already provided ‘not inconsiderable financial support and personal effort’, which would otherwise be completely wasted. Second, and more crucially, British officials argued that the former province of West Cameroon would need ‘a purposeful local government voice in view of the recent constitutional changes and the imminent harmonisation programme’:406 it would be a particularly bad time to be pulling out of LGTC efforts. The Pan-African Institute is also significant because it was the first form of collaboration between Cameroon and the post-1965 Commonwealth. Relations with the Commonwealth first started at a meeting organised by the

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Pan-African Institute for Development at the Royal Commonwealth Society Headquarters in October 1971. Dr Soper, a former member of the ODI and a member of the Pan-African Institute in Buea, attended the meeting and got in touch with the Commonwealth Foundation Director to investigate potential avenues of cooperation. Soper in effect sought Commonwealth Foundation assistance in two key areas: ‘(a) the provision of lecturers to the College on a short-term basis from Commonwealth African countries; [and] (b) attendance of administrators from Commonwealth countries at courses run by the College’.407 As British officials underlined, this was an exceptional request, given the fact that the Pan-African Institute in Buea was outside the Commonwealth. Simultaneously, the Institute contacted Léger at the ACCT and portrayed the multilateral value of this initiative. The Du Sautoy College and its director, G.B. Stapleton, presented strong arguments in favour of a Commonwealth Foundation contribution to this ‘premier institution in its field’:408 the growing number of students; its imminent recognition as a non-governmental organisation with the UN and as an international organisation by the Cameroonian Government; its ability to promote cooperation between Anglophone and Francophone Africans in development. Commonwealth members, Stapleton argued, accounted for about 80 per cent of the work of the Du Sautoy College:409 Commonwealth Foundation support would therefore acknowledge existing cooperation and first serve the interests of Commonwealth members. Course enrolment figures for 1971–72 show that 24 out of 33 trainees at the PAID came from African Commonwealth countries, and apart from one Ethiopian citizen, all remaining trainees were Cameroonians.410 The fact that trainees came from Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Botswana, Lesotho, Kenya, the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Swaziland showed that the attraction of the PAID in Buea went beyond the immediate region. The project, the Director argued, would also be an opportunity for Commonwealth Africa to increase its links with Francophone Africa, the sister centre for Francophones in Douala providing a very useful bridge. Admittedly, there was little evidence of collaboration between Buea and Douala411 but the potential for it was there. It was also essential that the work of the Du Sautoy College focused on ‘community development and agricultural project supervision’,412 away then from purely linguistic concerns. It could therefore foster links across Africa by using language teaching as a tool for development, rather than as an end in itself. Commonwealth Heads had responded favourably to plans to establish a Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation in 1971, whose primary purpose was to foster horizontal cooperation across the Commonwealth for the promotion of development and human security. Stapleton’s request received strong support from the Commonwealth,

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which saw it as ‘an interesting “test-bed” for cooperation between former Anglophone and Francophone countries’ and as a means of building ACCT– Commonwealth cooperation in ‘professional and technical cooperation’413 across Africa. This also came at a time when British officials welcomed more exchanges in technical cooperation between Anglophone Africans and France, as well as between Francophone Africans and Britain, for having ‘a topical common market flavour’.414 Beyond direct financial assistance, the Pan-African Institute in Buea also sought exchanges with Commonwealth experts across a wide range of academic disciplines and vocational practices. Stapleton hoped the Commonwealth Foundation would enable [the College] to bring to Buea an expert lecturer for short period[;] to assist with travel and possibly local costs for representatives attending Conferences organised by [the College] or in cooperation with other bodies[;] to facilitate short-term (two or three months) staff exchanges between [the College] and parallel institutions in the Commonwealth[;] to enable members of staff to make short study tours in Commonwealth countries.415 On 14 April 1972, as the Cameroonian Federation was being steered towards a unitary State and in a complete break from Commonwealth Foundation customary practice, the trustees decided to award the Pan-African Institute in Buea a £5,000 grant to support cooperation with the Commonwealth.416 Britain’s Overseas Development Administration417 would also provide technical assistance to the Institute. The Foundation grant was made for three years in the first instance: the Institute would have to provide a detailed summary of past expenses and a forecast of future projects every year for further funds to be released.418 This could never have the meaning or influence that Commonwealth membership as such would carry. But it meant that on the eve of unification, a link was renewed between Cameroon and the Commonwealth: it was multilateral, focused on development and founded on Cameroon’s official bilingualism rather than on any Franco-British duality.

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CHAPTER 5 THE CA MEROONIAN BR IDGE? ELUSIVE MULTIL ATER ALISM IN A GLOBALISING WOR LD

Assessing association with and within an enlarged EEC On 22 January 1972, Edward Heath signed the Treaty of Accession which would take the United Kingdom into the EEC on 1 January 1973. With the forthcoming enlargement of the EEC and the expiration of Yaoundé II and the Arusha Agreement on 31 January 1975, associated and ‘associable’ states would consider what new agreements, if any, they wished to negotiate. Yaoundé and Arusha stated that negotiations would open 18 months before they lapsed, i.e. on 1 August 1973.1 Protocol 22, annexed to the Act of Accession, offered three options: association under a new Yaoundé Convention; some other form of association under Article 238 of the Treaty of Rome, which allowed the Community to ‘conclude with one or more States or international organizations agreements establishing an association involving reciprocal rights and obligations, common action and special procedures’; and a simple trade agreement. The confirmation of the enlargement of the EEC occurred at a time when relations between the FCO and the political division of the Quai on African political affairs were rather cordial. Philippe Rebeyrol, who succeeded Bruno de Leusse as Director of African Affairs Department in early 1972, and Michel Combal, the Deputy Director for nonFrancophone Africa since early summer 1972, were both very committed to

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Franco-British talks. At the UN, the French attitude to issues crucial for Britain, such as Rhodesia, was described as ‘generally helpful’.2 However, negotiations for the successor to Yaoundé II demonstrated that rivalry and mistrust remained very present between France and Britain in their relations with Africa, as did their opposition on reverse preferences and Nigeria’s inclusion in the agreement demonstrated. What is significant is that the outcome of the negotiations saw British preferences prevail; Cameroon marked greater distance from France in a series of key readjustments, but these evolutions failed to lead to a stronger partnership between Britain and Cameroon. As British officials reported in October 1972, there was little agreement among EEC partners on the best form of association with African, Caribbean and Pacific states: The Dutch were convinced of the need for complete abolition of reverse preferences and the Germans were not in principle interested in them. The Italians favoured a gradual reduction of reverse preferences. The French, supported by the Belgians, resisted change. Germany, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg were in favour of a reduction in the level of preference enjoyed by the associates in the field of tropical products. The French were opposed to any reduction. Only small reductions in the Common External Tariff on coffee and palm oil were agreed.3 Unlike the French, the British Government did not believe that associated states should be required to give reverse preferences. Neither did the Commonwealth Secretariat which, as the rather recent product of new forms of multilateral diplomacy, sought to contribute to the readjustments that occurred between Africa and the ex-colonial powers and galvanise the drive towards AAMS and Commonwealth associable unity in defence of their interests. Both the Commonwealth Secretariat and Britain considered reciprocal preferences contrary to ‘traditions of non-alignment, non-discrimination, and hopes for an outward looking Europe’.4 European-funded projects were slowed down, Ronald Fredenburgh had told Arnold Smith, by the language barriers between African countries.5 Negotiations for the successor to the Yaoundé Convention would in fact provide a test for pan-African cooperation and for the Commonwealth Secretariat as an active diplomatic player in trade negotiations. Speaking in 1979, Arnold Smith praised the Commonwealth’s attempts to block reverse preferences, which would have ‘threatened trade war between Europe and other industrialized parts of the world, and jeopardized prospects for multilateralism and broad international cooperation’.6 The immediate objective of the Secretariat in 1972 was to act in the interests of the developing

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Commonwealth and its global approach to the multilateral issue meant that all developing states, within and without the Commonwealth, would be promoted. While some studies have highlighted the shortcomings of the Commonwealth Secretariat in the early stages of the negotiations,7 officials at Malborough House and Commonwealth member states did play a crucial part in defining the terms of what would become the Lomé Convention. Smith himself had always been a strong supporter of British EEC membership, since his time as a counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Brussels in the early 1950s and then as a Minister at the Canadian High Commission in London when the Treaty of Rome was signed. Smith firmly believed that there was ‘every advantage to be gained from Commonwealth countries being active in regional associations’ and that ‘Britain could make Europe more outward looking’.8 The Commonwealth Secretariat therefore coordinated a large-scale consultation from April 1972, involving the Commonwealth associables – Governments in each country and High Commissioners in London – and the AAMS, in an attempt to generate a common bargaining position towards the EEC.9 The signature of the Treaty of Accession, Smith said, was a ‘dramatic revival of the entente cordiale’10 but this ‘entente cordiale’ should in turn take root among EEC associates, and between Anglophone and Francophone Africa in particular. While the West African Department at the FCO made it clear that Smith ‘was not a spokesman for the British Government’, officials did acknowledge in the course of the summer that the involvement of the Commonwealth Secretariat offered the best guarantee of an agreement. As Le Quesne told the French in July, ‘if [Britain] urged the Commonwealth associables too strongly to adopt Yaoundé, they would not do so’,11 but multilateral diplomacy within the Commonwealth might well produce positive results. On the issue of reverse preferences, Cameroon’s position seemed fairly close to the position of Commonwealth associables and Britain itself. An indication of this had been given during the 7th annual meeting of parliamentarians of the EEC and AAMS, which had taken place on 9–13 January 1971, in Yaoundé. Among the AAMS, Cameroon was one of the most vocal critics of the first Yaoundé arrangements and resisted the continuation of reciprocal preferences. On 11 January, Ahidjo inaugurated the core debates by what the British called ‘a remarkably frank and hard-hitting statement of the associated states’ disappointment at the results of Yaoundé II’.12 In front of rising competition from Asia and America, ‘must one’, Ahidjo asked, ‘draw the conclusion that there were two kinds of farmer in the Association – one in Europe who deserved protection, and one in Africa who was supposed to remain naked and defenceless in a pitiless buyers’ market dominated by speculators?’ As Christopher Clapham has argued, Yaoundé I and II ‘were too restricted in scope, and too uneven in the bargaining power of the two sides,

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to constitute more than a practical multilateralisation of previously bilateral post-colonial economic relationships’.13 The British Ambassador emphasised that some of the AAMS bitterly resented the change in subsidies and price support brought about by Yaoundé II, accompanied by only limited provisions for industrialisation. The main issue, Ahidjo claimed, was not whether the AAMS group should be enlarged but whether the new convention would promote development in the associated states.14 Initially, it seems that British officials gave little attention to Cameroon’s specific position on the matter. One reason for this might be linked to Britain’s more global policy on negotiations with the French. British officials expected ‘a clash with the French’15 on the form of the next Association Convention but they were initially cautious not to confront the French too early or too forcefully on this. The Western and Southern European Section of the FCO considered that ‘the extent of Anglo-French co-operation might be limited by differences of approach between the French and the Commonwealth Africans’,16 apparently giving Britain rather a back-seat in the dispute. While the British Government and the Commonwealth Secretariat agreed on the objectives, they differed on strategies. On 12 October 1972, Smith sent a circular letter to a number of Commonwealth Governments to argue strongly against accepting reciprocal preferences. British diplomats at the FCO and the Paris Embassy immediately informed their French counterparts that this was no British initiative.17 In the flurry of diplomatic activity that followed, British officials made sure that all confusion between Commonwealth and British positions was dispelled. Britain, they told Combal at the Quai and Journiac in Foccart’s Secretariat, ‘disagreed with much of the content’18 of the circular. When arrangements were made for the visit of the Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr Okoi Arikpo, in November 1972, the West African Department at the FCO persuaded the Private Office ‘to drop the idea that the Secretary of State should make a substantial speech on this occasion’19 and thereby avoid facing conflict with either the Nigerians or the French over reverse preferences. In reality, Foccart seems to have seen Smith as a potential troublemaker who acted outside British control20 but British officials still considered it essential that no ambiguity should remain. The International and European Department advised ministers, ‘[s]hould Dr Arikpo draw attention to “reverse preferences” as an undesirable feature of the Yaoundé arrangements, [to] say that for [their] part [they did] not regard these as an obligatory feature of the present Convention’.21 Nothing more adamant was advocated. In fact, it was essentially with the form of Commonwealth Secretariat procedures that British officials disagreed. A few days later, FCO officials told Dr Arikpo that ‘the Commonwealth Secretariat had given the States a much better idea of the realities of the situation’ and served to mend ‘quite

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a gap between what was said in writing and what happened in practice’.22 During the Anglo-Canadian talks of March 1973, Martin Le Quesne criticised the ‘tactics’ of the Secretariat, rather than ‘the substance of [Smith’s] ideas [or] his aims’.23 While the British knew that opposing reverse preferences was important for their American and Commonwealth partners, they also knew that it might expose them to ‘Trojan horse accusations’.24 The formula suggested by Julian Amery to Douglas-Home in April 1973 reveals the fine balance the British were trying to achieve: ‘While in no way opposed to reciprocal arrangements freely concluded we consider that associate states of the European Community should not be required to give reverse preferences’.25 The main objective of association, the Commission of the European Communities stated in its memorandum of April 1973, should be ‘the economic and social development of the Associated States’.26 The Commission therefore made three major proposals: trade with the associated states ‘should be based on the principle of the free trade area [but this did] not entail any obligation for them to grant preferences to the Community’; mechanisms to remedy the ‘instability of export earnings from primary products’; and an increase in the Community’s financial aid.27 The French Government was prepared to accept exceptions in practice to the principle of reverse preferences and its insistence on the principle of reciprocity rested on two considerations: politically, the Community and the Associates had to accept similar obligations on paper, if not in practice; economically, a two-way free-trade area had to be maintained, even though ‘budgetary and development purposes’ allowed the Associates ‘to make extensive derogations’28 to the rule. But as Douglas-Home emphasised, ‘the assurance that reciprocal free trade [would] not constitute an obligation to grant reverse preferences to the Community sound[ed] hollow’ to most Commonwealth associables and the British should be prepared ‘to give firm support to maintaining free access to the Community in Yaoundé III’.29 Britain’s opposition to the terms of the memorandum was indeed relayed to Commonwealth and European partners30 and instructions were given to show the French that ‘their traditional attitudes on development issues whether inside Africa or outside’31 found no support in London. Meetings with the political and economic directorates of the Quai,32 and talks with the Secretariat for African and Malagasy Affairs failed to change the position of either France or Britain.33 In late May 1973, talks between Heath and Pompidou emphasised the need for both countries to cooperate in African affairs – but as the French President admitted to Foccart, he said very little on the issue of reverse preferences which the British Prime Minister raised.34 Correspondence during 1973 shows that although the atmosphere of Franco-British talks ‘was good’,35 policies remained at odds36 – to the extent that the British High Commissioner in Lagos warned against ‘an

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excess of zeal and haste to identify with the Africans to the point, at times, of appearing to be egging them on’,37 which might jeopardise Britain’s space for manoeuvre with both Africa and France in the future. According to Arnold Smith, Yaoundé associates sought partnership with ‘small Commonwealth countries’38 but feared the Nigerian giant: smaller and poorer neighbours would particularly suffer from a more buoyant Nigerian economy, that would nonetheless still receive European assistance – and vast amounts of it, if size was taken into account. As late as July 1972, Senghor made it clear ‘that Nigeria should be excluded from any new Yaoundé arrangements’,39 expressing a position that was no different from France’s. Negotiations confronted Britain with clear antagonism between its major European and one of its major African partners, France and Nigeria. The Commonwealth Secretary General, Britain’s ODA and the West African Department at the FCO were aware of French opposition to Nigerian inclusion.40 As the French Ambassador to Nigeria had told John Wilson when they met in Lagos, there was much apprehension about ‘Nigerian imperialism directed against OCAM countries’.41 Nigeria was known to oppose the West African Economic Community42 that had just emerged among Francophone States and whose viability and efficiency remained uncertain.43 Following talks with Quai officials, the First Secretary at the British Embassy in Paris, Robin Renwick, warned that ‘it would be unwise to under-estimate the determination or the capacity of the French to defend “their” territory in West Africa, if they should feel it to be seriously threatened’44 by Nigeria. Nigeria’s economic agreement with Togo and its promotion of a regional body, which would in effect counter OCAM, were seen as a threat to French dominance in the region.45 At a time when OCAM was showing clear signs of divisions, Nigeria’s drive for regional economic cooperation did constitute a threat to French dominance in West Africa, as both Commonwealth and British officials acknowledged.46 Similarly, Nigeria saw France as ‘a threat to Nigeria’s security’.47 Officials at the Ministry of External Affairs told their FCO counterparts in Lagos in July 1972 that the unratified Lagos Agreement provided ‘a foundation of earlier work to be built on’48 for a trade agreement but that they had no intention of signing any Yaoundé-type convention. Not only did Nigeria see ‘no great tariff advantages’ in association, but it considered the Yaoundé Conventions as ‘a follow-up of the French colonial empire[,] a coterie of conservative African regimes under heavy French influence’ and maintained that ‘the concept of Eurafrica could not be free from psychological inequalities’:49 ‘the Yaoundé ties’, Arikpo repeated in November, ‘were ties of dependency’,50 contrary to the spirit which animated relations between Commonwealth partners. Negotiations for EEC association brought to the fore comparisons

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between post-colonial relations in the Francophone and Anglophone spheres. Nigerian politicians and diplomats painted a positive picture of the transition to independence in the British Empire, where ‘Nigerians had never been encouraged to delude themselves that they were black Englishmen’ and where ‘British Africans had always been encouraged to think of eventual independence [instilling] a positive element in African politics’. By contrast, Nigerians thought of Francophone leaders in Africa in relation to ‘their villas in France which they considered home’.51 Nigerians, like their counterparts in most of Commonwealth Africa, felt that they had enjoyed full independence after the British retreat, something which they thought did not apply to their ex-French neighbours.52 The very fact that ‘associé’ had been translated as ‘associate’ and not partner53 was in itself a clear sign of the AAMS’ dependence on Europe – the French term tended to obscure this but the English version emphasised it. The British themselves doubted whether the considerable amount of aid France gave the Yaoundé associates left them much independence in Common Market negotiations.54 Suspicion, condescension and fear therefore dominated much of the initial African engagement with Britain’s prospective entry into the Common Market. As Nigeria asserted itself as an increasingly influential player in Africa, the effect of its position on other African or Commonwealth states was lost on no one. Negotiations could lead to a strong focus on the Franc zone, ‘the “institutionalised” nature of the Yaoundé arrangements; and the presence in large numbers of French nationals (including military personnel) in some former French colonies’.55 Nigerian politicians told Britain that they ‘would not raise difficulties for or seek to prevent the entry of other associables who might like a Yaoundé-type association’, as themselves had no alternative to offer.56 But French politicians and diplomats were particularly concerned that Nigerian criticism of the Yaoundé framework would severely damage France’s interests in both the EEC and Africa. By contrast, Britain wanted ‘as many associables as possible’57 to negotiate the successor to the Yaoundé Convention. Officials believed that developing countries would benefit from association with the enlarged community in terms of trade and aid. The prevailing British view, from the financial division of Overseas Development in London58 to the Ambassador in Yaoundé59, was that a united African front in Common Market negotiations would ultimately secure better overall conditions for the AAMS. Smith was also of the opinion that only with Nigeria would Africa ‘have more power and influence with the Europeans’.60 The Commonwealth Secretariat and Overseas Development agreed that Francophone fears essentially stemmed from ‘false assumptions’,61 and particularly from the belief that Nigeria would become the main beneficiary of EDF policies. They also considered that it would be

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in Britain’s own interests: only if a sizeable Commonwealth group joined could Britain’s contribution to the EDF be expected to lead to ‘procurement in the UK’62 and Commonwealth ties and relevance be maintained. The FCO recommended to the Cabinet that it should be made clear to the associables that the Yaoundé Conventions alone did not explain FrancoAfrican relations and that association with the EEC would in no way ‘interfere with their full sovereign independence’, be it in trade, development, ‘movement of capital, persons and services’, or ‘in the institutions, where the associates [were] represented equally with the Six’.63 Nigeria’s ‘self-exclusion seem[ed] bound to weaken not only Commonwealth influence on decisions in Brussels but also the adherence of other African Commonwealth countries to the association system’.64 British officials attempted to convince Nigeria that changing the ‘psychological relationships’65 between the EEC and the associated states really depended on their involvement. Within the International and European relations department of the FCO, officials argued that political, as well as regional and domestic economic factors, should lead Nigeria to join and influence the negotiations for a revamped Yaoundé-type Convention: Nigeria had the political clout to make sure that any new association benefited its pattern of trade with West Africa and with the EEC, including Britain and Ireland, and consequently improve the economy and development in Nigeria itself.66 Among AAMS states, Cameroon seems to have been less reticent than others about Nigeria’s inclusion in EEC association, in a context when Ahidjo expected reasonably good relations with Nigeria to pay dividends in African continental circles, and in the OAU specifically.67 While Ahidjo admitted to the British Ambassador that the inclusion of the African Commonwealth would be ‘painful, at least for Cameroon’, he also saw it as potentially beneficial in fostering closer educational, social and political links’.68 Even before British membership of the EEC had been finalised, Ahidjo was fully aware that Nigeria was ‘Cameroon’s most important African partner in the present and [would be] overwhelmingly important in the future’: realism once again informed the President’s position. Simultaneously, Ahidjo saw the enlarged Yaoundé association as a better forum for Cameroon to assert its unique character and to buttress its international influence. Cameroonians could therefore ‘see their partly bilingual country and Nigeria as the essential coupling-link between the two halves of Black Africa, a link that [would] be of even greater importance’69 after British entry. Resentment at the 1961 plebiscite in the Northern Cameroons was all ‘water over the dam’,70 to quote Given. Admittedly, a number of issues continued to threaten relations between Cameroon and Nigeria between 1970 and 1975. Tensions arose on ‘the problem of large-scale smuggling and illegal immigration in both

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directions’,71 with a focus on the strict restrictions on West Cameroonian students, whose numbers in all spheres of Nigerian education increased. The major bone of contention was border demarcation between the two countries. The exact frontier between the two former British Cameroons and between North Cameroon and Nigeria was hotly disputed. Historical links between Fulbe, Bamileke and Ibo communities across borders made the problem even more complex.72 Water boundaries were also a major issue, as offshore oil promised to be a lucrative resource. But personal and official relations between Ahidjo and Gowon in the wake of the Nigerian civil war were essential diffusing tensions. After three Nigerian customs officers were kidnapped off Ekang in June 1970, both Heads of State agreed on the need to ‘define a base line from which territorial waters [could] be divided without risk of dispute’73 and a mixed commission met the following year. Over the same period, Cameroon also forged closer relations with several key Commonwealth members in Africa. In 1972, Cameroon initiated diplomatic relations with Tanzania, to which its Ambassador in Addis Ababa became accredited. French diplomats read this as a sign that Ahidjo’s government truly wanted to play a pan-African role and bridge the Anglophone–Francophone divide.74 The following year, diplomatic relations also started with Ghana. This should undoubtedly be read in connection with the UPC trials of 1971 and the end of the rebellion in Cameroon to which Ghana had given assistance. But it was also the sign that non-Francophone Africa was increasingly important to Cameroonian diplomacy. Two important consequences stemmed from the official position of the Cameroonian government. First, at the time of EEC–African negotiations, domestic and regional considerations led Cameroon to favour cooperation with an increasingly powerful and present neighbour. Second, British diplomats noted Cameroon’s essentially realist and pragmatist approach to foreign affairs and diplomacy, which increasingly led the elite to reassess the place of France and Francophone circles.

From shared past to tenuous present: Cameroon On the margins of British diplomacy In September 1972, Ahidjo was among the first African leaders to request agreements with France to be revised, a demand which he repeated to the Coopération mission to Yaoundé in October and publicly announced in November.75 Admittedly, as several scholars have demonstrated, there was no radical break with France. French officials were reassured by the fact that the Cameroonian Government had forewarned them of their intentions before

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going to the press, that no deadline was set and that there seemed little risk of Yaoundé using the whole affair for ‘demagogic’76 purposes. November 1972 also saw the signature of new monetary agreements which led to the creation of the BEAC on 2 April 1973, officially replacing the Banque des Etats de l’Afrique Equatoriale et du Cameroun. But only on 1 January 1977 were the BEAC headquarters transferred from Paris to Yaoundé and not before April 1978 were the first African Governor and Deputy Governor appointed. In any case, public declarations emphasising Cameroon’s independence in foreign affairs in spite of substantial French financial and technical assistance77 were nothing new. As the Canadian Ambassador in Abidjan had told Ottawa, the renegotiation of cooperation agreements across the ex-French empire was more ‘an update’ or ‘a warning’ than a thorough transformation.78 French cooperation programmes in Cameroon, as they knew, were appreciated, all the more so as the wealth of two of Cameroon’s most influential neighbours, Nigeria and Gabon, continued to grow.79 The series of readjustments in Franco-Cameroonian relations, which occurred between 1972 and 1975, did, however, constitute a key evolution. A number of British diplomats considered that Cameroon stood out in Frenchor partially French-speaking Africa. Ahidjo had been more eager than most Francophone leaders to mark his independence from France80 and was not part of the most exclusive inner circle of African heads around Foccart and the SGAAM, unlike Houphouet-Boigny or Bongo. Among France’s partners in Africa, Cameroon was one of the first to Africanise its civil service and top managerial positions. In 1973, 872 French technical assistants remained in Cameroon, a sizeable group yet a far smaller one than their 20,000 counterparts posted in the Ivory Coast.81 By 1976, all French personnel had left key ministries and the bar82 and Franco-Cameroonian relations were very much state relations: the idea that France and Cameroon might form ‘a family of nations’, French diplomats noted, was simply absurd (at best) for Ahidjo. British diplomats thought that the departure of de Gaulle83 had further accentuated Ahidjo’s detachment. Given himself emphasised that the Cameroonian government was driving a rather determined bargain in the renegotiation of the cooperation agreements.84 This, however, did not materialise in stronger Anglo-Cameroonian engagements. At a time when Britain was entering EEC circles, when Franco-Cameroonian cooperation agreements were being revised, and the Yaoundé Convention was being renegotiated, it is particularly striking that Cameroon did not feature at the very top of Britain’s high-level visits to non-Commonwealth Africa. British and Nigerian politicians and diplomats met on a number of occasions in Europe and Africa but it seems that Cameroon remained on the margins of diplomatic correspondence and conversations, even though the position

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of non-Commonwealth states was regularly analysed and discussed. This was probably due to the sentiment that it was an essentially moderate – and sometimes indecisive – participant. Anxieties focused on the policies of the two most vocal opponents to major alterations to the Yaoundé Convention, the Ivory Coast and Senegal. By September 1972, Senghor, then Chairman of OCAM, still argued that reverse preferences were essential to secure EDF assistance, to preserve the ‘concept of “Eurafrica” as a special bloc and to limit influences in Africa, of Eastern Europe, Asia and North America’.85 Particular concern focused on his activities, as he repeatedly emphasised ‘that “reverse preferences” [were] a sine qua non of future association arrangements’.86 Senghor, the Nigerians thought, seemed to be ‘speaking on behalf of the French and not as an African state’.87 By contrast, they were ‘hoping for a more or less united Africa driving hard bargains in Brussels, with a minimum of institutional links between the two’.88 Hope centred on a number of Francophone states which seemed less averse to cooperation with Nigeria, and Anglophone states more generally: Togo ‘and perhaps Gabon’89 were mentioned in November 1972; Dahomey was also singled out by the Sierra Leone Minister of Agriculture and the Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs in April and May 1973.90 The attention of the British Government also tended to focus on the bigger Francophone states: Senegal and Zaire, the British Permanent Representative to the European Communities advised, should be given priority.91 In January 1973, Douglas-Home himself had chosen to include Senegal in his visit to West Africa, a welcome but unexpected decision for Senghor’s government.92 The decision could be interpreted as a sign that France’s socalled ‘chasse gardée’ had become ‘anachronistic’93 – in fact the report the French Ambassador in London sent to the Quai remained neutral, essentially commenting on the excellent relations which had always prevailed between Britain and Senegal.94 There were increasing signs that African countries, particularly ex-French territories where France had retained strong influence, ‘desired real and effective independence’.95 The British Ambassador in Dakar repeatedly emphasised that it was a mistake to see Francophone West Africa ‘as an unknown part of the dark continent where Englishmen venture at their peril, watched from behind every bush by agents of Monsieur Foccart’.96 Information gathered by the British Embassy in Paris confirmed this shortly afterwards: although the French wished to retain as much influence as possible and still harboured suspicions against the Nigerians, they also ‘recognis[ed] the inevitability of erosion of the chasse gardée’.97 But the visit was no doubt also prompted by EEC negotiations. On 15 February 1973 in Dakar, Douglas-Home declared that ‘[j]ust as in Europe old barriers [were] coming down, so, here in Africa, the old differences between Commonwealth and non-

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Commonwealth Africa [were] becoming irrelevant’.98 Senghor expressed support for regional integration in both Europe and West Africa99 and hoped that ‘the negotiations for a successor-Convention to Yaoundé II [would] provide a major historic opportunity to establish greater unity in Africa’.100 If both public statements presented rather optimistic assessments, Douglas-Home was nonetheless right that the issue of reverse preferences had blurred clear-cut distinctions which Africa had inherited from the colonial era. Cameroon, by contrast, was not included in Douglas-Home’s tour and no evidence in the archives shows whether it was even considered. Although its location in Equatorial Africa or its bilingual status may explain this, British documents show that despite its historical links with Britain, Cameroon was rated below Senegal and the Ivory Coast in FCO priorities. West Africa as a whole featured fairly low down in Britain’s overall international interests and in its African interests. By the end of 1972, only ten British representatives headed resident missions in West Africa, leaving 12 countries with a simple accreditation. By contrast, outside West Africa, Rwanda was the only country not to have a resident British mission. As the FCO noted, staff in West Africa represented ‘6.4% of the total number of Diplomatic Service staff overseas [while] the area only rate[d] 1.7% of the points awarded by the Planning Staff’101: there was therefore no prospect that missions would be extended. Nigeria stood out with 66 UK-based staff, a ‘C’ and 8 marks for importance, but even the other Commonwealth countries were of much less concern – Ghana was only rated 3 and the Gambia 0.4. In non-Commonwealth Africa, the Ivory Coast and Senegal, both in category F with one mark, had respectively seven and 11 UK-based staff. Only the number of staff, 13, marked the specificity of Cameroon, whose mission was in category G and rated 0.2. In French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, FCO officials essentially considered Zaire, the Ivory Coast and Senegal as countries that ‘would emerge as politically and economically important’.102 Most other countries, British diplomats argued, were of very little economic interest. Even Cameroon itself offered few prospects. Given’s report for 1973, written in the immediate aftermath of the oil crisis, gave prominence to a series of negative factors for British trade there, including a ‘lack of enthusiasm and energy among the people, aggravated by an expensive and stifling Government machine’, by a ‘Government excel[ing] themselves in obstructing would-be investors’ who therefore ‘ran into the sand of Cameroonian inanition’.103 With all parties feeling the negative influence of the oil crisis on the balance of payments, Cameroon now needed a vast credit allowance which Britain seemed both unwilling and unable to provide. Although they never considered French policy to be disinterested, the British did argue that ‘the French relationship with the francophone countries

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[was] probably, in economic terms, a good deal more profitable for the Africans than for the French’ and that France was ‘mak[ing] disproportionate efforts in them for cultural and historical reasons’.104 The reason why British relations with the ex-French African empire remained cautious was not simply out of some unwillingness to tread on French toes. Caution was also driven by strong economic motives. There was little to be gained in these countries but much to be lost should the French ‘lose interest’: if they were to do so the results would likely be instability and the development of anti-Western influences’.105 Back in 1959, the memorandum Africa: the next ten years had identified three major British interests in Africa: ‘peace and political stability’ against Soviet influence, ‘the maintenance and development of [British] trade with Africa and the encouragement of British investment’, and ‘the safety and welfare of white settlers and other minorities in present or former British territories’.106 In April 1972 the FCO already considered that a decade into independence, Britain ‘would increasingly judge [its] relations with African countries more in terms of their future potential than of [their] past relationship’ and told the Americans and the Canadians so.107 In December 1972, Martin Le Quesne noted that France and Britain had initially ‘act[ed] as if constitutional change and independence had not ipso facto put an end to [their] colonial task [and] tended to look on [their] relations with [their] former colonies in terms of [their] continuing inherited obligations’.108 By 1974, Britain’s ‘long term interests in both Black and White Africa’ were ‘largely economic’: the continent was seen ‘as an export market; as a source of energy, raw materials and food; as holders of sterling balance’, and ‘the promotion and protection of [Britain’s] economic interests [should] be [the] principal aim’.109 Whilst British officials favoured competing with the French in trade with Africa, they had ‘no wish to pick up the bill’ for assistance to the ‘smaller and weaker ex-colonies’ of the French empire.110 To some extent, the persistence of preferential spheres mattered less than the commonality of purpose between France and Britain: ‘raw materials’, ‘export markets’ and ‘stability’, which would guarantee that the European partners would remain ‘alpha double minus world powers’ on the international stage.111 Any significant decline in French assistance, the British argued, might ‘lead to worsening economic conditions, with a falling Cameroonian currency and inflation fuelled by the oil crisis, bringing unemployment, strikes and student disorders’.112 Such instability, in the leading state of Equatorial Africa, was obviously not a happy prospect for Britain. Britain consistently showed little interest in Cameroon. In November 1972, the French Ambassador considered that ‘Britain seem[ed] to have given up conserving an important role in a largely francophone’113 state. In his annual review for 1972, Given made it perfectly clear that there was

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little to be gained from greater involvement in Cameroon, ‘a country’, he argued, with no extremes other than those of climate, nothing that [Britain] should regard as political life and little in the way of public expression of opinion. So self-effacing a country, so low in [British] national priorities, naturally claims little attention, either in the Department or in the British Press; this means that if some developments are to be understood they will have to be discussed at rather more length than their intrinsic importance deserves.114 Given even ‘wish[ed] for some point of difference with Cameroon, to give [British diplomats] an excuse for more specific discussions with Ministers’.115 Cameroon was, however, included in Lady Tweedsmuir’s tour of the region, along with Sierra Leone and the Gambia (16–31 January 1973), which itself followed the visit of a trade mission in October 1970 and the visit of the CDC Chairman in December 1970. Golds had noted the Cameroonians’ interest in increasing commercial relations with Britain, emphasised ‘the economic potential of Cameroon and [its] generally welcoming attitude to foreign businessmen’.116 Cameroonian officials regularly sought greater British involvement in their country. Calls came from both the Yaoundé authorities and the political and business elite in the North-West and South-West. Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit was ‘genuinely welcomed’,117 particularly by the Cameroonian Foreign Affairs and Agriculture Ministers who expressed ‘the desire of Cameroon to get more aid as a result of British accession to the European Economic Community, and its pre-occupation with the terms of trade and low commodity prices’.118 On the whole though, the impact of Lady Tweedsmuir’s tour remained limited. The trip was preceded by a number of tensions arising from the lack of information the FCO was receiving from the Cameroonians and the talks between Lady Tweedsmuir and Foreign Affairs minister Vincent Efon lasted 25 minutes.119 Above all, the fact remained that the Foreign Secretary had gone to Senegal and a Minister of State had been sent to Cameroon. Given’s opinion had not changed a year later: as predicted, Given noted, 1973 had been a quiet year, ‘as anyone who [had] had the patience to read this deplorably dull despatch will have realised’120 Assistant Undersecretary Campbell noted in his report on Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit that Cameroon was ‘not likely ever to be of much importance’121 to Britain. A ‘routine relationship’122 was how Given described relations between Britain and Cameroon by the time he left Yaoundé in July 1975. Events in Southern Africa had also convinced British diplomats that Cameroon was unlikely to be a priority country for British foreign policy. Given’s

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reports between 1972 and 1974 highlighted divergences over Southern Africa as one reason why relations with Cameroon remained ‘without much warmth or content’.123 Cameroon joined the Liberation Committee of the OAU in 1972 and ratified the Convention on the Elimination and Repression of the Crime of Apartheid (adopted by the General Assembly on 30 November 1973). In his address on African Liberation Day on 25 May 1972, Ahidjo pledged Cameroon’s support for the elimination of all forms of racism or colonialism, encouraging all those fighting in South Africa, Namibia, Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde to prolong efforts.124 Both French and British diplomats acknowledged that Cameroon’s opposition to remaining pockets of colonialism in Africa had clearly taken a firmer turn.125 On 2 June, Ahidjo told delegates to the Extraordinary Congress of the CNU that unless the true representatives of Rhodesia participated in constitutional negotiations, ‘there would be no other choice, for Great Britain, for Africa and the international community, but to seek to resolve this problem by all available means, including force’.126 Cameroon’s Ambassador in Ottawa confirmed to Canadian diplomats that respect for national sovereignty and the fight against colonialism and racism were the two guiding principles of Cameroon’s foreign policy.127 In June 1973, the French Ambassador noted that Ahidjo’s popularity among the more radical African leaders had increased.128 Barely one month after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, the coordination committee for the liberation of Africa met in Yaoundé. Again, Ahidjo condemned the role of foreign Western powers and supported the armed struggle in Southern Africa.129 This also accounted for Ahidjo’s change of policies towards the MPLA, long opposed because of its links with the UPC. On 6 January 1975, a close aide of Agostinho Neto visited Yaoundé130 and the Foreign Affairs ministers of Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, the CAR, Chad, Zaire and Sao Tome et Principe held an extraordinary session on 16 November on the matter. Ahidjo’s end-of-year Message to the Nation on 31 December again condemned all external interventions in Angola.131 A few months later, official French briefs in preparation for Ahidjo’s state visit emphasised Cameroon’s hostility to foreign infiltration, pro-dialogue countries and all governments who maintained relations with the white minority governments of Southern Africa – although Cameroon itself refused to take sides in internal quarrels between nationalist African movements, be it in Rhodesia, Angola or Mozambique.132 If this made closer relations between the United States and Cameroon unlikely,133 it also had a negative impact on relations with Britain. Given did not consider Ahidjo to be as radical as his Tanzanian or Somalian counterparts and did describe Cameroon’s attitude to Southern African issues as ‘constructive’.134 However, he warned the FCO that Cameroon, elected to the Security Council by 120 out of 125 votes and

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the entire support of the African group on 15 October 1973,135 would most likely ‘be unsympathetic to [Britain’s] point of view on most matters’.136 This was indeed confirmed when Cameroon ‘took the lead in the attempt to expel South Africa’137 from the UN. As Cameroonians were negotiating new cooperation agreements with the French, the prospect of an increase in British contribution to the country’s development seemed as unlikely as ever. This was all the more striking as the French themselves were seeking to engage with Nigeria. Quai officials in the political division seemed to share Arikpo’s feeling that France and Nigeria ‘got along satisfactorily “on a basis of mutual suspicion”’.138 Paul-Henri Gaschignard was believed to hold ‘a fairly relaxed view’139 of economic integration across West Africa while Michel Combal thought the Nigerian threat fairly low: Nigerian domination of the region and influence over the Yaoundé proceedings were unlikely in the near future.140 Admittedly, Foccart and the Secretariat were persistently opposed to Nigeria. Although France feared that Nigeria’s absence from a new Convention would prevent other countries joining or remaining in EEC arrangements,141 it feared even more that Nigeria’s participation would destroy the EDF, by putting too great a strain on its resources.142 France had managed to secure a EDF fund for 1,000 million units of account in 1972 but it was clear that its five partners at the time were determined to reduce commitments to the Fund.143 Even though Nigeria showed no interest in the EDF144 – and in fact objected to even being considered a likely recipient of EDF assistance145 – and British officials underlined Nigeria’s growing oil revenues,146 the French Government, and the Coopération147 in particular, remained convinced that Nigeria would damage EDF arrangements. Pompidou, however, wanted ‘French policy towards Nigeria [to] be decided on purely pragmatic, not on any “doctrinal” grounds’.148 The visit to Nigeria in February 1973 of André Bettencourt, then Minister Delegate at the Quai, stood out as the first French Ministerial visit since 1960 and marked a turning point.149 As Xavier Renou has argued, France’s progressive support for regional integration in West Africa stemmed from their excellent knowledge of the region and their domination of Francophone markets there, which would undoubtedly benefit French firms.150 Commercial interests accounted for French interest in Nigeria – in the mid 1970s, oil represented 96 per cent of French imports from Nigeria, ‘France’s third main supplier behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq’.151 This meant that, in the EEC context, the French consensus was that Nigeria should be kept out of any Yaoundé-type agreement152 but that ways could simultaneously be devised to ‘tie in’ Nigeria to the EEC through a trade agreement. FCO officials attempted to convince the French, and particularly Foccart, that Nigeria did not actively seek leadership in West Africa, and

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conversations with Arikpo were relayed to French officials153 in an attempt to calm the ‘obsession with Nigeria’.154 In reality, the Secretariat for African and Malagasy Affairs refused to consider that Nigeria could join under a new Yaoundé Convention and still reject EDF assistance155 and the Coopération made it clear that unless Nigeria was prepared to accept ‘Yaoundé-style association’, they should ‘not come to the Yaoundé III negotiating table’.156 French plans therefore ran counter to the objectives of the British, who had told African, including Nigerian, officials in the spring of 1973 that ‘anything could be discussed’.157 During the Anglo-French talks of May 1973, ‘Britain and France agreed the best solution would be for Nigeria to associate in one form or another in order to avoid trouble and so that she should not dissuade others’. The British emphasised that should Nigeria not associate, ‘Yaoundé 3 would probably be the last of the series’158 and that Nigeria would be a bigger ‘counter-attraction’159 outside the EEC framework than inside. Le Quesne – described by the French Ambassador in London as one of the very best FCO officials160 – similarly failed to convince Foccart that ‘[t]here was surely nothing extraordinary in a situation in which not all the members of a given club exercised all the facilities open to them’:161 unless all associated states benefited from the EDF, Foccart argued, those who did would feel ‘less independent’162 than those who did not have to. As reports from Paris showed that ‘ignorance’ between France and Commonwealth Africa remained ‘mutual’,163 the West African Department argued that it was a key British interest ‘to create a climate of Franco-Nigerian confidence’164 if the Yaoundé arrangements were to be truly reworked to take the Commonwealth into account. The European Integration Department knew that a number of Quai officials shared their belief that ‘enlargement of the Association [was] the best guarantee of its stability’165 but even then the Nigerian issue remained problematic. While the French Coopération still focused on signs of Nigerian imperialism,166 senior officials in Lagos ‘were still mesmerised by the “French threat” and memories of French treachery over Biafra’167 lived on. Conflicting objectives also entailed disagreements over the best negotiating methods. The British Government wanted all potential parties to the next Convention of Association to participate in the negotiations.168 Mauritius signed into Yaoundé on 1 January 1973,169 and by May, the Gambia and Malawi had expressed their intention to participate in a Yaoundé-type association, with Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland increasingly likely to follow suit. The British were convinced that unless all states participated, the Convention would not last: ‘the smaller and weaker associables’170 would suffer most but the EEC would also be dealt an adverse blow if it failed to secure a wide-ranging association with developing countries – and not simply with Africa but with all Caribbean and Pacific countries. The FCO and the

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Commonwealth Secretariat shared the view that ‘it was in the interests of the Anglophones and the Francophones to get together; the more they did the more they would be likely to get a collectively good response from the Community and that ultimately this would be to the Community’s advantage as well’.171 Securing Nigeria’s participation was also key to the overall success of the negotiations. By contrast, the French Government feared, rightly, that general negotiations would work against the principle of reciprocity and allow Commonwealth states to alter the Yaoundé framework. This was made clear to Christopher Ewart-Biggs, then minister at the British Embassy in Paris. During one of his visits to London, he was told by the French Ambassador there that it was essential to ‘distinguish between those who opted for the Yaoundé system and those who did not – rather than everyone coming to the party and seeking to change the system’.172 While the political division of the Quai was slightly less adverse to general consultations, British officials were keenly aware of the strong opposition, and heavier influence, of the economic division and the Coopération.173

Stepping back from French networks? While EEC negotiations continued, both the Commonwealth and the ACCT were living through key evolutions in their organisation. The meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government in Ottawa in August 1973 further confirmed that the Commonwealth centred less and less on its British component and Canadian diplomats in Ottawa told the French Ambassador that new types of relations were truly emerging within the Commonwealth: Heath’s marked preference for European affairs and the increasing role of the Secretariat spurred the ongoing diversification of relations among Commonwealth members.174 Virtually two years into the life of the CFTC and as the CYP was being set up, development was also imposing itself as a key Commonwealth concern. The Association, however, remained a highly political forum. With the 1973 Ottawa meeting and on the initiative of Trudeau, Commonwealth circles started what became known as ‘the retreat’, whereby Heads of Government ‘retreated’ among themselves during Commonwealth summits, for more private, more informal and freer discussion. Limits were also placed on the size of delegations and the workload was better assigned between plenary meetings and special committees, providing a much more favourable context for open discussion.175 Worryingly for the Cameroonian authorities, however, Commonwealth practices were increasingly seen as a potential model for the ACCT. While Trudeau very much

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favoured this evolution, Senghor also renewed his calls in the 1970s for Heads of State meetings within the Francophonie, for what he still sometimes called a ‘Commonwealth à la française’. Distinctions between the Commonwealth and the ACCT made it possible for the Cameroonian Government to justify its position. But any high-level Francophone meetings would destroy one of the essential bases on which Cameroon’s character had been built and Senghor’s positions were a direct threat to national unity. For Ahidjo, there should and could be no further institutionalisation of the ACCT and no great multilateral Franco-African gatherings, as he argued with both his French and African counterparts. Two major decisions in 1973 proved his determination to oppose this trend: Cameroon’s withdrawal from OCAM and Cameroon’s refusal to participate in the first Franco-African summit. Cameroon, French diplomats admitted in 1973, had always been a cautious member of OCAM. First, Ahidjo had feared that a Francophone grouping would hinder, if not actually compromise, African moves for continental Unity. Second, Ahidjo had repeatedly clashed with Houphouët-Boigny, and even though he got on well with Senghor, he remained concerned that these two more assertive and better-known personalities might have too great an influence over OCAM.176 Finally, given French assistance in quelling the UPC rebellion at the turn of the 1960s, Ahidjo was genuinely concerned that accusations of French neo-colonialism about OCAM would have damaging consequences on his national and international authority.177 Cameroon’s decision to withdraw from OCAM on 1 July 1973 therefore came as little surprise to the French. Mauritania had left the organisation back in June 1965 and Cameroon did not actually initiate the second phase of withdrawals: Zaire left in April 1972, Congo (Brazzaville) in September 1972, Chad and Cameroon itself in July 1973; so did Madagascar, in August 1973, before OCAM eventually ran out of steam and members. Following a meeting with French officials in Paris in November 1972, British diplomats were under the distinct impression ‘that France was not overly bothered about the breaking up of OCAM’.178 In Yaoundé, the authorities had themselves come to the conclusion that Cameroon derived few, if any, economic benefits from OCAM membership.179 Politically, withdrawal could be turned into an even bigger advantage.180 In January 1971 already, Ahidjo had sent a young minister to represent him at the OCAM summit, probably in protest at the Southern African policies of most OCAM states.181 But what did come as a surprise to the French and most other observers, including OCAM officials and Cameroonians,182 was the manner in which Ahidjo staged Cameroon’s exit from the organisation. Ahidjo announced his decision during an international press conference in Dakar, catching everyone off-guard. The fact that OCAM headquarters

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were based in Yaoundé and Cameroon was the main Central African state in the organisation intensified the shock.183 The abruptness of the announcement was also striking because Cameroon reserved the right to remain part of some of the technical bodies that composed OCAM. This, the French decided, could only mean one thing: that Ahidjo intended to use Cameroon’s exit to make a strong political statement and gain an international advantage. Cameroon’s stand would give it more leverage with the radical and Commonwealth states which were increasingly critical of the dialogue policy with South Africa, promoted by a number of OCAM members. The French Ambassador noted that shortly before the announcement, Ahidjo had had long discussions with the OAU Secretary General, his fellow countryman Nzo Ekangaki, whose radical views on the Southern African conflicts might have encouraged the President in his own position.184 An Anglophone Cameroonian who had been elected to the Federal Assembly after reunification and had become one of the key bilingual politicians in Yaoundé, Ekangaki had served as Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister and Minister for Public Health and Population before obtaining the Labour portfolio in May 1965. The fact that he had been left in this post for over seven years demonstrated the trust Ahidjo placed in him.185 While Cameroon remained part of UDEAC, which it dominated comprehensively,186 the Cameroonian authorities seem to have shown increasing scepticism towards any form of regional integration. The French therefore saw Cameroon’s exit from OCAM as a sign to West African governments that Cameroon showed no interest in their plans for a West African Union – or in Senghor’s proposal for an Atlantic African Community. Cameroon would either look to the OAU187 or to very limited bodies such as UDEAC, which could never begin to compete with wider pan-African objectives.188 Finally, Cameroon’s withdrawal was also, as French diplomats put it, ‘an act of decolonisation’, a rejection of a limited African union that had emerged from the French empire.189 It might also have been a reaction to bold assertions by other African leaders who had started to compete with Cameroon’s claim as ‘a bridge’ in Africa. President Mobutu had told Mitchell Sharp during his 1971 visit that ‘Zaire might be French-speaking but was not Francophone. Zaire was Zaire’.190 More importantly for Cameroon, Mobutu linked Zaire’s withdrawal from OCAM to its ‘own independent position and special role to play between Francophone and Anglophone Africa’, to its projected role as ‘the fulcrum and promoter of understanding between Francophone and Anglophone Africa’.191 Shortly before Cameroon’s announcement, the Head of the African Division at the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had told British diplomats that OCAM was essentially a French creation and was now being used by the French to ‘mount an offensive in these areas based on francophonie’.192

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Decried by Ahidjo as ‘an anachronism’ in a press interview,193 OCAM had become both an economically useless and a politically dangerous arena for the Cameroonian authorities. In later statements during the course of August 1973, Ahidjo adopted a more conciliatory tone and the intention never was to break or damage relations with valuable Francophone partners. But speeches put OCAM in the realm of sentiments194 and emotions,195 in the early days of independence when new states were still in the process of working out their relations with the former imperial power and between themselves.196 This period, the Cameroonian President affirmed, should now be over. Over the same months, Cameroon continued to demonstrate support for non-reciprocity in EEC association. From Yaoundé, Given sent reports that distanced Cameroon from Senegalese and Ivorian positions on reverse preferences. Senghor, Given noted, ‘cut very little ice[:] Cameroon would not be likely to authorise him to speak on its behalf, and the views which he ha[d] expressed seem[ed] unlikely to command any support’.197 Cameroon’s main objective in the negotiations would be ‘national interest’: while there was no customs duty against EEC products, other taxes were imposed and the Cameroonian government had every intention to maintain them. According to a Reuter report, Cameroon had spoken against non-reciprocity at the Abidjan Conference of May 1973198 but meetings with officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the British otherwise: Cameroon believed that ‘a common African standpoint’ should be established and that the country ‘would be better off without reverse preferences’.199 There was, however, no strong line taken and no detailed report on Cameroon’s position emerges from the British archives. Joseph Owono, the Secretary General at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘emphasised that the Cameroonian attitude was not finally decided’. This was confirmed a few days later by the talks between President Ahidjo and François-Xavier Ortoli, the President of the Commission of the European Communities, who visited Cameroon on 16–20 June 1973. Like Owono, Ahidjo emphasised that the Cameroonian ‘government was still working to define precisely the attitude it would adopt on various questions at the pre-negotiations caucus with other Associates’.200 Cameroon’s President expressed strong support for price stabilisation mechanisms and hopes that the EDF would revert to a greater proportion of grants over loans. His position on reverse preferences was described, most concisely, as ‘reserved’. In July 1973, ‘all [British] objectives’ were secured in Brussels: associables and associates would be involved in negotiations that would start at Ministerial level on 17 October and adopt ‘an open position on the question of trade reciprocity’. The Nigerian, Guyanese and Fijian representatives, speaking for the developing countries, ‘made it clear that they wanted a single form

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of association, [wanted] to break away from the juridical choice of options in Protocol 22 [and] made it crystal clear that they would have nothing to do with trade reciprocity in any form’.201 In September 1973, the Nigerian Ambassador in Brussels remained extremely wary of most Francophone states but felt ‘reasonably confident of the solidarity of the Dahomey and Cameroon Ambassadors’.202 This was a period when relations between Nigeria and Cameroon remained tense. The absence of detailed maps for border demarcation, the distinctions between Nigerian and Cameroonian plans and a series of incidents between Cameroonian gendarmes and Nigerian fishermen constituted a potentially explosive situation – which is yet to be fully resolved. In their reports, the French emphasised that although Cameroonians were loath to admit their fear of Nigeria, they did see Nigeria’s ‘assurance and arrogance’ as a threat and the oil crisis of 1973 only reinforced these feelings. British reports, and particularly letters from the ‘corridors’ of the Lake Chad Basin Commission meeting in December 1973, painted a slightly different story. Difficulties with Nigeria were real but Cameroon saw its neighbour as an economic heavyweight with which good relations had to be maintained. According to Given, ‘neither side was willing to let matter[s] get out of hand’ and Ahidjo himself ‘made considerable efforts [to] take the heat out of more intractable frontier problems’. In early 1974, Ahidjo told Claude Cheysson, the European Commissioner in charge of relations with the Third World, that he favoured the participation of all African Commonwealth countries in the association with Europe, despite his knowledge that Nigeria would be a much bigger player than most others. While an underlying tension pervaded relations and violent incidents occurred, the general official mood favoured negotiation rather than open conflict. Ahidjo’s overall assessment by 1975 was that relations ‘were not bad’. In early July 1974, Given confirmed that Cameroon’s Government ‘attach[ed] great importance to the abolition of reciprocity and to stabilisation of prices’203 and welcomed the reorganisation of the EDF to accommodate the enlargement of both the EEC and its associates. Cameroon, Given had noted, would not ‘break ranks [but] maintain a united front against the community’.204 The agreement reached in Kingston a few days later, ensuring that African, Caribbean and Pacific countries would not be required to reciprocate the preferences they would enjoy in the Community market, therefore corresponded fully to Cameroon’s objectives. Simultaneously, Ahidjo refused to participate in the first Franco-African summit, which was to be held in Paris in November 1973. This is to be interpreted in conjunction with his growing suspicion towards ACCT projects for high-level summits, which Senghor repeatedly promoted. As both British and French diplomats reported, Ahidjo believed that it would be entirely ‘inappropriate’205 for the President of a bilingual country to attend summits206

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which only brought together French-speaking leaders. The Commonwealth, Ahidjo believed, was a direct remnant of the British Empire and would not have been created in 1973 had it not existed.207 While he very much favoured strong links with the French, any multilateral gathering of Heads that seemed to place France or French at its centre was an outdated and dangerous model. Senghor’s Francophone project was therefore constantly opposed, precisely because ‘a Commonwealth à la française’ was the last thing Ahidjo wished for,208 at a time when the Commonwealth still seemed of very little interest to Cameroon. Franco-African summits seemed even more dangerous, their initial restriction to France and its ex-Empire in Africa putting the nationalist credentials of Francophone African leaders on the line. Although Burundi, Mauritius, Rwanda and Zaire attended the Franco-African summit of 1975 in Bangui, only ex-French territories209 were present in Paris in 1973. As Foccart reported to Pompidou in late August 1973, some of the African leaders saw Franco-African summits as a way of counterbalancing their Anglophone counterparts –they would gather around the French President in the same way that Commonwealth heads gathered around Elizabeth II for biannual meetings.210 Whether the comparison was made in these terms – ignoring the larger geographical identity of the Commonwealth and the fact that it was not a newly formed endeavour– the very rumour of it could hardly have been more risky for Ahidjo.211 Cameroon argued that its official bilingualism, its reputation within the OAU212 and the on-going renegotiations of the cooperation agreements with the French made its participation impossible.213 Cameroon’s withdrawal from the Organisation for the Development of Tourism in Africa, one of the technical bodies of OCAM, on 13 September 1973 confirmed the Government’s intention to increase its distance from Francophone affairs.214 Again, Ahidjo’s decision not to attend the Franco-African summit came as no surprise to the French215, but again, they noted Ahidjo’s use of the media to create a more radical image of himself. Following cordial conversations between French and Cameroonian politicians and diplomats,216 Ahidjo issued a very terse communiqué to announce that he would not be going to Paris and spoke at length about Cameroon’s independence at the CNU Congress217 in November 1973. Franco-Cameroonian bilateral relations seem to have been unaffected by Ahidjo’s refusal to join the Franco-African summits. Ahidjo did entertain good official relations with France and good personal relations with French politicians and businessmen. Cameroon might have benefited from the presence at the head of the Quai’s African Affairs of Philippe Rebeyrol, a former Ambassador to Yaoundé, who had been on good terms with the political elite. Following the Bangui summit of 1975, Rebeyrol suggested to the French Ambassador in Yaoundé that Ahidjo should be kept fully informed of discussions and receive a copy of the minutes of the meetings.218 Valery

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Giscard d’Estaing, the new French President, sent his Cameroonian counterpart a personal letter, informing him of the main issues at stake. However, Ahidjo’s decision to remain absent from the Franco-African summits was used to demonstrate that the history of the unitary state of Cameroon was unique. French officials noted in 1976, on the eve of Ahidjo’s official visit to Paris, that it was absolutely crucial to distinguish Cameroon from the Francophone world: relations with France remained primordial but any attempt by the French to play the Francophone card in public would damage the relationship lastingly.219 The significance of EEC negotiations should also be read in the light of Cameroon’s perception of to the endeavours of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Plans for a Commonwealth–AAMS meeting in September 1972 had collapsed in the summer, under pressure from those Francophone states which favoured reverse preferences. Again, divisions among the associated states led to the cancellation of a meeting between the AAMS and the Commonwealth associables on 26 February 1973.220 The deadlock in the negotiations was overcome through the joint endeavours of the Commonwealth Secretariat and the OAU after February 1973. Nzo Ekangaki, the new OAU Secretary General after defeating the incumbent by 20 votes, put the Cameroonian connection at the heart of the debates. According to Commonwealth Secretariat officials, Ekangaki’s speech at the ministerial meeting of the UN ECA seemed to achieve two of its main purposes which were (a) to assert the primacy of OAU over ECA in African economic as in political affairs, (b) to heighten African suspicions of the motives of developed countries and of individuals from them and, in consequence, to encourage African countries to work out ‘[their] own African approach to the main economic problems facing the Continent today in an entirely African caucus’.221 Denouncing the Yaoundé Conventions as the institutionalisation of Africa’s dependence on Europe, Ekangaki argued that Africans were neither ‘pawns [nor] nitwits [nor simply] “hewers of wood and fetchers of water”’.222 Africa as a whole should fight ‘a policy of self interest which [Europeans] may like to present as humanitarian for the remorse they have for past colonial atrocities’ and prevent ‘inter-African economic co-operation [from] becom[ing] an instrument at the service of the interests of foreign industrialists and investors’: ‘the first architect of African development’, he concluded, ‘c[ould] only be the African himself’.223 A week after this speech, Ekangaki met Arnold Smith in London, in the presence of Emeka Anyaoku, then Director for International

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Affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat. A Nigerian diplomat who had first joined the new Commonwealth body in 1966 and would be the first African Secretary General, in office between 1990 and 2000, Anyaoku was no stranger to Ekangaki – highlighting the strong personal links that could link a number of Cameroonians to the Commonwealth via their Eastern neighbours. Ekangaki knew Anyaoku as a schoolfriend, from his early childhood on the Nigerian– Cameroonian border.224 Personal memories aside, the meeting was essential in dispelling misconceptions: Smith later talked of ‘the situation [being] pulled together by an unexpected person in an unlikely way’225 and Ekangaki admitted that he had so far seen the Commonwealth as a competitor for the OAU. Ekangaki’s role in the first half of 1973 sheds significant light on Cameroonian diplomacy at the time. Although he acted in his role as Secretary General of the OAU and not as a Cameroonian representative, his previous position as Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister in Yaoundé cannot be discounted. First, the OAU’s support for a strong African bargaining power echoed Ahidjo’s own demands. On 18 June 1973, Ahidjo told the French that key ‘adaptations’226 would have to be built into the next Convention in favour of African trade and development: the end of protectionism against a number of industrial goods, stabilisation in support of African production, and larger European funds for investment in Africa if there were to be more associates. Cameroon was particularly determined to obtain stabilisation guarantees for its three major exports, cocoa, cotton and coffee, at a time when 68 per cent of its total exports benefited from preferential tariffs in the EEC.227 Conversations with the Cameroonian authorities also convinced British diplomats that Yaoundé was determined ‘to preserve all existing benefits, especially those of the European Development Fund, while giving nothing in return’228 and was in fact closer to most African Commonwealth members than to its current Yaoundé associates. Second, the OAU’s strong intervention in the debate also caused Ahidjo serious concern as it seemed to counter two major tenets of his diplomacy: moderation and national sovereignty. Ahidjo did not favour reciprocal preferences but nor did he favour confrontational discussions among African states and between Africa and Europe. Perhaps more crucially, Ahidjo opposed the virtually ‘supranational’229 character that Ekangaki seemed to instil in OAU discussions by trying to push one option to the fore. Back in July 1972, Rebeyrol had assumed Ekangaki to be ‘completely in the hands of President Ahidjo’230 but the speeches which the OAU Secretary General delivered just over a year later indicated otherwise. Ekangaki’s address to the OAU Trade Ministers’ Conference in Lagos in July 1973 alarmed both the British and the French. British diplomats in Lagos thought his style ‘emotional and larded with hackneyed anti-colonialist rhetoric’231 while the Quai

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objected to his views that ‘there should be no African counterpart of any kind for the concessions the EEC was expected to make’.232 All believed that Algerian and Libyan influence made OAU discussions on European association more radical than they would otherwise have been.233 While Senegal, the Ivory Coast and Mauritius were among ‘the most vocal’234 opponents, Cameroon also responded initially with much caution to the July meeting. A few weeks later, on 2 August 1973, one of the major objectives of the press conference Ahidjo gave on these issues was to make clear that Ekangaki’s approach to the issue was in no way representative of official Cameroonian views.235 As the British Embassy in Yaoundé reported, Ahidjo’s interview was ‘a distinct slap on the wrist for Nzo Ekangaki’.236 Suspicion of all organisations that might have supranational tendencies continued to pervade Cameroonian diplomacy. If anything, the creation of ECOWAS in 1975 stood as the illustration of hazardous integration between very different countries.237 At a time when Ekangaki spoke of the need to ‘bury for ever the archaic, divisive, colonialist notion of French-speaking and English-speaking Africa’,238 the Cameroonian Government remained sceptical that regional unions were likely to achieve these aims. Christopher Clapham has argued that the negotiations that led to the signature of the Lomé Convention in February 1975 were ‘one of the very few occasions on which African states were able to bargain with external powers on something approaching a position of equality’.239 Following Labour’s victory in the 1974 General Elections, the UK’s engagement with Europe came under review and the British people would vote on whether they wished to remain in the EEC. But FCO recommendations to the Cabinet and to the associables were clear: negotiations had had a very positive political and economic impact on African unity and their right to non-reciprocal advantages should be seized. If the United Kingdom left the EEC, plans would be made ‘to restore their pre-accession arrangements in the UK market’.240 The oil crisis of 1973 certainly played an influence in strengthening Africa’s bargaining power but so did the role of the OAU and the Commonwealth in generating a consensus. African leaders in ex-British Africa still saw the Commonwealth primarily through their relations with Britain241 but the Secretariat had demonstrated new possibilities for cooperation. The absence of reciprocal preferences and the initiation of stabilisation mechanisms for African produce was ‘both a victory for and a manifestation of African regional foreign economic policies by Africans on the continent and in the diaspora’.242 The episode was ‘tangible evidence’, Shridath Ramphal declared, ‘that an enlightened internationalism was now informing the new Commonwealth’.243 But Ramphal, who had led the Caribbean negotiations and was taking over from Smith as Secretary General of the Commonwealth, also made clear that ‘Lomé I

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was essentially an act of faith [and] an unfinished exercise’. Objectives ‘like greater access for agricultural products, like greater liberalism in the application, if not the construction, of the Rules of Origin, like wider horizons for the Stabilization Fund, like greater realism in the levels of development assistance’244 would have to be constantly promoted in the coming years. As it came into effect on 24 June 1975 and brought together 46 African, Caribbean and Pacific states, including 12 African Commonwealth members, the Lomé Convention established ‘thirty-seven one-way free trade zones between individual African states and the Community (and 9 others between Caribbean and Pacific states and Europe), with duty- and quota-free access to Europe and only non-discriminatory most-favored-nation treatment for European goods entering Africa’ as well as ‘new and significant machinery for the stabilization of export earnings (STABEX) [which] cover[ed] 29 other basic tropical products, first stage transformation products, and iron ore’.245 In March 1975, the West African Department at the FCO welcomed the ‘impressive solidarity’ that all African countries had shown in achieving the Lomé Convention and their increasing economic independence.246 But if, as I.W. Zartman has argued, Lomé I ‘dilut[ed] [Africa’s] bilateral ties with the metropole’,247 it did not lead to a better balance in Cameroon’s relations with its two former metropoles. Franco-Cameroonian relations were being remodelled but Britain did not really appear as an alternative partner among the industrialised nations of the North.

Plus ça change . . . France’s persistent bilateral influence Despite the fact that the two governments had shared a number of key positions, Cameroon remained a middle, not a major, African actor in British eyes. Correspondence on and with Cameroon on EEC negotiations really followed initiatives from London and Commonwealth Africa, and Franco-British talks on the matter hardly ever discussed Cameroon’s policies and intentions specifically. Given thought that ‘[n]othing which [he] was told threw any real light on the attitudes of the Africans in general to these negotiations’.248 To a large extent, Cameroon’s relations with France had been readjusted but not transformed, and British officials saw little new interest to be seized there. The series of bilateral talks which occurred over the period did not contribute to a closer partnership between Britain and Cameroon. The renegotiation of the Franco-Cameroonian cooperation agreements failed to generate any new interest. Admittedly, the last months of the renegotiations of the FrancoCameroonian cooperation agreements had looked challenging for the French. Although renegotiations fitted in with French plans for a reorientation of

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their own cooperation,249 as suggested by Pompidou and Gorse in 1971, their dealings with the Cameroonians seem to have been more arduous than anticipated. The visibility of French activities made France a likely ‘scapegoat’250 and Cameroonian goodwill could not and should not be taken for granted. As a French official noted in June 1973, France had to take two major parameters into account in managing its relations with Cameroon. First, French assistance was both welcome and expected, which meant that while broad plans generally met with approval, specific programmes were intensely scrutinised. Second, relations with top level officials were good but could prove problematic lower down and with some of the younger generations.251 The opening of the negotiations themselves in Paris on 25 September 1973 had been kept from the press until then.252 As Vincent Efon, who led the Cameroonian delegation as Cameroon’s Foreign Affairs Minister, sought to emphasise Cameroon’s assertive sovereignty,253 the passing of two of his predecessors seemed to mark the end of the first phase of post-colonial relations. In the space of a few days, Charles Okala, who had signed the 1960 cooperation agreements, and his successor, Jean-Faustin Bétayéné, both died.254 French officials acknowledged that negotiations proved ‘long and difficult’255 under the influence of Ahidjo’s ‘jeunes loups’,256 something which British diplomats were very much aware of.257 The presence of Foccart among the delegates to the Yaoundé medical congress in December was a clear sign that ‘twist[ing] a few arms’258 was necessary and that the French were not getting their own way. In his speech to the CNU National Congress in November, Ahidjo denounced the persistent ‘perils of imperialisms’,259 just as he had seized Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai’s visit to Yaoundé in March to denounce ‘economic dependence’.260 Officials at the Commonwealth Secretariat even noted that ‘the die now seem[ed] to have been cast!’: France would have to comply with African demands for more equitable cooperation agreements.261 These impressions, however, were short-lived. In February 1974, the new Franco-Cameroonian cooperation agreements removed the remaining French structures from Cameroon’s administration, particularly in research and education where the inspection d’académie or the Foundation française d’enseignement supérieur were abolished.262 Coopération officials often cited Cameroon when discussing Africanisation and the loss of key posts for the French.263 The military agreement also did away with French military service in Cameroon and made clear that Cameroon would accept technical military assistance from any partner it chose. However, as Mouelle Kombi has demonstrated, defence and logistical support remained clouded in mystery264 and in practice France remained Cameroon’s virtually exclusive source of military assistance. Similarly, the British only gave limited importance to the ‘demotion’ of the French Ambassador, who was no longer the

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Dean of the diplomatic corps in Yaoundé after 1 January 1974.265 Admittedly, no reports resembled those that came from the Ivory Coast, where ‘the French Ambassador in Abidjan travel[ed] about like a royal personage with a motorcycle escort and all his other colleagues, including the British Ambassador, ha[d] to jump into the ditch when he passe[d]’.266 But the French Ambassador saw Ahidjo more often than his colleagues, in both private and official capacities:267 Given noted in January 1974 that ‘[r]elations with France remain[ed] the most important non-African aspect of Cameroonian foreign policy’.268 In June 1972, the Canadian Ambassador had emphasised the extent of France’s ‘spider web’ over its former territories in Equatorial Africa and admitted that no Ambassador could achieve any objective in Cameroon without showing ‘beaucoup de doigté’269 with the Cameroonians and the French. The importance which other Western powers gave to French presence in Cameroon therefore intensified, or at least prolonged France’s dominance, even after the first attempts by the Cameroonian government to relax it. While Britain or Canada pursued their own objectives in the region, diplomats gave clear weight to what the French themselves sought to achieve and to how they might interpret other foreign activities. Franco-British talks on Africa in February 1974, which started the day after the signature of the revised cooperation agreements with Cameroon, further confirmed this. The fact that British diplomats seem to have trusted their French counterparts undoubtedly gave greater influence to French impressions. Even after the ‘considerable defeat for the French’ over EEC negotiations in July 1973, both sides ‘had maintained close touch’.270 Rebeyrol, reported the British Embassy in Paris, was ‘certainly not representative of the old guard of French Africanists’271 and Combal was said to ‘hold “enlightened” views of French policy in Africa’ – translated for instance in the promotion of Franco-Nigerian relations,272 opposition to arms sales to Idi Amin’s Uganda, and stricter sanctions against Ian Smith’s Rhodesia.273 According to the British Ambassador in Paris, ‘[t]he days of Foccart adventurism [were] almost certainly over’.274 The FCO could therefore work on the assumption that ‘the French now believe[d], as [the British did], that British and French political objectives in Africa [were] largely complementary’275 and that ‘no unnecessary conflicts between Britain and France in Africa’276 should be allowed to develop. Rebeyrol was seen as a man who intended to do ‘his bit to help to keep M. Foccart’s organisation off the grass’277 and he was on record within the Quai as having told his departments that there [could] be no “politique saine” in Africa without close Anglo/French cooperation’.278 Rebeyrol told the British that the new Franco-Cameroonian cooperation agreements ‘made little change from the old’279 documents. The renegotiation would not lead to a reduction in French assistance to Cameroon: Cameroonian officials acknowledged the value

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of French subsidies280 and French ministers argued that levels of aid should to be maintained – possibly even increased, and in no case diminished.281 Asked for his opinion on Ahidjo’s ‘grasp on the reins of power’, Rebeyrol argued that the Cameroonian President was in control of the ‘very centralised and authoritarian government’,282 aided by his ability to co-opt the younger generations. Once again, the French led the talks on Cameroon. All that the British agenda for the talks said in relation to Cameroon was: Provided the Co-operation Agreements with France can be successfully negotiated, the future of the Cameroon seems likely to be one of uneventful stability, with most people getting enough to eat and with dissident voices easily stifled; would the French agree or is the apparent lethargy and stability of the Cameroonians misleading?283 A year later, Given unsurprisingly concluded: ‘the changes [to the cooperation agreements] were more cosmetic than substantial. The French have adopted a lower posture, but the country is still firmly oriented towards France in the ways that really matter’.284 British diplomats in Cameroon and Paris therefore emphasised continuity, rather than change, in the new agreements. As far as FrancoBritish relations were concerned, this confirmed that Cameroon would remain a place of limited opportunities for British diplomacy. The reorganisation of France’s relations with Africa following the election of Giscard d’Estaing in May 1974 was interpreted in London in positive terms, although no immediate radical change was expected. Under the last Messmer Government, the absence of a Secretary of State for Cooperation had raised the possibility that the Quai would supervise processes.285 When a separate Ministry of Cooperation was established under Pierre Abelin, who embarked on ‘a series of “missions de dialogue”’, the British rightly thought that ‘[n]o concrete results ha[d] been observed or [were] apparently expected, and the motivation [was] largely psychological’.286 Rebeyrol confirmed during the Anglo-French talks of December 1974 that the Quai d’Orsay saw ‘more continuity than change’287 from Pompidou to Giscard, whose personal and professional knowledge of Africa was well-known. The Quai d’Orsay also conducted parallel talks with the Canadians, who had expressed the wish in September 1972 that discussions on technical cooperation in Africa should be complemented by political discussions.288 With the support of the French Minister for Foreign Affairs Rebeyrol decided in April 1974289 to give renewed impetus to Franco-Canadian talks and consultations were organised in October 1974. Much of the talks centred on Francophone Africa,290 with an emphasis on the political situation in Africa, on bilateral and on multilateral cooperation on the continent. The Canadians emphasised

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that Trudeau and his Government sought to coordinate their actions with the French and in Cameroon itself, Canadian diplomats favoured closer contacts between the Canadian and French missions to avoid misconceptions and misunderstandings.291 The French Ambassador in Ottawa emphasised that Franco-Canadian and Franco-African relations were now linked: Canada had an aura which France, as the ex-colonial power, lacked, particularly among the younger generations; Canada and France were the major contributors to the ACCT (35 per cent and 46 per cent respectively); and Africa, particularly Francophone Africa, had become an important sphere of Canadian foreign policy.292 Initial French reports argued that the October 1974 talks had cleared the air between the two parties and provided a sound basis for better collaboration.293 However, they were also an acknowledgment that competition and mistrust had overshadowed relations until then. Aid, the French Ambassador in Ottawa stated, had been used by the Canadians in order to compete with France in technical and cultural cooperation, leading African governments to make ‘incommensurate demands’294 on Paris. Contacts on the ground, the French Ambassador in Kinshasa argued, were often purely formal.295 From Yaoundé, French Ambassador Hubert Dubois reported that the FrancoCanadian talks of October 1974 had failed to give practical results and blamed the lack of consultation on the CIDA representative. Canadians, he noted, were ‘more rivals than partners’.296 Cameroon’s vote for Canada’s inclusion in the UNESCO’s European Group, against French wishes, raised real, if short-lived, tensions.297 By contrast, Anglo-Canadian relations seemed much more straightforward – but not necessarily more positive for Cameroonian interests. Britain’s support for increasing Canadian involvement in Cameroon seemed to demonstrate its own limited interest for the country – and for the region more generally. On the FCO’s initiative,298 regular talks on African issues between the British and the Canadians were held after 1971.299 What made the consultations with the Canadians particularly valuable for the FCO was Ottawa’s long-term interest in Francophone Africa.300 Canadian diplomats were surprised to discover how little the British knew about Francophone Africa and that even Cameroon, ‘part of which [was] a former British colony’ was not of more interest to them.301 British officials made it clear that they had no intention to start any ‘large capital aid programmes’ in Cameroon302 and the FCO was firmly convinced that if any country had a valuable contribution to make to the improvement of relations between Anglophone and Francophone Africa, it was certainly Canada.303 Although Ahidjo again singled out France’s contribution in his speech to the CNU in February 1975,304 the visit to Yaoundé of Canada’s Secretary of State for External Affairs, Allan MacEachen, in April 1975 signalled that the

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Canadians intended to play a part in Cameroon. Whilst Canada remained extremely committed to multilateral organisations, a number of diplomats had begun to advocate building strong bilateral relations with individual African countries – neither the developed North nor the developing South were a ‘monolith’.305 Upper Volta, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Ghana were also on the list of countries which the Canadian Secretary of State had chosen. The French noted that Cameroon remained one of the priority African countries for Canada,306 which now gave greater assistance to economic administration besides the health and education sectors.307 The Cameroonian Government welcomed Canadian assistance, which often focused on integrated projects – covering financial assistance, technical assistance and training.308 The authorities in Yaoundé were also extremely appreciative of key projects that had been financed by Canadian grants, not loans, as was the case for the school in Bonaberi, which had become operational in December 1973.309 The international economy, multilateral negotiations in the GATT, food, international maritime law and Southern Africa were among the major issues310 which MacEachen intended to discuss during his West African trip. Cameroon’s importance for Canada might also have arisen from its relative distance from the USA. The US Deputy Secretary of State in charge of African affairs did visit Cameroon in June 1975. But no major plans for further assistance or trade surfaced, at a time when the issue of foreign involvement in Southern African issues continued to tarnish relations between the two countries.311 Middle powers provided over 85 per cent of Cameroon’s assistance.312 Even though Canadian officials presented themselves as ‘interpreters but not teachers’ and rejected the idea of being ‘a conscious bridge builder’ in Africa,313 the FCO repeatedly encouraged them to increase their efforts in language training on the continent.314 Part of the problem may have been that Britain envisaged some sort of Canadian contribution to the teaching of English in French-speaking Africa, where British initiatives remained rather small-scale and French schemes could not cover all requests. Although French remained the most-widely taught language in Francophone Africa, demands for qualified English teachers actually increased in the early 1970s, as regional cooperation in both Europe and Africa gathered pace.315 Canadian interest in Africa however, continued to rest on Francophone concerns. As Couvrette told his British counterpart in March 1973, Canada’s ‘permanent interests in Africa . . . were political’ and the Canadian aid programme was intended to ensure that ‘French Canadians could have “an outside world of their own”’.316 By the end of 1974, Gilles Mathieu, the Canadian Ambassador in Abidjan, still doubted whether Canada, as a middle power, really had the necessary requirements to have ‘a role’ in Africa: but there was no

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doubt that ‘Africa could no longer be left out’317 of Canada’s foreign policy. It was likely, Couvrette warned, that ‘[t]he less francophone that Africa became, the less interested the Canadians might well become’.318 This was very clear in Cameroon where French Canadians were posted to the Embassy in Yaoundé. While it proved to the French-speaking community in Canada that their interests were taken into account in foreign affairs and diplomacy, it also gave many Cameroonians the distinct impression that Canada was a purely Francophone country – thus damaging the hopes of Ahidjo’s government that relations with Canada would be seen to promote Cameroon’s own bilingualism.319 In British circles, Cameroon was still seen as part of a greater Francophone whole, where language problems blocked the advance of commercial relations. In 1974, Given reported on ‘the language and other difficulties which British businessmen seemed to meet in Cameroon’ and suggested dealing with the head offices of the Cameroonian firms, mostly located in Paris at the time.320 There had been growing British interest in the region since the turn of the 1970s but trade figures had not followed and Francophone Africa still remained a distant sphere by the time the Lomé Convention was signed. By 1976, no Francophone African country represented more than 0.069 per cent of British exports and 0.145 per cent of British imports – and in both cases, Senegal was Britain’s major partner.321 In Cameroon, British exports continued to out-value imports.322 With a 2.8 per cent share of the Cameroonian market, the British were Cameroon’s fifth commercial partner, far behind France’s 46.8 per cent share. Language alone did not account for the vast difference but French influence did count. West Germany was the second most important commercial actor in Cameroon with a 6.7 per cent share, driven partly by relations through the EEC and the EDF.323 Canadian officials had also identified the Common Market and the franc zone as the major reasons why trade with Cameroon would remain limited.324 In Africa, South Africa and Nigeria remained Canada’s main trading partners while the best new opportunities seemed most likely to arise from Algeria and Angola.325 But Given also attributed French, and to a lesser extent German, commercial influence in Cameroon to their assistance programmes.326 Canadian diplomats too were aware that aid was the main engine in their country’s relations with Africa327 but Commonwealth commitments limited their assistance to Francophone Africa.328 Cameroon did receive the largest amount of British and Canadian assistance in non-Commonwealth Africa but such assistance was ‘still minuscule by French standards’.329 Even though France no longer provided over half of Cameroon’s total external assistance, it remained the main contributor. In 1972, France had provided 35 per cent of Cameroon’s external assistance, ahead of two multilateral donors, the EDF (20 per cent) and the

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IBRD (15 per cent).330 Since independence, the greatest contribution of the FAC in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar had in fact gone to Cameroon, with a total of 560 million francs for the period ending in 1975 – and 40 million francs had already been signed off by July 1976.331 While the EDF was the most important single contributor by 1975, the main bilateral contributors were France, Germany and Canada – Russian and Chinese assistance remained minimal and there seemed little prospect of any increased cooperation in the near future.332 British assistance programmes did, however, produce very valuable results. Golds had advocated giving more prominence to projects for local rural development333 and the visit of the Chairman of the Commonwealth Development Corporation to Cameroon in December 1970 paved the way for the CDC’s first investment in non-Commonwealth Africa.334 Britain’s contribution to a new scheme which started in 1973 for the establishment of rural co-operatives in North-West Cameroon seems to have been most welcome, and all the more valued for not ‘being dwarfed by surrounding French efforts’.335 By the end of 1975, activities in telecommunications and the cooperatives had been very positive and the EDF representative, Maurice Foley, looked into expanding the cooperative schemes with more European input.336 Given, who believed that the reorientation of ‘primary education away from the literary formal mould of the colonial era and towards the development of the skills needed to improve life in the villages’337 was essential, seemed frustrated that bureaucratic formalities in Cameroon were delaying Britain’s contribution to the Co-operation College in Bamenda.338 But on the whole, British activities got very little publicity, remained very limited and essentially confined to two categories of people: the rich English-speaking elite whose children were still being sent to England for part of their education and who remained sentimentally attached to British traditions;339 and the local communities where efficient but small British involvement occurred. Given underlined at regular intervals that with the lack of an independent, well-informed press, Britain remained ‘practically invisible, and [its] effort [was] not appreciated by the Cameroonians’.340 Albert Saunders, his successor at the British Embassy in 1975, also noted that British aid lacked visibility and was in any case too small to provide any sizeable political advantage.341 As the West African Department of the FCO would later acknowledge, ‘Cameroon tend[ed] to judge its friends by the aid they give’342 and this did not put Britain in a favourable position. Numbers did indeed matter: at £310,000 in 1974, the British aid programme compared very unfavourably with those of ‘France (£8.25 million), Germany (£7.1 million) and Canada (£3.75 million)’.343 By 1977, British assistance had risen to £630,000 per year but still remained marginal compared to

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others. This was again particularly striking compared to the annual increases in German and Canadian assistance.344 Cameroon was not an exception in itself. As a former Ambassador to Dakar noted, France gave Francophone Africa around 60 per cent of its overall assistance whereas British assistance to Commonwealth Africa only amounted to about 30 per cent of the total.345 The ex-French African states were also more dependent on France than the former British territories in Africa were dependent on Britain.346 Africa, some British diplomats opined, mattered in the French memory in ways that had no equivalent in Britain and was doubly central to French ‘grandeur’. First, Africa had been a key centre for the French empire, less ‘diverse’347 than the British Empire, with ‘a spread of former colonies and dominions in all five continents’348 had been. Second, West Africa had held a special place since its association with the Free French Forces during the Second World War. At a time when successive British Governments failed to find viable solutions to the white minority regimes in Southern Africa, African issues as a whole ‘tend[ed] to be a vote loser in British politics’: there was no equivalent to Africa’s association ‘in France with salvation and the preservation of the présence française’.349 However, Saunders also believed that Britain missed rather than lacked opportunities in Francophone Africa because of a persistent belief that France dominated the region. During Given’s farewell audience with Ahidjo in July 1975, the Cameroonian President expressed hopes that the Lomé Convention and British membership of the EEC would improve trade relations between Cameroon and Britain.350 In November 1977, Ahidjo would also welcome his audience with Edward Rowlands, Minister of State at the FCO, as ‘the first opportunity to listen to a British Minister talk about HMG’s policy towards Africa’,351 more than 15 years after independence. Trade relations with Cameroon, Saunders wrote, had suffered ‘from the defeatist attitude which [he] encountered before leaving the UK to the effect that the French were in complete control and could not be budged, and in any case it was easier and more advantageous to deal through Paris’.352 The Lomé Convention offered better prospects to British exporters on paper but mentalities would first have to evolve before any real change could truly happen. Britain’s management of its diplomatic missions in Yaoundé also demonstrated that Cameroon remained a marginal country in British African interests. First, the decision was taken in 1973353 to move the British Consulate in Buea to Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital, in the former East Cameroon. With the end of the Federation, British officials had become convinced that very little decision-making power remained in the South-West province.354 The transfer, made in April 1974,355 was unsurprisingly interpreted as ‘a gesture of abandonment’356 by a number of Anglophones, who expressed ‘a good deal of grief’.357

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It was, Given admitted, ‘a hard-headed decision’, based on the argument that a Consulate in Douala would be able to ‘perform a valuable commercial function while still giving consular services to the British community in the south-west and north-west provinces’.358 In his valedictory despatch of July 1975, Given claimed that ‘many West Cameroonians believe[d] [Britain had done] a good job, if only . . . by leaving them alone to stand on their own feet’.359 But he also admitted that Cameroonians in the former West Cameroon, and particularly in the South-West, still blamed Britain for not providing more support against the imposition of the Yaoundé-driven centralised system. By the beginning of 1978, British diplomats in Cameroon still reported on the extremely negative effects that the decision to move the Consulate to Douala had had. It had further convinced those Cameroonians in the former West Cameroon who valued British political and educational traditions that Britain had wanted ‘to punish the Anglophones for opting to remain in French Cameroon’.360 As the British in Yaoundé noted, this ‘d[id] reflect a desire for continuing links with Britain’. But it also reflected Britain’s continuing distance from Cameroon as a whole. The FCO had in fact seriously considered closing the Yaoundé Embassy when posts were reviewed after 1974. The British Embassy in Lomé closed in October 1975, followed by the Embassy in Antananarivo in January 1976.361 Relations with Togo and Dahomey were respectively given over to the High Commissions in Ghana and Nigeria. The Head of the West African Department at the FCO acted as the British Ambassador to Chad, with support from his closest aides in London. The British Embassy in Paris also looked after British consular affairs in Reunion and Comoros. The post in Yaoundé was described as ‘relatively unimportant’ while Britain’s ‘unsatisfactory’ relations with the CAR and Gabon, to which the Ambassador was also accredited, were an argument for closure. In his valedictory speech in July 1975, Given concluded that Cameroon’s external relations were founded on ‘two major preoccupations, France and Nigeria’,362 leaving Britain a very secondary place. Hopes of improving trade relations with Cameroon and fears that closure would lead the Cameroonians to close their own Embassy in London – as had happened in the case of Madagascar – and therefore end relations with that part of Africa prompted the FCO to tread carefully. But equally important were fears that posts in Lagos and Kinshasa, which were not under threat, would not be able to cope with the subsequent additional workload that would ensue. The West African Department thus advised that Cameroon be kept ‘on a “back burner”’ for essentially ‘practical’363 reasons. The British Government was represented in three Francophone countries, the Ivory Coast, Senegal and Zaire, and in Cameroon. In other words, at Ambassadorial level, the British were no more present than the Canadians were, with four Embassies in the same four capitals.364

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By 1977, the FCO was still reporting that [o]n the economic front language, commercial practice, inertia and resistance to change, the influence of French expatriates and the dominant French trading companies w[ould] continue to work in favour of French rather than British suppliers. Many of the countries remain[ed] desperately poor, politically unstable, or both, and their potential in the economic and commercial fields remain[ed] insignificant.365 Cameroon was not considered to be as important as the Ivory Coast or Senegal, partly due to economic considerations and partly due to its reluctance to take centre stage in international politics.366 Trade relations were really only strengthened after 1975367 and even then, investors were warned that ‘the total available market [was] comparatively small’.368 This was not helped by Overseas Development’s refusal to fund aid in Francophone Africa, particularly in countries where there was no resident British mission but more generally because of persistent language problems.369 Moreover, the new Labour government only seemed marginally interested in Africa. Although relations with Commonwealth Africa improved as Wilson’s Government adopted a stricter policy against the apartheid regime in South Africa,370 Sir Thomas Brimelow, then Permanent Undersecretary of State and head of the Diplomatic Service, stressed in September 1974 that ‘Sub-Saharan Africa was not a high priority’371 for the new Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan – the EEC, the UN and the Commonwealth generally would rank first. On the whole, the view of the French and the British was of a well-managed transition in Francophone Africa, with France renegotiating cooperation agreements and reducing defence commitments but essentially preserving its position as the region’s major partner.372 The French knew that they still dominated the field of technical assistance in virtually every French-speaking African country and intended to pursue their special relation with Africa.373 One Coopération official writing in 1976 outlined that the risk of Quai supervision over their activities had definitely subsided.374 Far more radical for the British was the dismissal of Foccart375 but the persistent division of responsibilities for Francophone and Anglophone Africa within the Quai until 1978 continued to complicate relations. By 1979, there were still no integrated projects between the French, British, Canadian and Cameroonian governments, and with each external party using their own material, there was little hope of any development. On the few projects where both France and Canada were involved, tasks were carried out completely independently.376 Coopération officials had noted in 1973 that Cameroon would welcome more joint operations377 but there were few signs of real change in the short term.

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ACCT–Commonwealth partnerships: a diplomatic impasse for Cameroon? In ACCT–Commonwealth circles, Noel Salter, Arnold Smith’s assistant, emphasised that it was highly ‘symbolic’378 that Canadian diplomats should pioneer the multilateralisation of France’s and Britain’s relations with a good number of their former territories. This stemmed from a much wider endeavour for consultations across multilateral bodies and should be read in the light of multiple Commonwealth efforts to branch out of its membership. Barriers between Anglophone and Francophone West African states were undoubtedly eroded, albeit very progressively, by the consultations undertaken by the ACCT and the Commonwealth Secretariat and Foundation. Canadian diplomats also noted that Commonwealth Africa was not a ‘hermetically sealed entit[y]’379 – if it had ever been one – and should not be considered separately from other parts of the continent. Initial discussions were led by the two Secretaries General, Jean-Marc Léger and Arnold Smith, and the fact that both were Canadian provided an important common ground on which to build. A definite intention to cooperate can be found as early as March 1969.380 Smith was quick to underline that the two Secretariats pursued ‘rather parallel tasks’ and should look to potential ‘successful achievements in fields of mutual concern’.381 However, differences were not minimised and cooperation should therefore not be over-estimated. The Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs declared at the end of 1970 that there would be ‘much more in co-operation in cultural matters, in education and in scientific and industrial exchanges’382 and the British themselves mentioned this in discussions on language teaching in early 1970.383 But it would occur in the medium rather than the short term. By the end of 1974, Arnold Smith and Léger’s successor, Dankoulodo Dan Dicko of Niger, agreed that politics remained out of the ACCT’s remit and that ‘culture’, in its Francophone acceptation, was not a fundamental Commonwealth area.384 Very similar comments were made by Xavier Deniau, the President of the Comité Francophonie, and Lord Goronwy-Roberts, the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.385 Sonny Ramphal insisted on the importance of ‘build[ing] essential and longneeded bridges between Commonwealth and Francophone states’:386 concrete joint Commonwealth–ACCT projects in West Africa were under study by the end of 1976, a new, not yet an established practice.387 The importance of ACCT–Commonwealth projects, however, lay in the fact that they constituted ways to overcome or bypass, but not replicate, the duality of Franco-British plans.

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Over the same period, Cameroon’s place at the crossroads of these new networks is symptomatic of the complexities its diplomacy faced. Overall, Cameroon as an individual country, not as part of the AAMS, featured very little in initial cooperation plans. In early 1973, the British authorities thought the Du Sautoy College, where the Pan-African Institute for Development operated, a ‘well heeled’ institution, which welcomed students from across Africa and had the support of the Cameroonian government.388 However, Commonwealth Foundation budget reports show that the College failed to use the entire £5,000 grant: by October 1973, only £910 had been paid out.389 Archives do not offer enough evidence to determine why the grant was not fully used. What they do show is that between 1972 and 1975, other projects in Africa received much more attention from the official Commonwealth and the ACCT. Cooperation over the Pan-African Institute in Buea remained on the margins, overseen by the Commonwealth Foundation and the Du Sautoy College itself. Cameroon was not a Commonwealth member, it participated very discreetly in ACCT activities, the West Cameroonian government itself had been abolished, and there was no strong Yaoundé drive to stimulate Commonwealth–ACCT projects. This contrasted, for instance, with Mauritius, a member of both the Commonwealth and the ACCT. In 1972, Mauritius entered into bilateral agreements with Canada and France to establish a bilingual institute in Mauritius and the Assistant Director of the CFTC encouraged the Mauritian government to request both Commonwealth and ACCT funding for a venture which would ‘no doubt provide a useful link between the peoples of the French and English speaking states of Africa and Asia’.390 Understandably, cooperation focused on joint members: Canada and Mauritius, while the forthcoming independence of the Seychelles in 1976 promised to expand the group.391 In 1973, OCAM Ministers chose Mauritius to establish the African and Mauritius Institute of Bilingualism, which would organise training, foster cooperation across Africa and help with the diffusion of publications in both French and English. Both the ACCT and the CIDA were expected to contribute to the Institute, whose constitution was eventually approved in December 1975, but Canadian diplomats argued that the project should be treated as a real multilateral enterprise. Canadian officials put forward to their ACCT partners, including the French,392 that the ACCT could benefit greatly from the equivalent of the CFTC,393 which fostered concrete, efficient, horizontal cooperation. Cooperation was also undertaken between countries which only belonged to one of the two organisations but which took a very active role in their sphere. Universities and training centres in Niger and Nigeria, Togo and Ghana sought to develop cooperation in language teaching which involved consultations across the ACCT and the Commonwealth.

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Cameroon’s decision to alter its relation with the ACCT and become an associated member of the Francophone body in 1975 followed the need to preserve national balance and stability, particularly after the advent of the unitary State in 1972. Articles in the Mauritian newspaper Le Soleil during the November 1975 ACCT Conference seemed to justify the choice. As several articles described the progress made towards a Francophone summit, comparisons with the Commonwealth flourished: ‘La Francophonie aurait son “Commonwealth”’,394 one title read. After 1973, Cameroon initiated new policies in favour of bilingualism and national languages. ‘Operation bilinguisme’,395 which started in earnest in 1974, sought to introduce both official languages to all primary schools and move away from the initial focus on adult elites.396 The ACCT also began the ALCAM project at the University of Yaoundé in 1974, with the objective of promoting national languages.397 A number of Cameroonian artists and athletes travelled to Quebec in August 1974 for the International Youth Festival and two film directors were given awards in 1975.398 But records of ACCT activities in Cameroon between 1970 and 1975 show virtually no programme directly linked to the French language. In reality, bilingualism essentially took root among the Anglophone elite. Although 70 per cent of the Cameroonian elite were Francophones – if French estimates are to be believed – the Anglophone elite had realised that speaking French was a compulsory requirement and had therefore become bilingual, consequently gaining much more influence in senior positions.399 However, this did not mean that Anglophones necessarily agreed with the system that the United Republic was imposing. Between 1973 and 1975, both French and British diplomats noted growing agitation in the North-West and South-West Provinces. Given emphasised ‘discontent’ in the former British Cameroon400 while his French counterpart warned of potentially dangerous resentment among Anglophones throughout the country against Yaoundé-imposed directives and against French presence in the country.401 Even the French acknowledged that ‘Opération bilinguisme’ in the Anglophone provinces felt like the application of a French, rather than Cameroonian model, with two negative consequences: it increased Anglophone suspicions against Yaoundé; and it delayed the spread of bilingualism across the social spectrum, as the authorities had to tread carefully in order to avoid open discontent.402 When Allan MacEachen visited Yaoundé in early 1975, his attempts to bolster Cameroon’s participation in the ACCT fell on deaf ears. Cameroon’s role had been minor and the authorities had no intention of investing more in a forum that generated much concern among the Anglophone community.403 Canadian pressure, if anything, proved counterproductive. MacEachen

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promoted the transformation of the ACCT in two directions: vertical growth, through the establishment of high-level meetings; and horizontal growth, through a body similar to the CFTC.404 In June 1974, Canada promoted the creation of a fund for multilateral cooperation which would finance specific development projects that fell outside the ACCT’s traditional programmes, bolster cooperation and increase the ACCT’s international presence by seeking external funding if necessary.405 Allan MacEachen held the work of the Commonwealth, and particularly its increasing focus on multilateral cooperation for development, in high esteem.406 The Commonwealth remained an incomparable association in his eyes, which had no real equivalent, but it still meant that the CFTC was seen as an inspiring achievement for other bodies, which Canadian proposals for the ACCT did reflect. A year later, the Canadians presented their proposal for the multilateral fund: operating on the basis of voluntary contributions in cash or kind, the fund would favour regional projects with a clear development objective which would work through horizontal cooperation and respond to the demands of the recipient countries themselves.407 Canadian support for an ACCT Fund and MacEachen’s visit to Yaoundé occurred as ACCT–Commonwealth consultations devoted increasingly detailed attention to cooperation. As Smith had told Deniau in December 1974, unless real cooperation was underway, the ACCT and the Commonwealth would be open to accusations that they divided Africa even further.408 Similarly, Dan Dicko emphasised that the ACCT could usefully learn from the Commonwealth in order to transform its essentially vertical cooperation into a horizontal, truly multilateral forum.409 Commonwealth officials were particularly keen to get the message across that the focus was on multilateral initiatives, backed by a host of member countries in Africa, not ‘the result of an agreement between Paris and London alone’.410 The challenge was therefore to provide useful joint projects that would not be seen as imperial hangovers and that would not stimulate French ‘sensitiveness’411 to pan-regional cooperation in Africa – and indeed, Commonwealth Foundation Director John Chadwick was still reporting in January 1979 on ‘the machinations of the Quai’412 in order to dominate the ACCT and multilateral activities. Although proposed changes sought to erode remnants of the imperial past, the further institutionalisation of the ACCT ran counter to Ahidjo’s diplomatic choices. Canadian proposals for the ACCT to widen the scope of its multilateral development initiatives also met with strong resistance within the organisation. French opposition was particularly clear. As the French Ambassador in Ottawa reported, there was a fundamental difference in French and Canadian objectives for the ACCT. Canadians took a wide-ranging approach to ACCT work and sought to include all forms of

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development assistance in the multilateral programmes of the Francophone network. By contrast, the French remained adamant that the ACCT should focus on multilateral actions that promoted the French language specifically: other bilateral and multilateral structures provided development assistance to Africa and it would be counter-productive, irrelevant and dangerous to go much beyond linguistic objectives.413 Commonwealth officials who came into contact with French officials and programmes underlined France’s reluctance to countenance horizontal multilateral cooperation. Commonwealth correspondence from the early 1970s shows the extent to which France was seen as a problematic actor in Africa. Victor Kyaruzi, a Tanzanian doctor who headed the Commonwealth Secretariat Medical Division and was the Commonwealth representative at Niamey in 1970 was particularly suspicious of all French activities, from financial assistance to cultural programmes, which in effect impinged on the independence of Francophone Africa. ‘Any agreement reached without’ the French, he recalled from his UNICEF days, ‘could not be fulfilled’.414 Tensions over the Village du Benin were seen as evidence that multilateralism was not truly favoured by the French. In 1968, Togo had launched the Village du Benin project in Lomé, ‘a centre for cultural, and handicraft activities’ that was meant to gather Africans from across the Benin region and promote Anglophone–Francophone links through a focus on their common ancient African culture. The centre was financed by Togo, Canada and the ACCT, but essentially by the French, who promptly put the emphasis on language teaching and French culture. Commonwealth Secretariat officials reported that the Coopération was particularly opposed to multilateral schemes in Francophone Africa that were not subordinate to existing French programmes415 and that French Francophonie officials seemed content to interpret cooperation as the sending of observers at biannual meetings.416 The Franco-African summit of November 1973 aroused some interest within the Commonwealth Secretariat, as did Senghor’s proposal for a ‘Commonwealth à la française’. Some saw the suggestion of regular highlevel summits as the sign that multilateral consultation and cooperation would grow and particularly welcomed the proposal to hold ‘regular toplevel trans-regional consultations’.417 But there was no immediate prospect that the Francophone world would bring about any organisation approaching the Commonwealth. As Ahidjo’s government had realistically assessed, relations with France were the defining component in the nature and function of Franco-African meetings. Whether the closed circle of Franco-African relations would be extended to other spheres seemed equally uncertain. By the end of 1974, Commonwealth officials remained concerned about the latent antagonism

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between France and Anglophone Africans: while they thought that France remained suspicious of Anglophone – and particularly Nigerian – domination in the region, they also feared that ACCT projects, which excluded Guinea for instance, were equally suspicious to a number of Commonwealth Africans.418 Around the same time, British diplomats noted ‘the depth of cultural interdependence’ between West Africa and France, which the French were most happy to nurture.419 France did show increasing interest in Commonwealth West Africa. Even in military cooperation did French officials consider that the realities of the continent as a whole needed to be taken into account, if not materially and financially, at least theoretically and strategically, when programmes were devised.420 But France did not suddenly open to multilateral Commonwealth proposals. Incidents over the Village du Benin project, which had become operational in the summer of 1972,421 demonstrated this. Tensions surfaced when the French initially opposed the presence of Commonwealth officials at a Village du Benin meeting in May 1975. The meeting, however, seemed to appease exaggerated suspicions on both sides,422 and in April 1976 the CFTC offered up to 100 scholarships for Commonwealth teachers and students, and also recruited a university lecturer from Ghana.423 It was a cautious and slow evolution but relations were being remodelled. The Village du Benin proved valuable in offering French language training for Anglophones but its impact went beyond that. Dan Dicko himself was influential in supporting indigenous African cultures against ‘cultural imperialism’424 and he suggested that English courses might also be made available to teachers and students of English from Francophone West and Central Africa.425 By September 1974, 709 people from Commonwealth West Africa had attended the summer courses – including 550 from Nigeria – and it was ‘recommended that CFTC Education and Training awards should be tenable in Francophone countries of West Africa’.426 Both Nigeria and Ghana had expressed clear intentions to spread the use of French within their diplomatic service.427 The Commonwealth Secretariat noted ‘the impatience of the leaders of the various countries to communicate better with their neighbours in as many ways as possible’.428 These plans featured on Dankoulodo Dan Dicko and Arnold Smith’s agenda in 1974 and both Secretaries General gave their backing to cooperation429 – Sonny Ramphal would also insist on the importance of facilitating West African cooperation in his new role as Secretary General after 1975.430 As new multilateral initiatives flourished, British diplomats seem to have doubted Cameroon’s influence in international diplomacy. Admittedly, they acknowledged a number of successful manoeuvres in African diplomacy. The American Ambassador on Yaoundé in the mid 1970s believed that because of

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their national diversity, Cameroonians ‘had become natural diplomats’,431 as their involvement in the OAU or the UN demonstrated. In early 1973, Ahidjo was among the African leaders who opposed the transfer of the OAU headquarters to Cairo and the condemnation of Israel before the OAU summit in May 1973,432 refused to demand Israel’s expulsion from the UN in 1975 but instructed the Cameroonian delegation to vote for Resolution 3379, identifying Zionism with racism, despite pressure from France and other Western powers to the contrary.433 Ahidjo acted as a mediator in the border dispute between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea in mid 1974.434 Cameroon was also chosen as ‘one of the three African members of the Paris Conference on International Economic Cooperation’.435 William Eteki Mboumoua was elected as Secretary General of the OAU on 15 June 1974 to succeed his Cameroonian predecessor in the post. Britain attributed the fact that OAU Secretaries General between February 1973 and July 1978 were Cameroonian nationals to Ahidjo’s diplomatic skills.436 American Ambassador C. Roberts Moore, for whom Cameroon was his last post, stated his admiration for Ahidjo, who acted ‘without fanfare’.437 On the whole, what stood out was Cameroon’s moderation on most issues. Mouelle Kombi thus considers that William Eteki Mboumoua was elected because the Somalian and the Zambian candidates represented white and black Africa respectively.438 French diplomats also noted Cameroon’s attempts to have a ‘moderating influence’439 in Africa and seemed to acknowledge that the country was, as official Cameroonian rhetoric had it, ‘a microcosm of the African continent’.440 However, British diplomats increasingly interpreted moderation as lack of influence, deviousness or immobilism. The result was that Cameroon was not considered as an essential country for the promotion of British interests in Africa. While Given had seen Cameroon’s moderation at the UN as the sign that it ‘clearly wanted to be seen as a natural African leader, bridging the gap between English and French speakers’,441 there were doubts that this was a realistic task. Ahidjo’s ‘balancing act between East and West, between Anglophones and Francophones and between Arabs and Israelis’, as one FCO official called it, would surely meet its limits. The Cameroonian President would not be able to ‘go on forever and he must climb down, slip or be pushed off one day’.442 Saunders described Cameroon’s diplomacy in damning terms when reviewing events a year later. ‘In international affairs’, Saunders asserted, ‘Cameroon will hop from one side of the fence to the other and sit on it when appropriate. And when there is no fence she will erect one and sit on it in the hope of not impaling herself in the process’.443 A year later, reports from the West African Department at the FCO similarly emphasised Cameroon’s apparent retreat from international affairs.444 Shortly before the ACCT summit in Mauritius in November 1975, and as plans were made for the Seychelles to become a member of both

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the ACCT and the Commonwealth, the Ahidjo government announced that it would become an associate member only and an agreement was drawn up.445 With limited voting rights,446 Cameroon would attend the General Conference, make a financial contribution based on that of other associate members and on activities carried out in Cameroon, propose items for the Conference agenda and receive a copy of all ACCT documents. Symbolically, Cameroon’s decision was highly significant. It made it possible for Ahidjo and his government to place Cameroon’s special status at the heart of political discourse.447 Cooperation with the ACCT focused on development rather than language: ‘Opération Sahel Vert’, which targeted the needs of young people; the promotion of rural communities; cooperation for new and renewable energies; and national languages in the central African region. Again, French directives in 1976 emphasised that there should be no ‘clumsy and rash reference to the francophonie and bodies’ which would question the government’s commitment to official bilingualism.448 Following his reelection as President in 1975, Ahidjo had taken the oath in English and this, the British Ambassador emphasised, should not be underestimated.449 National balance was said to be ‘fragile’ and it was in nobody’s interest to shake it further. When the Association of French-Speaking Mayors was formed in 1980, the mayors of Yaoundé and Douala were not allowed to join.450 But if association with, rather than full membership of, the ACCT went some way towards mending Anglophone–Francophone disparities, it also failed in two essential ways. First, it did not fully counter the prevailing international view that Cameroon was part of a wider Francophone community. At a time when Guinea, for instance, remained violently opposed to Francophone projects and likened Francophonie to the return of ‘the most abject slavery’,451 Cameroon’s decision to opt for association was fairly tame. Britain did acknowledge that Cameroon was in a category of its own. In July 1975, Given noted that the Cameroonian President was ‘a strong opponent of Francophonie[,] left OCAM because it smacked too much of the French colonial empire [and] refuse[d] to attend meetings of Francophone Heads of State’.452 But Cameroon had not in fact withdrawn from all OCAM bodies: it remained engaged in industrial protection, posts and telecommunications and the cultural institute, and this was a fact that both French and British diplomats were keenly aware of.453 The ambiguities in Cameroon’s posture meant that foreign partners also developed a complex, sometimes ambiguous and sometimes contradictory picture of what Cameroon sought. Attitudes within the Canadian administration showed this. The situation of the early 1970s,454 when Cameroon was ‘a full member of the Francophonie’,455 stuck in diplomatic memory. Canadian diplomats knew that Cameroon was different

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from other countries that had had a link with France: their own involvement in military assistance in the country, their most important operation after Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria, demonstrated this clearly.456 But linguistically, Cameroon remained primarily identified as Francophone. When the French Ambassador in Ottawa commented on MacEachen’s report of his West African tour in April 1975, he concluded that Canada had paid Anglophone and Francophone countries equal attention: no distinction was made between Cameroon, with its bilingual status, and Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Upper Volta.457 In 1977, a few months after Cameroon’s participation in a special session of the Francophone Parliamentary Association in New York, Canadian diplomats thought that associate membership had had virtually no impact. Francophonie matters, they argued, remained an essential part of bilateral relations between Canada and Cameroon.458 Cameroon was in fact listed as a member of ‘La Francophonie (L’Agence)’ in a confidential memo in 1978.459 Similar attitudes showed within the Commonwealth Secretariat. In the brief for the Secretary General’s visit to the ACCT in 1976, Cameroon appeared in the list of members, with no indication that it was only an associated member: the single country to appear under ‘associated state’460 was Laos. Cameroon was also listed as a ‘Francophone country’ in the Director of the Commonwealth Foundation’s African journey report in May 1977.461 Secondly, Cameroon’s retreat from the ACCT coincided with ACCT– Commonwealth plans to reinforce cooperation, as promoted, for instance, by Dan Dicko at the May 1975 Conference of African Ministers of Culture at Freetown.462 One Commonwealth official saw Cameroon’s exit from Air Afrique and OCAM as evidence of a ‘tendency to sever or to weaken the existing arrangements with France and’ – and this is absolutely essential – ‘therefore with the other Francophone members’.463 Cameroon’s choices were rightly seen to resist French supremacy but they also doubted the value of multilateralism, thereby making it a rather unlikely partner for the Commonwealth. In early 1975, it was agreed that the Secretaries General should meet annually, ‘alternately in London and in Paris’. On the report of the May discussions, Chief Anyaoku had added a handwritten note on 1 June endorsing the suggestion wholly and pressing officials to ‘maintain the contacts’.464 Both organisations were keenly aware of their shoe-string budgets and three priority areas were identified for useful cooperation: ‘education and training; youth; and health’.465 As the Director of the Foundation put it a few years later, the objective was to concentrate on ‘grass-roots projects’ which would ensure that ‘the maximum impact [could] be made with the minimum of funds’.466 Demands for language programmes that would provide better communication between Anglophone and Francophone Africans stemmed

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from a number of key considerations: political, as it would contribute to overcome the remnants of Africa’s colonial division and facilitate diplomatic negotiations; commercial, as business across African regions would be carried out more easily; and cultural, hopefully providing for better understanding between neighbouring countries.467 As P.D. Snelson at the Commonwealth Secretariat noted, ‘until such time as language barriers have been overcome, opportunities for co-operation in other fields are inevitably restricted’.468 The Mauritius Institute of Bilingualism thus became a key centre of interest. The Education Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat and the CFTC discussed possible cooperation and the item was put on the agenda for the ACCT–Commonwealth meeting in 1976.469 Finances for limited, yet targeted and efficient, collaboration between Commonwealth and ACCT were also made available through the Commonwealth Foundation, with a £50,000 fund voted in July 1977 to enable Commonwealth Africans to attend relevant seminars and conferences in Francophone Africa.470 Cameroon was part of the overall scheme and £2,400 was provided by the Foundation to enable Commonwealth members to attend a meeting of the executive committee of the African Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology there in June 1978.471 Dan Dicko had also sought Secretariat assistance for afforestation projects between Cameroon and Nigeria.472 In July 1977, a further £5,000 grant was also made to the Pan-African Institute over a two-year period starting in January 1978. In the short term however, relations between the Commonwealth and Cameroon remained limited to the Pan-African Institute in Buea and the Foundation, not the Secretariat or the Heads of State.

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CONCLUSION

On the eve of the UN plebiscites, Cameroon’s imagined reunification had been predicated on the double rejection of the French Community and the Commonwealth of Nations. Irrelevant at best, they would more likely be a hazard for Cameroon’s two fundamental objectives: independence and national unity, based on political stability and economic development. As the Lomé Convention of 1975 brought into closer contact ex-French and exBritish territories in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, the multilateral legacies of the Franco-British period remained a highly complex question for Cameroon’s nation-building. Little discussed in public spheres, they were handled with care in political and diplomatic circles. At a time when Canada was stepping up its dynamic drive for multilateral empowerment, Cameroon’s position seemed dangerously ambivalent: out of a buoyant Commonwealth, out of an extinct French Community, Cameroon still retained an associate link with the ACCT. Why it did, and why this was potentially damaging, finds some explanation in the difficult dialogue between the French and British worlds and the intersecting but fundamentally distinct decolonisation processes at work in the respective spheres of influence of France and Britain. The territorial and political divisions of Cameroon’s reunification had largely subsided by 1975 as a centralised government in Yaoundé ruled over the United Republic of Cameroon, and as Ahidjo, the leader of the unified party, was repeatedly re-elected President with virtual unanimity. Neither France nor Britain was the cause of this but the dynamics of their triangular relations with Cameroon certainly favoured these evolutions. For the successive French governments, three major and mutually reinforcing objectives prevailed: the promotion of the French language and French culture; the maintenance of economic dominance, partly through high levels of bilateral and EEC assistance which buttressed France’s commercial interests in return; and the capacity to exercise political influence in bilateral relations and within international organisations. The Cameroonian ‘bridge’ was essentially

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interpreted as a choice avenue for the deployment of French influence – political, economic, linguistic and cultural – into a former British territory, well into the 1980s.1 By contrast, British objectives in Cameroon throughout the period were less clearly defined. Cameroon was a unique case: a former territory, it was not part of the Commonwealth but unlike Somaliland or the Sudan, it had become part of a State that had joined France’s privileged sphere in Africa. That Cameroon had rejected the French Community mattered little in British eyes. Its absence from the original grouping was made less important as the French Community was transformed into a set of bilateralcooperation agreements between France and the Community States which were virtually identical to Franco-Cameroonian agreements. Cameroon’s parallel inclusion in the UAM, OCAM and the successive Yaoundé Conventions proved that it ‘belonged’ to the French mouvance. It was not the fact that Cameroon was neither French Community nor Commonwealth that guided British interpretations: it was that it was neither foreign nor Commonwealth, which in reality muddled, more often than it guided, British policy and diplomacy towards Cameroon. To transpose Churchill’s three circles, British relations with Cameroon obeyed a complex balance between two other sets of relations: relations with France and relations with the Commonwealth, which was favoured over Cameroon and had to be favoured or risk collapsing for seeming irrelevant. Relations with Europe certainly mattered but essentially through France and only to a limited extent. The successive British applications to the EEC and eventual membership only marginally influenced British policies in Cameroon: the FO views on imperial preference remained unchanged, even after de Gaulle’s veto; Franco-British relations on African affairs between 1967 and 1970 suffered far more from the strain of the Nigerian civil war than they did from the second veto; and the prospect and reality of EEC membership in 1973 encouraged much reflection but resulted in limited actions. Throughout the period, British diplomacy in Cameroon suffered from a fundamental division between interest-driven policies and sentiment-oriented appeals. The early years of the Federation had prolonged the imbalance of the trusteeship years: as Ahidjo remained on good terms with French politicians and diplomats, tensions between British officials and KNDP politicians, including Foncha, led to mutual suspicions and reinforced Britain’s belief that political stability and economic development in Cameroon would be guaranteed by a strong federal centre, not by the periphery. France’s early dominance among Cameroon’s external partners meant that Britain had few motives for increasing its own presence. There was little economic interest to be gained, unless the accepted Franco-British commercial rivalry that existed in Africa was to become much more aggressive, and Cameroon

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offered few resources worth the challenge. There was little political leverage to be obtained, unless far more development assistance was given. British Ambassadors did repeatedly argue with Whitehall for greater levels of assistance to Cameroon because of Britain’s shared past with the country but to little avail in most cases. There was never any attempt to undermine the French position in Cameroon2 – something which French officials were very much aware of. But it was less fear of upsetting the French that influenced refusals than the brutal assessment that greater assistance would deliver no comparative advantage for British interests in the country or the region. The fine balance that was sometimes achieved in Franco-British discussions between the FO, later the FCO, in London and the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, was repeatedly shaken on the ground in Cameroon. Cooperation remained a prospect that the greater resources of the French Embassy, the activities of the Coopération and the private and public ties of the Franco-African networks made difficult to achieve. By 1975, France remained Cameroon’s primary partner by far and according to the Quai d’Orsay, French politics had few secrets for Ahidjo, who organised his timetable around France-Inter radio programmes.3 There was, however, one area where French intentions had not been secured: Cameroon’s inclusion in France’s privileged multilateral bodies. Diplomatic relations over the period also show marked differences between policy intentions and policy outcomes, and France’s inability to draw Cameroon into its inner circle proves Cameroon’s influence on FrancoBritish relations. Throughout the period, reports from British posts in key Francophone African countries, Senegal or the Ivory Coast, painted a much stronger French presence than Yaoundé reports did. The French factor was definitely a major concern for British decision-makers but their French counterparts also gave greater importance to the British factor in Cameroon than they did elsewhere in Francophone Africa – where, in any case, there was often no resident British representative. In some cases, as linguistic policies in the mid 1960s in West Cameroon show, the British factor actually led to more forceful French policies, in a strong drive to extend French influence over the territory. By the end of the period, however, French politicians and diplomats had realised that overplaying their shared past with Cameroon and emphasising Franco-African networks would be counterproductive and risk alienating the Ahidjo government. There is a clear coincidence between Cameroon’s national territorial integration after 1972 and its retreat from all high-level summits where the French or Francophone component could be interpreted as the determining common factor. Cameroon’s approach to the UAM had been cautious and Ahidjo’s government had taken Cameroon out of OCAM in July 1973, refused to attend the Franco-African summits which began in

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November 1973 and recurring discussions over the organisation of high-level summits between ACCT leaders led to Cameroon’s partial withdrawal from the organisation. Cameroon’s caution towards high-level summit diplomacy cannot be attributed to any momentous change in linguistic balance. As literacy improved, Cameroon became increasingly francophone, as the number of bilingual Cameroonians seemed to increase more among Anglophones4 and the absence of a dominant African language guaranteed the permanence of French and English as official languages.5 By 1975, Cameroon was sending more students to France than any other African country and Radio France International was recording its best ratings there.6 Nor can Cameroon’s caution be attributed to any British counter-influence, at a time when there was no renewed interest that Cameroonians could perceive, as Ahidjo’s regular but unfruitful appeals to the British to improve their level of assistance showed. In 1976, the British Ambassador in Yaoundé made it clear to the Cameroonians and the French that there was no ‘competition’7 between them and there would be no British emulation of French programmes – which was also true at the regional level where, as British Ambassadors in the region and the Permanent Undersecretary at the FCO firmly believed, French influence would not be eroded in the short term.8 In his public declarations, Ahidjo largely attributed his distance from Francophone multilateral high-level diplomacy to its similarity with Commonwealth diplomacy. Horizontal cooperation on technical matters as an ACCT associate member was deemed acceptable9 but political discussions that seemed to copy the Commonwealth model could not be envisaged. A ‘passive’10 policy, the French Ambassador in Yaoundé in 1979 stated, had been adopted as the best possible solution. When the Ambassador attempted to sound out Ahidjo on Francophone summits, emphasising that Quebec would not be invited, the Cameroonian President refused to engage in conversation on the matter and made clear that Cameroon’s Anglophone component precluded participation, in any form whatsoever.11 Ahidjo reiterated the same position to Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark, on his first visit to Cameroon in July 1979.12 Three years earlier, addressing the French press on a visit to ACCT Secretary General Dankoulodo Dan Dicko in Paris, Commonwealth Secretary General Shridath Ramphal had drawn attention to Mauritius, Seychelles and Canada, ‘the three countries that [were] members of both organisations’.13 In principle, Cameroon could also have been in this category. But it was not. Unlike Mauritius, Cameroon remained out of the Franco-African summits and did not even attend as an observer, as the Seychelles did. Neither Cameroon’s Franco-British heritage nor its relatively limited means, therefore, can fully account for Cameroonian policies. Throughout the period, Cameroon’s diplomacy seems to have been influenced

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by the two convictions that had formed in the early months of the Cameroun Republic: that the UPC tenets of independence and reunification would have to be appropriated and that Britain and the Commonwealth, who had supported union with Nigeria, were not to be fully trusted and would generate divisions and exclusions, as had happened with the Northern Cameroons. In May 1961, the first British Ambassador to Cameroon had admitted ‘that “the Commonwealth” was a dirty word in the Cameroun Republic’14 and it seems to have left persistent traces in the minds of the first generation of Cameroonian leaders. The ambivalence which the Ahidjo government displayed in its relations with French and British circles therefore stems in large part from the fundamentally conflictual nature of both the independence of the Republic of Cameroun and the reunification of the Cameroons. At the time of the negotiations for reunification, the cooperation which prevailed between France and Britain certainly had an influence over proceedings – prospective EEC membership, cold war concerns, the transfer of power to friendly elites who would guarantee political stability and access to resources and markets were common concerns which France, who had stronger links with the greater part of the territory, seemed better able to manage. But it is equally certain that the UN’s decision to dissociate the end of the trusteeship in the British and French Cameroons contributed to giving both the Ahidjo government and de Gaulle’s France a level of influence that they could not have otherwise mustered. Three fundamental differences in British and French policies after independence accentuated this trend. First, Britain was much more reluctant than France to get directly involved in the internal affairs of its former territories after independence. British correspondence shows that there was no attempt by Britain to provide strong political support to West Cameroon as harmonisation processes began. Policies were devised with federal unity as the defining perimeter, even though actual programmes rather focused on West Cameroon itself, and after 1972, with the United Republic in mind. Secondly, the multilateral projects which emerged with independence rested on very different geographic and economic concerns. Africa was France’s primary focus while British attention was drawn to other places, including the vast South Asian sub-continent. Until 1975, the French and British spheres of economic, financial and commercial interests remained essentially separate, in EEC/ACP and Commonwealth circles. Cameroon’s temporary enjoyment of imperial preference was exceptional in this respect. The OAU provided a continental political forum but only after 1975 would the combined influences of ACP association, stronger regional bodies, an increasingly diverse Commonwealth and ACCT begin to open up the divides that the colonial era had imposed. But even then, past patterns held fast. In the late 1970s,

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British officials considered that there was a certain yet very slow extension of French interests towards non-Francophone Africa but not really outside Africa. The French ‘remain[ed] very much attached to the Euro-Africa concept as part of their geo-political approach to foreign relations’15 and little inclined to extending EEC trade and aid relations beyond the confines of the Lomé Convention.16 In parallel, France’s focus on Africa was combined with a strong reliance on bilateral assistance while Britain provided more to the United Nations Development Programme or the World Bank.17 Not only was French assistance in Cameroon greater but it was also more visible. Cameroon’s drive for unity did not foster Franco-British joint actions but it did bring the two European neighbours to survey the motives and impact of their policies in comparative perspective, and diverging levels and patterns of assistance were a recurrent item in British reports. Finally, France and Britain held very different views of their respective languages. Utilitarian for Britain, English was a means for direct and efficient cooperation within the Commonwealth and with an increasing number of other countries and there was little emphasis on British culture as such. By 1975, the Singapore Declaration had proved Commonwealth diversity in the interpretation of key values – democracy, human rights, equality, free trade and development – and a number of military coups and human rights violations in several Commonwealth member states had demonstrated the fragility of inherited Westminster models. By contrast, language was both a means and an end to France and firmly linked to the expansion of French culture. Interference in Canada’s domestic affairs, conflict with ACCT partners over the objectives of the association and with the Commonwealth over AACT– Commonwealth joint projects, were evidence that Francophone multilateralism would not simply be about using French for other practical ends. There have often been comparisons between Canada and Cameroon, as the Franco-British period resulted in official bilingualism and the need for the state to balance Anglophone and Francophone interests. Canada’s engagement with Cameroon after 1962, firmly grounded in its capacity for economic assistance and its political aura in Africa as a middle power who had never practised colonialism abroad, had no territorial ambitions and made a point of steering clear of US18 initiatives, brought clear comparative advantage to Ottawa. Successive Ambassadors highlighted fundamental goodwill as Canada seemed to break the duality of Franco-Cameroonian and Anglo-Cameroonian relations and place national unity at the heart of political discourse. By 1975 however, the Canadian model differed from Cameroon in essential ways. First, political unity after 1972 rested on two distinct dynamics: Canada’s federal system remained firmly entrenched at a time when political power in Cameroon was centralised on one single

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national assembly. When Ahidjo visited Canada in 1968 and 1970, political discourse had emphasised institutional comparisons but this could no longer be the case. Second, the nature of the linguistic minorities differed, which had a double impact on their relations. On the level of mental representation, both countries emphasised their multiple heritage, and sought to gain international influence from it, as forming bridges between cultures, and harmony between Anglophones and Francophones was a strong domestic motive behind their international policies. Canada’s privileged relations with Cameroon derived directly from the 1960 pledge and reunification. Outside the Commonwealth yet with intrinsic connections with the British world, Cameroon was an ideal partner for the Canadian Federal Government in Ottawa to demonstrate to its Francophone communities that international relations went beyond Commonwealth circles. Patterns of Canadian involvement in Cameroon between 1960 and 1975 also demonstrate that Ahidjo’s diplomacy with France and Britain opened a clear space for Canada. France was extremely present, and Canadians very much took the French factor into account, but less so than in the Francophone countries in the region. As for Britain, not only was it far less present but officials in Whitehall and in Cameroon itself had always welcomed, and even encouraged, Canadian relations with Yaoundé. Unlike France and Britain, Canada had no connection with the power struggles of Cameroon’s birth. Canadian policies in Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s stemmed directly from the need to keep a firm leash on Quebec in external affairs. Again, Ahidjo’s management of diplomatic relations, whether in national, regional, African or international circles, proved to Ottawa that he was a valuable ally against separatist forces. In return, the balance which Canada attempted to strike between Anglophone and Francophone Africa19 was extremely valuable for the Ahidjo Government. It meant that bilateral relations with Canada did not force Cameroon into ambiguous post-colonial spheres of influence. When it seemed on the verge of doing so, as in ACCT circles in 1975, Canadian proposals were firmly rejected without any apparent negative consequence for bilateral relations. There was none of the neo-colonial spectre that engagement with France raised and none of the fears that relations with Britain might foster particularist sentiments. There remained, however, a sizeable gap between Canadian discourse and practice in Cameroon. If Canada was a valuable means of emphasising harmony in principle, on the level of diplomatic representation, it favoured Francophones in practice. While repeated references were made to their common bilingualism, two other features characterised Canadian relations with Cameroon: it was outside the Commonwealth and predominantly Francophone. Cameroon used the Canadian connection for its bilingualism and Anglophone majority,

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but Canada saw the Cameroonian connection as an essentially Francophone affair, within a more diverse whole. The visit of Prime Minister Joe Clark in July 1979 was a public success but in the practical realities of diplomatic business, virtually all Canadian representatives in Cameroon at the beginning of the 1980s remained Francophone Québécois.20 Diplomatic developments over the period also highlight the persistent obstacles from the colonial period that multilateral associations faced. The Commonwealth of Nations had only had limited success in projecting its momentous evolutions out of its own circles. In Senegal, Senghor’s interest in the organisation had emerged in the 1950s and was not purely the direct consequence of the creation of the Secretariat, of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings, of the Singapore Declaration or of the multiple initiatives for development. Commonwealth values still awaited the mechanisms that would truly support them throughout the association. From Yaoundé, Ahidjo saw Commonwealth meetings as the equivalent of Franco-African summits, pursuing in 1977 the comparison first made in 1960 between the Commonwealth and the French Community. In a press interview, Ahidjo announced that he would not attend Franco-African summits for the sake of national balance: just as ‘he did not attend Commonwealth meetings so he avoided those organised by metropolitan France’.21 Ahidjo’s public comment prompted a FCO official to scribble on the press report: ‘An odd excuse. President A. does not attend Commonwealth meetings because Cameroon is not a member of the Commonwealth!’ What was at least as remarkable was the shadow that Franco-African relations cast on interpretations of the Commonwealth in Cameroon. Ahidjo had rejected Franco-African summits because they gave France disproportionate prominence and seemed to replicate the French empire in Africa. They also brought out the Franco-African core of the ACCT, at a time when the ACCT was yet to evolve into the diverse organisation it has become in the early 21st century. Had there been ACCT high-level summits in 1975, the indefinite duplication of Franco-African relations, bilaterally with cooperation agreements and in collective bodies (EEC/ACP, Franco-African summits, ACCT) would have gained both greater weight and greater visibility. This interpretation was translated to Commonwealth mechanisms, giving Britain in the Commonwealth a similar place and role to that of France in its own spheres. There was in fact no such equivalent. Britain was, admittedly, the focus of most political discussions at Commonwealth summits over the period but there were at least two major differences. First, there had never been – and have still never been – Anglo-African summits, and Commonwealth gatherings had always placed Anglo-African relations within a much broader international context. Second, Anglo-African affairs in the

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Commonwealth context generated divisions, not the intimacy and cohesion displayed by the elite of the Franco-African networks. Both Labour and Conservative governments faced attacks against their policies in Southern Africa or against their immigration laws. Commonwealth dynamics, however, point to another fundamental difference in French and British circles over the period. Unlike the strategies behind the independence proclamations in French Africa in 1960, the more disparate pace of independence proclamations in British Africa put decolonisation processes and Britain’s co-existing roles as a colonial power and a Commonwealth partner at the centre of Commonwealth scrutiny. Rhodesia’s UDI in 1965 and apartheid in South Africa meant that by 1975 Commonwealth political discussions still focused on the strategies for liberation, for the overthrow of all forms of colonialism. Although issues of dependence, power and influence pervaded the realities of Franco-African relations, the elite was in a better position to present a cohesive front to a variety of audiences. Intersections between France and Britain, public and private spheres of power, bilateral and multilateral diplomacy undoubtedly weighed on Cameroon’s conception of what the Commonwealth was. Discussions at Franco-African and Commonwealth summits held one common characteristic for Ahidjo: they placed France and Britain in the limelight. The Commonwealth in the mid 1970s, however, cannot be considered purely in terms of state relations and points to a distinct and highly important evolution in diplomatic relations: the slow but palpable emergence of non-governmental links. The first form of cooperation between reunified Cameroon and the post-1965 Commonwealth occurred through PAID in Buea and the Commonwealth Foundation in 1971. The successive small grants that were awarded to the PAID on an exceptional basis show how trans-national non-governmental exchanges provided favourable grounds for horizontal cooperation after 1975, at a time when bilaterally, AngloCameroonian relations ‘continued to lack substance’22 and Ahidjo’s moderation on the international stage seemed to give his Senegalese and Ivorian counterparts a rather more important place in British policies in nonCommonwealth Africa.23 Between January and April 1977, the Director of the Commonwealth Foundation travelled across Africa, including nonCommonwealth Africa – visiting Gabon, Togo, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Reunion, Madagascar and Cameroon.24 While this followed from the initial phases of ACCT–Commonwealth cooperation projects, it signalled the increasingly outward perspective adopted by the Foundation. Most importantly, the Director of the Foundation reported on the strong support of the Cameroonian authorities for the PAID and saw it as an incentive for the Foundation to continue its limited funding of pan-African projects.

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The Director did see Cameroon as part of Francophonie, but thought that ‘[g]iven the support of the Cameroun Government for the Institute and of the location of the latter in a still predominantly English-speaking area of la francophonie, continuing Foundation involvement in this work could prove a useful, practical example of professional cooperation across the historical and language frontiers’.25 His visit to Yaoundé revealed the interest of Government departments, from Health to Education and Information and Agriculture, in ‘anglo/francophone professional cooperation[,] whether promoted through the Agence de Coopération in Paris or “bilaterally” between the Republic and the Commonwealth Foundation’. Meetings with the various departments were organised by the Cameroonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, displaying governmental support for professional initiatives. University members were particularly keen to become involved in transnational exchanges with Commonwealth Africa, and room for cooperation was mentioned in journalism, forestry and fisheries, medical research and agro-industrial expertise. Recommending that funds should be earmarked for Francophone–Anglophone cooperation in Africa, the Commonwealth Foundation identified three essential partners: the Commonwealth Foundation, the ACCT and CIDA.26 This combination, based on multilateral professional exchanges, and on present realities rather than sentimentally charged legacies, offered new perspectives to Cameroon, with its support of the PAID, its association with the ACCT and its privileged relations with Canada. In 1989, Cameroon jointly applied for full membership of the ACCT and membership of the Commonwealth,27 secured in 1991 and 1995 respectively. The transition from Ahmadou Ahidjo to Paul Biya at the head of the Cameroonian state, the economic crisis of the 1980s, the rise of aid conditionality, the dismantling of apartheid and the ending of the cold war, the rise of democratic movements, multipartism and evolving Anglophone–Francophone dynamics in Cameroon as multilateral organisations themselves sought to adapt and redefined their identity, all deserve scrutiny in assessing Cameroon’s 1989 decision and the timing of admissions. What can be underlined here, however, is that the agreement which PAID in Buea and CFTC signed in 1986 to promote agricultural and rural development28 rested on the first trans-national endeavours of the early 1970s. In the autumn of 1977, Nicholas Henderson, the British Ambassador in Paris, advised Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary David Owen that it was now ‘time to consult more closely about [French and British] respective interests in Africa, which no longer conflict’.29 This was an uncanny echo of his French counterpart in London who, 17 years before, had also claimed that

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‘there no longer [was], at the governmental level, any Franco-British rivalry in Africa’.30 Similarly, FCO recommendations to the High Commissioner in Lagos31 to consult with his French colleague partly revived memories of the early 1970s. Writing about the Saint-Malo Summit of 1998 and FrancoBritish relations in Africa in the early 21st century, Tony Chafer and Gordon Cumming have underlined five major changes that have favoured partnership: ‘the end of the Cold War[,] a “new generation” of African leaders[,] the shift in the way that the EU has engaged with the continent[,] the election in the UK of a reformist Labour government [and] the election in France of Lionel Jospin’s modernising socialist government’.32 In parallel, however, they have identified, among many other factors behind the persisting limits to Franco-British cooperation, ‘divergent national interests, institutional constraints’, ‘internal divisions’ and ‘lack of trust’.33 In the current concerns for governance and human rights,34 they have also outlined the systematic failure of France and Britain to promote joint actions by the Commonwealth and the OIF, the successor of the ACCT. This is fundamental and relations over Cameroon in the initial years of the ACCT demonstrate both how entrenched these perceptions are but also how different the Commonwealth and Francophone circles were and remain. Commonwealth tradition, firmly rooted in high-level political activity and conflictual relations with the former imperial centre, contrasts sharply with the African-led promotion of a consensual Francophone body of cooperation. Franco-British relations in Cameroon between 1959 and 1975 underline the importance of bringing multilateral and trans-national networks, governmental and non-governmental, into the study of decolonisation processes, beyond UN and OAU diplomacy. Tying diplomacy to nation-building imperatives in reunified Cameroon gave fundamental importance to French and British multilateral legacies, within geographies that seemed rooted in the colonial era. Evolutions demonstrate that unless African initiatives rested on trans-national networks that specifically sought to break colonial divides and on non-governmental collaboration to feed into state relations, there could be no sustained renegotiation of the power structures and influences of European imperialism. The value of both the Commonwealth and the ACCT was that they broke the restrictive contours of Franco–British–African relations, albeit in different ways, while offering a common forum for cooperation and consultation. Cameroon’s choices in foreign policy and diplomacy were part of a drive for political hegemony, which had begun in the late period of the French mandate and took reunification in its stride. But the case of Cameroon between 1959 and 1975 shows that the nature and structure of Franco-British relations in West and Equatorial Africa also left little space for balanced relations with each European power and equally little space for

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any multilateral engagement with their respective sphere. In Canada, Mauritius and the Seychelles – the British had taken over from the French, a very different pattern from the territorial and temporal complexities of Cameroon’s history. The achievements and limits of joint projects across the Franco-British legacy demonstrate the greater attention that these intersections deserve, particularly as the turn of the 21st century has witnessed a rise in the number of joint Commonwealth–OIF members,35 Cameroon included, and each organisation has embarked on a profound redefinition of its objectives, strategies and partnerships. The history of their emergence, interaction and transformation provides avenues to understand what Frederick Cooper calls ‘the foreclosure of possibilities’ in the era of decolonisation, and to stimulate ‘cooperation across borders against the injustices of imperialism[,] for recognition of Africa’s contributions to global culture [and] activism across borders’ beyond the ‘gate-keeper state’.36 Engaging with Franco-British diplomatic legacies is therefore a crucial task, not only in the investigation of history but in the understanding of contemporary politics and in the making of relevant policies in a globalising world.

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M APS AND TABLES

Cameroon (shaded relief), 1975 (University of Texas, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

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The Commonwealth of Nations, 1960–1975: an expanding organisation

274

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The emerging Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT) and the Niamey Signatories (1970)

M APS

Maps.indd Sec4:275

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70 60

France

Canada

United Kingdom

Other donor countries

US$ millions

50 40 30 20 10 0 1964

1965

1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

Bilateral Overseas Development Assistance to Cameroon (1964–1975): marginal British connections, French dominance and growing Canadian presence (Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, International Statistics)

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M APS

US$ millions

0 Kenya Malawi Zambia Nigeria Botswana Uganda Tanzania Ghana Lesotho Swaziland Mauritius Gambia Sierra Leone Cameroon Mali* Congo/Zaire Cote d'Ivoire Senegal Madagascar

50

100

AND

TABLES

150

200

277 250

300

350

Commonwealth Non-Commonwealth * 92.3% of British assistance to Mali was given in 1974 & 1975 in food aid and for a water supply aid project, as the international community mobilised in reaction to the severe Sahel drought in the early 1970s (FCO 65/1606)

Cameroon in British bilateral aid to Africa, 1964–1975: first outside Commonwealth Africa (Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, International Statistics)

US$ millions

0

Tanzania Ghana Nigeria Niger* Botswana Senegal Cameroon Kenya Cote d'Ivoire Zambia Malawi Congo/Zaire Rwanda Benin Mali Uganda Togo Congo Braz. Burkina Faso Chad Mauritania Madagascar Gabon Guinea Swaziland Sierra Leone

20

40

60

80

100

120

Commonwealth Non-Commonwealth

* Canadian aid increased dramatically after 1970, as the Sahel drought hit Niger.

Canada’s bilateral development assistance to Africa, 1964–1975: balancing regions and linguistic spheres (Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, International Statistics)

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DIPLOMACY

US$ millions

0

50

AND 100

NATION-BUILDING 150

200

Senegal Ivory Coast Madagascar Cameroon Niger Chad Burkina Faso Gabon Congo Braz. CAR Mali Benin Congo/Zaire Togo Mauritania Rwanda Burundi Mauritius Ghana

250

IN

A FRICA 300

350

400

Francophone Africa Commonwealth

Cameroon in French bilateral aid to Africa, 1964–1975: a key state in Francophone spheres (Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, International Statistics)

3000 AAMS

US$ millions

2500

African Commonwealth

2000

1500

1000

500

0 EEC

France

UK

Distinct spheres, 1968: French, British and EEC trade with the Associated African and Malagasy States (AAMS) and the African Commonwealth, 1968 (Source: MAE (Nantes), Yaoundé (MCAC), 744PO/1/1)

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NOTES

Introduction 1. The National Archives (TNA), FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, London, 28–30 November 1967, 28 November. 2. Dozon, Jean-Pierre, ‘L’état français contemporain et son double, l’état franco-africain’, Foccart – Entre France et Afrique, Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques, 30, 2002, (last consulted 30 January 2010, http://ccrh.revues.org/index432.html). 3. TNA, FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, op. cit. 4. Elango, Lovett Z., The Anglo-French Condominium in Cameroon, 1914–1916 (Limbe, Navi-Group, 1987); Eyelom, Franklin, Le partage du Cameroun entre la France et l’Angleterre (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2003); Eyongetah, Mbuagbaw, Brain, Robert, A History of the Cameroon (London, Longman, 1974); Gaillard, Philippe, Le Cameroun (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1989); Kom, David, Les perspectives de la colonisation: Les trois colonisateurs du Cameroun, Allemagne, France, Grande-Bretagne (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2004); Njeuma, Martin ed., Introduction to the History of the Cameroon in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1989); Owona, Adalbert, La naissance du Cameroun 1884–1914 (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1996). 5. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential document, from W.J. Vosc, Yaoundé, 17 April 1970; by 1971, there were 4.7 million inhabitants in Est Cameroon and just over one million in West Cameroon, Archives Nationales (AN), AG/5(FPR)/33. 6. In this book, ‘Cameroun’ will refer to the independent Republic of Cameroun which existed between 1 January 1960 and 30 September 1961 and was the former French mandate. 7. See Joseph, Richard, Radical Nationalism in Cameroun: social origins of the U.P.C. rebellion (Oxford, New York, Clarendon Press, 1977); Joseph, Richard (ed), Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo (Enugu, Nigeria, Fourth Dimension Publishing Co. Ltd, 1978). 8. See Deltombe, Thomas, Domergue, Manuel, Tatsitsa, Jacob, Kamerun! Une guerre cache aux origines de la Françafrique (Paris, La Découverte, 2010).

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9. Awasom, Nicodemus, ‘Colonial Background to the Development of Autonomist Tendencies in Anglophone Cameroon: 1946–1961’, Journal of Third World Studies, XV:1 (1998), pp.163–184; Chem-Langhëë, Bongfen, The paradoxes of selfdetermination in the Cameroons under United Kingdom administration: the search for identity, well-being and continuity (Lanham, MD; Oxford, University Press of America, 2004); Fanso, Verkijika G., ‘Anglophone and Francophone nationalisms in Cameroon’, The Round Table, 350 (1999), pp.281–296; Ngoh, Victor Julius, Constitutional Developments in Southern Cameroons, 1946–1961: from trusteeship to independence (Yaoundé, CEPER, 1990); Ngoh, Victor Julius, Southern Cameroons, 1922–1961: a constitutional history (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000). 10. TNA, DO 195/137, Policy towards Africa South of the Sahara, paper approved at official level by the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, and Commonwealth Relations Office, August 1961. 11. Ahidjo spoke pidgin and understood English, but hardly ever expressed himself in English and was accompanied by an interpreter, see FCO13/625, ‘The role of English and French as languages of communication between Francophone and Anglophone Africa’, Interim Report, Carew Treggarne, Africa Educational Trust, June 1973. 12. Ruben Um Nyobé, Observations devant la Quatrième Commission, 1954, in Um Nyobé, Ruben, Le problème national kamerunais, (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1984), p.250. 13. Ministère des Affaires étrangères et européennes (MAEE), Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Voyage de M. l’Ambassadeur au Cameroun occidental, 25 November–4 December 1962. 14. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Cameroun) à Direction des Affaires africaines et malgaches (DAM), 28 December 1973. 15. Ibid. For diverging trends and pace in French and British decolonisation, see also Shipway, Martin, Decolonization and its Impact: a Comparative Approach to the End of Colonial Empires (Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007). 16. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Lignes intérieures – extérieures, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 January 1973. 17. Cruise O’Brien, Donald B., ‘The Show of State in a Neo-Colonial Twilight: Francophone Africa’, in J. Manor (ed), Rethinking Third World Politics, (New York, Praeger, 1991), p.158. 18. Epie, Alobwed, ‘The Concept of Anglophone Literature’ in Lyonga, Nalova, Breitinger, Eckhard, Butake, Bole (eds), Anglophone Cameroon Writing, (Bayreuth, Bayreuth African Studies 30, 1993), p.57. 19. Coleman, James S., Rosberg, Jr., Carl G. (eds), Political parties and national integration in tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), pp.8–9. 20. Khadiagala, Gilbert M., Lyons, Terrence, African Foreign Policies: power and process (Boulder, Co., Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc., 2001), p.5. 21. Chabal, Patrick, Power in Africa: an essay in political interpretation (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1992), p.146; Harbeson, John, Rothschild, Donald (eds), Africa in World Politics (Boulder, Westview Press, 1991). 22. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse, June 1976.

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23. Kofele-Kale, Ndiva, ‘Patterns of Political Orientations Toward the Nation: A Comparison of Rural-Urban Residents in Anglophone Cameroon’, African Social Research, 26, December 1978. 24. Zartman, I. William, ‘Decision-Making Among African Governments on InterAfrican Affairs’, Journal of Development Studies 2:2 (1966), p.116. 25. Oyono, Dieudonné, La politique africaine du Cameroun (1960–1985), Université de Lille III, 1989, p.22. 26. Zartman: ‘Decision-Making’, p.118. 27. Berman, Bruce, Lonsdale, John, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa, vol. II (London, James Currey, 1991). 28. Valuable press resources were accessible at the National Archives in Yaoundé and Buea but government papers remained limited and in some cases, impossible to access; see also Babani, S. ‘L’Etat et les Archives au Cameroun. Le cas des Archives Nationales de Yaoundé, 1952–2002: Aperçu historique et état des lieux’, Journal of Environment and Culture, 5:2 (2008), pp.79–89. Unless otherwise indicated, references to Cameroonian newspapers are from the National Archives of Cameroon (Yaoundé for newspapers in French, Buea for newspapers in English). 29. Information on the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT) was gathered from its public, non-confidential documents as well as from the rich correspondence and minutes received and kept in the Commonwealth, French and Canadian archives. The archives of the ACCT, however, remained unavailable. 30. See also Butler, L.J., Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a Post-Imperial World (London, I.B.Tauris, 2001), p.xiii, and Darwin, John, Britain and decolonisation, the retreat from empire in the post-war world (Basingstoke, Macmillan Education, 1988). 31. Khadiagala and Lyons: African Foreign Policies, p.3. 32. Library and Archives Canada (LAC), MG 331/E47/vol.38, Address by Mr S. Rajaratnam, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Commonwealth Seminar on ‘The Changing Patterns in the Organisation and Conduct of Foreign Policy’, Singapore Conference Hall, 9 March 1970. 33. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé), à MAE, 21 June 1960. 34. Mouelle Kombi, Narcisse, La politique étrangère du Cameroun (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1996), p.22. 35. AN, AG/5(FPU)/756, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 23 May 1962. Unless otherwise indicated, archives in French have been translated into English by the author. 36. Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.310. 37. TNA, FCO 65/1275, Briefs for Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, West African Department, 10 January 1973. 38. TNA, FCO 65/1841, A.E. Saunders, Cameroon: Annual review for 1975. 39. Ibid. 40. The National Archives of Cameroon (NAC), Annex (Buea), Ga (1963), 148, Prime Minister’s Office, Secretary General, Presidency, to Prime Minister of West Cameroon, 30 January 1969. 41. Zartman: ‘Decision-Making’, p.101.

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42. 21 March 1959, 19 March 1962, 10 March 1963, 29 June 1963, 14 October 1965, 22 September 1966 and 4 July 1968. On Ahidjo and De Gaulle, see also NAC (Annex), Buea, Ga/1969/5, Texte de la conférence de presse du chef de l’Etat à Bamenda, Yaoundé, 12 May 1969. 43. 4 September 1969, then 22 June 1974. 44. TNA, FO 371/187836, Letter from FO to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 23 March 1966. 45. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Pierre-Henri Dumont, chargé d’affaires, à DAM, 31 August 1973; see also RG71-F, 150, National Day of Cameroun, 18 October 1967. 46. TNA, FCO 65/978, Report ‘French policy in Black Africa’ from British Ambassador (Paris) to FO, May 1963. 47. MAEE, La Courneuve, Secrétariat Général, P11924, Cabinet du Secrétaire d’Etat à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 12 June 1965. 48. LAC, RG25, 9175, Relations France-Cameroun, 1972. 49. Foccart, Jacques, Dans les bottes du Général, Journal de l’Elysée III, 1969–1971 (Paris, Fayard/Jeune Afrique, 1999), p.190; Foccart, Jacques: La France pompidolienne, Journal de l’Elysée IV, 1971–1972 (Paris, Fayard/Jeune Afrique, 1998), p.192. 50. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 3 May 1974. 51. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 31 May 1974. 52. TNA, PREM 13/895, Letter from British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 19 October 1966. See also Chipman, John, French power in Africa (Oxford, Blackwell, 1989). 53. Chafer, Tony, ‘French African Policy in Historical Perspective’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 19, 2 (2001), p.167; see also Frederick Cooper’s analysis of General de Gaulle’s relation to Africa, through the distinction between French state and French nation, Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, London: University of California Press, 2005), p.153. 54. Relations between France and Cameroon were also supervised by the SGAAM, AN, AG/5(FPR)/153, Note de Jacques Foccart à l’Ambassadeur de France, Yaoundé, 26 May 1961. 55. MAEE, La Courneuve, Archives orales, AO29, entretien 4.1, entretien de Couve de Murville, 30 September 1987. 56. Médard, Jean-François, ‘La politique est au bout du réseau: questions sur la méthode Foccart’, Foccart – Entre France et Afrique, Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques, 30 (2002). 57. TNA, FCO 65/1176, Note on M. Jacques Foccart and French Policy in West Africa, 1970. 58. TNA, FCO 65/1176, J. de C. Ling to John Wilson (WAD), 14 November 1972. 59. MAEE, La Courneuve, Archives orales, AO29, entretien 4.1, entretien de Couve de Murville, 30 September 1987. 60. Aerts, Jean-Joël et al., L’économie camerounaise, un espoir évanoui, (Paris, Karthala, 2000), p.17. 61. Mama, Touna (ed), Crise économique et politique de déréglementation au Cameroun (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1996), p.142.

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62. Decree n° 59–887, 25 July 1959. 63. The other states were Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Dahomey, Gabon, Congo (Brazzaville), the Central African Republic and Madagascar. 64. Decrees n°66–60 and 66–70, 20 and 24 January 1966. 65. MAEE, La Courneuve, Archives orales, AO29, entretien 4.1, entretien de Couve de Murville, 30 September 1987. 66. TNA, FCO 65/906, Note from J.N.T. Spreckley to A.R. Thomas, ODA, 9 July 1971. 67. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Agenda on Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 22 February 1974. 68. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Agenda on Anglo-French talks on Africa, Paris, 2 December 1974. 69. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Mission de coopération et d’action culturelle, MCAC), 744/1/1, P. Décamps, Spécificité de la Coopération franco-africaine, 20 April 1974. 70. Cumming, Gordon, Aid to Africa: French and British policies from the Cold War to the new Millenium (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1995), p.71. See also Bangura, Yusuf, Britain and Commonwealth Africa: the politics of economic relations, 1951–75 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983), and Tomlinson, Jim, ‘The Commonwealth, the balance of payments and the politics of international poverty: British aid policy, 1958–1971’, Contemporary European History (2003), pp.413–429. 71. TNA, FCO 65/1176, Report ‘France and Africa’, John Wilson, West African Department, 29 September 1972. 72. TNA, FCO 65/1517, N. Aspin (FCO) to D. Kirkness (Overseas Development), 12 July 1974. 73. Ibid. 74. TNA, FCO 31/2195, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 24 July 1978. 75. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959. 76. TNA, FO 371/137959, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 21 February 1959. 77. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1976, Note sur la politique britannique en Afrique, 14 March 1960. 78. TNA, FO 371/137959, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 21 February 1959. 79. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note from A.D.M. Ross, 24 February 1959. 80. TNA, FO 371/137960, Record of meeting between the British and French Prime Ministers, 14 April 1959. 81. Kent, John, ‘The United States and the Decolonization of Black Africa, 1945–63’, in David Ryan and Victor Pungong (eds), The United States and Decolonization, Power and Freedom, (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), p.175; see also Ovendale, Richie, ‘Macmillan and the Wind of Change in Africa, 1957–1960’, The Historical Journal, vol.38, 2 (1995), p.462. 82. TNA, FO 371/137960, Message from H. Macmillan to General de Gaulle, 4 June 1959; see also P.F. de Zuleta to T.J. Bligh, 1 July 1959, PREM 11/2587, in R. Ovendale, op. cit., p.468. 83. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note from A.D.M. Ross, 24 February 1959. 84. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note 25 February 1959.

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85. TNA, FO 371/161371, Letter from British Embassy, Paris, to FO, 23 May 1962. 86. TNA, PREM 65/978, Report ‘French policy in Black Africa’ from British Ambassador, Paris, to FO, 6 May 1963. 87. TNA, PREM 13/895, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 20 November 1964. 88. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/247, Ambassade de France (Londres), Problèmes africains et relations franco-britanniques, 27 March 1965. 89. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/263, Note sur les conversations franco-britanniques, 23 March 1965. 90. TNA, FCO 65/1176, Report ‘France and Africa’, John Wilson, West African Department, 29 September 1972. 91. TNA, FCO 33/1376, Confidential note, ‘Anglo-French cooperation in Africa’, West African Department, 11 May 1971. 92. TNA, FCO 65/977, British High Commission (Ottawa) to FCO, 22 November 1971. 93. Decree 74–577, 6 June 1974. 94. Turpin, Frédéric, ‘Jacques Foccart et le secrétariat général pour les affaires africaines et malgaches’, Histoire@Politique, Politique, culture, société, 8 (2009), p.7. See also Mabilleau, Albert, Quantin, Patrick, ‘L’Afrique noire dans la pensée politique du Général de Gaulle’, in Lavroff, D.G. (ed), La politique africaine du Général de Gaulle (1958–1969) (Paris, A. Pédone, 1981), pp.53–74, and Nouaille-Degorce, Brigitte, ‘Les structures et moyens de la politique de coopération avec les Etats africains et malgache au sud du Sahara de 1958 à 1969’, in Lavroff: La politique africaine, pp.75–99. 95. Decree n°79–433, 1 June 1979. 96. TNA, FCO 65/1517, D. Kirkness (OD) to A. Campbell (FCO), 8 July 1974. 97. TNA, FCO 65/1881, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 22 July 1977. 98. TNA, FCO 65/1880, Visit of President Giscard D’Estaing of France, 12–13 December 1977, Brief by Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 7 December 1977. 99. TNA, FCO 33/2870, Annual Review from minister C.T.E. Ewart-Biggs, Paris. 100. TNA, FCO 65/1974, “President Giscard and Africa”, Nicholas Henderson to FCO, 23 June 1978. 101. TNA, FCO 65/1881, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 22 July 1977. 102. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/21, Note du Ministère des Affaires étrangères sur les grandes lignes de la politique française en Afrique, 6 July 1977. 103. Ibid. 104. Clarke, Michael, ‘The Foreign Policy System: A Framework for Analysis’, in Michael Clarke and Brian White (eds), Understanding Foreign Policy: the foreign policy systems approach, (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1989), p.27. 105. Khadiagala and Lyons: African Foreign Policies, pp.1–2. 106. Chafer: ‘French African Policy’, p.166.

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107. Turpin, Frédéric, ‘L’association Europe-Afrique: une ‘bonne affaire’ pour la France dans ses relations avec l’Afrique (1957–1975) ?’, in Marie-Thérèse Bitsch and Gérard Bossuat (eds), L’Europe unie et l’Afrique – de l’idée d’Eurafrique à la Convention de Lomé I, (Bruxelles, Groupe de Liaison des Historiens auprès des Communautés, 2005), p.359. 108. Clapham, Christopher, ‘Foreign Policy Making in developing states: a comparative approach’, in M. Schatzberg and I. W. Zartman (eds), The Political Economy of Cameroon (New York, Praeger, 1986), p.90. 109. N’Jeuma, Martin Z., ‘L’“idée de Cameroun” dans l’indépendance du Cameroun (1959–1961)’, in Ageron, Charles-Robert, Michel, Marc (eds), L’Afrique noire française: l’heure des indépendances (Paris, CNRS, 2010).

1

The Reunification Dialogues

1. TNA, FO 371/138263, British Embassy, Paris, to African Department, FO, 4 February 1959. 2. Le Vine, Victor, ‘Politics of Partition in Africa: The Cameroons and the Myth of Unification’, Journal of International Affairs, 18, 2, (1964). 3. TNA, FO 371/101391, E. Gibbons, British Commissioner, to Chief Secretary of the Government, Lagos, 8 October 1951. 4. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique-Levant, (Afrique)/Généralités, 49QONT/50, Notes préparatoires aux conversations franco-britanniques sur la coopération en Afrique, April 1952. 5. TNA, FO 371/101391, Colonial Office Memorandum, February 1952. 6. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique-Levant, (Afrique)/Généralités, 49QONT/50, Mémorandum destiné à M. le Ministre, Conversations franco-britanniques des 1er, 2 et 3 avril 1952, Questions politiques d’importance primordiale. 7. TNA, FO 371/101391, Attitude to be adopted in discussing the Cameroons Unification Petition with the French, March 1952. 8. Ibid. 9. Observation de Ruben Um Nyobé, Secrétaire général de l’UPC, devant la Quatrième Commission, 17 December 1952 in Um Nyobé, Ruben, Le problème national kamerunais, notes et introduction de Achille Mbembe (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1984), p.202. 10. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique-Levant, (Afrique)/Généralités, 49QONT/50, Mémorandum destiné à M. le Ministre, Conversations franco-britanniques des 1er, 2 et 3 avril 1952, Questions politiques d’importance primordiale. 11. Ibid. 12. Paper from the Commonwealth Relations Office to the Cabinet, June 1956, in Goldworthy, David (ed), The Conservative government and the end of Empire, 1951– 1957 (vol.1), (London, HMSO, 1994), pp.93–95. 13. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique-Levant, (Afrique)/Généralités, 49QONT/50, Mémorandum destiné à M. le Ministre, Conversations franco-britanniques des 1er, 2 et 3 avril 1952, Questions politiques d’importance primordiale.

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14. Ibid. 15. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique-Levant, (Afrique)/Généralités, 49QONT/50, Notes préparatoires aux conversations franco-britanniques sur la coopération en Afrique, April 1952. 16. AN, AG/5(FPU)/2041, Note sur les Relations franco-britanniques en Afrique, 1959. 17. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique-Levant, (Afrique)/Généralités, 49QONT/50, Notes préparatoires aux conversations franco-britanniques sur la coopération en Afrique, April 1952. 18. Ibid. 19. TNA, FO 371/101391, Attitude to be adopted in discussing the Cameroons Unification Petition with the French, March 1952. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Le Vine, Victor T., The Cameroon Federal Republic (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1971), p.24. 23. Abwa, Daniel, Commissaires et hauts-commissaires de la France au Cameroun (1916– 1960): ces hommes qui ont façonné politiquement le Cameroun (Yaoundé, Presses universitaires de Yaoundé et Presses de l’Université Catholique d’Afrique centrale, 1998); Duval, Eugène-Jean, Le sillage militaire de la France au Cameroun 1914–1964 (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2004); Shipway: Decolonization, p.193. 24. TNA, FO 371/117430, Letter from the UPC to Anthony Eden, 24 August 1955. 25. TNA, FO 371/125643, Association des Étudiants Camerounais, section de Toulouse, to the President of the British Delegation to the UN, 20 January 1957. 26. Le Vine: The Cameroon Federal Republic, p.24. 27. TNA, CO 554/1756, Secret, Future of the Cameroons, July 1959. 28. Conference at Lancaster House, London, 21 plenary sessions between 23rd May and 26th June 1957, in Mbile, Nerius Namaso, Cameroon political story: memoirs of an authentic eye witness (Limbe, Cameroon, Presbyterian Print, 1999), pp.89–90. 29. Hargreaves, John D., Decolonization in Africa (London, Longman, 1988), p.181. 30. Chafer: ‘French African Policy’, p.171–172. 31. Bangura, Yusuf, Britain and Commonwealth Africa: the politics of economic relations 1951–75 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), p.31–32. 32. TNA, FO 371/154791, M. Goldsmith, Board of Trade for the Secretary of State, June 1961. 33. In the French West African Empire, matters were overseen by the Institut d’émission for French West Africa and Togo, which became the Bank of West African States (BEAO) in April 1959. 34. Montarsolo, Yves, L’Eurafrique, contrepoint de l’idée d’Europe: le cas français de la fin de la deuxième guerre mondiale aux négociations des Traités de Rome (Université de Provence, Le Temps de l’Histoire, 2010). 35. Guia Migani, ‘L’association des TOM au marché commun: histoire d’un accord européen entre cultures économiques différentes et idéaux politiques communs, 1955–1957’, in Bitsch, Bossuat: L’Europe unie et l’Afrique, p.234, see also Migani,

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NOTES

36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43.

44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

287

Guia, La France et l’Afrique sub-saharienne, 1957–1963: Histoire d’une décolonisation entre idéaux eurafricains et politique de puissance (Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2008). Zartman, I. William, ‘Europe and Africa: Decolonization or Dependency?’, Foreign Affairs: an American Quarterly Review, 54:2 (January 1976), p.328. Ibid. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959. Ibid. Mbembe, Achille, ‘La palabre de l’indépendance: les ordres du discours nationaliste au Cameroun (1948–1958)’, Revue française de science politique, 35:3 (1985), p.470. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Relations du pays avec la France, relations militaires, Document de l’Ambassade de France à Londres, 18 June 1958, Compte rendu des entretiens de M. Torré, HautCommissaire de France au Cameroun, au Colonial Office, 16 June 1958. TNA, FO 371/137963, Record of the Secretary of State’s Visit to the Quai d’Orsay, 12 November 1959. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/3, Politique intérieure, (juillet 1953-septembre 1960), Réunification du Cameroun, Ambassadeur de France au Cameroun, à Couve de Murville, 21 January 1960. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Relations du pays avec la France, relations militaires, Document de l’Ambassade de France à Londres, 18 June 1958, Compte rendu des entretiens de M. Torré, HautCommissaire de France au Cameroun, au Colonial Office, 16 June 1958. Ibid. MAEE, Nantes, Haut Commissariat de la République française au Cameroun, 743PO/1/10, Débat de l’ONU sur la levée de la tutelle, 1958, Ministre de la France d’Outre Mer à Ministre des Affaires étrangères, September 1958. Frontline Diplomacy (FD), Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Robert C. Foulon, 22 April 1988. TNA, FCO 65/1832, British Policy Towards Francophone Africa, West African Department, 9 May 1977. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959. France and its 4 overseas departments (Guyane, Martinique, Reunion, Guadeloupe) and 6 overseas territories in the Atlantic and Pacific (Comoros, French Polynesia, French Somaliland, New Caledonia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon) and Algeria; 12 self-governing states: Senegal, Mauritania, French Sudan (Mali), Niger, the Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Dahomey (Benin), Gabon, Congo, Oubangui-Chari (Central African Republic), Chad and Madagascar. For details of the advent of the French Community see also Vaïsse, Maurice, La grandeur: politique étrangère du Général de Gaulle, 1958–1969 (Paris, Fayard, 1998) pp.92–102. TNA, FO 371/138263, British Embassy, Paris, to Foreign Office, African Department, 4 February 1959.

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52. TNA, FO 371/145254, Minutes by K.J Uffen, 30 January 1959. 53. TNA, FO 371/138263, British Embassy, Paris, to Foreign Office, African Department, 4 February 1959. 54. Ibid. 55. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/15, Note sur les rapports franco-camerounais, 18 September 1959. 56. TNA, FO 371/145254, Colonial Secretary to J. Robertson, Federation of Nigeria, 29 January 1959. 57. Ibid; see also FO 971/145254, Record of meeting on the Future of the Southern Cameroons, 17 February 1959. 58. TNA, FO 371/145254, Colonial Secretary to J. Robertson, Federation of Nigeria, 29 January 1959. 59. TNA, FO 371/145254, Colonial Secretary to J Robertson, 4 February 1959. 60. TNA, FO371/138263, British Embassy, Paris, to Foreign Office, African Department, 4 February 1959. 61. TNA, FO 371/145254, Colonial Secretary to J. Robertson, Federation of Nigeria, 4 February 1959. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. TNA, FO 971/145254, Record of meeting on the Future of the Southern Cameroons, 17 February 1959. 65. TNA, FO 371/145254, Colonial Secretary to UK Mission NY, 18 February 1959. 66. TNA, FO 371/145254, UK Mission NY to Governor General Lagos, February 1959. 67. Konings, Piet, ‘Agro-Industry and Regionalism in the South West Province of Cameroon during the National Economic and Political Crisis’ in P.N. Nkwi, F. Nyamnjoh (eds), Regional Balance and National Integration in Cameroon: Lessons Learnt and the Future (Yaoundé, I.M.A., 1997), pp.289–291. 68. Stark, Frank, ‘Federalism in Cameroon: the Shadow and the Reality’, Revue canadienne des études africaines/Canadian Journal of African Studies, 10:3 (1976), p.425. 69. TNA, FO 371/138184, General Assembly, Resumed Thirteenth Session, Report on the Fourth Committee, 20 February – 13 March 1959. 70. TNA, CO 554/1756, C. Eastwood to Sir James Robertson, Lagos – draft, June 1959. 71. Ibid. 72. TNA, FO 371/145258, Draft brief for the UK Delegation, Item 41 of the provisional agenda, The Future of the Cameroons under UK Administration, September 1959. 73. TNA, FO 371/153526, Reply from M. Tahourdin to Parliamentary Question, 9 December 1960. 74. TNA, FO 371/154688, P. Johnston, Yaoundé, to Sir R. Stevens, FO, 16 January 1961. 75. Charles Assalé acknowledged in August 1960 that Cameroonians in the British mandates were more ‘foreign’ to Camerounians than the Gabonese, La Presse du Cameroun, interview with Charles Assalé, 5 August 1960.

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76. TNA, CO 554/1756, Future of the Cameroons, July 1959. 77. AN, AG/5(FPR)/149, Etat-Major Général de la Défense Nationale, Renseignement, 17 March 1959. 78. TNA, FO371/154688, P. Johnston, Yaoundé, to Sir R. Stevens, FO, 16 January 1961. 79. Ibid.; see also Fogui, Jean-Pierre, L’intégration politique au Cameroun (Paris, Librairie générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1990), p.87. 80. TNA, FO 371/145254, UK Mission NY to Governor General Lagos, February 1959. 81. TNA, CO 554/1756, C. Eastwood to A. Emanuel, 25 May 1959. 82. TNA, FO 371/137961, Anglo-French official talks on Africa, London, 7–8 December 1959. 83. TNA, CO 554/1756, John Tilney, MP, to A. Lennox Boyd, Colonial Office, 12 June 1959. 84. Ibid. 85. Murphy, Philip, Party Politics and Decolonization, The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951–1964 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995), p.156. 86. TNA, CO 554/1756, Letter to the Colonial Secretary on the Mamfe Conference, 17 August 1959. 87. In Anyaoku, Emeka, The Missing Headlines: selected speeches (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1997), p.ix. 88. TNA, DO161/280, CRO Research Unit, April 1965. 89. Ibid. 90. Smith, Arnold, Stitches in time: the Commonwealth in world politics (Don Mills, Ontario, General Publishing Co. Limited, 1981), p.154. 91. On South Africa’s departure, see Hyam, Ronald, ‘The parting of the ways: Britain and South Africa’s departure from the Commonwealth, 1951–61’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 26:2 (1998), pp.157–175, and Britain’s Declining Empire, The road to Decolonisation, 1918–1968 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006). 92. TNA, FO 371/145256, Record of Commonwealth meeting at the United Nations, 19 February 1959. 93. TNA, FO 371/145256, Foreign Office to Colonial Office, 15 July 1959 94. TNA, FO 371/145256, UK UN Department to Ottawa, Wellington, Delhi, Karachi, Colombo, Kuala Lumpur, 6 April 1959. 95. TNA, FO 371/145256, Pierson Dixon to CS Jha, Permanent Representative of India to the UN, 20 March 1959. 96. TNA, FO 371/145256, Pierson Dixon to Dato Nik Kamil, Permanent Representative of the Federation of Malaysia to the UN, 20 March 1959. 97. TNA, FO 371/145256, UK Mission NY to Foreign Office, 9 March 1959. 98. TNA, CO 554/1614, Colonial Office note, March 1959. 99. TNA, CO 554/1614, P. Carter to C. Eastwood, 18 March 1959. 100. TNA, DO 195/405, Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, Gambia: Commonwealth Membership.

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101. Quoted in TNA, DO 161/280, CRO Research Unit, April 1965. 102. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1976, Consulat général de France (Chypre) à MAE, 23 April 1960. 103. Canada’s reluctance towards the admission of Cyprus, Malta, Zanzibar and the Gambia is referred to in TNA, DO 161/280, CRO Research Unit, April 1965. 104. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959. 105. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1976, Ambassade de France (Londres) à MAE, 20 September 1961. 106. DO 35/1049. 107. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959. 108. Reported in TNA, DO 161/280, CRO Research Unit, April 1965. 109. TNA, CO 554/1675, Commonwealth Relations Office to Colonial Office, 18 December 1959. 110. TNA, DO 35/8074, Sierra Leone Constitutional Conference, Initial Statement by the Secretary of State, 20 April 1960. 111. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959. 112. TNA, CO 554/1054, Welcome address by Endeley to the Right Honorable Alan Lennox-Boyd, Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the occasion of his visit to the Southern Cameroon, Buea, 26 January 1955. 113. TNA, FO 371/145254, Governor of Nigeria to Colonial Secretary, 14 February 1959. 114. MAEE, Nantes, Haut Commissariat de la République française au Cameroun, 743PO/1/10, Relations du gouvernement camerounais avec la Guinée, le Ghana, le Libéria, le Nigeria et l’Ouest africain, ‘The Kamerun Revolution’, Evening News, 20 June 1958. 115. TNA, FO 371/145254, Colonial Secretary to UK Mission NY, 18 February 1959. 116. TNA, CO 554/1756, Copy of Minutes, Maurice Smith, 18 June 1959. 117. Ibid. 118. TNA, CO 554/1756, A. Lennox-Boyd to J. Tilney, 24 June 1959. 119. Ruben Um Nyobé was killed in the maquis on 13 September 1958 – and replaced by Felix Moumié at the head of the UPC. See Joseph: Radical Nationalism; Deltombe, Domergue, Tatsitsa: Kamerun! and Prévitali, Stéphane, Je me souviens de Ruben: mon témoignage sur les maquis camerounais (1953–1970) (Paris, Karthala, 1999). 120. Rapport présenté au deuxième congrès statutaire de l’Union des Populations du Cameroun, Eseka, 29 September 1952 in Um Nyobé, Ruben, Écrits sous maquis, notes et introduction de Achille Mbembe (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1989), p.93. 121. TNA, FO 371/145258, Draft brief for the UK Delegation, Item 41 of the provisional agenda, The Future of the Cameroons under UK Administration, September 1959.

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NOTES 122. 123. 124. 125.

126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132.

133. 134. 135. 136. 137.

138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143.

144. 145.

146. 147.

291

TNA, CO 554/1756, A. Lennox-Boyd to J. Tilney, 24 June 1959. TNA, CO 554/1756, R.F Grey, Lagos, to M.N.H.Milne, Buea, 8 July 1959. Which became the Commonwealth Development Corporation in July 1963. Unlike in the French Cameroons, German lands seized during the First World War were later sold off, with no nationality restrictions placed on buyers, resulting in the presence of three times more German than British citizens in the Southern Cameroons between 1925 and 1939; see Bederman, Sanford Harold, The Cameroons Development Corporation: Partner in national growth (Bota, West Cameroon, Cameroons Development Corporation, 1968). Bederman: The Cameroons Development Corporation. Ibid. Berrill, Kenneth, The economy of the Southern Cameroons under United Kingdom trusteeship (Cambridge, 1960), p.12. TNA, OD 30/40, April 1965. Berrill: The economy of the Southern Cameroons, p.14. Berrill: The economy of the Southern Cameroons, p.14. Milne, Malcolm, No Telephone to Heaven. From Apex to Nadir – Colonial Service in Nigeria, Aden, the Cameroons and the Gold Coast, 1938–1961 (Stockbridge, Meon Hill Press, 1999), p.395. Hansard, HC Deb 30 July 1959 vol 610 cc650–2. TNA, FO 371/145257, Brief for the Secretary of State, The Southern Cameroons Plebiscite, April 1959. Ibid. TNA, CO 554/1756, Future of the Cameroons, July 1959. TNA, FO 371/145258, Draft brief for the UK Delegation, Item 41 of the provisional agenda, The Future of the Cameroons under UK Administration, September 1959. TNA, CO 554/1756, R.F Grey, Lagos, to C.M. Esquire, Colonial Office, 28 August 1959. TNA, CO 554/1614, Note from Ian Watt, 13 March 1959. TNA, CO 554/1756, Future of the Cameroons, 7 July 1959. TNA, CO 554/1756, M. Smith to A. Emanuel and C. Eastwood, 18 June 1959. TNA, CO 554/1756, John Tilney, MP, to A. Lennox Boyd, 12 June 1959. TNA, FO 371/145258, Draft brief for the UK Delegation, Item 41 of the provisional agenda, The Future of the Cameroons under UK Administration, September 1959. AN, AG/5 (FPR) 150, Note d’information, Paris, 26 August 1959. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant (1953–1959), Cameroun, 40QO/3, Politique intérieure, (juillet 1953-septembre 1960), Projet d’instructions, Unification des deux ‘Cameroun’, June 1959. TNA, CO 554/1744, Note from J. Inman to Mr Emanuel, 28 November 1958. TNA, CO 554/1756, Governor General’s Office, Lagos to Colonial Office, 26 August 1959; see also MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (gouvernement général de l’Afrique occidentale française puis Haut-commissariat-AOF), 183PO/1/ 404, Procès verbal des entretiens franco-britanniques, Paris, 4–5 July 1957.

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148. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note on Anglo-French Talks on Africa, Prime Ministers’ meeting, March 1959; see also AN, AG/5 (FPR) 150, Mission permanente de la France auprès des Nations Unies, Assemblée Générale, 20 February-13 March 1959. 149. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note on Anglo-French Talks on Africa, Prime Ministers’ meeting, March 1959. 150. MAEE, La Courneuve, Secrétariat Général, P11917, Entretiens franco-britanniques de Londres, 13–14 April 1959. 151. Ibid. 152. TNA, FO 371/137960, Record of meeting between the French and British Prime Ministers, London, 14 April 1959. 153. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant (1953–1959), Cameroun, 40QO/3, Politique intérieure, (juillet 1953-septembre 1960), Projet d’instructions, Unification des deux ‘Cameroun’, June 1959. 154. MAEE, La Courneuve, Secrétariat Général, P11917, Directives pour les conversations de Washington, 31 March 1959. 155. Ibid. 156. MAEE, La Courneuve, Secrétariat Général, P11917, Entretiens francobritanniques de Londres, 13–14 April 1959. 157. TNA, FO 371/137960, Telegram on the Prime Minister’s discussion on Africa with M. Debré, 14 April 1959. 158. Ibid. 159. TNA, FO 371/137960, Message from Harold Macmillan to General de Gaulle, 4 June 1959. 160. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note on Anglo-French Talks on Africa, Prime Ministers’ meeting, March 1959. 161. Ibid. 162. TNA, FO 371/137961, Record of Franco-British conversations on 8–9 June 1959, Foreign Office. 163. TNA, PREM 11/2888, Note for the Prime Minister, 18 December 1959. 164. TNA, FO 371/137959, Brief 1, The Commonwealth, prepared for the AngloFrench Talks, 1959. 165. TNA, FO 371/137961, Record of Franco-British conversations on 8–9 June 1959, Foreign Office. 166. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note on Anglo-French Talks on Africa, Prime Ministers’ meeting, March 1959. 167. TNA, FO 371/46492, British Embassy (Paris) to Foreign Office, 27 July 1960. 168. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note on Anglo-French Talks on Africa, Prime Ministers’ meeting, March 1959. 169. TNA, CO 936/565, Colonial Office brief for a meeting of British and French Parliamentarians in Bordeaux, ‘The role of Great Britain and France in the evolution of Africa’, July 1959. 170. TNA, CO 554/1556, Note from the Commonwealth Relations Office, 18 November 1959.

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293

171. TNA, FO 371/137961, Record of Franco-British conversations on 8–9 June 1959, Foreign Office. 172. TNA, FO 371/137959, Brief 1, The Commonwealth, prepared for the AngloFrench Talks, 1959. 173. TNA, FO 371/137959, Foreign Office to British Embassy (Washington), 13 February 1959. 174. TNA, FO 371/138263, Record of conversation between the Foreign Secretary and M. Couve de Murville on the Journey to Washington, 26–27 May 1959. 175. Ibid. 176. TNA, FO 371/137963, Secretary of State’s Visit to Paris, Record of a meeting at the Quai d’Orsay, 12 November 1959. 177. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note on Anglo-French Talks on Africa, Prime Ministers’ meeting, March 1959. 178. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note from A.D.M. Ross, 24 February 1959. 179. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note on Anglo-French Talks on Africa, Prime Ministers’ meeting, March 1959. 180. TNA, CO 936/565, Colonial Office brief for a meeting of British and French Parliamentarians in Bordeaux, ‘The role of Great Britain and France in the evolution of Africa’, July 1959. 181. AN, AG/5(FPU)/2041, Entretiens franco-britanniques sur l’Afrique, 13–14 December 1960. 182. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note from A.D.M. Ross, 24 February 1959. 183. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1976, Note de l’ambassade sur la politique britannique en Afrique, 14 March 1960. 184. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/11, Sécurité des frontières, décembre 1957-mars 1959, Correspondance du ministre de la France d’Outre Mer au ministre des Affaires étrangères, en prévision des entretiens franco-britanniques de février 1958, December 1957; also in entretiens entre le Haut Commissaire au Cameroun et James Robertson, Gouverneur Général du Nigeria, 4–7 August 1958. 185. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/11, Sécurité des frontières, décembre 1957-mars 1959, Ministre de la France d’Outre Mer à ministre des Affaires étrangères, 26 November 1958. 186. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Relations du pays avec la France, relations militaires, Document de l’Ambassade de France à Londres, 18 June 1958, Compte rendu des entretiens de M. Torré, HautCommissaire de France au Cameroun, au Colonial Office, 16 June 1958. 187. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/6, Note, 25 August 1959. 188. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/3, Politique intérieure, (juillet 1953-septembre 1960), Projet d’instructions, Unification des deux ‘Cameroun’, June 1959. 189. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/6, Note, 25 August 1959. 190. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959.

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191. AN, AG/5 (FPR) 150, Note d’information, Paris, 26 August 1959. 192. TNA, FO 371/145258, Draft brief for the UK Delegation, Item 41 of the provisional agenda, The Future of the Cameroons under UK Administration, September 1959. 193. TNA, FO 371/145259, Statement by John Foncha to the Fourth Committee of the UN, 24 September 1959. 194. TNA, FO 371/138184, Statement by Emmanuel Endeley to the Fourth Committee of the UN, 24 September 1959. 195. TNA, FO 371/138184, Statement by Sir Andrew Cohen to the Fourth Committee of the UN, 24 September 1959. 196. Hansard, HC Deb 17 November 1959 vol 613 c111W. 197. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/6, Lettre de la sousdirection Afrique, 4 February 1960. 198. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/11, Relations du pays avec la France, relations militaires, Lettre de l’ambassadeur de France à Yaoundé au Premier Ministre de la France, 14 June 1960. 199. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 200. MAEE, Nantes, Haut Commissariat de la République française au Cameroun, 743PO/1/10, Relations du gouvernement camerounais avec la Guinée, le Ghana, le Libéria, le Nigeria et l’Ouest africain, Joint Communiqué by Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure, on the situation in the Cameroons, May 1959. 201. Liberia, the United Arab Republic and the Communist bloc also provided the UPC with political and material support, but to a lesser extent and less publicly than Ghana and Guinea did. 202. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant (1953–1959), Cameroun, 40QO/3, Politique intérieure, (juillet 1953-septembre 1960), Note, 11 February 1960. 203. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 204. TNA, FO 371/167385, President Ahidjo, Press Conference, 1963. 205. Ibid. 206. TNA, FO 371/1831, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 28 July 1965. 207. TNA, FO 371/181832, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 17 August 1965. 208. Oyono, Dieudonné, Avec ou sans la France? La politique africaine du Cameroun depuis 1960 (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1990), p.117. 209. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/263, Note de la Direction des Affaires Africaines et Malgaches, 24 March 1965; communiqué from OCAM, 12 February 1965. 210. TNA, FO 371/147065, Office of the High Commissioner (Accra) to Commonwealth Relations Office, 18 January 1960. 211. TNA, DO 169/218, “The Influence of Ghana in East Africa”, British High Commissioner (Uganda) to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 27 September 1963.

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295

212. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 213. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, tome 2, Note de la Direction des Affaires africaines et malgaches, 2 July 1968. 214. See in particular the work of Jean-François Bayart, Richard Joseph, Victor T. Le Vine, Jean-François Médard, Dieudonné Oyono, Nicolas Happy Nya. 215. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/15, Note sur les rapports franco-camerounais, 19 octobre 1959. 216. Expressed in a letter to Michel Debré, 26 September 1959 in MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/15, Note sur les rapports francocamerounais, 19 October 1959. 217. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/11, Premier Ministre camerounais à Premier Ministre français. 218. Dozon: ‘L’état français contemporain et son double, l’état franco-africain’. 219. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/13, Relations extérieures (sauf la France), relations politiques, économiques, financières et militaires avec les divers pays (janvier 1953-mars 1961), Ambassade de France (Bonn) à MAE, 15 January 1960; see also Eyinga Abel, Cameroun 1960–1990, la fin des élections: un cas d’évolution regressive de la démocratie (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1990). 220. MAEE, La Courneuve, Cabinet du Ministre, Couve de Murville, 114, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 7 January 1960. 221. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/6, Lettre de la sousdirection Afrique, 4 February 1960. 222. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/11, Relations du pays avec la France, relations militaires, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 22 February 1960. 223. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/20, 2/2, C.I.1.c., Note sur l’aide de la France au Cameroun entre 1959 et 1970, January 1970. 224. TNA, FO 371/147068, E.B. Boothy, Foreign Office, to C. Eastwood, Colonial Office, 29 January 1960. 225. AN, AG/5 (FPR) 150, Note d’information, Paris, 26 August 1959. 226. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/6, Note sur la situation en Pays Bamileke, 22 November 1960. 227. TNA, FO 371/137963, Secretary of State’s Visit to Paris, Brief on the British Cameroons, November 1959. 228. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/6, Lettre de la sousdirection Afrique, 4 February 1960. 229. Robert, Maurice, ‘Ministre de l’Afrique’, Entretiens avec André Renault (Paris, Seuil, 2004), pp.115–116, p.286. 230. Ibid., p.132. 231. Quoted in Happy Nya: La coopération franco-africaine, p.415–416. 232. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976.

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233. TNA, FO 371/167380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 26 April 1963. 234. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 1 June 1973. 235. Commonwealth Secretariat Archives (CSA), 2006/151 (1 of 2), Note by Victor Kyaruzi, 10 April 1970. 236. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/56, C.I.11., Premier Ministre français au Premier Ministre camerounais, accord diplomatique prenant effet au 1er janvier 1960. 237. AN, AG/5 (FPR) 150, Haut-Commissaire (Yaoundé) au Premier ministre français, 14 March 1959. 238. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/56, C.I.11., Ministre des Affaires étrangères à Chefs des Missions, 15 January 1960. 239. Ibid. 240. Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.79. 241. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/15, Ahidjo au Président de la Commission Permanente de la Communauté Economique Européenne, Walter Hallstein, 12 January 1960. 242. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/56, C.I.11., Premier Ministre français au Premier Ministre camerounais, accord diplomatique prenant effet au 1er janvier 1960. 243. TNA, FO 371/147068, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 1960. 244. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 245. AN, AG/5(FPR)/153, Note de Jacques Foccart à l’Ambassadeur de France, Yaoundé, 26 May 1961. 246. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 247. TNA, CO 554/2577, Termination of UK Trusteeship, Southern Cameroon Representation in London, Colonial Office meeting, 2 May 1961. 248. TNA, CO 554/2577, Termination of UK Trusteeship, Southern Cameroon Representation in London, Brief for UK Delegations to talks in Yaoundé on 4 August 1961. 249. Ahidjo, Speech to the National Assembly, 18 February 1958, in Oyono: Avec ou sans la France?, p.84. 250. TNA, FO 371/138263, Speech by Ahidjo on his return from the UN, Douala, 1959; speech by Ahidjo 12 May 1958 on the first anniversary of the trusteeship in Ndedi Penda, Patrice, Le pouvoir aux deux visages: la terreur et la prospérité (Galaxie, 1992), p.22–23. 251. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/2, C.I.1.c., Discours d’Ahmadou Ahidjo, 1 January 1960. 252. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 June 1960. 253. TNA, FO 371/147076, Letter from Commonwealth Relations Office, 22 December 1959.

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297

254. TNA, FO 371/147076, Foreign Office to Treasury, 12 January 1960. 255. TNA, CO 554/1661, Letter to A.F.F.P Newns, S.G.G, 9 December 1959. 256. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 257. TNA, CO554/1939, Petition against the present registration in the Southern Kamerun, by Alois Kamden (Famer Ebonji Bakossi), to the Colonial Secretary, 26 May 1959. 258. TNA, CO 936/642, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 4 June 1960. 259. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 June 1960. 260. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 3 October 1960. 261. TNA, CO 554/2338, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Cameroun, to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 6 January 1961. 262. TNA, FO 371/146492, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 13 July 1960. 263. TNA, FO 371/147068, British Embassy (Yaoundé), 1960. 264. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 265. Ibid. 266. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 June 1960. 267. TNA, FO 371/146492, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 13 July 1960. 268. TNA, FO 371/46492, British Embassy (Paris) to Foreign Office, 27 July 1960. 269. LAC, 5362, 10283-L-40, pt.2, Canadian Embassy (Paris) to External Affairs, ‘Visit to the Community’s African States’, 17 March 1960. 270. TNA, CO 554/1675, J. Chadwick, Commonwealth Relations Office, to A. Emmanuel, Colonial Office, 18 December 1959. 271. TNA, FO 371/46492, Foreign Office to British Consulate (Dakar), 31 August 1960. 272. Michel, Marc, ‘Au travers des archives Foccart: les relations franco-africaines de 1958 à 1962’, Foccart – Entre France et Afrique, Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques, 30 (2002). 273. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1976, Note sur la politique britannique en Afrique, 14 March 1960. 274. TNA, FO 371/137959, Foreign Office to British Embassy (Washington), 13 February 1959. 275. TNA, FO 371/46492, British Consulate (Dakar) to Foreign Office, 13 June 1960. 276. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note from A.D.M. Ross, 24 February 1959, and 18 November 1959. 277. TNA, FO 371/137963, Note from A.D.M. Ross, 18 November 1959.

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278. TNA, FO 371/46492, Foreign Office to British Consulate (Dakar), 31 August 1960. 279. TNA, FO 371/46492, British Consulate (Dakar) to Foreign Office, 13 June 1960. 280. TNA, FO 371/46492, Foreign Office to British Consulate (Dakar), 31 August 1960. 281. Ibid. 282. Ibid. 283. Ibid. 284. TNA, FO 371/138278, British Embassy (Paris) to Foreign Office, 28 April 1959. 285. TNA, FO 371/138278, Handwritten note, 1 May 1959. 286. TNA, FO 371/138278, British Embassy (Paris) to Foreign Office, 28 April 1959. 287. TNA, FO 371/146492, British Embassy (Conakry) to Foreign Office, 28 July 1960. 288. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1976, Note de l’ambassade sur la politique britannique en Afrique, 14 March 1960. 289. La Presse du Cameroun, 13 January 1959, interview with President Ahidjo. 290. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/1, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 7 July 1960. 291. TNA, CO 554/2359, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 1960. 292. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant (1953–1959), Cameroun, 40QO/6, Ahidjo, 3 January 1960. 293. FD, Robert C. Foulon, 22 April 1988. 294. TNA, CO 554/2337, Note of a meeting between his Excellency the Governor Mr. B. Greatbatch, Sir Andrew Cohen and Mr. G. Caston, 10 January 1960. 295. TNA, CO 554/2241, B.L. Barder to Mr Burr, 29 February 1960. 296. Ibid. 297. TNA, FO 371/137960, Record of meeting between the French and British Prime Ministers, 14 April 1959. 298. TNA, FO 371/137961, Anglo-French official talks on Africa, London, 7–8 December 1959, Briefs. 299. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant (1953–1959), Cameroun, 40QO/3, Politique intérieure, (juillet 1953-septembre 1960), Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 11 April 1960. 300. TNA, FO 371/137961, Record of Anglo-French official talks on Africa, London, 7–8 December 1959. 301. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant (1953–1959), Cameroun, 40QO/3, Politique intérieure, (juillet 1953-septembre 1960), DAM à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 19 March 1960. 302. TNA, CO 554/2201, Note by the United Kingdom Delegation (Nigeria, Constitutional discussions 1960); Record of the Second Plenary Session, Colonial Office, 12 May 1960. 303. TNA, FO 371/146821, Government House (Lagos) to Colonial Office, 30 May 1960.

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299

304. TNA, CO 936/642, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 4 June 1960. 305. La Presse du Cameroun, 20 June 1960, interview with Ahidjo. 306. TNA, CO 554/2208, Meeting at the Colonial Office, 10 November 1960. 307. Ibid. 308. TNA, CO 554/2439, Petition from Chiefs and People of Wum West Clans Plebiscite District, 22 February 1961, and Petition from the People of Modelle, to the Secretary-General of the UNO General Assembly, 11 March 1961; CO 554/2440, Petition from Chief Chu and Ten other residents of Bu concerning the Cameroons under United Kingdom Administration, 10 March 1961. 309. TNA, CO 554/2208, Meeting at the Colonial Office, 10 November 1960. 310. TNA, DO 195/137, Policy towards Africa South of the Sahara, paper approved at official level by the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, and Commonwealth Relations Office, August 1961. 311. Milne: No Telephone to Heaven, p.399. 312. TNA, CO 554/2208, Meeting at the Colonial Office, 9 November 1960. 313. Ibid. 314. TNA, FO 971/145254, Record of meeting on the Future of the Southern Cameroons, 17 February 1959. 315. TNA, FO 371/145255, Colonial Office to UK Mission, New York, 27 February 1959. 316. TNA, CO 554/2241, B.L. Barder to Mr Burr, 29 February 1960. 317. TNA, FO 371/145254, Deputy Governor-General (Lagos) to Colonial Office, 2 February 1959. 318. Torrent, Mélanie, ‘Bilingualism and Double-Talk: Language and Diplomacy in the Cameroons (1959–1962)’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Special Issue, Perspectives on Africa, 45:4 (2009). 319. TNA, CO 554/2439, Petition from the Cameroons Indigenes Party, 21 February 1961. 320. TNA, CO 554/2531, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 20 June 1961. 321. TNA, FO 371/137959, Note on Anglo-French Talks on Africa, Prime Ministers’ meeting, March 1959. 322. TNA, FO 371/146514, Somali Republic: Commonwealth Membership, 1960. 323. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/15, Note sur les rapports franco-camerounais, 18 septembre 1959. 324. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Archives orales, AO29, entretien 4.1, entretien de Couve de Murville, 30 septembre 1987. 325. AN, AG/5 (FPR) 150, Note d’information, Paris, 25 August 1959. 326. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/1, C.I., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 27 July 1960. 327. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, 6 August 1960. 328. AN, AG/5 (FPR) 150, Note d’information, Paris, 25 August 1959. 329. TNA, CO 554/2266, Southern Cameroons, Record of Tripartite talks in Yaoundé, 4–7 August 1961, First Session.

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330. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Secrétariat Général, P11917, Entretiens franco-britanniques de Londres, 13–14 April 1959; TNA, FO 371/137960, Prime Minister’s discussion on Africa with M. Debré, 14 April 1959. 331. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959. 332. Ibid. 333. TNA, FO 371/137960, Brief on Anglo-French cooperation in Africa, April 1959. 334. TNA, CO 554/1675, Interview accordée à la radiodiffusion d’Outre-mer par l’Ambassadeur de Grande Bretagne, 27 February 1960. 335. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1976, Note sur la politique britannique en Afrique, 14 March 1960. 336. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/15, Note de la Direction des Affaires économiques et financières, Service de coopération économique, 27 November 1959. 337. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/15, Note sur le régime douanier en vigueur, 1960. 338. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 June 1960. 339. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 340. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/15, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 7 September 1960. 341. LAC, 5362, 10283-L-40, pt.2, Canadian Embassy (Paris) to External Affairs, ‘Visit to the Community’s African States’, 17 March 1960. 342. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 343. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 June 1960. 344. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/15, Direction, note, 31 August 1960. 345. TNA, FO 371/147062, British Embassy (Paris) to Foreign Office, 6 August 1960. 346. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 23 August 1960. 347. Bach, Daniel, Kirk-Greene, Anthony (eds), États et sociétés en Afrique francophone, (Paris, Economica, 1993), p.145. 348. Renou, Xavier, ‘A New French Policy for Africa?’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 20:1 (2002), p.12. 349. Bach, Kirk-Greene: États et sociétés, p.187. 350. TNA, FO 371/167380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 26 April 1963. 351. MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/11, Relations du pays avec la France, Accords, Conventions, Comparaison entre l’accord de coopération en matière économique, monétaire et financière franco-camerounais d’une part et franco-malien d’autre part, 1960.

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352. MAEE, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/6, Note sur la situation en Pays Bamileke, 22 novembre 1960. 353. Ibid. 354. CPNC, Plebiscite Message to All Voters of the Cameroons, quoted in Ngoh: Southerns Cameroons, p.151. 355. TNA, CO 554/2338, Federation of Nigeria Fortnightly Summary, Part I, Nigerian Federal Prime Minister’s broadcast, 22 January 1961. 356. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from the Chiefs of Fungom Palm Area, 2 March 1961. 357. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from Chief Chu and Ten other residents of Bu concerning the Cameroons under United Kingdom Administration, 10 March 1961. 358. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from the Chiefs of Fungom Palm Area, 2 March 1961. 359. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition against unification with the Cameroun Republic, from the Fon of Bum, March 1961. 360. See also TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from Mr. M.C. Tanam concerning the Cameroons under United Kingdom Administration, to the Secretary-General of the UN, 9 April 1961. 361. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from Esmibi Women, 13 April 1961. 362. TNA, CO 554/2439, Resolution from the Chiefs of Aghem Clan of the Wum Division, 7 February 1961. 363. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from Mr. M.C. Tanam concerning the Cameroons under United Kingdom Administration, to the Secretary-General of the UN, 28 August 1961. 364. Ibid. 365. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition against unification with the Cameroun Republic, from the Fon of Bum, March 1961. 366. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from Mr. M.C. Tanam concerning the Cameroons under United Kingdom Administration, to the Secretary-General of the UN, 28 August 1961. 367. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from Mrs. Bi Mbong and others, 12 March 1961. 368. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from Mr. M.C. Tanam concerning the Cameroons under United Kingdom Administration, to the Secretary-General of the UN, 28 August 1961. 369. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from Mr. M.C. Tanam concerning the Cameroons under United Kingdom Administration, to the Secretary-General of the UN, 9 April 1961. 370. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 June 1960; MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 3 October 1960. 371. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744PO/1/2, Rapport concernant l’orientation et l’amélioration de l’aide et de la coopération au Cameroun, December 1960.

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372. TNA, FO 371/154739, Notes by Her Majesty’s Representatives in West and Equatorial Africa in Preparation for their Meeting in London, 16–18 May 1961, ‘The ex-French States of West and Central Africa’. 373. Kent: The United States and the Decolonization of Black Africa. 374. TNA, FO 371/154739, Notes by Her Majesty’s Representatives in West and Equatorial Africa in Preparation for their Meeting in London, 16–18 May 1961, ‘The ex-French States of West and Central Africa’. 375. Ibid. 376. 97,741 people voted for Nigeria and 233,571 for Cameroun in the plebiscite of 11 February in the Southern Cameroons, according to the final results. See for instance Konings, Nyamnjoh: Negotiating, p.39. 377. Quoted in TNA, CO 936/643, Foreign office to British Embassy (Buenos Aires), 14 April 1961. 378. TNA, FO 371/154689, Nouvelles du Cameroun, Ahidjo, Press Conference, 20 February 1961. 379. Charles Okala, quoted in TNA, FO 371/154832, UK Mission (New York) to Foreign Office, 13 April 1961. 380. TNA, CO 936/644, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 5 June 1961. 381. See Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.190, for the arguments put forward by Cameroun. 382. TNA, CAB 21/5569, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 15 February 1961. 383. La Presse du Cameroun, 15 February 1961. 384. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL. 30.1, Cameroun, Situation d’ensemble, Rapport des entretiens franco-britanniques de mars 1961, 6 March 1961. 385. Ngoh, Victor Julius, Constitutional Developments in Southern Cameroons, 1946– 1961: from trusteeship to independence (Yaoundé, CEPER, 1990); Ngoh: Southern Cameroons. On the question of negotiations, see also the work of Nicodemus Awasom, Bongfen Chem-Langhëë, Emmanuel Chiabi and Victor Pungong. 386. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL. 30.1, Cameroun, Situation d’ensemble, Rapport des entretiens franco-britanniques de mars 1961, 6 March 1961. 387. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL. 30.1, Cameroun, Situation d’ensemble, 6 March 1961. 388. TNA, CO 936/643, British Embassy (Abidjan) to Foreign Office, 12 April 1961. 389. TNA, FO 371/154739, Notes by Her Majesty’s Representatives in West and Equatorial Africa in Preparation for their Meeting in London, 16–18 May 1961, ‘The ex-French States of West and Central Africa’. 390. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1976, Note, Londres, 2 March 1960. 391. TNA, FO 371/154739, Notes by Her Majesty’s Representatives in West and Equatorial Africa in Preparation for their Meeting in London, 16–18 May 1961, ‘The ex-French States of West and Central Africa’.

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392. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL. 30.1, Cameroun, Situation d’ensemble, 6 March 1961. 393. AN, AG/5(FPR)/153, Note sur la situation au Cameroun après le référendum. 394. Delancey, Mark, ‘Cameroon’s Foreign Relations’ in M. Schatzberg, I.W. Zartman (eds), The Political Economy of Cameroon (New York, Praeger, 1986), p.194. 395. TNA, PREM 11/4077, P. de Zuleta to the Prime Minister, 22 February 1962. 396. TNA, FO 371/167385, Record of Talks between the Prime Minister and the President of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, 8 May 1963. 397. TNA, OD 20/192, Record of a talk with Dr Fonlon, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yaoundé, 12 November 1964. 398. Ibid. 399. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959. 400. La Presse du Cameroun, 14 January 1961, interview with Ahidjo. 401. TNA, CO 554/2265, Foumban Conference, First Session 11am, 17 July 1961. 402. TNA, CO 554/2265, Comparison between draft constitutions for the Federal Cameroon Republic, July 1961. 403. Ibid. 404. Ibid. 405. Le Vine, Victor T., ‘Political Integration and the United Republic of Cameroon’ in D. Smock, K. Bentsi Enchill (eds), The Search for National Integration in Africa (New York, London, The Free Press, A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc, 1975). 406. Bayart, Jean-François, ‘The Birth of the Ahidjo Regime’, in Richard Joseph (ed.), Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo (Enugu, Nigeria, Fourth Dimension Publishing Co. Ltd, 1978). 407. Ahidjo, Press Conference, 11 November 1961 in Ndedi Penda: Le pouvoir aux deux visages, p.38. 408. Médard, Jean-François, ‘L’État sous-développé au Cameroun’, Année africaine (1977), p.53. 409. Ahidjo, Press Conference, 11 November 1961 in Ndedi Penda: Le pouvoir aux deux visages, p.38. 410. Chem-Langhee, Bongfen‚The Origin of the Southern Cameroons House of Chiefs’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 16:4 (1983), pp.653–674. 411. AN, AG/5(FPU)/467, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 20 June 1961. 412. Ibid. 413. AN, AG/5(FPU)/467, MAE à Ambassade de France (Londres), 24 June 1961. 414. AN, AG/5(FPU)/467, MAE à Ambassade de France (Londres), 7 July 1961. 415. AN, AG/5(FPU)/467, Ambassade de France (Londres) à MAE, 18 July 1961. 416. Cameroon Post, Statement of the withdrawal of the Honourable Dr. John Ngu Foncha from the Constitutional Consultative Committee, 22–29 December 1994. 417. Mbile: Cameroon Political Story, p.170. 418. Ibid., p.169.

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419. Ibid., p.172. 420. AN, AG/5(FPU)/466, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 28 November 1962. 421. AN, AG/5(FPU)/467, Note à l’attention du Président de la République, Président de la Communauté, 27 July 1961. 422. AN, AG/5(FPU)/467, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 2 August 1961. 423. Milne: No Telephone to Heaven, p.407. 424. TNA, CO 554/2468, Notes of a meeting between the Commissioner of the Southern Cameroons and leading members of the business community in the Southern Cameroons, 1961. 425. Mbile: Cameroon political story, pp.167–168. 426. Milne: No Telephone to Heaven, p.415. 427. TNA, CO 554/2356, Telegram to the Colonial Secretary, 26 May 1961. 428. TNA, FO 371/155354, C. Eastwood to Sir Roger Stevens 15 May 1961. 429. TNA, FO 371/154700, Milne to Foreign Office, 20 June 1960. 430. TNA, FO 371/154699, Southern Cameroons Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, 26 June 1961. 431. Ibid. 432. Ahidjo, Ahmadou, Contribution à la construction nationale (Paris, Présence africaine, 1964), p.23. 433. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Mémorandum pour Lord Home, 5 July 1961. 434. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/1, C.I., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 September 1961. 435. TNA, CO 852/2034, Extract from Draft Record of Anglo-French talks, Paris, 3 March 1961. 436. Ibid. 437. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Mémorandum pour Lord Home, 5 July 1961. 438. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/1, C.I., Conseiller commercial de l’Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 17 August 1961. 439. TNA, FO 371/154690, British Embassy (Paris) to Foreign Office, 7 March 1961. 440. TNA, CO 554/2265, Southern Cameroons Commissioner to Colonial Office, 10 July 1961. 441. Ibid. 442. 17 July 1960, Ahidjo, Ahmadou, Anthologie des Discours 1957–1979 (Erti, Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1980), pp.59–60. 443. TNA, CO 554/2266, C.T.E Ewart-Biggs to A.Emmanuel, 10 August, 1961 444. Ibid. 445. TNA, CO 554/2265, Foumban Conference, Second Session 4.45pm, 21 July 1961. 446. Ahidjo in Union et Vérité, Bulletin de liaison de l’Union nationale camerounaise n°3, November 1966, p.2.

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447. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 19 August 1961. 448. Ibid. 449. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Consulat de France (Buea), 8 January 1962. 450. Jeune Afrique, 623, 16 December 1972, interview with Ahidjo. 451. TNA, CO 852/2034, Minutes on the future of imperial preference for Southern Cameroons products, 2 March 1961. 452. TNA, FO 371/154791, Imperial preference for the Southern Cameroons, Finance law, new clause, notes for the Secretary of State, Board of Trade, June 1961. 453. TNA, CO 852/2034, Minutes on the future of imperial preference for Southern Cameroons products, 2 March 1961. 454. Ibid. 455. TNA, FO 371/154687, Constitutional Position of the Southern Cameroons in the event of its electing to become part of the Federation of Nigeria, 3 January 1961. 456. TNA, CO 852/2034, E.C Burr to J. Vernon, 21 December 1960. 457. TNA, CO 852/2034, W.A Morris to M. Trafford Smith, 3 October 1960. 458. Hansard, HC Deb 13 December 1960 vol 632 cc184–5; HC Deb 15 December 1960 vol 632 cc579–80. 459. TNA, CO 852/2034, P. Selwyn to J. Vernon, 25 December 1960. 460. Ibid. 461. TNA, CO 852/2034, John Hennings, 5 August 1960. 462. Ibid. 463. TNA, CO 852/2034, J.Vernon to A. Emmanuel, 4 January 1961. 464. TNA, CO 554/2255, Miss Hailstone, Treasury, to E.C Burr, Colonial Office, February 1961. 465. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/1, C.I., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 September 1961. 466. Ibid. 467. AN, AG/5(FPU)/2041, Entretiens franco-britanniques sur l’Afrique, 13–14 December 1960; MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL. 30.1, Cameroun, Situation d’ensemble, MAE, 15 December 1960. 468. TNA, CO 852/2034, W.A Morris to T. Smith, 3 October 1960. 469. TNA, CO 852/2035, Brief for the Colonial Secretary, Cabinet, Colonial policy Committee, Commonwealth Preferences, 31 May 1961. 470. TNA, CO 852/2034, Letter to Sir J. Martin, 27 January 1961. 471. Hansard, HC Deb 02 February 1961 vol 633 cc1179–80. 472. TNA, CO 852/2034, Letter to Sir J. Martin, 27 January 1961. 473. TNA, CO 852/2034, J. Vernon to A. Emmanuel, 4 January 1961. 474. TNA, CO 852/2034, L. Woods to J. Vernon, 4 January 1961. 475. Hansard, HC Deb 24 January 1961 vol 633 c25. 476. TNA, FO 371/160891, Notes for supplementaries for the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 24 January 1961.

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477. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL. 30.1, Cameroun, Situation d’ensemble, Rapport des entretiens franco-britanniques de mars 1961, 6 March 1961. 478. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL. 30.1, Cameroun, Situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 26 August 1961. 479. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2, Ambassade de France (Cameroun) à MAE, 21 September 1960. 480. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL. 30.1, Cameroun, Situation d’ensemble, Rapport des entretiens franco-britanniques de mars 1961, 6 March 1961. 481. TNA, CO 852/2034, Extract from Draft Record of Anglo-French talks, Paris, 3 March 1961. 482. TNA, FO 371/154791, M. Goldsmith, Board of Trade for the Secretary of State, June 1961. 483. TNA, CO 852/2034, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 14 March 1961. 484. TNA, CO 852/2035, Brief for UK Delegation at the Tripartite Talks, 8 June 1961. 485. TNA, FO 371/154791, Cabinet, Southern Cameroons, Imperial Preference, Memorandum by the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and the Colonies, March 1961. 486. TNA, CO 852/2034, P.C. Brown, Board of Trade, to J. Vernon, Colonial Office, 28 February 1961. 487. TNA, CO 852/2035, Brief for the Colonial Secretary, Cabinet, Colonial policy Committee, Commonwealth Preferences, 31 May 1961. 488. TNA, FO 371/154791, Cabinet, Southern Cameroons, Imperial preference, Memorandum by the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and the Colonies, March1961. 489. TNA, CO 852/2035, Meeting at the Colonial Office, Foreign Office, Board of Trade, Colonial Office, Treasury, CRO, Customs and Excise, 30 May 1961. 490. TNA, CO 852/2034, Note, 1961. 491. Ibid. 492. TNA, DO 165/87, Sierra Leone Official Record of Meetings between Mr Hare and Ministers, 3 July 1961. 493. TNA, DO 200/22, Note for the Secretary of State, June 1963. 494. TNA, FO 371/154791, Cabinet, Memorandum by the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and the Colonies, 9 May 1961; see also CO 852/2035, Brief for the Colonial Secretary, Cabinet, Colonial policy Committee, Commonwealth Preferences, 31 May 1961. 495. TNA, FO 371/154791, Cabinet, Memorandum by the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and the Colonies, 9 May 1961. 496. TNA, FO 371/154791, Letter from A. J. Peckham, Colonial Office, June 1961. 497. TNA, CO 852/2035, Brief for the Colonial Secretary, Cabinet, Colonial policy Committee, Commonwealth Preferences, 31 May 1961.

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498. TNA, FO 371/154791, Cabinet, Southern Cameroons, Imperial preference, Memorandum by the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and the Colonies, March 1961. 499. TNA, FO 371/154739, ‘The ex-French States of West and Central Africa’, Notes by Her Majesty’s Representatives in West and Equatorial Africa in Preparation for their Meeting in London, 16–18 May 1961. 500. TNA, DO 195/136, Meeting of Her Majesty’s Representatives in West and Equatorial Africa, 16–19 May 1961, Day One, Political. 501. TNA, FO 371/155352, Ministère des Affaires étrangères de la République du Cameroun, 31 May 1961. 502. Discours à la nation, Journée nationale de deuil, 31 May 1961 in Ndedi Penda: Le pouvoir aux deux visages, p.42. 503. TNA, FO 371/155353, Foreign Office to British Embassy (Dakar), 15 June 1961. 504. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Secretary, 23 August 1960. 505. TNA, CO 554/1662, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 7 December 1959. 506. TNA, FO 371/155352, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 1 June 1961. 507. Ibid. 508. TNA, FO 371/154708, British Embassy (Dakar) to FO, 15 March 1961. 509. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 26 August 1961. 510. TNA, CO 554/2531, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 20 June 1961. 511. TNA, OD 20/125, Background to Ahidjo’s visit, 8 May 1963. 512. TNA, CO 852/2034, A.J. Peckham to the Secretary of State, 3 May 1961. 513. TNA, FO 371/154791, M. Goldsmith, Board of Trade to the Secretary of State, June 1961. 514. TNA, FO 371/154791, Board of Trade, Reginald Maudling, 28 June 1961. 515. TNA, FO 371/154791, Note from the African Affairs Department, 26 June 1961. 516. TNA, FO 371/154791, Imperial preference, Minutes of a meeting at the Board of Trade, 23 June 1961. 517. TNA, FO 371/154791, Southern Cameroons, Imperial Preference, Finance law, New clause, June 1961. 518. Ibid. 519. Bayart, Jean-François, L’État au Cameroun (Paris, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, seconde édition revue et augmentée, 1985), p.176. 520. Article 12 de la Constitution Fédérale de 1961, et articles 28 et 30 de la Constitution de 1972. 521. TNA, FO 371/167385, Conférence de Presse d’Ahidjo, 1963. 522. Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.37. 523. Ibid. 524. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/1, C.I., Note, 1 June 1972.

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Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.24. Zartman: ‘Decision-Making’, p.101. William Eteki, in Jeune Afrique, 1598–1599, 14–27 août 1991. Nkoum-Me-Ntseny, Louis-Marie, La dualité culturelle dans la politique étrangère: une étude comparative entre le Cameroun et le Canada (Université de Yaoundé II – SOA – IRIC, 1997/1998), p.305. 529. Ibid., p.310. 530. Ibid., p.48. 531. Médard, Jean-François, ‘The underdeveloped state in tropical Africa: political clientelism or neo-patrimonialism?’, in Christopher Clapham (ed), Private Patronage and Public Power: political clientelism in the modern state (London, Frances Pinter, 1982), p.167. 532. Hansard, HC Deb 10 March 1959 vol 601 c1047. 533. TNA, FO 371/160891, R.F. Grey, Governor-General’s Office (Lagos) to C. Eastwood, Colonial Office, 15 July 1959. 534. Hansard, HC Deb 30 January 1961 vol 633 c67W. 535. TNA, CO 554/2439, Petition from the Cameroon People’s National Convention, Bamenda, 7 February 1961. 536. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL. 30.1, Cameroun, Situation d’ensemble, Rapport des entretiens franco-britanniques de mars 1961, 6 March 1961. 537. TNA, CO 554/2439, Petition from the People of Modelle to the SecretaryGeneral of the UNO General Assembly, 11 March 1961. 538. TNA, CO 554/2439, Petition from Ngaw Iwisi Njesi &co., 11 March 1961. 539. TNA, CO 554/2440, Petition from Esmibi Women, 13 April 1961. 540. TNA, CO 554/2439, Petition from Chiefs and People of Wum West Clans Plebiscite District, 22 February 1961. 541. TNA, CO 554/2439, Petition from the Cameroons Indigenes Party, 21 February 1961. 542. Mbile: Cameroon political story, p.128–129. 543. TNA, CO 554/2531, British Consulate (Buea) to Foreign Office, 3 October 1961. 544. AN, AG/5(FPU)/467, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 29 September 1961. 545. TNA, CO 554/2359, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 19 September 1961. 546. TNA, CO 554/2359, Southern Cameroons Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, 14 September 1961. 547. TNA, CO 554/2531, British Consulate (Buea) to Foreign Office, 3 October 1961. 548. Elizabeth II would again visit Senegal in 1968 and lay the foundation stone of the British Institute in Dakar – by contrast, she sent a message on the occasion of reunification on 1 October 1961, ‘look[ing] forward to ever more cordial relations in the future’ (see TNA, CO 554/2531, the Queen’s Message, October 1961), but she never visited Cameroon.

525. 526. 527. 528.

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309

549. Senghor, Speech at 1959 party congress, quoted in Senghor, Léopold Sédar, On African Socialism, (London, Pall Mall Press, 1962), p.23.

2

Out of Commonwealth Dynamics

1. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Consulat de France (Buea), 8 January 1962. 2. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 30 June 1962. 3. Le Vine: ‘Political Integration and the United Republic of Cameroon’, p.282. 4. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/26, Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 4 January 1964. 5. TNA, FO 371/176844, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 22 September 1964 and 5 October 1964. 6. This was later emphasised by Anglophone opposition politicians in the 1990s, see Carlson Anyangwe in Cameroon Post, 23–30 March 1994. 7. Ibid. 8. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Consulat de France (Buea), 8 January 1962. 9. It was eventually abolished after Cameroon became a unitary state in May 1972. 10. Konings, Nyamnjoh: Negotiating, p.54. 11. TNA, OD 30/193, Annual Review for Cameroon, 1 January 1970. 12. TNA, DO 195/380, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 17 December 1966. 13. TNA, CAB 21/5569, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 12 June 1961. 14. Benjamin, Jacques, Les Camerounais occidentaux: la minorité dans un état bicommunautaire (Montréal, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1972), p.141. 15. Quoted in Takougang, Joseph, Krieger, Milton, African State and Society in the 1990s, Cameroon’s Political Crossroads (Boulder, Westview, 1998), p.43. 16. Cameroon Federal Republic, Federal Information Service Press Bulletin, n°1895, 4 July 1962. 17. Takougang, Krieger: African State and Society, p.44. 18. TNA, DO 200/21, The Political situation in Cameroon, 11 March 1963. 19. Interview with Charles Onana Owana, La Presse du Cameroun, 23 March 1962. 20. FD, Robert C. Foulon, 22 April 1988. 21. See also Cameroons Champion, 3:61, 28 August 1962. 22. Fonlon, Bernard, ‘Will we make or mar?’, Abbia, Revue Culturelle Camerounaise, 5 (1964). 23. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 7 January 1963.

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310 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

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TNA, FCO 25/196, British Consulate (Buea) to FCO, 19 April 1968. AN, AG/(FPU)/467, Note DAM à (Washington), 21 October 1961. Konings, Nyamnjoh: Negotiating, p.52. TNA, FCO 25/196, British Consulate (Buea) to FCO, 19 April 1968. Ibid. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 December 1965. TNA, FO 371/176844, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 13 July 1964; see also Ndongko, Wilfred A., Economic Development of Cameroon (Stockholm, Bethany, 1989), p.96. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 7 January 1963. TNA, CO/1056/164, Confidential, 12 February 1963. Ibid. AN, AG/5(FPR)/153, Note à l’attention du Président de la République, 3 November 1964; see also NAC (Annex), Buea, Ga/1962/161, Prime Minister’s Office, Brief for Ahidjo’s visit, 27 September 1964, and Ministre des forces armées, Note sur le déroulement de la prise d’armes organisée le 1 October 1964 à Buea, 29 September 1964. TNA, DO 200/21, The Political situation in Cameroon, 11 March 1963. Ibid.; see also MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Voyage de M. l’Ambassadeur au Cameroun occidental, 25 November – 4 December 1962, and Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 7 July 1965. TNA, FO 371/167380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 26 April 1963. FD, Lucian Heichler, commercial officer, embassy, 1966–1968, 2 February 2000. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 30 June 1962. Bederman: The Cameroons Development Corporation, p.25. Ibid., p.19. Two scholarships in medicine to Britain and Nigeria; one in accountancy in Britain; ten in mechanics in Britain, Nigeria and the United States; one in agriculture in the United States; one in economics in Sierra Leone; one in secretarial work in Britain; two in nursing in Britain and Nigeria; one in administration in Britain; and 18 in Teacher Training Institutes in Britain; see MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 2 October 1963. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Consulat de France (Buea), 8 January 1962. TNA, FO 371/167588, Draft reply, J. Tilney C.R.O., Philip Hunter, Lagos, 1963. TNA, DO 200/21, The Political situation in Cameroon, 11 March 1963.

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NOTES

311

46. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/6, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 1964; see also TNA, DO 195/380, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 17 December 1966. 47. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Annual review for 1974, 9 January 1975. 48. TNA, FO 371/167141, Anglo-French talks, Paris, 30 January 1963. 49. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 December 1965. 50. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Consulat de France (Buea), 8 January 1962; see also AN, AG/5(FPU)/466, Note de l’ambassadeur de France à Yaoundé sur la situation au Cameroun occidental, October 1962. 51. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 28 February 1962. 52. Cooper, Frederick, Africa since 1940: the Past of the Present (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.84. 53. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Voyage de M. l’Ambassadeur au Cameroun occidental, 25 November – 4 December 1962. 54. Fonlon: ‘Will we make or mar?’, p.12. 55. TNA, OD 20/192, Record of a talk with Dr Fonlon, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, at Yaoundé, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 12 November 1964; see also TNA, FO 371/176851, British Consulate (Buea) to Foreign Office, 9 July 1964. 56. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Consulat de France (Buea), 8 January 1962. 57. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Voyage de M. l’Ambassadeur au Cameroun occidental, 25 November–4 December 1962; see also MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Note de Michel Moreux (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 3 May 1966. 58. This was particularly true in the context of ‘the new and peculiar “partition” of Africa’ and the persistent forms of colonialism in Southern Africa, see Darwin, John, After Tamerlane: a global history of the British Empire since 1465 (London, Allen Lane, 2007), p.467. 59. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Consulat de France (Buea), 8 January 1962. 60. Ibid. 61. FD, John Prospt Blane, (Yaoundé, 1963–1966), 8 August 1990; Henry Allen Holmes, consular and political officer (Yaoundé, 1959–61), 9 March 1999. 62. FD, John Prospt Blane, (Yaoundé, 1963–1966), 8 August 1990. 63. Ibid.; as Frederick Cooper argues, the USA was prepared to ‘provide aid, but not too much of it [and] not too often’ and the French presence in Cameroon, as long it did not interfere with wider US interests, would have suited it well. See Cooper: Africa since 1940, p.134. 64. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.73.

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65. TNA, DO 195/139, Foreign Office discussion paper for Heads of Mission Meeting, April 1963. 66. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 2 October 1962. 67. TNA, DO 195/139, Foreign Office discussion paper for Heads of Mission Meeting, April 1963. 68. TNA, FO 371/167380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 26 April 1963. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Bach, Daniel, ‘Dynamique et contradictions dans la politique africaine de la France’, Politique Africaine, 5 (1982), pp.52–53. 72. TNA, FO 371/88403, UKDEL to the European Communities (Brussels) to FO, 3 February 1966. 73. FD, Scott Behoteguy, mission director of USAID in Cameroon, 11 August 1997. 74. Véronique Dimier, ‘Négocier avec les rois nègres: l’influence des administrateurs coloniaux français sur la politique européenne de développement’, in Bitsch, Bossuat: L’Europe unie et l’Afrique, p.408. 75. Heads of the Directorate General of the European Commission in charge of relations with associated territories (DG VIII) between 1958 and 1985 were all French nationals. 76. Andreas Wilkens, ‘L’Allemagne et l’Afrique, 1949–1963’, in Bitsch, Bossuat: L’Europe unie et l’Afrique, p.288. 77. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/191, Note sur le Cameroun et la CEE, 1968. 78. Renou: ‘A New French Policy’, p.11. 79. Martin, Guy, ‘Continuity and Change in Franco-African Relations’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 33:4 (1995), p.199. 80. Bach: ‘Dynamique et contradictions’, pp.52–53. 81. Agir Ici-Survie, France – Cameroun: croisement dangereux (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1996), p.8–9. 82. TNA, FO 371/167380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 26 April 1963. 83. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 23 August 1960. 84. TNA, OD 20/125, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 16 October 1962. 85. TNA, DO 195/380, British Consulate (Buea) to DO, 17 December 1965. 86. TNA, FO 371/176530, British Embassy (Lomé), 25 March 1964. 87. Outside the African Commonwealth, in the 1960s and 1970s, diplomatic relations were initiated with Pakistan, represented through its High Commission in Lagos, and Trinidad and Tobago in 1976. 88. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/263, Note de la Direction des Affaires Africaines et Malgaches, 24 March 1965. 89. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 23 August 1960. 90. TNA, FO 371/147062, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 6 August 1960. 91. Oyono: La politique africaine, p.116. 92. TNA, CO 852/1798, Norman Pannell, MP, to Hugh Fraser, Colonial Office, 9 November 1961.

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313

93. TNA, CAB 21/5569, Imperial Preference for West Cameroon, 1962. 94. TNA, CO 852/2035, Governor for Jamaica to Colonial Secretary, 15 February 1962. 95. TNA, CO 852/2036, Windward Islands Banana Growers’ Association, April 1962. 96. TNA, CO 852/2036, Acting Administrator (St Lucia) to Colonial Secretary, 21 May 1962. 97. TNA, CO 852/2035, Miss Wannan to J. Leahy, British Embassy (Paris), 22 February 1962. 98. TNA, CO 852/2036, F. Erroll, Board of Trade, to Selwyn Lloyd, 16 May 1962. 99. AN, AG/5(FPU)/2041, MAE, Afrique-Levant, Note, 7 février 1962, sur les entretiens franco-britanniques du 22 et 23 janvier 1962. 100. TNA, CO 852/2036, Preparatory note for the affirmative resolution debates in the Houses of Parliament, July 1962. 101. Ibid. 102. Hansard, HC Deb 02 May 1961 vol 639 cc94–5W. 103. TNA, FO 371/176854, P. Mansfield, 10 January 1964. 104. TNA, CO 852/2035, Letter to Miss Barkley, 19 March 1962. 105. TNA, CO 852/1799, Note of a meeting, Colonial Office, 5 April 1962. 106. Hansard, HC Deb 17 May 1962 vol 659 cc1511–2. 107. TNA, CO 852/2035, Letter to Miss Barkley, 19 March 1962. 108. TNA, CO 852/2036, Note of a meeting, Treasury, 9 February 1962. 109. TNA, FO 371/161620, British Consulate (Buea) to FO, 9 November 1962. 110. TNA, FO 1096/3, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 15 January 1962. 111. TNA, CO 852/1799, Letter from K.M Wilford, Foreign Office, to A. Galsworthy, Colonial Office, 28 May 1962. 112. Ibid. 113. TNA, BT 241/647, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Board of Trade, 18 June 1962. 114. TNA, CO 852/2036, R. Nowell, Board of Trade, 9 April 1962. 115. TNA, BT 241/647, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Board of Trade, 18 June 1962. 116. TNA, FO 371/167396, J.-F. Bétayéné to British Embassy (Yaoundé), December 1961. 117. TNA, FO 371/161615, Record of Conversation between Sir Roger Stevens and J.-F. Bétayéné, London, 25 June 1962. 118. TNA, FO 371/161622, F. Vallat to Sir Harold Kent, Treasury Solicitor, 17 January 1962. 119. Quoted in Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.193. 120. TNA, FO 371/167399, Communication à la nation du Président Ahidjo, December 1963; see also FO 371/160217, Ahmadou Ahidjo, Message à la nation, Buea, 1 October 1964. 121. TNA, FO 371/167380, Africa 1963. 122. TNA, FO 371/176884, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 5 June 1964. 123. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.21.

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124. TNA, CO 852/2036, A. Peckham to O.H. Morris, W.A Morris and J.W. Vernon, 5 June 1962. 125. TNA, CO 852/2036, Commonwealth Relations Office to Board of Trade, 15 May 1962. 126. TNA, CO 852/2035, Foreign Office to Customs and Excise, 16 March 1962. 127. Ibid. 128. TNA, CO 852/2035, Foreign Office to British Embassy (Dakar), 8 February 1962. 129. TNA, FO 371/161371, British Embassy (Paris), to FO, 23 May 1962. 130. TNA, CO 852/2035, Foreign Office to Customs and Excise, 16 March 1962. 131. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/294, Ambassade de France (Londres) à MAE, 20 September 1962. 132. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/197, Canada-Afrique, Note from African and Middle Eastern Division to M. Cadieux, Meeting with M. Jacques Kuoh Moukouri, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Cameroun, 6 April 1962. 133. TNA, BT 241/647, Brief for the Secretary of State’s talk with J.-F. Bétayéné, 26 June 1962. 134. TNA, DO 195/137, British High Commission (Accra) to Deputy UnderSecretary of State, CRO, 27 February 1963. 135. TNA, FO 371/161615, FO, Meeting between Secretary of State and M. Bétayéné, 20 June 1962. 136. TNA, BT 241/647, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Board of Trade, 18 June 1962. 137. Ibid. 138. La Presse du Cameroun, 20 September 1962. 139. TNA, CO 852/2036, Brief for Affirmative Resolution Debates in both Houses of Parliament, Preparatory note, July 1962. 140. TNA, CO 1056/164, Confidential report on the Customs mission to the Republic of Cameroon, June 1962. 141. TNA, CO 852/2036, Chancellor of the Exchequer to F. Erroll, 29 May 1962. 142. TNA, BT 241/647, Letter from British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 22 August 1962. 143. TNA, CO 852/2036, Preparatory note, July 1962. 144. TNA, FO 371/161620, British Consulate (Buea) to Foreign Office, 9 November 1962. 145. TNA, BT 241/647, British Consulate (Buea) to Board of Trade, 16 October 1962. 146. TNA, DO 200/21, Common Market Negotiations, Tariff and Quota treatment of UK imports of bananas, note by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 13 December 1962. 147. TNA, DO 195/137, British High Commission (Accra), to Deputy UnderSecretary of State, CRO, 27 February 1963. 148. TNA, CO 1056/165, Note from the Foreign Office, 24 May 1963. 149. Ibid.

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315

150. TNA, CO 1056/165, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 27 April 1963. 151. TNA, CAB 21/5569, Cabinet, Economic Policy Committee, Note by the Chairman of the Economic Steering Committee, June 1963. 152. Ibid. 153. TNA, FO 371/167394, Minutes, Foreign Office, R.J. Stratton, 3 May 1963. 154. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 6 February 1963; see also MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/26, Consulat de France (Buea) à DAM, 20 November 1962. 155. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 6 February 1963. 156. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 30 January 1963. 157. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 21 February 1963. 158. Ibid. 159. TNA, FCO 25/204, The Cameroons Development Corporation, 31 May 1968. 160. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/26, Yves Robin à DAM, 20 Novembre 1962. 161. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 6 February 1963. 162. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 21 February 1963. 163. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 19 June 1963. 164. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 21 February 1963. 165. TNA, DO 200/21, The Political situation in Cameroon, 11 March 1963. 166. Ibid. 167. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 6 February 1963. 168. TNA, FO 371/167141, Anglo-French talks, Paris, 30 January 1963. 169. Ibid. 170. TNA, FO 371/161371, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, May 23, 1962. 171. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 172. TNA, FCO 65/978, ‘French policy in Black Africa’, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 6 May 1963. 173. TNA, DO 195/140, British Embassy (Lomé) to WCAD, FO, 25 April 1963. 174. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 175. Ibid. 176. Chafer: ‘French African Policy’; Smith, Tony, ‘The French Colonial Consensus and People’s War, 1946–58’, Journal of Contemporary History, 9:4 (1974). 177. TNA, FCO 65/978, ‘French policy in Black Africa’, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 6 May 1963.

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178. Ibid. 179. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 180. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Ambassadeur du Canada (Paris) au Sous-Secrétaire d’Etat aux affaires extérieures, Ottawa, 17 May 1966. 181. TNA, DO 200/21, E. Sykes to Sir A. Rumbold, 24 May 1963. 182. TNA, CO 1056/165, Note from the Foreign Office, 24 May 1963. 183. TNA, CO 1056/165, E. Sykes, Note on bananas, April 1963. 184. TNA, CO 852/1799, Note of a meeting at the Colonial Office, 5 April 1962. 185. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 186. TNA, CO 852/2034, M.L Woods to J. Vernon, 4 January 1961. 187. TNA, CAB 21/5569, Commonwealth Preference for West Cameroon Products, Notes by Officials. 188. TNA, CO 1056/164, Report, 12 February 1963. 189. TNA, CAB 21/5569, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 18 June 1963. 190. TNA, DO 200/21, Note, March 1963. 191. Ibid. 192. TNA, DO 200/21, Preparatory report for the Economic Organisation Committee, 1963. 193. TNA, CO 554/2266, Southern Cameroons, Record of tripartite talks in Yaoundé, 4–7 August 1961, First session. 194. TNA, CO 554/2531, Independence Celebrations, A.A Acland to LieutenantColonel Martin Charteris, 22 September 1961. 195. TNA, CO 554/2266, Southern Cameroons, Record of tripartite talks in Yaoundé, 4–7 August 1961, First session. 196. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 June 1960. 197. La Presse du Cameroun, 4 July 1963. 198. TNA, DO 195/380, D.F Lomax (Yaoundé), to J. Mellon (Foreign Office), 25 January 1964. 199. TNA, DO 200/21, J. Barrow to E. Sykes, 25 March 1963. 200. TNA, DO 200/21, Record of talks between the Foreign Secretary and J.-F. Bétayéné, 8 May 1963. 201. TNA, PREM 11/4077, Record of Talks between the Prime Minister and the President of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, 8 May 1963. 202. Ibid. 203. TNA, DO 200/21, E. Sykes to the Prime Minister’s personal secretary, 8 May 1963. 204. TNA, DO 200/21, Memo by the West Indies Department for the Secretary of State, 8 May 1963. 205. TNA, DO 200/21, Record of Talks between the Foreign Secretary and J.-F. Bétayéné, 8 May 1963. 206. Ibid. 207. TNA, DO 200/21, Memo by the West Indies Department for the Secretary of State, 8 May 1963.

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317

208. Ibid. 209. Ibid. 210. TNA, CAB21/5569, Cabinet, Economic Policy Committee, Note by the Chairman of the Economic Steering Committee, June 1963. 211. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 212. TNA, DO 200/21, Note from E. Sykes, 12 June 1963. 213. TNA, CO 1056/165, Letter to M. Trafford Smith, 27 May 1963. 214. TNA, DO 200/21, Kingston to Commonwealth Relations Office, 29 May 1963. 215. TNA, DO 200/21, Brief F, West and Central African Department for the Secretary of State, 2 May 1963. 216. TNA, CAB 21/5569, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 18 June 1963; CO 1056/165, Economic Organisation Committee, Minutes of a meeting in the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 19 June 1963; DO 200/22, Note to the Secretary of State, June 1963. 217. TNA, CO 1056/165, Economic Organisation Committee, Minutes of a meeting in the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Treasury, 19 June 1963. 218. TNA, DO 195/137, British High Commission (Accra) to Deputy UnderSecretary of State, CRO, 27 February 1963. 219. TNA, DO 195/137, CRO to British High Commission (Accra), 25 March 1963. 220. TNA, DO 200/22, L.B Atkins to His Excellency M. H.L. Lindo, 24 June 1963. 221. TNA, CO 1056/165, Colonial Secretary to Administrators of St Lucia, Dominica, St Vincent, Grenada, Montserrat, 25 June 1963. 222. TNA, OD 20/125, Summary of Ahidjo’s first press conference since 11 November 1961, 2 July 1963. 223. TNA, DO 200/22, Letter from the office of H.L. Lindo to the Duke of Devonshire, Commonwealth Relations Office, 8 August 1963. 224. TNA, DO 200/22, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 25 June 1963. 225. TNA, CO 1056/166, Memo for the Special Orders Committee (House of Lords), Board of Trade, 2 July 1963. 226. TNA, T 312/1312, P.R Mansfield, Foreign Office, to J. Whaley, Export credits Guarantee Department, 28 June 1963. 227. In September 1964, a letter from the Cameroonian Embassy referred to the acceptance of a £200,000 loan and there is no evidence that anything happened before then, see TNA, T312/1312. 228. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 229. TNA, T 312/1312, W. Pattinson to Mr. Lynch, 22 August 1963. 230. TNA, FO 371/181841, Notes for farewell luncheon for Martin Epie, 5 October 1965. 231. TNA, FO 371/187836, Mervyn Brown FO to Mr Buxton, 23 December 1966.

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IN

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232. See TNA, FO 371/187846, Note from C.M. Le Quesne, 23 May 1966; and FCO 65/1093, Letter from John de Courcy Ling to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 26 June 1972. 233. TNA, FCO 25/204, The Cameroons Development Corporation, 31 May 1968. 234. Bederman: The Cameroons Development Corporation, p.36. 235. TNA, FO 371/176851, British Consulate (Buea), to FO, 9 July 1964. 236. Harryan, Anjo G., Van Der Harst, Jan, ‘A bumpy road to Lomé: the Netherlands, Association and the Yaoundé Treaties, 1956–1969’, in Bitsch, Bossuat: L’Europe unie et l’Afrique, p.235. 237. Zartman: ‘Europe and Africa’, p.329. 238. West African Pilot, July 1963, in Oyono: La politique africaine, pp.16–17. 239. Ahidjo: Anthologie, p.59–60. 240. TNA, FO 371/147062, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 6 August 1960; MAEE, La Courneuve, Afrique Levant, Cameroun, 40QO/12, Chargé d’affaires a.i. au Cameroun à MAE, 3 October 1960. 241. La Presse du Cameroun, 4 July 1963. 242. TNA, OD 30/193, Ahidjo, Second ordinary session of the Federal National Assembly, August 1970. 243. TNA, FO 371/160217, Ahidjo, Message à la Nation, Buea, 1 October 1964. 244. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.38. 245. La Presse du Cameroun, interview with Ahidjo, 4 July 1963. 246. TNA, FO 371/160217, Message à la Nation, Buea, 1 October 1964. 247. Ahidjo: Contribution,p.44. 248. Ibid. 249. NAC, Annex (Buea), Ga/1962/5, 1962–1965, Address by Ahidjo, Bekoko, 10 October 1965; Times of Cameroon 1: 9, 27 November 1966. 250. TNA, FO 371/176840, Agence Camerounaise de Presse, Important Discours prononcé par le Président Ahidjo à la 2ème Conférence des Pays non-alignés au Caire, 20 October 1964. 251. Le Vine, Victor T., The Cameroon Federal Republic (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1971), p.37. 252. Kofele-Kale, Ndiva, An African Experiment in Nation-Building: the Binlingual Cameroon Republic Since Reunification (Boulder, Colo, Westview Press, 1980), p.7. 253. Fourth Congress of the Union Camerounaise, August 1962, in Lewis, W.H. (ed), French-Speaking Africa: the search for identity (New-York, Walker, 1965) p.210. 254. TNA, FO 371/167381, British Embassy (Bonn) to Foreign Office, 16 May 1963. 255. TNA, FO 371/189188, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Michael Stewart, 8 March 1966. 256. TNA, FO 371/167381, British Embassy (Bonn) to Foreign Office, 16 May 1963. 257. Bourdieu, Pierre, Ce que parler veut dire: l’économie des échanges linguistiques (Paris, Fayart, 1982), p.31. 258. TNA, FCO 25/210, Ahidjo, Speech in Buea, 1 November 1966.

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NOTES 259. 260. 261. 262. 263. 264. 265. 266.

267. 268. 269. 270. 271.

272. 273. 274. 275.

276. 277. 278. 279. 280. 281. 282.

283. 284.

319

TNA, FO 371/160217, Ahidjo, Message à la Nation, Buea, 1 October 1964.. Jeune Afrique, 623, 16 December 1972, (my italics). TNA, FO 371/160217, Ahidjo, Message à la Nation, Buea, 1 October 1964. Muna, Bernard, Cameroon and the Challenges of the 21st Century (Tama Books, 1993), p.1. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.26. TNA, FO 371/160217, Ahidjo, Message à la Nation, Buea, 1 October 1964. TNA, FCO 25/210, Ahidjo, Speech in Buea, 1 November 1966. Ahidjo, Council for Higher Education and Scientific and Technical Research, First Meeting, December 1974, in Bahoken, J-C, Atangana, E., Cultural Policy in the United Republic of Cameroon (The Unesco Press, 1976), p.26. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Jua au Ministère fédéral de l’éducation nationale et au Consulat de France (Buea), 16 May 1963. Article 1, chapter 1 of the 1961 Constitution and Article 1, title 1 of the 1972 Constitution. This was increasingly the case in ministries, with all ministries having translation services after 1972. Article 59 of the 1961 Constitution and Article 39 of the 1972 Constitution. Echu, G., Grundstrom, A., Official Bilingualism and Linguistic Communication in Cameroon; Bilinguisme Officiel et Communication linguistique au Cameroun (New York, Peter Lang Publishings, 1999). Cameroon Tribune, 10 October 1974. Torrent: ‘Bilingualism and Double-Talk’. TNA, FCO 65/605, Ambassador’s summary, 14 July 1970. See also MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/197, Canada-Afrique, Note from African and Middle Eastern Division to M. Cadieux, Meeting with M. Jacques Kuoh Moukouri, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Cameroun, 6 April 1962. AN, AG/5(FPU)/468, Note pour le Président de la République et de la Communauté, 12 December 1961. TNA, FCO 65/1093, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 26 May 1972. TNA, FO 371/161615, British Embassy (Washington) to FO, 23 March 1962. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/6, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 October 1964. TNA, FCO 65/605, Ambassador’s summary, 14 July 1970. AN, AG/5(FPU)/468, Note pour le Président de la République et de la Communauté, 12 December 1961. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/28, Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, West Cameroon Education Policy, Investment in Education, 1963. See also Hessel, Stéphane, Citoyen sans frontières, conversations avec Jean-Michel Helvig (Paris, Fayard, 2008), p.144. AN, AG/5(FPU)/756, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), à Ministre des Affaires Etrangères et Ministre de la Coopération, 4 January 1963.

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285. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.98; MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/28, Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, West Cameroon Education Policy, Investment in Education, 1963. 286. AN, AG/5(FPU)/756, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), à Ministre des Affaires Etrangères et Ministre de la Coopération, 23 May 1962; AN, AG/5(FPU)/756, Note à l’attention du Président de la République et de la Communauté, 7 August 1962. 287. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 1 May 1967. 288. Ahidjo: Contribution, pp.93–94. 289. TNA, FCO 25/210, Report on Bilingualism in Cameroon. 290. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.98. 291. Tabi-Manga, Jean, Les politiques linguistiques au Cameroun, essai d’aménagement linguistique (Paris, Karthala, 2000), p.115. 292. Stark: ‘Federalism in Cameroon’, p.433. 293. Konings, Nyamnjoh: Negotiating, p.56. 294. TNA, FCO 13/026, Anglo-Cameroon Mixed Commission Meeting, Brief for United Kingdom Delegation, October 1968. 295. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.102. 296. TNA, FO 371/160217, Ahidjo, Message à la Nation, Buea, 1 October 1964. 297. TNA, FCO 13/625, ‘Africa, Britain and the European Community: cultural and educational implications’, Paper arising from a symposium held at SOAS, 8–9 January 1973. 298. TNA, FO 371/167381, British Embassy (Bonn) to FO, 16 May 1963. 299. TNA, DO 195/137, ‘Policy towards Africa South of the Sahara’, Paper approved at official level by the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, and Commonwealth Relations Office, August 1961. 300. Ibid. 301. TNA, FO 371/161371, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 23 May 1962. 302. Ibid. 303. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 304. TNA, FO 371/181614, FO note on Official and Public reactions in Commonwealth African Countries to the Nouakchott Conference. 305. France carried out a total of thirteen nucler tests in the Sahara between 1960 and 1966. 306. TNA, FCO 65/978, British Embassy (Dakar) to FO, 20 June 1963. 307. TNA, DO 195/137, ‘Policy towards Africa South of the Sahara’, Paper approved at official level by the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, and Commonwealth Relations Office, August 1961. 308. TNA, DO 195/208, British High Commission (Freetown) to FO, 11 September 1963. 309. TNA, FCO 65/978, British Embassy (Dakar) to FO, 20 June 1963. 310. TNA, FO 371/161371, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 23 May 1962. 311. TNA, DO 195/139, Foreign Office discussion paper for Heads of Mission Meeting, April 1963.

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321

312. See also TNA, DO 195/140, British Embassy (Lomé) to FO, 25 April 1963. 313. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Discours de l’ambassadeur de France, 14 December 1969. 314. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Voyage de M. l’Ambassadeur au Cameroun occidental. 315. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Note concernant la diffusion de la langue et de l’enseignement français au Cameroun occidental, 1966. 316. AN, AG/5(FPU)/468, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Ministre de la Coopération, 20 October 1961. 317. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/6, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 15 December 1965. 318. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Coopération, 3 October 1962. 319. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/20, 2/2, C.I.1.c., Projet d’allocution prononcée par M. le Président de la République à son arrivée à l’aéroport de Yaoundé, 9 February 1971. 320. TNA, FO 371/167380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 26 April 1963. 321. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/6, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 15 December 1965. 322. TNA, FO 371/167380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 26 April 1963. 323. TNA, FO 371/167141, Anglo-French talks, Paris, 30 January 1963. 324. TNA, FO 924/001501, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Cultural Relations Department, FO, 17 July 1964. 325. TNA, AG/5(FPU)/756, Note à l’attention du Président de la République et de la Communauté, 21 March 1963. 326. TNA, FO371/161371, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 23 May 1962. 327. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 328. Ibid. 329. Ibid. 330. TNA, FO 1096/3, Research Department Memorandum, 16 October 1962. 331. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea), 26 December 1962. 332. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea), 10 December 1962. 333. TNA, FO 371/161615, Record of Conversation between Sir Roger Stevens and J.-F. Bétayéné, Foreign Office, 25 June 1962. 334. TNA, FO 371/176851, British Consulate (Buea) to FO, 9 July 1964. 335. Yasothar, Annita, VSO, personal electronic message to the author, 9 August 2004; see also NAC (Annex), Buea, Oa/j/1965/4, International Voluntary Service Overseas. 336. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea), 26 December 1962. 337. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 29 July 1963.

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338. TNA, FCO 65/978, ‘French policy in Black Africa’, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 6 May 1963. 339. TNA, FO 924/001501, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Cultural Relations Department, Foreign Office, 17 July 1964. 340. Ibid. 341. TNA, FO 370/2748, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Library, FO, 9 July 1964. 342. Ibid. 343. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 23 August 1960. 344. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 29 July 1963. 345. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/28, Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, West Cameroon Education Policy, Investment in Education, 1963. 346. TNA, FO 371/161615, British Embassy (Washington) to FO, 23 March 1962. 347. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE. 348. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 1 May 1967. 1967; see also Amin, Julius, The Peace Corps in Cameroon (Kent, The Kent State University Press, 1992). 349. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 13 July 1963. 350. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à DAM, 19 February 1963. 351. AN, AG/5(FPU)/468, Note pour le Président de la République et de la Communauté, 12 December 1961. 352. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 15 September 1962. 353. TNA, FCO 25/210, Letter from Embassy to FCO, 1 May 1967. 354. TNA, FO 371/176851, British Consulate (Buea) to FO, 9 July 1964. 355. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 13 July 1963; NAC (Annex), Buea, Oa/j/1962/3, Foncha to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yaoundé, 27 February 1964. 356. MAEE, Yaoundé (Coopération), 209, Extrait du rapport de H. Alphand, Ambassadeur de France aux Etats-Unis, 1961. 357. FD, James K. Bishop Jr., Embassy in Yaoundé (1968–1970), 15 November 1995. 358. TNA, OD 20/192, Record of a talk with Dr Fonlon, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yaoundé, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 12 November 1964; NAC (Annex), Buea, Oa/j/1962/3, Fonlon to Foncha, 14 February 1967. 359. Ibid. 360. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 13 July 1963. 361. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/209, Extrait du rapport de H. Alphand, Ambassadeur de France aux Etats-Unis, 1961.

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323

362. Ibid. 363. TNA, FO 371/160217, Ahidjo, Message à la Nation, Buea, 1 October 1964. 364. TNA, FO 371/155354, British Ambassador (Yaoundé) to Foreign Secretary, 27 February 1961. 365. TNA, FO 371/155354, Commonwealth Relations Office to British High Commission (Ottawa), 24 March 1961. 366. Ibid. 367. Ibid. 368. LAC, RG25, vol.8607, file 18, Ambassade du Canada (Abidjan) à Affaires extérieures, 9 December 1974. 369. LAC, RG25–8605-20–1-2-AFR, part 9, Notes for an address by Marc Perron (African Affairs (II) Division) to the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Canadian Institute for International Affairs, 8 December 1971. 370. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/112, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 12 December 1960. 371. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/112, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 20 May 1960. 372. LAC, RG25–8605-20–1-2-AFR, part 9, Notes for an address by Marc Perron (African Affairs (II) Division) to the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Canadian Institute for International Affairs, 8 December 1971. 373. Ibid. 374. TNA, FO 371/155354, British Ambassador (Yaoundé) to Foreign Secretary, 27 February 1961. 375. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Secretary, 23 August 1960. 376. LAC, 5362, 10283-L-40, pt.2, Canadian Embassy (Paris) to EA, Ottawa, ‘Visit to the Community’s African States’, 17 March 1960. 377. La Presse du Cameroun, 27 April 1961. 378. It was also accredited to Mali, Guinea and Mauritania. 379. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975. 380. LAC, MG31/E47, vol.89, ‘Canada, the Commonwealth and the World’, Arnold Smith, Assistant Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, to the Canadian Universities Society of Great Britain, 22 March 1965. 381. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/197, Canada-Afrique, Note from African and Middle Eastern Division to M. Cadieux, Meeting with M. Jacques Kuoh Moukouri, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Cameroun, 6 April 1962; see also NAC (Annex), Buea, Oa/j/1964/5, Technical assistance, Canada. 382. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 12 May 1972. 383. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975. 384. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/197, Afrique-Canada, Comité d’action pour l’Afrique de langue française, Outremont (Montréal), 1962.

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385. TNA, FO 371/155354, Commonwealth Relations Office to British High Commission (Ottawa), 24 March 1961. 386. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, June 1975. 387. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/209, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 4 April 1962 388. Ibid. 389. See also Schlegel, John P., The Deceptive Ash: Bilingualism and Canadian Policy in Africa: 1957–1971 (University Press of America, Washington, 1978). 390. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975. 391. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/243, PL.I.11., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 15 May 1981. 392. TNA, BT 241/647, D.C Hartridge to Mr. Reynolds, 27 November 1961. 393. TNA, OD 20/125, Background to Ahidjo’s visit, 8 May 1963. 394. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 29 July 1963. 395. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 December 1965. 396. TNA, DO 195/380, British Consulate (Buea), 17 December 1965. 397. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 8 December 1965. 398. Ibid. 399. TNA, FO 371/167388 J. Tilney, CRO, to P. Hunter, Lagos, 1963. 400. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 401. TNA, DO 195/142, Note of a meeting in the CRO, 30 May 1963. 402. TNA, FO 371/167380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 26 April 1963. 403. Mazrui, Ali, The Anglo-African Commonwealth: Political Friction and Cultural Fusion London, Pergamon Press, 1967). 404. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 405. TNA, DO 195/140, Summary of main problems in relation to agenda, as seen from Abidjan, for the Meeting of H.M. Representatives in West and Equatorial Africa, May 1963. 406. TNA, DO 195/140, British Embassy (Lomé) to FO, 25 April 1963. 407. TNA, FO 371/167141, Anglo-French talks, Paris, 30 January 1963. 408. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 409. TNA, DO 195/140, British Embassy (Lomé) to FO, 25 April 1963. 410. TNA, FO 1096/2, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 6 November 1961. 411. LAC, RG25, vol.11109, Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé), Octobre 1980. 412. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 1 August 1964. 413. Ibid. 414. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 15 January 1963. 415. TNA, FO 371/176844, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 13 July 1964.

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416. Ibid.; see also Amazee, Victor Bong, ‘The “Igbo Scare” in the British Cameroons, c. 1945–1961’, Journal of African History, 31 (1990), and Weiss, Thomas Lothar, Migrants nigérians: la dispora dans le sud-ouest du Cameroun (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1998). 417. Fonlon: ‘Will we make or mar?’. 418. TNA, DO 200/21, The Political situation in Cameroon, 11 March 1963. 419. TNA, FO 371/160217, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 7 July 1964. 420. TNA, FO 371/176879, reference to a letter from Kale to Vanderfelt, dated 12 February 1964. 421. TNA, FO 371/176879, Robin Vanderfelt, CPA, to J. Mellon, FO, 17 March 1964. 422. TNA, FO 371/176879, Constitution of the CPA, revised and adopted by the General Meeting of the Association, 1961. 423. TNA, FO 371/176879, FO to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 20 March 1964. 424. Ibid. 425. TNA, FO 371/176879, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 3 April 1964. 426. TNA, FO 371/176879, FO to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 14 April 1964. 427. TNA, FO 371/176879, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to British Consulate (Buea), 1 July 1964. 428. TNA, FO 371/176879, British Consulate (Buea) to FO, 9 July 1964. 429. TNA, FO 371/167385, Letter from G.E. Millard, 19 March 1963. 430. TNA, DO 200/21, The Political situation in Cameroon, 11 March 1963. 431. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à MAE, 15 January 1963. 432. TNA, FO 371/161615, British Embassy (Washington) to FO, 23 March 1962. 433. TNA, FCO 25/194, Cameroon, Annual review for 1966. 434. TNA, FO 1096/3, Research Department Memorandum, 16 October 1962; see also the Bangui Conference final communiqué, quoted in Ahidjo: Contribution, p.41. 435. Ahidjo, Conference in Dakar, March 1964 in Oyono: La politique africaine, pp.180–181; see also Ahidjo: Contribution, p.41, 48. 436. TNA, FO 371/161371, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 23 May 1962; see also references later in TNA, FO 371/176538, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 17 March 1964. 437. TNA, FO 371/161371, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 23 May 1962. 438. TNA, FO 371/176538, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 17 March 1964. 439. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, R.C.II., Note sur le Projet de communauté francophone, 23 August 1966. 440. TNA, FO 371/176538, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 17 March 1964. 441. TNA, DO 195/139, Foreign Office discussion paper for Heads of Mission Meeting, April 1963. 442. MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (Ambassade), 184PO/1/255, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 March 1964 and 11 April 1964. 443. TNA, FO 371/176538, Report on the UAM Dakar Conference, British Embassy (Dakar), 13 March 1964. 444. MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (Ambassade), 184PO/1/255, Charte de l’UAMCE, 29 April 1964.

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445. Apart from Rwanda and Cameroon, the group included the CAR, Chad, Congo, Dahomey, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Upper Volta. 446. MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (Ambassade), 184PO/1/255, Synthèse sur la Conférence des Chefs d’Etat de l’UAM, 13 March 1964. 447. TNA, FO 371/176538, Report on the UAM Dakar Conference, British Embassy (Dakar), 13 March 1964. 448. TNA, CO 936/644, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 5 June 1961; see also TNA, BT 241/647, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 18 June 1962 and FO 371/181828, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 18 March 1965. 449. TNA, FO 371/154690, Message to the nation by J. Foncha. 450. TNA, FO 371/154739, ‘The ex-French States of West and Central Africa’, Notes by Her Majesty’s Representatives in West and Equatorial Africa in Preparation for their Meeting in London, 16–18 May 1961. 451. TNA, FO 371/167385, Nouvelles du Cameroun, 9 February 1963. 452. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/153, Correspondance diverse, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 19 May 1972. 453. Roy, Jean-Louis, Une nouvelle Afrique: A l’aube du XXIe siècle (Paris, Maisonneuve et Larose, 1999), p.58. 454. TNA, FO 371/187838, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 31 December 1965. 455. Nkene, Jacques-Blaise, ‘Les étrangers, acteurs de la vie politique camerounaise: l’expérience des immigrés nigérians dans la ville de Douala’, Polis, 8 (2001), p.17. 456. Fogui: L’intégration politique, p.92. 457. TNA, OD 20/125, Brief for Ahmadou Ahidjo’s visit, G.E Millard, 2 May 1963. 458. DeLancey: ‘Cameroon’s Foreign Relations’, p.215. 459. Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.220. 460. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/1, C.I., Note, 11 June 1972. 461. TNA, FO 371/176873, Letter to Anthony Steel, 1964. 462. TNA, FO 371/176879, British Consulate (Buea) to FO, 9 July 1964. 463. TNA, FO 371/176844, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 13 July 1964. 464. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/6, C.I.1.c., Note du Consulat (Buea), 6 January 1964. 465. TNA, FO 371/160217, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 7 July 1964; MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 December 1965. 466. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 3 May 1966. 467. TNA, FO 371/160217, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 7 July 1964. 468. TNA, FO 371/176851, FO to British Consulate (Buea), 25 June 1964. 469. TNA, FO 371/176851, British Consulate (Buea) to FO, 9 July 1964. 470. Ibid. 471. TNA, FO 371/18131, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 18 December 1965.

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472. TNA, FO 371/176879, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to British Consulate (Buea), 1 July 1964; British Consulate (Buea) to FO, 9 July 1964. 473. TNA, FO 371/176879, FO to Robin Vanderfelt, CPA, 31 July 1964. 474. TNA, DO 195/137, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 16 February 1963.

3

Francophone Diplomacies

1. TNA, FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, London, 28–30 November 1967. 2. Ibid. 3. TNA, FCO 25/194, Cameroon, Annual review for 1966. 4. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential Report, 14 July 1970. 5. TNA, FCO 65/921, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1970. 6. TNA, OD 30/193, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 7. TNA, FCO 65/1275, Briefs for Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, January 1973, West African Department, 10 January 1973. 8. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624, Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 11 May 1970. 9. LAC, RG25/8627, 20–1-2-CAM, pt 4, Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 1 June 1972. 10. Wiengrod, Alex, ‘Patrons, Patronage and Political Parties’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 10:4 (1968), p.379. 11. Médard, Jean-François, ‘Le rapport de clientèle, du phénomène social à l’analyse politique’, Revue française de Science politique, 26:1 (1976), p.103; translated in Médard: ‘The underdeveloped state’, p.166. 12. Médard: ‘The underdeveloped state’, p.166. 13. Konings, Nyamnjoh: Negotiating, pp.177–178. 14. Bayart: L’État au Cameroun, p.125 (my translation). 15. TNA, DO 195/380, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 17 December 1966. 16. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.131. 17. Ibid. 18. Foccart, Jacques, Tous les soirs avec de Gaulle, Journal de l’Elysée I, 1965–1967 (Paris, Fayard/Jeune Afrique, 1997), p.99. 19. LAC, RG25, 10075, 20-CAM-9, Notes on Cameroon, Canadian Ambassador (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 3 October 1967. 20. Union Nationale Camerounaise, Premier Conseil National de l’Union nationale camerounaise / First National Council of the Cameroon National Union, 5–8 November 1967 (Yaoundé, Imprimerie nationale, 1968), p.32; see also Agence Camerounaise de Presse, 24 January 1969. 21. NAC, Annex (Buea), Ga//1969/5, Texte de la conference de presse du chef de l’Etat à Bamenda, Yaoundé, 12 May 1969. 22. Fanso, Verkijika G., ‘Anglophone and Francophone nationalisms in Cameroon’, The Round Table, 350 (1999), p.292.

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23. Sindjoun, Luc, Le Président de la République au Cameroun, 1982–1996: les acteurs et leur rôle dans le jeu politique (Talence, CEAN, 1996), p.16 (my translation). 24. Bayart: L’État au Cameroun, p.125. 25. LAC, RG25, 10075, 20-CAM-9, Notes on Cameroon, Canadian Ambassador (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 3 October 1967. 26. L’effort camerounais, 712, 26 October 1969. 27. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 8 December 1965. 28. TNA, FCO 25/196, British Consulate (Buea) to FCO, 19 April 1968. 29. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 Decembre 1965; see also Note de Michel Moreux, Consulat de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 3 May 1966. 30. Ibid. 31. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Consul de France (Buea) à Chargé d’affaires, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 22 August 1967. 32. TNA, FCO 25/196, British Consulate (Buea) to FCO, 19 April 1968. 33. LAC, RG25, 10075, 20-CAM-9, Notes on Cameroon, Canadian Ambassador (Yaoundé) to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 3 October 1967. 34. TNA, FCO 25/210, Letter from Embassy to FCO, 1 May 1967. 35. LAC, RG25, 10075, 20-CAM-9, Notes on Cameroon, from the Canadian Ambassador (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 3 October 1967. 36. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/6, C.I.1.c., Consul de France (Buea) à Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé), 4 Novembre 1964. 37. TNA, FCO 25/204, The Cameroons Development Corporation, 31 May 1968. 38. TNA, DO 195/380, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 17 December 1966. 39. TNA, LAB 13/2126, A. Silkin, British Embassy (Leopoldville), 12 April 1966. 40. Ibid. 41. TNA, FCO 25/202, T. Haighton to Mr. Meyer, FO, 14 June 1967. 42. TNA, LAB 13/1564, A. Silkin, British Embassy (Leopoldville), 9 November 1964. 43. TNA, OD 30/193, Ahidjo, Second ordinary session of the Federal National Assembly, August 1970. 44. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.53. 45. Ahidjo: Contribution, pp.54–55. 46. TNA, OD 30/193, Ahidjo, Second ordinary session of the Federal National Assembly, August 1970. 47. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.61. 48. Jeune Afrique, 623, 16 December 1972. 49. TNA, OD 30/193, Ahidjo, Second ordinary session of the Federal National Assembly, August 1970. 50. Bayart: L’État au Cameroun, pp.175–176. 51. Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.39. 52. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.109. 53. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.49.

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329

54. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.51. 55. La Presse du Cameroun, 4 July 1963. 56. TNA, FO 371/160217, Ahidjo, Message à la nation, Buea, 1 October 1964; see also NAC (Annex), Buea, Ga/1962/161, for speeches delivered by Ahidjo. 57. TNA, FO 371/176840, Agence Camerounaise de Presse, Important Discours prononcé par le Président Ahidjo à la 2ème Conférence des Pays non-alignés au Caire, 20 Octobre 1964. 58. Union Nationale Camerounaise: Premier Conseil, p.54. 59. Ahidjo: Contribution, pp.47–48. 60. TNA, FCO 65/1093, Confidential report, 1972. 61. TNA, DO 195/380, British Ambassador (Yaoundé) to Foreign Secretary, 8 December 1965. 62. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.49. 63. Relations were later established with Romania (1970), Bulgaria (1984), Hungary (1987) and Czechoslovakia (1990). 64. TNA, FO 371/187844, R.N. Dales, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to G.A. Duggan, FO, 20 April 1966. 65. Ibid. 66. TNA, FO 371/187833, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 28 July 1966. 67. TNA, FCO 25/194, Romania, Annual review for 1967. 68. Ibid. 69. Union Nationale Camerounaise: Premier Conseil, p.52. 70. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 71. TNA, OD 30/193, Ahidjo, Second ordinary session of the Federal National Assembly, August 1970. 72. Ministry of Information and Tourism, Press and Information Services, 19 January 1970. 73. S.T. Muna, on the occasion of the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Cameroon Independence, Ministry of Information and Tourism, Press and Information Services, 19 January 1970. 74. TNA, OD 30/193, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1969. 75. The ex-Belgian Congo temporarily received more assistance in the last stages of the civil war but the longer-term trend shows that assistance to Cameroon did stand above the rest. See also TNA, OD 20/192, Record of a talk with Dr Fonlon, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yaoundé, 12 November 1964. 76. TNA, FO 371/167588, Technical Cooperation from the United Kingdom, 1963. 77. TNA, FO 371/187852, Background brief, British Interests, 1966; see also MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/210, FED, Aide de la Grande-Bretagne au développement de la République Fédérale du Cameroun, 15 June 1971. 78. TNA, OD 30/92, Visit of Sir Edward Warner, Ambassador (Yaoundé), September 1965. 79. TNA, ADM 1/28611, British technical assistance, training in Britain, courses completed by Cameroon students, 1966–71.

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80. TNA, FCO 65/49, British Ambassador (Yaoundé) to FCO, 18 December 1968. 81. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/210, FED, Note sur l’aide technique britannique, 1968. 82. TNA, FO 371/187851, Réponse d’Ahidjo à l’Ambassadeur de Grande Bretagne, 1966. 83. TNA, FCO 65/49, British Ambassador (Yaoundé) to FCO, 18 December 1968; see also Ahidjo: Contribution, p.48. 84. Ibid. 85. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Note de Buea, 30 April 1966. 86. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Note du Consul de France (Buea) à l’Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé), 3 May 1966. 87. Ibid. 88. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/6, C.I.1.c., Lettre du Chargé d’affaires (Yaoundé) à MAE, 21 October 1964; see also 5, C.I.1.c., Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 12 April 1966. 89. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, tome 2, Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 22 April 1968. 90. TNA, FO 371/176867, Millard, Foreign Office, to W.D Pattinson, Treasury, 17 February 1964. 91. TNA, FO 371/187846, British Consulate (Buea) to ODM, 5 July 1966. 92. TNA, FO 371/18131, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 18 December 1965. 93. TNA, FO 371/187846, British Consulate (Buea) to ODM, London, 5 July 1966. 94. TNA, OD 30/193, British Embassy (Yaoundé), 8 December 1970. 95. TNA, FO 371/187836, Mervyn Brown FO to Mr Buxton FO, 23 December 1966. 96. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential Report, 14 July 1970. 97. TNA, OD 30/193, British Embassy (Yaoundé), 8 December 1970; this, according to the USA, was one instance when the high level of expenditure required encouraged France to look for multilateral funding in one of its close African partners, see LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, American Embassy (Paris) to Department of State (Washington), 14 December 1967. 98. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential Report, 14 July 1970. 99. Ibid. 100. Konings, Piet, ‘L’État, l’agro-industrie et la paysannerie au Cameroun’, Politique Africaine, 22 (1986), p.126. 101. Bederman: The Cameroons Development Corporation, p.69. 102. TNA, FCO 25/204, The Cameroons Development Corporation, 31 May 1968. 103. Ibid. 104. Konings: ‘L’État, l’agro-industrie’, p.126. 105. TNA, FCO 25/204, The Cameroons Development Corporation, 31 May 1968. 106. Ibid. 107. TNA, OD 30/40, April 1965. 108. TNA, OD 20/192, Record of a talk with Dr Fonlon, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yaoundé, 12 November 1964. 109. TNA, FCO 25/204, The Cameroons Development Corporation, 31 May 1968.

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331

110. TNA, OD 30/193, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1969. 111. TNA, OD 30/347, Report of visit to the Cameroon Republic, administrative and social affairs department, Overseas Development Administration, 13–23 July 1971. 112. TNA, FO 371/187846, Note from C.M. Le Quesne, FO, 23 May 1966. 113. TNA, FCO 25/196, British Consulate (Buea) to FCO, 19 April 1968. 114. TNA, OD 30/193, E. Barnes to Mr Huijsman, 11 September 1970. 115. TNA, FO 371/187852, Background brief, British Interests, 1966. 116. Bederman: The Cameroons Development Corporation, p.69. 117. TNA, FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, London, 28–30 November 1967. 118. TNA, FCO 25/204, The Cameroons Development Corporation, 31 May 1968. 119. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 27 September 1966. 120. TNA, FO 371/188403, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 19 May 1964. 121. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/191, Ahidjo, Bilan de l’Association du Cameroun au Marché Commun, July 1967. 122. FD, Lucian Heichler, commercial officer, embassy, 1966–68, 2 February 2000. 123. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 25 January 1964. 124. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.125. 125. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, tome 2, Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 22 avril 1968. 126. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy to FCO, 1 May 1967. 127. TNA, FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, London, 28–30 November 1967. 128. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Ambassadeur du Canada (Paris) à Affaires extérieures, 25 January 1968. 129. TNA, FO 371/88403, R.J. O’Neill, West and Central African Department, 16 February 1966. 130. TNA, FO 371/88403, UKDEL to the European Communities (Brussels) to FO, 3 February 1966. 131. TNA, FO 371/188403, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 19 May 1964. 132. TNA, FO 371/88403, Mr Brown, Economic affairs, FO, to UKDEL to the European Communities (Brussels), 21 November 1966. 133. Ibid; see also TNA, FO371/88403, Note from N. Statham, 14 November 1966. 134. TNA, FO 371/188403, M.W. Errock, Ministry of Overseas Development, to N. Statham, 15 September 1966. 135. Commonwealth Secretariat Archives (CSA), 2002/70 (2 of 3), Secretariat background paper on Commonwealth and Generalised Preferences, 18 March 1970. 136. NAC, Annex (Buea), Qb/a/1966, Official signing ceremony of the Convention of Association between the EEC and the AAMS, Yaoundé, 29 July 1969. 137. Ibid. 138. Ibid.

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139. Smith: Stitches, pp.186–187. 140. TNA, FO 371/176538, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 17 March 1964. 141. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Ambassade du Canada (Paris) à Affaires extérieures, 1 September 1965. 142. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Ambassade du Canada (Paris) à Affaires extérieures, 1 October 1965. 143. FD, James K. Bishop Jr., Embassy in Yaoundé (1968–70), 15 November 1995. 144. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, American Embassy (Paris) to Department of State, 14 December 1967. 145. Ibid. 146. TNA, DO 206/12, British High Commission (Nairobi), 25 August 1965; British High Commission (Lusaka), 30 August 1965. 147. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential Report, 14 July 1970. 148. TNA, FCO 65/604, Valedictory Despatch, 9 March 1970. 149. Ibid. 150. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Ahidjo, fêtes du 10ème anniversaire de l’indépendance du Cameroun, 1 January 1970. 151. Foccart: Dans les bottes, p.192. 152. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624. 153. TNA, FO 371/176538, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 17 March 1964. 154. TNA, FO 371/176517, ‘Franco-African Relations’, British Embassy (Paris), 6 August 1964. 155. Ibid. 156. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, American Embassy (Paris) to Department of State, 14 December 1967. 157. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Ambassade du Canada (Paris) aux Affaires extérieures, 25 January 1968. 158. TNA, FO 371/176517, ‘Franco-African Relations’, British Embassy (Paris), 6 August 1964. 159. TNA, FO 371/88403, UKDEL to the European Communities (Brussels) to FO, 3 February 1966. 160. TNA, PREM 13/895, ‘Franco-African relations’, British Embassy (Paris), 19 June 1965. 161. TNA, FO 371/176517, ‘Franco-African Relations’, British Embassy (Paris), 6 August 1964; see also TNA, PREM 13/895, British Embassy (Paris) to FO, 19 October 1966. 162. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/20, 2/2, C.I.1.c., Note sur l’aide de la France au Cameroun entre 1959 et 1970, January 1970. 163. TNA, FO 371/176517, ‘Franco-African Relations’, British Embassy (Paris), 6 August 1964. 164. TNA, PREM 13/895, ‘Franco-African relations’, British Embassy (Paris), 19 June 1965. 165. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/247, Note de l’Ambassade de France à Londres, Problèmes africains et relations franco-britanniques, 27 March 1965.

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166. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/, Canada-Afrique, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 8 October 1964. 167. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/263, Note de la Direction des Affaires Africaines et Malgaches, 24 March 1965. 168. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/247, Ambassade de France (Londres), Problèmes africains et relations franco-britanniques, 27 March 1965. 169. Ibid. 170. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/264, Visite officielle à Londres du Premier ministre et du Ministre des Affaires étrangères, 6–8 July 1966. 171. MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (Ambassade), 184PO/1/537, Ambassade de France (Dakar) à MAE, 4 juin 1969. 172. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, tome 2, Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 22 April 1968. 173. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 27 July 1965. 174. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975. 175. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 176. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 27 July 1965. 177. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, tome 2, Note de la Direction des Affaires africaines et malgaches, 2 July 1968. 178. Ibid. 179. TNA, FO 371/176840, Agence Camerounaise de Presse, Important Discours prononcé par le Président Ahidjo à la 2ème Conférence des Pays non-alignés au Caire, 20 October 1964. 180. LAC, RG25, 10075, 20-CAM-9, Notes on Cameroon, Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 3 October 1967. 181. Along with the leaders of Zambia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Niger and Liberia. 182. TNA, DO 195/380, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 17 December 1966. 183. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/153, Correspondance diverse, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 19 May 1972. 184. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, tome 2, Note de la Direction des Affaires africaines et malgaches, 2 July 1968. 185. LAC, RG25, 10075, 20-CAM-9, Notes on Cameroon, Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 3 October 1967; AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 30 October 1968. 186. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 8 December 1965.

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334 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211. 212. 213.

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Ibid. AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 18 October 1968. Benjamin: Les Camerounais occidentaux, footnote 35 p.169. TNA, FCO 25/196, British Consulate (Buea) to FCO, 19 April 1968. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential Report, 14 July 1970. AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 11 August 1967. TNA, FCO 65/49, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 18 December 1968. TNA, DO 195/380, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 17 December 1966. TNA, FCO 25/196, British Consulate (Buea) to FCO, 19 April 1968. AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 6 June 1967. AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à Jacques Foccart, 23 July 1967 AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à Secrétariat d’Etat aux Affaires Etrangères chargé de la coopération, 22 July 1967. TNA, FCO 65/1442, R.W. Renwick to S.Y. Dawbarn, West African Department, FCO, 3 June 1974. LAC, RG25/8627, 20–1-2-CAM, pt 4, Ambassade du Canada (Yaoundé) à Affaires extérieures, 1 June 1972. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Agenda on Anglo-French talks on Africa, Paris, 2 December 1974. Bach, Daniel, ‘Le Général de Gaulle et la guerre civile au Nigeria’, Revue Canadienne des Études africaines, XIV:2 (1980), p.333. Foccart, Jacques, Foccart parle: Entretiens avec Philippe Gaillard 1 (Paris, Fayard, Jeune Afrique, 1995), p.343. Agir Ici – Survie, Trafic, barbouzes et compagnies . . . Aventures militaires françaises en Afrique (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1999), p.72. TNA, FCO 25/194, Cameroon, Annual review for 1967. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624, Mémoire, Direction des Affaires d’Afrique et du Moyen-Orient, 21 November 1969. AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 30 October 1968. AN, AG/5(FPR)/153, Note manuscrite de Charles de Gaulle, 20 December 1967. AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 27 August 1968. AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Direction Afrique Levant à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 15 October 1968. AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Michel Debré, télégramme transmis au SGAAM via le MAE, 30 October 1968. Toast de bienvenue au Major général Gowon, 5 April 1971, in Oyono: Avec ou sans la France?, p.93. TNA, FCO 65/294, President Ahidjo, answering questions on Nigeria at a National Congress conference in Garoua, 15 March 1969.

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335

214. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/247, Note DAM, Vues françaises et britanniques sur la situation de l’Afrique à la fin de 1967, 18 November 1967. 215. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 27–30 January 1970. 216. TNA, FCO 65/923, Confidential report, September 1970. 217. TNA, FCO 65/923, Réponse du Major Général Gowon, September 1970; see also TNA, FCO 65/606, Joint Communiqué issued on 29 September 1970, on the visit of Ahidjo to Nigeria, 25–29 September 1970. 218. See for instance New Nigerian, 20 October 1969, p.12. 219. Sunday Times, 26 March 1972, p.20. 220. TNA, FCO 65/921, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1970. 221. TNA, FCO 65/923, Confidential Report, September 1970; TNA, FCO 65/921, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1970. 222. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/268, Entretiens franco-britanniques, 17 June 1970. 223. TNA, FCO 65/558, D. Tebbit to P. Marshall (Paris), 5 February 1970. 224. TNA, FCO 33/1376, Confidential note, ‘Anglo-French cooperation in Africa’, West African Department, 11 May 1971. 225. TNA, FCO 65/1176, ‘France and Africa’, John Wilson, West African Department, 29 September 1972. 226. TNA, FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, London, 28–30 November 1967. 227. TNA, FCO 65/609, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 4 June 1970. 228. TNA, FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, London, 28–30 November 1967. 229. TNA, FCO 65/1075, S.J.G. Stringland to C.M. Le Quesne, 16 February 1972. 230. TNA, DO 195/137, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to West and Central African Department, 16 February 1963. 231. TNA, DO 35/10454, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 23 August 1960. 232. Exposé de politique extérieure, 7 September 1962, in Oyono: La politique africaine, pp.272–273. 233. TNA, FO 1096/3, Confidential report. 234. La Presse du Cameroun, 4 July 1963. 235. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 236. Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.100. 237. TNA, FO 371/160217, Ahidjo, Message à la nation, Buea, 1 October 1964. 238. Union Nationale Camerounaise: Premier Conseil, pp.54–56. 239. Ahidjo: Contribution, p.39. 240. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/247, Ambassade de France (Londres), Problèmes africains et relations franco-britanniques, 27 March 1965. 241. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, Report on audience with Ahidjo, 25 November 1964.

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336 242. 243. 244. 245. 246.

247. 248. 249. 250. 251. 252. 253. 254. 255. 256. 257. 258. 259. 260. 261. 262. 263. 264. 265. 266. 267. 268. 269. 270. 271.

272.

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Ibid. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., note. TNA, FCO 25/324, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 3 November 1967. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 20 November 1965. McWilliams, Michael, ‘Zimbabwe and the Commonwealth’, The Round Table, the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 92:368 (2003); Murphy, Philip, ‘An intricate and distasteful subject: British Planning for the Use of Force Against the European Settlers of Central Africa, 1952–65’, English Historical Review, CXXI:492 (2006); Watts, Carl, ‘Killing Kith and Kin: The Viability of British Military Intervention in Rhodesia, 1964–65’, Twentieth Century British History, 16:4 (2005). ‘Murphy: ‘An intricate and distasteful subject’, p.777. TNA, DO195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 8 December 1965. Ibid. Ibid. TNA, FO 371/18131, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 17 December 1965. TNA, FO 371/187846, British Consulate (Buea) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 24 December 1965. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 8 December 1965. TNA, DO 195/380, Cameroon, Annual review for 1965. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 20 November 1965. TNA, DO 195/380, Cameroon, Annual review for 1965. Ibid. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 27 July 1965. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 12 November 1965. TNA, FO 371/18131, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 17 December 1965. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 21 August 1966. Ibid. TNA, FO 371/187851, Réponse d’Ahidjo à l’ambassadeur de Grande Bretagne, 1966. TNA, DO 195/380, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Foreign Office, 27 September 1966. TNA, FCO 25/324, 12 December 1966. TNA, FCO 24/324, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 3 January 1967. Premier Conseil National de l’UNC, 6 November 1967, in Oyono: La politique africaine, pp.312–313. Discours prononcé devant l’Assemblée générale des Nations-Unies, 8 October 1969, in Oyono: La politique africaine, p.222. Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.66. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 December 1965. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 1 May 1967; see also MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/20, 2/2, C.I.1.c., Note sur la Réunification du Cameroun, 1971. TNA, FCO 25/210, Ahidjo, Buea, 1 November 1966.

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NOTES

337

273. TNA, FCO 25/196, British Consulate (Buea) to FCO, 19 April 1968. 274. LAC, RG25, 9175, Relations France-Cameroun, 1972. 275. Yetna, Jean-Pierre, Langues, média, communautés rurales au Cameroun: essai sur la marginalisation du monde rural (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1999), p.54, p.74. 276. Ibid., p.54. 277. TNA, FCO 25/196, British Consulate (Buea) to FCO, 19 April 1968. 278. TNA, FCO 25/210, Ahidjo, Buea, 1 November 1966. 279. Ibid. 280. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Cameroon Outlook, 20 January 1971. 281. TNA, OD 30/193, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 8 December 1970. 282. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Allocution de N. Mbile, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Education primaire sur Radio Buea, 10 November 1969. 283. TNA, FO 371/187836, Brown to Buxton, 23 December 1966. 284. TNA, FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, London, 28–30 November 1967; see also TNA, FCO 45/1264, Meeting of Heads of Mission, M. Le Quesne, 7 December 1972. 285. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/263, Note de la Direction des Affaires Africaines et Malgaches, 24 March 1965. 286. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/247, Ambassade de France (Londres), Problèmes africains et relations franco-britanniques, 27 March 1965. 287. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Consul de France (Buea) au chargé d’affaires, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 19 June 1963. 288. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 1 May 1967. 289. TNA, OD 30/193, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 8 December 1970. 290. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 1 May 1967. 291. Ibid. 292. TNA, FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, London, 28–30 November 1967. 293. TNA, FCO 13/026, Anglo-Cameroon Mixed Commission Meeting, Brief for United Kingdom Delegation, October 1968; see also TNA, FCO 65/906, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 2 August 1970. 294. TNA, FCO 13/025, FCO to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 2 September 1968. 295. TNA, FCO 13/026, Anglo-Cameroon Mixed Commission Meeting, Brief for United Kingdom Delegation, October 1968. 296. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 1 May 1967. 297. TNA, DO 195/138, Meeting of Representatives in Tropical Africa, 21 May 1963. 298. TNA, FO 371/176517, ‘Franco-African Relations’, British Embassy (Paris), 6 August 1964. 299. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/247, Ambassade de France (Londres), Problèmes africains et relations franco-britanniques, 27 March 1965.

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300. Ibid. 301. Fonlon: ‘Will we make or mar?’, p.33. 302. TNA, FCO 13/625, Note on « The Improvement and Co-ordination of French and English Language Teaching in Sub-Saharan Africa », Educational Projects Involving Greater Co-operation Between Anglophone and Francophone West Africa, Carew Treffgarne, The Africa Educational Trust, Paris, 28–29 September 1973. 303. TNA, PREM 13/895, ‘Franco-African relations’, British Embassy (Paris), 19 June 1965. 304. Foccart: Tous les soirs, p.178. 305. TNA, DO 195/380, British Consulate (Buea), 17 December 1965. 306. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/6, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 15 December 1965. 307. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 December 1965. 308. Jacques Foccart in Ela, Pierre, Dossiers noirs sur le Cameroun: politique, services secrets et sécurité nationale (Paris, Pyramide Papyrus Presse, 2002), p.253. 309. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 December 1965. 310. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1454, Consul de France (Buea) à Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé), 3 May 1966. 311. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/642, Rapport de Mme Black, attachée culturelle, sur la situation au Cameroun occidental, January 1965. 312. Ibid. 313. Cameroon Times, 13 March 1968. 314. TNA, OD 30/192, The Director General’s visit to West Africa, April 1970. 315. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 1 May 1967. 316. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/642, Rapport sur le fonctionnement du Centre linguistique de Buea, 1972–1973. 317. NAC, Annex (Buea), Oa/j/1962/5, Prime Minister of West Cameroon to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1 July 1966; see also Oa/j/1962/5, Conclusions, Ministry of Public Service, to advise government on policy regarding French language courses taken by civil servants, 21 March 1970. 318. AN, AG/5(FPR)/153, Note à l’attention du Président de la République, 10 May 1967. 319. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/4, C.I.1.c., Discours de l’Ambassadeur au Cameroun occidental, Lettre au Ministre de la Coopération, 14 December 1969. 320. TNA, FCO 13/025, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Yaoundé) to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 2 September 1968. 321. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 1 May 1967. 322. See for instance Cameroon Times, ‘Canada’s Technical Assistance Scheme’, 24 October 1967; Cameroon Times, ‘Cameroon’s First African State to Open Relations with Canada’, 25 October 1967; L’Effort camerounais, ‘Le Président Ahidjo dans un grand pays ami: le Canada’, 22 October 1967; La Presse du

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NOTES

323.

324. 325.

326.

327. 328. 329.

330. 331. 332. 333. 334.

335. 336. 337. 338.

339

Cameroun, ‘Voyage présidentiel: le Cameroun est sur la liste prioritaire’, 19 October 1967. LAC, RG25, vol.8607, file 18, Ambassade du Canada (Abidjan) à Affaires extérieures, 9 December 1974; see also LAC, RG25, 8605, 20–1-2-AFR, part 5, African Affairs Division, Mitchell Sharp to the House of Commons, following his Tour of Africa, 22 March 1971; LAC, RG25, 8605, 20–1-2-AFRICA, part 8, Dossier envoyé par la Direction de l’Afrique à Jeune Afrique, 28 September 1971; Annexe au mémoire du 6 septembre 1967, recommandation de la direction européenne au ministre des Affaires extérieures, in LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/353. LAC, RG25–8605-20–1-2-AFR, part 9, Notes for an address by Marc Perron, African Affairs (II) Division, Department of External Affairs, to the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Canadian Institute for International Affairs, 8 December 1971. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975; see also LAC, RG25/14625, 30–10-FRAN, Mitchell Sharp, ‘Dimension de notre politique envers la France et le Québec’, Mémoire au Premier Ministre, 20 October 1969. Schlegel: The Deceptive Ash, p.269. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975. LAC, RG25/10075, 20-CAM-9, Direction de l’Afrique et du Moyen-Orient, Memorandum au sujet de la visite d’Ahmadou Ahidjo, Guidance, 16–19 October 1967. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/208, Note sur l’aide canadienne au Cameroun, April 1968. Ibid. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/208, Note sur l’aide canadienne au Cameroun, January 1967. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/208, Ambassadeur de France à Coopération, 10 November 1967. LAC, RG25/10075, 20-CAM-9, Thomas Carter, Direction de l’Afrique et du Moyen-Orient, Compte-rendu des discussions du 17 octobre entre Ahidjo et Pearson, Martin et Trudeau, 20 October 1967. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/209, Mission de Coopération et d’Action culturelle (Yaoundé) à MAE, 18 Novembre 1971. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624, External Affairs to Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé), 17 April 1970. MAEE, Secrétariat Général, P17458, Entretien entre M. Couve de Murville et M. Paul Martin, Ottawa, 29 September 1966. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975.

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339. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Ambassade du Canada (Paris) à Affaires extérieures, 17 May 1966. 340. For de Gaulle’s relations with Quebec, see Vaïsse: La grandeur, chapter 14. 341. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/353, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 21 November 1967. 342. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624, From Peacekeeping and Military Assistance to African and Middle Eastern Division, 11 July 1969. 343. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975. 344. Ibid. 345. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/642, Rapport de Mme Black, attachée culturelle, sur la situation au Cameroun occidental, January 1965. 346. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, Etude préparée par l’équipe chargée du projet sur la Francophonie, June 1975. 347. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Ambassade du Canada (Paris) à Affaires extérieures, 25 January 1968. 348. The mission was in Cameroon itself on 3–7 March 1968; see MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/208, Note sur l’aide canadienne au Cameroun, April 1968; see also MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/353, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 12 May 1972. 349. Schlegel: The Deceptive Ash, p.261. 350. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, June 1975. 351. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/208, Note sur l’aide canadienne au Cameroun, avril 1968. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, R.C.II., Francophonie 70, Spécial Niamey, 3, May 1970; The United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 1095, I-16842, Multilateral, Convention on the Agency for Cultural and Technical Co-operation (with annexed Charter of the Agency for Cultural and Technical Co-operation), concluded at Niamey on 20 March 1970. 352. Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique, Convention relative à l’Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique, 20 March 1970. 353. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Consul de France (Buea) à Ambassade de France (Yaoundé), 22 August 1967. 354. Senghor, Speech at 1959 party congress, in Senghor: African Socialism, p.23. 355. In MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, R.C.II., Note sur le Projet de communauté francophone, 23 August 1966. 356. MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (Ambassade), 184PO/1/255, Synthèse sur la Conférence des Chefs d’Etat de l’UAM, 13 March 1964. 357. MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (Ambassade), 184PO/1/255, MAE à Ambassade de France (Dakar), 9 April 1964; see also Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Ambassade de France (Tunis) à Ambassade de France (Niamey), 17 December 1965. 358. TNA, FO 371/181614, British Embassy (Dakar) to FO, 6 March 1965. 359. TNA, FO 371/181614, FO note on Official and Public reactions in Commonwealth African Countries to the Nouakchott Conference.

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341

360. Ibid. 361. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/247, Ambassade de France (Londres), Problèmes africains et relations franco-britanniques, 27 March 1965. 362. Ibid. 363. TNA, FO 371/181614, British Embassy (Dakar) to FO, 6 March 1965. 364. McIntyre, W. David, ‘Britain and the creation of the Commonwealth Secretariat’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 28:1 (2000). 365. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Ambassade du Canada (Paris) à Affaires extérieures, 1 September 1965. 366. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/263, Note de la Direction des Affaires Africaines et Malgaches, 24 March 1965. 367. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Ambassade du Canada (Paris) à Affaires extérieures, 1 September 1965. 368. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/247, Note DAM, Vues françaises et britanniques sur la situation de l’Afrique à la fin de 1967, 18 November 1967. 369. Foccart: Tous les soirs, pp.150–151, 178. 370. TNA, FO 371/181614, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 28 May 1965. 371. Ibid. 372. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 3 August 1965; see also TNA, FCO 65/1093, Confidential, 1972. 373. TNA, FO 371/181614, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 24 May 1965 and 28 May 1965. 374. TNA, FO 371/181614, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FO, 24 May 1965. 375. TNA, FCO 51/233, Francophonie 1965–1972, Research Department Memorandum, February 1972. 376. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Ambassade de France (Tunis) à Ambassade de France (Niamey), 24 November 1965. 377. TNA, FCO 51/233, Francophonie 1965–1972, Research Department Memorandum, February 1972. 378. TNA, FCO 51/234, Report from Western and Southern European Section, 2 October 1972. 379. Ibid. 380. TNA, FCO 51/233, Francophonie 1965–1972, Research Department Memorandum, February 1972. 381. Senghor, in Rous, Jean, Léopold Sédar Senghor, La vie d’un president de l’Afrique nouvelle, Paris, J. Didier, 1967), pp.73–74; MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (Ambassade), 184PO/1/255, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 March 1964 and TNA, FCO 51/233, Francophonie 1965–1972, Research Department Memorandum, February 1972. 382. LAC, RG25–12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, discours prononcé par A. Ahidjo le 21 août 1966 lors de la clôture du congrès de l’Union camerounaise, in Ambassade du Canada (Yaoundé) à Affaires extérieures, 6 September 1966; see

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342

383.

384. 385. 386.

387. 388. 389. 390. 391. 392. 393. 394. 395. 396. 397. 398. 399. 400. 401.

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also MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 13 November 1967. LAC, RG25–12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, discours prononcé par A. Ahidjo le 21 août 1966 lors de la clôture du congrès de l’Union camerounaise, in Ambassade du Canada (Yaoundé) à Affaires extérieures, 6 September 1966; see also LAC, MG32/B4/33, Visit of President Senghor, 19–21 September, Confidential memorandum, ‘La Francophonie’, 13 September 1966. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, 22827, Ambassade de France (Dakar) à MAE, 14 November 1966. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, R.C.II., MAE, Note sur le Projet de francophonie: motivations et réactions, 19 August 1966. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, 22827, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 24 August 1966; see also LAC, RG25/10075, 20-CAM-9, Thomas Carter, Direction de l’Afrique et du Moyen-Orient, Compte-rendu des discussions du 17 octobre entre Ahidjo et Pearson, Martin et Trudeau, 20 October 1967; and MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 13 November 1967. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, 22827, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 24 August 1966 and 2 November 1966. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, R.C.II., MAE, Note sur le Projet de communauté francophone, 23 August 1966. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Note de Senghor sur la Francophonie, June 1966. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, R.C.II., MAE, Note sur le Projet de communauté francophone, 23 August 1966. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Note de Senghor sur la Francophonie, June 1966. Ibid. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/136, R.C.II., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 28 avril 1970. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, R.C.II, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 13 November 1967. Ibid. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Ambasssade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 November 1966. TNA, FCO 51/233, Francophonie 1965–1972, Research Department Memorandum, February 1972. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/136, R.C.II., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 28 avril 1970. Ibid. MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (Ambassade), 184PO/1/255, Ambasssade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 March 1964. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, R.C.II., MAE, Note sur le Projet de francophonie: motivations et réactions, Paris, 19 August 1966;

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NOTES

343

see also LAC, MG32/B4/33, Visit of President Senghor, 19–21 September, Confidential memorandum, ‘La Francophonie’, 13 September 1966. 402. LAC, RG25, 10075, 20-CAM-9, Notes on Cameroon, Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 3 October 1967. 403. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2, Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 13 November 1967. 404. See also Ashton, Sarah R., ‘British Government Perspectives on the Commonwealth, 1964–1971: An Asset or a Liability?’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies, 35:1 (2007). 405. TNA, FCO 49/7, Value of Commonwealth (1967). 406. LAC, RG25/10075, 20-CAM-9, Direction de l’Afrique et du Moyen-Orient, Memorandum au sujet de la visite d’Ahidjo, « VI. La Francophonie », 16–19 October 1967. 407. TNA, FCO 51/233, Francophonie 1965–1972, Research Department Memorandum, February 1972. 408. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, 22827, Rapport d’activités du groupe d’Amitié ‘Europe-Afrique’ (avril 1965-avril 1966), 5 May 1966. 409. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Ambassade de France (Luxembourg) à Ambassade de France (Niamey), 9 May 1967. 410. Beside Marigoh, the board comprised one representative of Belgium, France, Congo-Kinshasa, Senegal, Laos, Tunisia, Canada and Luxembourg; another Frenchman, Xavier Deniau, was made Secretary-General, see compte-rendu succinct de la première rencontre internationale des parlementaires de langue française (Centre européen, Luxembourg, 17–18 May 1967), (last consulted, 18 October 2010). 411. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, 22827, Ambassade de France (Niamey) à MAE, 30 January 1968. 412. TNA, FCO 51/233, Francophonie 1965–1972, Research Department Memorandum, February 1972. 413. Ibid. 414. TNA, FCO 33/529, Report on ‘La Francophonie’, November 1969 415. Schlegel: The Deceptive Ash, p.266. 416. LAC, RG25/14625, 30–10-FRAN, Mitchell Sharp, ‘Dimension de notre politique envers la France et le Québec’, Mémoire au Premier Ministre, 20 October 1969. 417. LAC, RG25, 3104, file 4, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone, 1960–1970’, June 1975. 418. LAC, RG25/14625, 30–10-FRAN, Mitchell Sharp, ‘Dimension de notre politique envers la France et le Québec’, Mémoire au Premier Ministre, 20 October 1969. 419. Louis Sabourin, Africa Report, April 1970, p.16. 420. LAC, RG25/10075, 20-CAM-9, Direction de l’Afrique et du Moyen-Orient, Memorandum au sujet de la visite d’Ahidjo, « V. Question constitutionnelle et relations fédérales-provinciales », 16–19 octobre 1967. 421. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/136, R.C.II., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 28 April 1970.

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422. LAC, RG25/14625, 30–10-FRAN, Mitchell Sharp, ‘Dimension de notre politique envers la France et le Québec’, Mémoire au Premier Ministre, 20 October 1969. 423. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624, Mitchell Sharp to Gérard Levesque, 3 September 1970. 424. Le Monde, 25–26 janvier 1970, Supplément du n°7787. 425. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624, Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 11 May 1970. 426. AN, AG/5(FPU)/336, Note à l’attention de M. Journiac, Entretien de Maurice Perrier avec M. Alliot, 14 mars 1968. 427. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1453, AL 30.1, Cameroun, situation d’ensemble, tome 2, Note de la Direction des Affaires africaines et malgaches, 2 July 1968. 428. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/59, Ambassade de France (Niamey) à MAE, 13 November 1968. 429. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/59, Ambassade de France (Niamey) à MAE, 29 November 1968. 430. AN, AG/5(FPU)/570, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 9 juin 1969. 431. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/59, Ambassade de France (Niamey) à MAE, 29 November 1968. 432. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/59, Ambassade de France (Niamey) à MAE, 29 November 1968. 433. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/59, Ambassade de France (Niamey) à MAE, 1 December 1968; Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 December 1968; Ambassade de France (Niamey) à MAE, 3 décembre 1968. 434. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/59. 435. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/59, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 13 February 1969. 436. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624, Mémoire, Direction des Affaires d’Afrique et du Moyen-Orient, 21 November 1969. 437. Léger, Jean-Marc, La francophonie: grand dessein, grande ambiguïté (LaSalle, Québec, Hurtubise HMH, 1987), p.21. 438. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/134, ACCT Divers, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 28 May 1969; see also MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, 22827, ACCT, Premier rapport d’activité présenté par le Secrétaire exécutif provisoire à son Excellence Hamani Diori (10 March–10 June 1969). 439. TNA, FCO 65/49, Conférence de Presse de Ahidjo, 1969. 440. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, 22827, ACCT, Premier rapport d’activité présenté par le Secrétaire exécutif provisoire à son Excellence Hamani Diori (10 March–10 June 1969). 441. TNA, FCO 65/49, Conférence de Presse de Ahidjo, 1969. 442. Haiti signed in the autumn of 1970. 443. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Hamani Diori à OCAM, 27 January 1969 (in Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 February 1969).

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345

444. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Projet Francophone, Notes techniques annexes, 1969. 445. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, 22827, ACCT, Premier rapport d’activité présenté par le Secrétaire exécutif provisoire à son Excellence Hamani Diori (10 March–10 June 1969). 446. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Hamani Diori à OCAM, 27 January 1969 (in Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 February 1969). 447. LAC, MG31/E47/38, Paul Martin, ‘Canada and Britain in a Changing Commonwealth’, the Commonwealth Correspondents Association, London, 21 April 1967. 448. TNA, FCO 20/90, Record of the Conference of West African Heads of Mission, London, 28–30 November 1967. 449. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Hamani Diori à OCAM, 27 January 1969 (in Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 February 1969); see also Projet Francophone, Notes techniques annexes, 1969. 450. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, Projet Francophone, Notes techniques annexes, 1969. 451. MAEE, Nantes, Niamey (Ambassade), 478/PO/1/58, 22827, Confemen. 452. Louis Sabourin, Africa Report, April 1970, p.16. 453. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/136, R.C.II., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 28 April 1970. 454. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, Texte de l’intervention de Zachée Mongo Soo, Ministre de l’éducation, de la jeunesse et de la culture à la Conférence de Niamey, 17–20 February 1969. 455. Schlegel: The Deceptive Ash, p.298. 456. CSA, 2003/59, Report by Rajsoomer Lallah (CFTC) on ACCT Conference, Ottawa, 22 October 1971.

4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

New Partnerships

TNA, FCO 65/558, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 2 February 1970. Ibid. Smith: Stitches, p.189. TNA, FCO 33/1376, ‘Anglo-French cooperation in Africa’, West African Department, 11 May 1971. TNA, FCO 65/558, FCO to British Embassy (Paris), 16 February 1970. TNA, FCO 65/1176, John Wilson, ‘France and Africa’, West African Department, 29 September 1972. Ibid. TNA, FCO 65/558, FCO to British Embassy (Paris), 16 February 1970. TNA, FCO 65/558, FCO to British Embassy (Paris), 5 February 1970. TNA, FCO 65/558, FCO to British Embassy (Paris), 16 February 1970. Ibid.

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346 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

38.

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TNA, FCO 65/558, FCO to British High Commission (Lagos), 6 March 1970. TNA, FCO 65/558, FCO to British Embassy (Paris), 26 May 1970. TNA, FCO 65/558, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 23 March 1970. TNA, FCO 65/558, Draft, FCO to British Embassy (Paris), 24 June 1970. TNA, FCO 65/906, Note on ELT in Francophone Africa, 30 June 1971. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 30 January 1970. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 29 January 1970. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 27–30 January 1970. TNA, FCO 65/1169, Brief on Anglo-French Talks, July 1972. Ibid. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 27–30 January 1970. Ibid. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 29, 30 January 1970. TNA, FCO 65/1169, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, July 1972, Steering brief, and John Wilson (WAD) to Miss Tasch (PSD), 1 November 1972 TNA, FCO 65/1169, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, July 1972, Steering brief. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 27–30 January 1970. TNA, FCO 65/1176, ‘My visit to Paris on 8 November to discuss West Africa’, J. de C. Ling to John Wilson, WAD, 14 November 1972. TNA, FCO 65/906, Note on ELT in Francophone Africa, 30 June 1971. TNA, FCO 65/554, J. Tahourdin, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 27–30 January 1970. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 27–30 January 1970. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 30 January 1970. AN, AG/5(FPU)/2400, rencontre Richard Wood - Yvon Bourges, Londres, 19–20 October 1971. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/268, Affaires politiques, Afrique Levant, ‘L’Afrique et les entretiens franco-britanniques du 15 juillet 1970’, 10 July 1970. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/268, Entretiens francobritanniques, 17 June 1970. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, Politique de Coopération militaire en Afrique, June 1970. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/268, Affaires politiques, Afrique Levant, ‘L’Afrique et les entretiens franco-britanniques du 15 juillet 1970’, 10 July 1970. Foccart: Dans les bottes, p.351.

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347

39. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, Note de la Coopération, Réflexions après dix ans 1959–1969 sur la politique française de coopération en Afrique noire. 40. Ibid. 41. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, Coopération avec l’Afrique Noire et Madagascar, Propositions concrètes, June 1970. 42. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, Note pour le Ministre en vue du Conseil restreint sur les problèmes de coopération, 17 June 1970. 43. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, Coopération avec l’Afrique Noire et Madagascar, Propositions concrètes, June 1970. 44. TNA, FCO 65/899, Note by H. Smedley, 29 April 1971. 45. TNA, FCO 65/552, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, London, 26–30 January 1970. 46. TNA, FCO 65/554, D.J. Cheke (Abidjan), Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 27–30 January 1970. 47. TNA, FCO 65/867, Ivory Coast, Annual Review for 1969. 48. TNA, FCO 65/554, D.J. Cheke (Abidjan), Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 27–30 January 1970. 49. TNA, FCO 65/558, British Embassy (Freetown) to WAD, 7 October 1970. 50. Ibid. 51. Foccart: Dans les bottes, p.486. 52. LAC, RG25, 9175, Relations France-Cameroun, 1972. 53. TNA, FCO 65/558, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 2 February 1970. 54. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/268, Annual Dinner of Confederation of British Industries, London, Speech by Christopher Soames, 20 May 1970. 55. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/268, Entretiens francobritanniques, 17 June 1970. 56. The British embassies in Dakar, Abidjan, Yaoundé and Kinshasa were respectively accredited to Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau; Niger and Upper Volta; CAR, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea; Congo-Brazzaville and Burundi. 57. TNA, FCO 45/403, Extract from record of conversation between Douglas-Home and Schumann, 15 July 1970. 58. TNA, FCO 45/403, FCO to Heads of Mission in African posts South of the Sahara, 18 August 1970. 59. TNA, FCO 45/403, M. Moynihan (Monrovia) during conversations at the FCO, 6 November 1970. 60. TNA, FCO 45/403, British High Commissioner (Lagos) to FCO, 28 August 1970. 61. TNA, FCO 45/403, British Ambassador (Abidjan) to FCO, 2 September 1970. 62. TNA, FCO 45/403, British Ambassador (Dakar) to FCO, 28 August 1970. 63. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/269, Compte-rendu des entretiens franco-britanniques, tenus par M. Alphand (Secrétaire Général) au Foreign Office, 3 September 1970. 64. TNA, FCO 51/233, British Ambassador (Yaoundé) to E.E. Orchard, Research Department, FCO, May 1972.

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65. Ibid. 66. The Times, “The French Commonwealth: a link between nations and cultures”, 5 January 1971. 67. TNA, FCO 33/529, ‘La Francophonie’, November 1969. 68. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/466, Note sur la Conférence de Niamey, 16–20 March 1970. 69. TNA, FCO 51/233, British Ambassador (Kinshasa), to E.E. Orchard, Research Department, FCO, 15 May 1972. 70. TNA, FCO 51/234, Report from Western and Southern European Section, 2 October 1972. 71. TNA, FCO 65/906, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 21 April 1971. 72. TNA, FCO 65/1176, ‘My visit to Paris on 8 November do discuss West Africa’, J. de C. Ling to John Wilson, WAD, 14 November 1972. 73. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Agenda on Anglo-French talks on Africa, Paris, 2 December 1974. 74. TNA, FCO 65/558, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 15 April 1970. 75. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Note sur l’élargissement de la Communauté et l’association des EAM, 5 June 1970. 76. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/2, Avenir de l’Association des EAMA à la CEE, 25 October 1971. 77. TNA, FCO 13/419, Record of Anglo-French talks on Africa, London, 17 June 1970. 78. Ibid. 79. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/19, ½, C.I.1.g., Discours de Georges Pompidou, visite officielle au Cameroun, 9–11 February 1971. 80. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/2, Décisions du Conseil restreint sur la Coopération, 28 October 1971. 81. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/20, 2/2, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 12 February 1971; AN, AG/5(FPR)/33, Procès-verbal des entretiens élargis de Yaoundé du 11 février 1971, 16 February 1971. 82. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/20, 2/2, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 12 February 1971. 83. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/19, ½, C.I.1.g., Discours de Georges Pompidou, visite officielle au Cameroun, 9–11 February 1971. 84. Ibid. 85. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Australian Embassy (Paris) to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 March 1971. 86. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé) to External Affairs, 17 February 1971. 87. LAC, RG25, 8605, 20–1-2-AFR, pt 5, Direction des Affaires Afrique et MoyenOrient, ‘Notes sur la politique étrangère canadienne en Afrique francophone’, 7 October 1970; LAC, RG25, 8605, 20–1-2-AFRICA, pt 8, Direction de l’Afrique, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone’, 8 November 1971. 88. Ibid. 89. TNA, FCO 65/977, British High Commission (Ottawa) to FCO, 22 December 1971.

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349

90. LAC, RG25, 8607, 20–1-2-AFRICA/FRANCO, 1, Etude de la Direction des Affaires d’Afrique II, ‘Relations du Canada avec les pays d’Afrique francophone: incidences sur les relations Ottawa-Québec’, 1972; LAC, RG25, 8606, 20–1-2AFR,pt 14, Ambassade du Canada (Abidjan) à Affaires extérieures, 19 March 1973. 91. LAC, RG25/14625, 30–10-FRAN, Mitchell Sharp, ‘Dimension de notre politique envers la France et le Québec’, Mémoire au Premier Ministre, 20 October 1969. 92. LAC, RG25, 8607, 20–1-2-AFRICA/FRANCO, 1, Etude de la Direction des Affaires d’Afrique II, ‘Relations du Canada avec les pays d’Afrique francophone: incidences sur les relations Ottawa-Québec’, 1972. 93. TNA, FCO 51/233, Extract from record of Anglo-American & Anglo-Canadian Official Talks on Africa, March 1972. 94. TNA, FCO 65/1167, Anglo-Canadian Talks on Africa, 9 March 1972. 95. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/353, Ambassadeur de France (Cameroun) à MAE, 12 May 1972. 96. See correspondence on 10–27 August 1970 in LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624; see also Foccart: Dans les bottes, p.431, 436. 97. LAC, RG25, 8605, 20–1-2-AFRICA, part 8, Mitchell Sharp’s Tour of Africa, Summary of comments to the African Affairs Division I, 19 November 1971. 98. TNA, FCO 65/1341, Anglo-Canadian Talks, 2 March 1973. 99. Ibid. 100. LAC, RG25, 8605, 20–1-2-AFRICA, pt 8, Direction de l’Afrique, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone’, 8 November 1971. 101. Ibid. 102. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/415, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 7 May 1975. 103. TNA, FCO 45/706, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 30 July 1970. 104. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/415, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 12 May 1972. 105. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624, From Peacekeeping and Military Assistance to African and Middle Eastern Division, 11 July 1969. 106. LAC, RG25-A-3-C, 14624, Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé) to External Affairs and Paris, 8 July 1969. 107. LAC, RG25, 8605, 20–1-2-AFR, pt 8, Canadian Embassy (Dakar) to External Affairs, 30 October 1971. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid. 110. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/209, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 4 March 1970. 111. FD, Glenn Slocum, Agency for International Development, 18 November 1998. 112. FD, Scott Behoteguy, mission director of USAID in Cameroon, 11 August 1997. 113. FD, James K. Bishop Jr., Embassy in Yaoundé (1968–1970), 15 November 1995.

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114. FD, Glenn Slocum, Agency for International Development, 18 November 1998. 115. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/209, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 26 June 1975. 116. Ibid. 117. FD, Michael P.E. Hoyt; 30 January 1995. 118. FD, James K. Bishop Jr., Embassy in Yaoundé (1968–1970), 15 November 1995 119. AN, AG/5(FPU)/616, Synthèse de l’ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé), 25 May 1971. 120. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/209, MAC, Yaoundé, Note sur l’aide des USA au Cameroun au début de 1971, March 1971. 121. FD, Arthur M. Fell, Agency for International Development, 15 February 1997. 122. TNA, FCO 33/1376, ‘Anglo-French cooperation in Africa’, West African Department, 11 May 1971. 123. TNA, FCO65/604, British Ambassador (Yaoundé), Valedictory Despatch, 9 March 1970. 124. Ibid. 125. TNA, FCO 65/558, Draft Agenda for Anglo-French Talks, West African Department, 10 June 1970. 126. TNA, FCO 45/995, ‘France’s favoured sons’, The Guardian, February 1971. 127. TNA, FCO 65/913, British Embassy (Dakar) to FCO, 5 March 1971. 128. TNA, FCO 65/604, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 129. AN, AG/5(FPU)/616, Synthèse de l’ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé), 23 December 1971. 130. TNA, FCO 65/1075, Note on Pompidou’s visit to Niger and Chad, 24–28 January 1972, 14 February 1972. 131. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Australian Embassy (Paris) to Foreign Affairs, 10 March 1971. 132. TNA, FCO 45/677, UK Mission to the UN to FCO, 17 July 1970. 133. TNA, FCO 65/1075, Note on M. Pompidou’s visit to Niger and Chad, 24–28 January 1972, 14 February 1972. 134. Ibid. 135. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 29 January 1970. 136. TNA, FCO 65/1075, Note from J. Wilson, February 1972. 137. TNA, FCO 45/706, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 22 July 1970. 138. TNA, FCO 45/706, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 30 July 1970. 139. Along with the foreign ministers of Mali, Kenya and Algeria, and led by President Kaunda. 140. TNA, FCO 65/1092, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 141. TNA, OD 30/193, Ahidjo, Second ordinary session of the Federal National Assembly, August 1970. 142. TNA, FCO 65/606, Joint Communiqué, visit of Ahidjo to Nigeria, 25–29 September 1970, 29 September 1970; see also Cameroon Times, 10:22, 24 March

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NOTES

143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159.

160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173.

351

1970, Cameroon Outlook, 2:50, 10 July 1970 and Cameroon Times 10:71, 25 July 1970, for reports of British policies and Ahidjo’s stand in the Cameroonian press. TNA, FO 65/1094, Joint Communiqué, visit of Ahidjo to Nigeria, 24–27 March 1972. TNA, FCO 45/706, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 22 July 1970. TNA, FCO 65/609, Ahidjo to British Ambassador, June 1970. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential Report, 14 July 1970. TNA, FCO 36/11/9, Note, 25 January 1972. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential Report, 14 July 1970. TNA, FCO 45/706, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 30 July 1970. Ibid. TNA, FCO 65/921, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1970. TNA, FCO 45/677, UK Mission to the United Nations to FCO, 17 July 1970. TNA, FCO 45/706, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 30 July 1970. TNA, FC0 45/706, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 27 August 1970. TNA, FCO 65/717, Senegal, Annual Review for 1969. TNA, FCO 65/558, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 2 February 1970. TNA, FCO 65/558, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 15 April 1970. TNA, FCO 13/419, Brief 11 on West Africa for visit to Paris, 15 April 1970. AN, AG/5/FPU/2173, Note de Jean Ribo, Elysée, au Secrétariat Général pour la Communauté et les Affaires Africaines et Malgaches, au Secrétaire Général, 27 October 1970. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/386, Compte-rendu des entretiens franco-britanniques, 8 March 1971. TNA, FCO 65/1442, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 3 June 1974. TNA, FCO 65/1176, John Wilson, ‘France and Africa’, West African Department, 14 November 1972. TNA, FCO 65/1075, Note from John Wilson, 14 February 1972 TNA, FCO 30/1362, Renwick, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, December 1972. TNA, FCO 30/1707, ‘French African Policy’, British Embassy (Paris), 8 June 1973. Ibid. TNA, FCO 65/906, T. Bambury to J.C de Ling, 13 September 1971. TNA, FCO 65/1075, Note from S. Fingland, February 1972. TNA, FCO 33/1376, ‘Anglo-French cooperation in Africa’, West African Department, 11 May 1971. TNA, FCO 30/1708, Note for the record, John Wilson, 25 May 1972. TNA, FCO 30/1707, ‘French African Policy’, British Embassy (Paris), 8 June 1973. TNA, FCO 65/1512, Canada/UK Consultations on Africa and the Middle East, Ottawa, 19 February 1974. TNA, FCO 65/608, Board of Trade, Commercial Relations and Exports Department, January 1970.

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IN

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174. TNA, FCO 65/609, Ahidjo to British Ambassador (Yaoundé), June 1970. 175. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential Report, 14 July 1970. 176. TNA, OD 30/193, Ahidjo, Second ordinary session of the Federal National Assembly, August 1970. 177. TNA, FO 371/187846, British Consulate (Buea) to ODM, 5 July 1966. 178. TNA, FCO 65/604, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 179. Réponse au toast de Chou-En-Laï, 26 March 1973, in Oyono: La politique africaine , p.112. 180. Prouzet, Michel, Le Cameroun (Paris, Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 1974), pp.319–320. 181. TNA, FCO 65/609, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 21 July 1970. 182. FD, Glenn Slocum, Agency for International Development, 18 November 1998. 183. FD, Herbert John Spiro, 25 April 1994. 184. TNA, FCO 65/609, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 21 July 1970. 185. TNA, FCO 65/1093, Confidential, 1972. 186. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/19, ½, C.I.1.g., Toast d’Ahmadou Ahidjo en l’honneur de Georges Pompidou. 187. Oyono: La politique africaine, p.233. 188. See also Foccart: Dans les bottes, pp.627–628, p.702. 189. TNA, FCO 65/604, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 190. TNA, OD 30/193, Note, 6 May 1971. 191. Foccart: Dans les bottes, p.767. 192. See Deltombe, Domergue, Tatsitsa: Kamerun! 193. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 194. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/2, Rapport Gorse, September 1971. 195. Happy Nya: La coopération franco-africaine, p.135. 196. TNA, FCO 65/1694, Senegal, Annual Review for 1974. 197. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/2, Conseil interministériel sur la Coopération, 28 October 1971. 198. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/2, Avenir de l’Association des EAMA à la CEE, 25 October 1971. 199. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/2, Décisions du Conseil restreint sur la Coopération, 28 October 1971. 200. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1977, Louis Vorms, Ambassade de France (Londres) à MAE, 16 May 1969. 201. CSA, 2002/72 (1 of 2), Memorandum from Ronald Fredenburgh (Director of the Commonwealth-American Current Affairs Unit) to Arnold Smith, 5 March 1970. 202. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 29 January 1970. 203. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/268, Entretiens franco-britanniques, 17 June 1970. 204. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 29 January 1970.

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353

205. TNA, BW 1/646, Anglo-French Talks, 8 March 1971. 206. Ibid. 207. CSA, 2002/72 (1 of 2), Memorandum from Ronald Fredenburgh (Director of the Commonwealth-American Current Affairs Unit) to Arnold Smith, 5 March 1970. 208. Ibid. 209. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 30 January 1970. 210. Ibid. 211. TNA, FCO 65/913, Record of Anglo-French Talks (1971). 212. TNA, FCO 65/1269, Draft notes for speech by the Secretary of State at Government dinner at Dakar, 10 February 1973. 213. TNA, FCO 65/1084, Report on English Language Taching in Francophone Africa, October 1971. 214. TNA, OD 30/192, The Director General’s tour of Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, 1–25 April 1970, Appendix D – The British Council Executive Committee, 2 June 1970. 215. TNA, FCO 13/419, Note, Brief on West Africa for visit to Paris, 15 April 1970. 216. TNA, FCO 13/419, British measures, existing or under consideration to provide training in English and related subjects for Francophone Africans, March 1970. 217. Ibid. 218. TNA, FCO 65/921, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1970. 219. TNA, OD 30/193, Factual notes on our English language teaching support to Cameroon, 1970–1972. 220. TNA, OD 30/192, The Director General’s tour of Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, 1–25 April 1970, Appendix D – The British Council Executive Committee, 2 June 1970. 221. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 222. TNA, OD 30/193, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 8 December 1970. 223. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, English Language Teaching in Cameroon, 16 June 1971. 224. TNA, FCO 26/336, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Report by Mr. R. Swann, November/December 1969. 225. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/209, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 26 juin 1975. 226. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to WAD, 16 June 1971. 227. TNA, FCO 65/921, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Cultural Relations Department (FCO), 7 July 1970 228. TNA, BW 1/646, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to WAD, 15 September 1970. 229. Ibid. 230. TNA, OD 30/192, The Director General’s tour of Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, 1–25 April 1970, Appendix D – The British Council Executive Committee, 2 June 1970. 231. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to WAD, 16 June 1971.

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232. TNA, FCO 65/1093, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 26 May 1972. 233. TNA, FCO 65/609, Ahidjo to British Ambassador (Yaoundé), June 1970. 234. TNA, OD 30/192, The Director General’s tour of Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, 1–25 April 1970, Appendix D – The British Council Executive Committee, 2 June 1970. 235. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, English Language Teaching in Cameroon, 16 June 1971. 236. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/19, ½, C.I.1.g., Discours de Georges Pompidou, visite officielle, 9–11 February 1971. 237. TNA, FCO 13/625, Note on ‘The Improvement and Co-ordination of French and English Language Teaching in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Educational Projects Involving Greater Co-operation Between Anglophone and Francophone West Africa, Carew Treffgarne, The Africa Educational Trust, Paris, 28–29 September 1973. 238. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/210, FED, Aide de la GrandeBretagne au développement de la République Fédérale du Cameroun, 15 June 1969; 15 June 1970; 15 June 1971. 239. TNA, FCO 65/906, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to WAD, 2 August 1970. 240. Mbile: Cameroon political story, p.225. 241. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, English Language Teaching in Cameroon, 16 June 1971. 242. Ibid. 243. TNA, FCO 65/1093, FCO to British Embassy (Yaoundé), 26 June 1972. 244. TNA, FCO13/625, ‘Africa, Britain and the European Community: cultural and educational implications’, Paper arising from a symposium held at the SOAS, 8–9 January 1973. 245. Ibid. 246. TNA, OD 30/192, Anglo-Cameroon mixed commission, English language teaching in Cameroon: support under the British aid programme, Brief by the ODA, 1971; see also TNA, FCO 13/026, C.B Stewart to Mr. Peck, 11 October 1968. 247. TNA, OD30/192, The Director General’s tour of Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, 1–25 April 1970, Appendix D – The British Council Executive Committee, 2 June 1970. 248. TNA, FCO 65/604, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 249. Tabi-Manga: Langues, p.135. 250. Ibid., p.127. 251. TNA, OD 30/193, W.J. Vosc, Confidential document, 17 April 1970. 252. Tabi-Manga: Langues, pp.114–115. 253. TNA, OD 30/193, W.J. Vosc, Confidential document, 17 April 1970. 254. TNA, OD 30/193, Confidential Report, 14 July 1970. 255. Fombad, Charles Manga, ‘The Scope for Uniform National Laws in Cameroon’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 29:3 (1991). 256. TNA, OD 30/347, Report of the visit to the Cameroon Republic, administrative and social affairs department, overseas development administration, London, 13–23 July 1971. 257. TNA, FCO 65/970, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 8 March 1971.

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355

258. TNA, FCO 13/625, ‘Africa, Britain and the European Community: cultural and educational implications’, Paper arising from a symposium held at the SOAS, 8–9 January 1973. 259. TNA, FCO 65/970, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 8 March 1971. 260. TNA, FCO 13/419, Possible Anglo-French Cooperation in helping Francophone and English-speaking Africa to overcome its language barrier, Cultural Relations Department, 4 March 1970. 261. Ibid. 262. TNA, FCO 65/906, Cultural Relations Department to West African Department, 23 March 1971. 263. TNA, FCO 65/906, Language teaching: basic information, 28 June 1971. 264. TNA, FCO 65/906, Cultural Relations Department to West African Department, 23 March 1971. 265. TNA, FCO 65/906, Note on ELT in Francophone Africa, 30 June 1971. 266. TNA, FCO 13/419, CCB Stewart, Brief on West Africa for visit to Paris, 15 April 1970. 267. Ibid. 268. TNA, BW 1/646, Regional Officer (West Africa) to Acting Controller Overseas, 3 April 1970. 269. Ibid. 270. TNA, FCO 13/419, J. Johnston, Possible Anglo-French Cooperation in helping Francophone and English-speaking Africa to overcome its language barrier, 5 March 1970. 271. TNA, FCO 65/906, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 1 March 1971. 272. Ibid. See also TNA, FCO 65/906, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to ODA, 17 February 1971. 273. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, English Language Teaching in Cameroon, 16 June 1971. 274. TNA, FCO 65/606, Joint Communiqué on the visit of Ahidjo to Nigeria, 25–29 September 1970, 29 September 1970. 275. Tabi-Manga: Langues, p.118. 276. TNA, FCO 65/906, J. Wilson (WAD) to J.E. Rednall (ODA), 5 May 1971. 277. TNA, FCO 65/906, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 21 April 1971. 278. TNA, FCO 65/1084, Report on English Language Teaching in Francophone Africa, October 1971. 279. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/268, Entretiens franco-britanniques, 17 June 1970. 280. TNA, FCO 65/554, Record of discussion, West African Heads of Mission Meeting, 27–30 January 1970. 281. TNA, FCO 45/1264, C.M. Le Quesne, Summary of points raised by speakers, 7 December 1972. 282. TNA, FCO 65/1269, Draft notes for speech by the Secretary of State at Government dinner at Dakar, 10 February 1973. 283. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, Politique française de coopération en personnel, June 1970.

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284. Bach: ‘Dynamique’, p.60. 285. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/26, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 7 April 1971. 286. TNA, FCO 13/419, Record of Anglo-French talks on Africa, London, 17 June 1970; 287. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/268, Entretiens franco-britanniques, 17 June 1970. 288. TNA, FCO 65/970, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 8 March 1971. 289. TNA, FCO 65/906, CCB Stewart (Cultural Relations Department) to Goodall (West African Department), 23 March 1971. 290. TNA, FCO 65/625, ‘Africa, Britain and the European Community: cultural and educational implications’, Paper arising from a symposium held at the SOAS, 8–9 January 1973. 291. TNA, FCO 65/1167, External Affairs to Canadian High Commission (London), 16 March 1972. 292. TNA, FCO 13/419, CCB Stewart, Brief on West Africa for visit to Paris, 15 April 1970. 293. TNA, FCO 65/1166, Anglo-Canadian talks on Africa, Ottawa, 9–10 March 1972, Brief from Overseas Development Administration, 2 March 1972. 294. Ibid. 295. TNA, FCO 65/1166, Brief on Anglo-Canadian Talks, West African Department and North American Department, February 1972. 296. TNA, FCO 13/419, Cultural Relations Department, Possible Anglo-French Cooperation in helping Francophone and English-speaking Africa to overcome its language barrier, 4 March 1970. 297. TNA, FCO 13/419, CCB Stewart, Brief on West Africa for visit to Paris, 15 April 1970; see also TNA, BW 1/646, Anglo-French Talks, 8 March 1971. 298. TNA, BW 1/646, Anglo-French Talks, 8 March 1971. 299. TNA, FCO 65/906, Note on ELT in Francophone Africa, 30 June 1971. 300. TNA, FCO 65/1084, Report on English Language Taching in Francophone Africa, October 1971. 301. LAC, RG25, 12523, 20-FR-1–3-AFRICA, Special Research Bureau Memorandum, ‘Francophone Africa and its relations with France’, 27 June 1973. 302. TNA, OD30/192, Anglo-Cameroon mixed commission, English language teaching in Cameroon: support under the British aid programme, Brief by the Overseas Development administration, 1971; see also TNA, OD 30/193, E. Barnes to Mr Huijsman, 11 September 1970. 303. TNA, OD 30/140, H.A Moisley to Dr. B. Lott (British Council), 29 April 1970. 304. Ibid. 305. TNA, OD 30/193, E. Barnes to Mr Huijsman, 11 September 1970. 306. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/20, 2/2, C.I.1.c., Note sur la Réunification du Cameroun, 1971. 307. TNA, FCO 65/604, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory Despatch, 9 March 1970.

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357

308. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, English Language Teaching in Cameroon, 16 June 1971. 309. TNA, FCO 25/210, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 1 May 1967. 310. TNA, OD 30/140, C.H Smee (Manpower Planning Unit) to Mr. Barnes, 10 April 1970. 311. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, English Language Teaching in Cameroon, 16 June 1971. 312. TNA, OD 30/140, H.A Moisley to Dr. B. Lott (British Council), 29 April 1970. 313. TNA, BW 1/646, Anglo-French Talks, 8 March 1971. 314. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, English Language Teaching in Cameroon, 16 June 1971. 315. Ibid. 316. TNA, FCO 65/559, Talk by Maurice Foley to the Royal African Society, 25/26 February 1970. 317. Ibid. 318. CSA, 2002/72 (1 of 2), Memorandum from Ronald Fredenburgh (Director of the Commonwealth-American Current Affairs Unit) to Arnold Smith, 5 March 1970. 319. Hansard, HC Deb 01 November 1965 vol 718 cc629. 320. TNA, FCO 36/820, Ahidjo, interview with Agence Camerounaise de Presse, 1 December 1971. 321. TNA, FCO 36/820, J. Varcoe (Rhodesia Political Department) to Mr. Masson, 4 August 1971. 322. TNA, FCO 36/820, Telegram, 30 November 1971. 323. TNA, FCO 36/820, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 20 December 1971. 324. Ibid. See also AN, AG/5(FPU)/616, Synthèse de l’ambassadeur, 23 December 1971. 325. TNA, FO 65/1094, Joint Communiqué, Visit of Ahidjo to Nigeria, 24–27 March 1972. 326. TNA, OD 30/193, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 327. TNA, FCO 36/820, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 20 December 1971. 328. TNA, OD 30/193, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 329. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., divers., Ahidjo, Speech on 6 May 1972. 330. La Presse du Cameroun, 10 May 1972. 331. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/27, Ahidjo’s address to the Nation, 9 May 1972 in Ministry of Information, Buea, 17 May 1972. 332. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/27, Solomon Tandeng Muna, 11 May 1972 in ibid. 333. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/27, Nzo Ekangaki, 12 May 1972 in ibid. 334. Konings, Nyamnjoh: Negotiating, p.64. 335. TNA, FCO 65/1093, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 26 May 1972. 336. Le Vine: Political Integration, pp.274–276.

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337. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/38, C.I.2, Maurice Schumann à Ahmadou Ahidjo, 24 May 1972. 338. Foccart: La France pompidolienne, p.328. 339. Ahidjo, Southwest/Northwest Provinces, 2 June 1972; see also Stark: ‘Federalism in Cameroon’. 340. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/38, C.I.2, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 25 May 1972; 1, C.I., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 1 June 1972; 7, Lignes intérieures – extérieures, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 January 1973. 341. TNA, FCO 65/604, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 342. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/153, Correspondance diverse, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 19 May 1972. 343. Sindjoun: Le Président de la République, pp.15–16. 344. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/38, C.I.2, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 25 May 1972. 345. Takougang, Krieger: State and Society, p.54. 346. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 12 October 1973. 347. AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 31 May 1974. 348. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Lignes intérieures – extérieures, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 5 January 1973. 349. La Presse du Cameroun, 10 May 1972. 350. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/27, Ahidjo’s address to the Nation, 9 May 1972 in Ministry of Information, Buea, 17 May 1972. 351. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/38, C.I.2, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 25 May 1972. 352. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/20, 2/2, C.I.1.c., Note du conseiller culturel à l’ambassadeur de France, 2 December 1970. 353. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Note sur les rapports franco-camerounais de coopération, March 1973. 354. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/465, MAE à Ambassade de France (Ottawa), 2 February 1976. 355. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/466, Entretiens LevesqueBillecocq, 12 February 1973. 356. Mendo Ze, Gervais, Le français, langue africaine, enjeux et atouts pour la francophonie (Paris, Publisud, 1999), p.104. 357. TNA, FCO 65/1288, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1972. 358. LAC, RG25, 8627, 20–1-2-CAM, pt.5, Note confidentielle, André Couvrette (Afrique II), 10 July 1973. 359. TNA, FCO 65/1093, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 26 May 1972. 360. TNA, FCO 65/1288, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1972. 361. TNA, FCO 65/1093, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 26 May 1972. 362. TNA, FCO 65/1288, P.K.C. Thomas (FCO) on Cameroon, Annual review for 1972, 29 January 1973. 363. TNA, FCO 65/1274, Report by Lady Tweedsmuir on her visit to Sierra Leone, Cameroon and the Gambia (16–31 January), 7 February 1973.

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364. FD, Herbert John Spiro, 25 April 1994. 365. TNA, FCO 65/1275, Briefs for Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, Sierra Leone and the Gambia (16–31 January 1973), West African Department, 10 January 1973. 366. TNA, FCO 65/1288, Annual Review for 1972. 367. TNA, FCO 65/1273, Report by A.H. Campbell, assistant under-secretary, on Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, 26 January 1973. 368. TNA, FCO 65/1269, Draft notes for speech by the Secretary of State at Government dinner at Dakar, 10 February 1973. 369. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/642, Rapport de Jacqueline Bardolph pour le Service de la Coopération Culturelle, 21 June – 2 July 1973. 370. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 9 November 1973. 371. TNA, FCO 65/1275, Briefs for Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, January 1973, British Council Africa South of the Saraha Department, January 1973. 372. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 12 octobre 1973. 373. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 31 août 1973. 374. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975. 375. Ibid. 376. FD, Herbert John Spiro, 25 April 1994. 377. TNA, FCO 65/1691, Ivory Coast, Annual Review for 1974. 378. TNA, FCO 65/1696, Senegal, Annual Review for 1975. 379. TNA, OD 30/192, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, English Language Teaching in Cameroon, 16 June 1971. 380. TNA, FCO 65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975. 381. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/415, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 7 May 1975. 382. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 383. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/1, C.I., Note, 1 June 1972. 384. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/20, 2/2, C.I.1.c., Perspectives maghrébines, n°3, March 1971. 385. TNA, FCO 65/1442, ‘The Changing Scene in Francophone Africa’, Ivor Porter, Joint meeting of the Royal African Society and the Royal Commonwealth Society, April 1974. 386. Commonwealth Prime Ministers Meeting, Singapore, Declaration of Commonwealth Principles, January 1971 in The Commonwealth at the Summit: Communiqués of Heads of Government Meetings, 1944–1987 (London, Commonwealth Secretariat, 1987). 387. TNA, FCO 51/233, British Embassy (Kinshasa) to Research Department, FCO, 15 May 1972. 388. TNA, FCO 51/233, Francophonie 1965–1972, Research Department Memorandum, February 1972. 389. Ibid.

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390. Ibid. 391. Ibid. 392. LAC, RG25, 8605, 20–1-2-AFR, pt 2, ‘Objectifs de la politique canadienne en Afrique francophone en 1970’, 16 February 1970. 393. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/404, Ambassade de France (Abidjan) à MAE, 12 March 1971. 394. LAC, RG25, 8605, 20–1-2-AFRICA, pt 8, Direction Afrique, ‘Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone’, 8 November 1971. 395. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/136, R.C.II., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 28 April 1970; LAC, RG25/9175, 20-CAM-9, Visite du Président Ahidjo, 9–16 September 1970, Mémoire au ministre, 8 September 1970. 396. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/1, C.I., Note, 1 June 1972. 397. LAC, RG25, 8627, 20–1-2-CAM, pt.5, Discussion – Couvrette (GAF) / Tchoungi (Ambassadeur Cameroun), 10 November 1972, Note, 15 November 1972. 398. Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.39–40. 399. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/135, R.C.II., Francophonie 70, Spécial Niamey, 3, May 1970; CSA, 2006/41, ACCT, Liaison with Commonwealth, ACCT, Troisième Réunion de la Conférence générale, Belgium, October 1973; ACCT, Rapport de la commission des chefs de délégation, Conférence générale, Mauritius, 12–15 November 1975. 400. TNA, OD30/347, Pan-African Institute for Development, Geneva, September 1972. 401. Ibid. 402. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/5, C.I.1.c., Consulat de France (Buea), traduction d’un article paru dans le “Bulletin de Presse Régional”, 1 December 1969. 403. TNA, OD30/347, Pan-African Institute for Development, Geneva, September 1972. 404. Ibid. 405. TNA, OD 30/347, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to ODA, 13 October 1972. 406. TNA, OD 30/347, G.H. Malley, 26 October 1972. 407. TNA, OD 30/347, PAID, Du Sautoy staff training centre (Buea), Commonwealth Foundation project, February 1972. 408. Ibid. 409. TNA, OD 30/347, Extract from PAID to Commonwealth Foundation, 4 February 1972. 410. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/29. 411. TNA, FCO 13/625, ‘Africa, Britain and the European Community: cultural and educational implications’, Paper arising from a symposium held at the SOAS, 8–9 January 1973. 412. CSA, 2009/077, Commonwealth Foundation, Part 3, A further African Journey, Report from the Director, January-April 1977, 11 May 1977. 413. TNA, OD 30/347, PAID, Du Sautoy staff training centre (Buea), Commonwealth Foundation project, February 1972.

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361

414. TNA, OD 30/347, P.H. Johnston, 17 April 1972. 415. TNA, OD 30/347, Extract from PAID to Commonwealth Foundation, 4 February 1972. 416. TNA, OD 30/347, PAID, Du Sautoy staff training centre (Buea), Commonwealth Foundation project, February 1972. 417. TNA, FCO 65/1273, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, 31 January 1973. 418. Commonwealth Foundation, Minutes of the Board of Directors’ Meetings, July 1977, Report on Tour of Francophone West Africa, May 11, 1977.

5

The Cameroonian Bridge?

1. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Memorandum of the Commission to the Council on the Future Relations Between the Community, the Present AASM States and the Countries in Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian and Pacific Oceans referred to in Protocol N°22 to the Act of Accession, 4 April 1973. 2. TNA, FCO 30/1707, ‘French African Policy’, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 8 June 1973. 3. TNA, CAB 130/618, Working Party on Protocol 22 of the Treaty of Accession, Note by FCO, 18 October 1972. 4. TNA, FCO 30/1272, Aid Questions, Minutes of the Fourth Plenary Meeting of Commonwealth Finance Ministers, 22 September 1972. 5. CSA, 2002/72 (1 of 2), Memorandum from Ronald Fredenburgh (Director of the Commonwealth-American Current Affairs Unit) to Arnold Smith, 5 March 1970. 6. LAC, MG31/E47/vol.89, Arnold Cantwell Smith, ‘Britain and Canada in the wider world – the Commonwealth’, paper prepared for the British-Canadian Colloquium at Leeds University, 26–29 October 1979. 7. See for instance Akinrinade, Olusola, ‘The Failure of Commonwealth BridgeBuilding, 1971–73’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 27:2 (June 1989), pp.177–199. 8. Smith: Stitches, p.162. 9. Ibid., pp.187–189. 10. Speech to the Foreign Press Association in May 1972, in ibid., p.183. 11. TNA, FCO 30/1271, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 6–7 July 1972. 12. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Dawbarn, FCO, to Given (Yaoundé), 8 February 1974. 13. Clapham, Christopher, Africa and the International System: the Politics of State Survival (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.99. 14. TNA, FCO 30/856, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to WAD, 21 January 1971. 15. TNA, FCO 65/1176, Report ‘France and Africa’, John Wilson (WAD), 29 September 1972. 16. TNA, FCO 51/234, Report from Western and Southern European Section, 2 October 1972. 17. TNA, FCO 65/1176, Report ‘France and Africa’, John Wilson (WAD), 14 November 1972.

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18. TNA, FCO 65/1176, ‘My visit to Paris on 8 November to discuss West Africa’, J. de C. Ling to John Wilson (WAD), 14 November 1972. 19. TNA, FCO 30/1362, John Wilson, 3 November 1972. 20. Foccart: La France pompidolienne, p.384. 21. TNA, FCO 30/1362, Visit of Dr Arikpo, Nigerian Foreign Minister, to London, 30 November 1972, Nigeria and the EEC, International and European Department, 27 November 1972. 22. TNA, FCO 30/1708, Record of the Visit by Dr Arikpo, 30 November 1972. 23. TNA, FCO 65/1341, Anglo-Canadian Talks, 2 March 1973. 24. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Julian Amery to Secretary of State, 4 April 1973; see also TNA, FCO 65/1266, Background paper, EEC Council of Ministers, 23–24 July 1973. 25. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Julian Amery to Secretary of State, 4 April 1973. 26. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Memorandum of the Commission to the Council on the Future Relations Between the Community, the Present AASM States and the Countries in Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian and Pacific Oceans referred to in Protocol N°22 to the Act of Accession, 4 April 1973. 27. Ibid. 28. TNA, FCO 30/1707, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, French African Policy, 8 June 1973. 29. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Foreign Secretary to British Embassy (Paris), 6 April 1973. 30. TNA, FCO 30/1706, Anglo-German Talks on Africa, London, 26 April 1973. 31. TNA, FCO 30/1706, D. Williams to A. Campbell, FCO, 18 May 1973. 32. TNA, FCO 65/1265, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 18 May 1973. 33. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Visit of M. Achard, Deputy Secretary-General (SGAAM), 7 May 1973. 34. Foccart, Jacques, La fin du gaullisme, Journal de l’Elysée V, 1973–1974 (Paris, Fayard/Jeune Afrique, 2001), p.243–244. 35. TNA, FCO 65/1265, British Embassy to European Integration Department, FCO, 25 May 1973. 36. Ibid; see also TNA, FCO 30/1707, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, French African Policy, 8 June 1973; MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/386, compte-rendu des conversations franco-britanniques sur l’Afrique des 23 et 24 mai 1973 à Paris, 29 June 1973; TNA, FCO 69/470, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 12 July 1973; TNA, FCO 65/1267, British Embassy (Paris) to EID, 19 September 1973. 37. TNA, FCO 65/1267, British High Commission (Lagos) to FCO, 18 October 1973. 38. CSA, 2003/55 (1 of 2), Notes on discussion with Richard Wood (ODA), 6 July 1972. 39. Smith: Stitches, p.189. 40. CSA, 2003/55 (1 of 2), Notes on discussion with Richard Wood (ODA), 6 July 1972. 41. TNA, FCO 30/1708, Note for the record, John Wilson, 25 May 1972.

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363

42. The West African Economic Community comprised Niger, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Upper Volta and Mali. 43. TNA, FCO 30/1707, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 24 May 1973. 44. TNA, FCO 30/1271, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 21 August 1972. 45. TNA, FCO 65/1176, Report ‘France and Africa’, John Wilson, West African Department, 29 September 1972. 46. Ibid. 47. TNA, FCO 30/1362, WAD to British High Commission (Lagos), 1 December 1972. 48. TNA, FCO 30/1271, Visit by C.M. Le Quesne to Lagos, 12–15 July 1972. 49. Ibid. See also TNA, FCO 30/1362, WAD to British Embassy (Paris), 31 October 1972. 50. TNA, FCO 30/1362, Record of a meeting between the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Nigerian Commissioner for External Affairs, 29 November 1972. 51. TNA, FCO 30/1362, WAD to British High Commission (Lagos), 1 December 1972. 52. CSA, 2003/55 (1 of 2), Notes on discussion with Richard Wood (ODA), 6 July 1972. 53. TNA, FCO 13/625, ‘Africa, Britain and the European Community: cultural and educational implications’, Paper arising from a symposium held at the SOAS, 8–9 January 1973. 54. CSA, 2003/55 (1 of 2), Notes on discussion with Richard Wood (ODA), 6 July 1972. 55. TNA, CAB 130/618, Working Party on Protocol 22 of the Treaty of Accession, Note by FCO, 18 October 1972. 56. TNA, FCO 30/1271, Visit by C.M. Le Quesne to Lagos, 12–15 July 1972. 57. TNA, CAB 130/618, Working Party on Protocol 22 of the Treaty of Accession, Note by FCO, 18 October 1972. 58. CSA, 2003/55 (1 of 2), Notes on discussion with Richard Wood (ODA), 6 July 1972. 59. TNA, FCO 30/856, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to WAD, 21 January 1971. 60. CSA, 2003/55 (1 of 2), Notes on discussion with Richard Wood (ODA), 6 July 1972. 61. Ibid. 62. TNA, CAB 130/618, Working Party on Protocol 22 of the Treaty of Accession, Note by FCO, 18 October 1972. 63. Ibid. 64. TNA, FCO 30/1362, Visit of Dr Arikpo, Nigerian Foreign Minister, to London, 30 November 1972, Nigeria and the EEC, International and European Department, 27 November 1972. 65. TNA, FCO 30/1271, Visit by C.M. Le Quesne to Lagos, 12–15 July 1972. 66. TNA, FCO 30/1362, Visit of Dr Arikpo, Nigerian Foreign Minister, to London, 30 November 1972, Nigeria and the EEC, International and European Department, 27 November 1972.

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67. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/153, Correspondance diverse, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 19 May 1972. 68. TNA, FCO 65/923, Confidential report, September 1970. 69. Ibid. 70. TNA, FCO 65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975; see also FCO 65/604, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1971. 71. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975. 72. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/153, Correspondance diverse, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 23 September 1977. 73. TNA, FCO 65/923, Confidential Report, September 1970. 74. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/155, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 25 August 1972. 75. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/19, ½, C.I.1.g., Notice biographique sur Ahmadou Ahidjo, December 1970. 76. Philippe Essomba, ‘Le droit à la différence’, Jeune Afrique, 30 July 1976. 77. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 78. TNA, FCO 65/1442, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 3 June 1974. 79. FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973; see also Foccart: La fin du gaullisme, p.343. 80. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Note sur les relations francocamerounaises, March 1973. 81. LAC, RG25, 8627, 20–1-2-CAM, pt.5, Discussion – Couvrette (GAF) / Tchoungi (Ambassadeur Cameroun), 10 November 1972, Note, 15 November 1972; CADN, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 7, Note sur les rapports franco-camerounais de coopération, March 1973. 82. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., interview accordée par Ahmadou Ahidjo à l’ACAP, 31 October 1972. 83. LAC, RG25, 8606, 20–1-2-AFR, pt 14, Ambassade du Canada (Abidjan) à Affaires extérieures, 19 March 1973. 84. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Cameroun) à DAM, 1 mars 1974. 85. TNA, FCO 30/1272, Aid Questions, Minutes of the Fourth Plenary Meeting of Commonwealth Finance Ministers, 22 September 1972. 86. TNA, CAB 130/618, Working Party on Protocol 22 of the Treaty of Accession, Note by FCO, 18 October 1972. 87. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Record of conversation between the British High Commissioner in Kenya and the Kenyan Minister of Commerce, 18 May 1973. 88. TNA, FCO 51/234, Report from Western and Southern European Section, 2 October 1972. 89. TNA, FCO 30/1362, Record of a meeting between the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Nigerian Commissioner for External Affairs, 29 November 1972. 90. TNA, FCO 65/1265, British High Commission (Freetown), 12 April 1973, and Record of conversation between the British High Commissioner in Kenya and the Kenyan Minister of Commerce, 18 May 1973.

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365

91. TNA, FCO 30/1708, Office of the UK, Permanent Representative to the European Communities, to FCO, 2 October 1973. 92. MAEE, Nantes, Dakar (Ambassade), 184PO/1/537, Ambassade de France (Dakar) à MAE, 19 December 1972; see also Foccart: La France pompidolienne, p.392. 93. TNA, FCO 65/1268, British Embassy (Dakar) to FCO, 22 March 1973. 94. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/378, Ambassade de France (Londres) à MAE, 26 January 1973. 95. TNA, FCO 45/1264, C.M. Le Quesne speaking, Summary of points raised by speakers, 7 December 1972. 96. TNA, FCO 65/1268, British Embassy (Dakar) to FCO, 22 March 1973. 97. TNA, FCO 65/1268, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 11 April 1973. 98. TNA, FCO 65/1270, Alec Douglas-Home, Federal Palace Hotel, Dakar, 15 February 1973. 99. TNA, FCO 65/1270, Record of the meeting between the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and the President of Senegal, Dakar, 10 February 1973. 100. TNA, FCO 30/1272, Note by Noël Salter, 6 September 1972, of a meeting held in Paris with A. Smith, E. Anyaoku, L.S. Senghor and the Senegalese ambassador to Paris, 5 September 1972. 101. TNA, FCO 30/1271, Personnel Policy Department, 8 December 1972. 102. TNA, FCO 65/1167, Letter from FCO to British High Commission (Lagos), 13 April 1972. 103. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 104. TNA, FCO 65/1442, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 3 June 1974. 105. TNA, FCO 65/1268, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 11 April 1973. 106. TNA, CAB/129/98, ‘Africa: The Next Ten Years’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 July 1959. 107. TNA, FCO 65/1167, FCO to British High Commission (Lagos), 13 April 1972. 108. TNA, FCO 45/1264, C.M. Le Quesne speaking, Summary of points raised by speakers, 7 December 1972. 109. TNA, FCO 65/1515, Discussions with Heads of Mission from Africa, Summary of Questions and Answers, 12 September 1974. 110. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Agenda on Anglo-French talks on Africa, Paris, 2 December 1974. 111. TNA, FCO 65/1264, J de C Ling (WAD), 26 February 1973. 112. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Dawbarn (FCO) to Given (Yaoundé), 8 February 1974. 113. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/3, C.I.1.c., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 17 November 1972. 114. TNA, FCO 65/1288, Cameroon, Annual Review 1972. 115. Ibid. 116. TNA, FCO 65/921, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1970. 117. TNA, FCO 65/1273, Report by A.H. Campbell, assistant under-secretary, on Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, 26 January 1973. 118. TNA, FCO 65/1273, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to the FCO, Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, 31 January 1973.

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119. TNA, FCO 65/1273, Record of meeting between Lady Tweedsmuir and Vincent Efon (Foreign Affairs, Cameroon), Yaoundé, 17 January 1973. 120. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 121. TNA, FCO 65/1273, Report by A.H. Campbell, assistant under-secretary, on Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, 26 January 1973. 122. TNA, FCO 65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975. 123. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974; see also TNA, FCO 65/1274, Report by Lady Tweedsmuir on her visit to Sierra Leone, Cameroon and the Gambia (16–31 January), 7 February 1973; TNA, FCO 5/1288, Cameroon, Annual Review 1972. 124. TNA, FCO36/11/9, Message d’Ahidjo pour la journée de la libération africaine, 25 May 1972. 125. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/C.I., Note, 1 June 1972; TNA, FCO 65/1093, Confidential report, 1972. 126. TNA, FCO 36/11/9, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 6 June 1972. 127. LAC, RG25, 8627, 20–1-2-CAM, pt.5, Discussion – Couvrette (GAF) / Tchoungi (Ambassadeur Cameroun), 10 November 1972, Note, 15 November 1972. 128. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 1 June 1973. 129. Allocution d’ouverture de la 23ème session du comité de coordination pour la libération de l’Afrique, Yaoundé, 13 May 1974 in Oyono: La politique africaine, p.277. 130. Cameroon tribune, 6 January 1975. 131. Message à la Nation, Yaoundé, 31 December 1975 in Oyono: La politique africaine, p.290. 132. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 133. Ibid. 134. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 135. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 26 October 1973. 136. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 137. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 138. TNA, FCO 30/1362, WAD to British High Commission (Lagos), 1 December 1972. 139. TNA, FCO 30/1271, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 21 August 1972. 140. TNA, FCO 30/1362, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 6 December 1972. 141. TNA, FCO 30/2147, Visit by Dr Krohn, Director General DG VIII, EEC Commission, 19 December 1971. 142. TNA, FCO 30/1362, WAD to British Embassy (Paris), 31 October 1972. 143. TNA, CAB 130/618, Working Party on Protocol 22 of the Treaty of Accession, Note by FCO, 18 October 1972. 144. TNA, FCO 30/1271, Visit by C.M. Le Quesne to Lagos, 12–15 July 1972. 145. TNA, FCO 30/1362, Record of a meeting between the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Nigerian Commissioner for External Affairs, 29

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146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176.

367

November 1972; TNA, FCO 30/1362, WAD to British High Commission (Lagos), 1 December 1972. TNA, FCO 30/1362, WAD to British Embassy (Paris), 31 October 1972. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/466, Entretiens LevesqueBillecocq, 12 February 1973. TNA, FCO 30/1362, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 15 December 1972. Bach: ‘Dynamique et contradictions’, p.59. Renou: ‘A New French Policy’, p.22. Bach: ‘Dynamique et contradictions’, p.64. TNA, FCO 65/1265, British Embassy to European Integration Department, 25 May 1973. TNA, FCO 65/1265, C.M. Le Quesne, 1 June 1973. Ibid. See also TNA, FCO 30/1707, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, French African Policy, 8 June 1973. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Visit of M. Achard, Deputy Secretary-General (SGAAM), 7 May 1973. TNA, FCO 65/1265, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 18 May 1973. TNA, FCO 30/1707, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 24 May 1973. Ibid. TNA, FCO 30/1707, WAD on Tomkins’ despatch from Paris, 3 July 1973. AN, AG/5/FPU/898, Ambassade de France (Londres) à MAE, 15 January 1974. TNA, FCO 65/1265, C.M. Le Quesne, 1 June 1973. Ibid. TNA, FCO 30/1707, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, French African Policy, 8 June 1973. TNA, FCO 30/1707, WAD on Tomkins’ despatch from Paris, 5 July 1973. TNA, FCO 30/1707, EID to WAD, 12 July 1973. TNA, FCO 65/1267, British Embassy (Paris) to EID, 19 September 1973. TNA, FCO 65/1267, Note from Ling, WAD, 17 December 1973. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Visit of M. Achard, Deputy Secretary-General (SGAAM), 7 May 1973. TNA, CAB 130/618, Working Party on Protocol 22 of the Treaty of Accession, Note by FCO, 18 October 1972. TNA, FCO 65/1265, Visit of M. Achard, Deputy Secretary-General (SGAAM), 7 May 1973. TNA, FCO 30/1707, Note about Mr Hunter Wade, 15 June 1973. TNA, FCO 65/1265, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 18 May 1973. TNA, FCO 65/1267, Paris Embassy to EID, 19 September 1973. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/414, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 29 August 1973. Ibid. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 1 June 1973; MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/173, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 July 1973.

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177. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 1 June 1973. 178. TNA, FCO 65/1176, ‘My visit to Paris on 8 November to discuss West Africa’, J. de C. Ling to John Wilson (WAD), 14 November 1972. 179. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/173, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 July 1973. 180. AN, AG/5 5FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 6 July 1973. 181. AN, AG/5(FPU)/616, Synthèses de l’ambassadeur, 20 January, 3 February 1971. 182. AN, AG/5 5FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 6 July 1973. 183. Ibid. See also MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/173, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 July 1973. 184. Ibid. 185. MAEE, Nantes, Buea (Consulat), 131PO/1/28, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 16 June 1972. 186. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 1 June 1973; see also TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 187. Agence Camerounaise de Presse, 1 July 1973 in Oyono: La politique africaine, p.238. 188. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Interview du Chef de l’Etat à l’ACAP, 2 August 1973. 189. AN, AG/5(FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 6 July 1973. 190. TNA, FCO 51/233, British Embassy (Kinshasa) to Research Department (FCO), 15 May 1972. 191. Ibid. 192. TNA, FCO 30/1707, Anglo-Belgian Talks on Africa, early July 1973. 193. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/173, Interview à l’AFP, July 1973. 194. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 195. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Interview du Chef de l’Etat à l’ACAP, 2 August 1973. 196. AN, AG/5 5FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 3 August 1973. 197. TNA, FCO 65/1265, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 3 April 1973. 198. TNA, FCO 65/1265, British High Commission (Nairobi) to FCO, 15 May 1973. 199. TNA, FCO 65/1265, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to WAD, 1 June 1973. 200. TNA, FCO 65/1266, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to EID, 21 June 1973. 201. TNA, FCO 65/1266, J. Robinson to Private Secretary, 27 July 1973. 202. TNA, FCO 30/1708, Office of the UK, Permanent Representative to the European Communities, to EID, 27 September 1973. 203. TNA, FCO 30/2119, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to EID, 11 July 1974. 204. Ibid. 205. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973.

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206. LAC, RG25, vol.11109, Ambassade du Canada (Yaoundé) à Affaires extérieures, October 1980. 207. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/136, R.C.II, Le Cameroun et la Francophonie, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 10 October 1974. 208. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/138, RC II, Ambassade de France à MAE, 23 November 1973. 209. They were CAR, Dahomey, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Congo, Senegal, Togo, Upper Volta. 210. Foccart: La fin du gaullisme, p.316. 211. Ibid., p.419, 466. 212. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 9 November 1973. 213. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/138, RC II, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 10 November 1973. 214. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/173, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 13 September 1973. 215. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/138, RC II, Ambassade de France à MAE, 23 November 1973. 216. Ibid. 217. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 218. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/136, R.C.II, Le Cameroun et la Francophonie, P. Rebeyrol (DAM) à Ambassadeur de France (Yaoundé), 10 March 1975. 219. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 220. Smith: Stitches, p.196. 221. CSA, 2006/42 (part 2 of 2), OAU, R.H. Wade to the Commonwealth SecretaryGeneral, 1 March 1973. 222. Ibid. 223. Ibid. 224. Smith: Stitches, p.197. 225. Ibid. 226. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 22 June 1973. 227. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 1 February 1974. 228. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 229. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 3 August 1973. 230. TNA, FCO 30/1271, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 6–7 July 1972. 231. TNA, FCO 30/1707, British High Commission (Lagos) to FCO, 10 July 1973. 232. TNA, FCO 69/470, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 12 July 1973. 233. TNA, FCO 30/1707, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 24 May 1973. 234. TNA, FCO 69/470, British High Commissioner (Lagos) to FCO, 14 July 1973. 235. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 3 August 1973.

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IN

A FRICA

236. TNA, FCO 65/1266, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to WAD, 29 August 1973. 237. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 238. CSA, 2006/41 (part 2 of 2), Memorandum on Co-operation with ACCT, S.J. Cookey, 19 November 1974. 239. Clapham: Africa and the International System, p.99. 240. TNA, T 317/2468, Paper by the FCO on The Protocol 22 Negotiations, January 1975. 241. TNA, FCO 30/2119, Discussions with Heads of Mission from Africa, 11–12 September 1974. 242. Wright: African Foreign Policies, p.230. 243. ‘Britain and the EEC’, 6 April 1976 in Ramphal, Shridath, One World to Share: selected speeches of the Commonwealth Secretary-General, 1975–1979 (London, Hutchinson, 1979), p.320. 244. ‘Beyond Lomé’, 1 March 1978 in Ramphal: One World, p.115. 245. Zartman: ‘Europe and Africa’, p.332. 246. TNA, FCO 65/1649, Note by WAD, March 1975. 247. Zartman: ‘Europe and Africa’, p.342. 248. TNA, FCO 30/2119, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to EID, 11 July 1974. 249. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/386, compte-rendu des conversations franco-britanniques sur l’Afrique des 23 et 24 mai 1973 à Paris, 29 June 1973; MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/351, Consultations politiques franco-canadiennes sur l’Afrique, Paris, 26 April 1974. 250. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 13 juillet 1973. 251. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Note sur les rapports franco-camerounais de coopération, June 1973. 252. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 28 September 1973. 253. Ibid. 254. Ibid. 255. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 1 March 1974. 256. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 257. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 258. Ibid. 259. Ahmadou Ahidjo, Discours d’ouverture à l’occasion du troisième conseil national de l’UNC, Yaoundé, 25 November 1973 in Oyono: La politique africaine, p.111. 260. Réponse au toast de Chou-En-Laï Premier Ministre de la République populaire de Chine, 26 March 1973 in Oyono: La politique africaine, p.112. 261. CSA, 2006/41, (part 2 of 2), Handwritten note on letter from D. Sagar to Mr. Husain, 19 November 1973.

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NOTES

371

262. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 263. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, P. Décamps, Spécificité de la Coopération franco-africaine, 20 April 1974. 264. Mouelle Kombi: La politique étrangère du Cameroun, p.64. 265. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 1 February 1974. 266. TNA, FCO 65/1176, Report ‘France and Africa’, John Wilson, West African Department, 29 September 1972. 267. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 268. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 269. LAC, RG25/8627, 20–1-2-CAM, pt 4, Ambassade du Canada (Yaoundé) à Affaires extérieures, 1 June 1972. 270. TNA, FCO 65/1266, J. Robinson to Private Secretary, 27 July 1973. 271. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Record of Anglo-French talks on Africa, Paris, 2 December 1974. 272. Ibid. 273. TNA, FCO 65/1517, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 23 January 1974. 274. TNA, FCO 30/1707, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, French African Policy, 8 June 1973. 275. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Agenda for Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 22 February 1974. 276. TNA, FCO 65/1442, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 3 June 1974. 277. TNA, FCO 65/1517, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 23 January 1974. 278. TNA, FCO 65/1517, British Embassy (Paris) to WAD, 6 February 1974. 279. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 22 February 1974. 280. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Note sur les rapports franco-camerounais de coopération, March 1973. 281. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 282. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Anglo-French Talks on Africa, 22 February 1974. 283. Ibid. 284. FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 285. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, P. Décamps, Spécificité de la Coopération franco-africaine, 20 April 1974. 286. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Agenda on Anglo-French talks on Africa, Paris, 2 December 1974. 287. Ibid. 288. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/405, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 12 September 1972; MAE à Ambassade de France (Ottawa), 18 October 1972. 289. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/351. 290. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Note de la DAM pour le Secrétaire Général, 8 October 1974.

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DIPLOMACY

AND

NATION-BUILDING

IN

A FRICA

291. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 16 September 1975. 292. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/353, Note de l’Ambassade de France, Aide canadienne à l’Afrique francophone, 18 October 1974. 293. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/Canada, 406, Note de la DAM pour le Secrétaire Général, 8 October 1974. 294. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/353, Note de l’Ambassade de France, Aide canadienne à l’Afrique francophone, 18 October 1974. 295. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Brazzaville) à MAE, 10 Novembre 1975. 296. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/415, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 7 May 1975. 297. Ibid. 298. TNA, FCO 65/1167, FCO to British High Commission (Lagos), 13 April 1972. 299. Regular talks with the United States were also initiated over the same period. 300. TNA, FCO 65/1167, FCO to British High Commission (Lagos), 13 April 1972. 301. TNA, FCO 65/1167, External Affairs (Ottawa) to Canadian High Commission (London), 16 March 1972. 302. TNA, FCO 65/1341, Anglo-Canadian Talks, 2 March 1973. 303. TNA, FCO 65/1166, FCO to British High Commission (Ottawa), 3 March 1972. 304. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 305. LAC, RG25, 8607, file 18, Note, 30 October 1974. 306. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 7 May 1975, and Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 16 September 1975. 307. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 7 May 1975. 308. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/415, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 10 December 1976. 309. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 28 December 1973. 310. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 4 July 1975; LAC, RG25, 3104, file 3, ‘Le Canada et la Francophonie’, 1974. 311. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/209, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 26 June 1975. 312. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 313. TNA, FCO 51/233, Extract from record of Anglo-American & Anglo-Canadian Official Talks on Africa, March 1972. 314. TNA, FCO 65/1341, Anglo-Canadian Talks, 2 March 1973. 315. Ibid.

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NOTES

373

316. Ibid. 317. LAC, RG25, vol.8607, file 18, Ambassade du Canada (Abidjan) à Affaires extérieures, 9 December 1974. 318. TNA, FCO 65/1341, Anglo-Canadian Talks, 2 March 1973. 319. TNA, FCO 51/233, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to Research Department (FCO), May 1972. 320. TNA, FCO 65/1516, Heads of Mission meeting, Africa, 11 September 1974 321. TNA, FCO 65/1832, ‘British Policy Towards Francophone Africa’, WAD paper for the visit of Mr Rowlands to Francophone Africa, 19 May 1977. 322. Exports represented £6.25 million and imports £3 million in 1974, TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975. 323. TNA, FCO 65/1972, Francophone West Africa, basic statistics. 324. LAC, RG25/8627, 20–1-2-CAM, pt 4, Ambassade du Canada (Yaoundé) à Affaires extérieures, 1 June 1972. 325. LAC, RG25, 8607, file 17, ‘Canada-Africa’. 326. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974; TNA, FCO 65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975. 327. LAC, RG25, vol.8607, file 18, Ambassade du Canada (Abidjan) à Affaires extérieures, 9 December 1974. 328. LAC, RG25, 8607, file 20, Direction de l’Afrique francophone et du Maghreb, ‘Politiques française et canadienne en Afrique’, 5 July 1978. 329. TNA, FCO 65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975. 330. Presse du Cameroun, in MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/206, 5 July 1973. 331. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 332. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974; TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975. 333. TNA, FCO 65/921, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1970. 334. Ibid. 335. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 336. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975. 337. TNA, FCO 65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975. 338. Ibid. 339. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 340. TNA, FCO 65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975; see also TNA, FCO 65/1288, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1972. 341. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975. 342. TNA, FCO 65/1832, ‘British Policy Towards Francophone Africa’, WAD paper for the visit of Mr Rowlands to Francophone Africa, 19 May 1977. 343. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 344. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/415, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 10 December 1976. 345. TNA, FCO 65/1442, ‘The Changing Scene in Francophone Africa’, Ivor Porter, Joint meeting of the Royal African Society and the Royal Commonwealth Society, April 1974.

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NATION-BUILDING

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346. TNA, FCO 651/1341, Anglo-French Talks, 2 March 1973 347. TNA, FCO 65/1176, ‘My visit to Paris on 8 November do discuss West Africa’, J. de C. Ling to John Wilson (WAD), 14 November 1972. 348. TNA, FCO 65/1264, Note from J de C Ling (WAD), 26 February 1973 349. TNA, FCO 65/1176, ‘My visit to Paris on 8 November do discuss West Africa’, J. de C. Ling to John Wilson (WAD), 14 November 1972. 350. TNA, FCO 65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975. 351. TNA, FCO 65/1845, Report on the Visit of Minister of State to Cameroon, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 9 November 1977. 352. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975. 353. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 354. TNA, OD 30/347, G.H. Malley, ODA, 10 August and 25 August 1972. 355. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 356. Ibid. 357. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973. 358. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 359. TNA, FCO 65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975. 360. TNA, FCO 65/1992, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1977. 361. MAEE, La Courneuve, Europe, Grande-Bretagne, 28QO/378, Ambassade de France (Londres) à MAE, 13 November 1975. 362. TNA, FCO65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975. 363. TNA, FCO 65/1841, M.E. Heath (WAD) to Mr. Mansfield, 16 May 1977. 364. TNA, FCO 65/1341, Anglo-Canadian Talks, 2 March 1973. 365. TNA, FCO 65/1832, ‘British Policy Towards Francophone Africa’, WAD paper for the visit of Mr Rowlands to Francophone Africa, 19 May 1977. 366. Ibid. 367. TNA, FCO 65/1973, Why an Anglo-Afrique Chamber of Commerce, 1978. 368. TNA, FCO 65/1832, ‘British Policy Towards Francophone Africa’, WAD paper for the visit of Mr Rowlands to Francophone Africa, 19 May 1977. 369. Ibid. 370. TNA, FCO 65/1515, Draft note on Meeting with Heads of Mission from Africa, August 1974. 371. TNA, FCO 65/1516, Heads of Mission meeting, Africa, 11 September 1974 372. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Agenda on Anglo-French talks on Africa, Paris, 2 December 1974. 373. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, P. Décamps, Spécificité de la Coopération franco-africaine, 20 April 1974. 374. Ibid. 375. TNA, FCO 65/1517, Agenda on Anglo-French talks on Africa, Paris, 2 December 1974. 376. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/351, Ambassade de France au Ministre de la Coopération, 8 juin 1979.

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NOTES

375

377. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Note sur les rapports franco-camerounais de coopération, March 1973. 378. Smith: Stitches, p.181 (footnote). 379. LAC, RG25–8605-20–1-2-AFR, part 9, Notes for an address by Marc Perron (African Affairs (II) Division) to the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Canadian Institute for International Affairs, 8 December 1971. 380. CSA, 2002/72 (1 of 2), Telegrams, 4 and 5 March 1969. 381. CSA, 2002/72 (1 of 2), Arnold Smith to Jean-Marc Léger, 14 April 1970. 382. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/353, Mitchell Sharp, Year-end interview with Bob Abra for the CBC, 29 December 1970. 383. TNA, FCO 13/419, Possible Anglo-French Cooperation in helping Francophone and English-speaking Africa to overcome its language barrier, Cultural Relations Department, 4 March 1970. 384. CSA, 2006/41 (2 of 2), Note on Arnold Smith’s Call on Dan Dicko (ACCT), Paris, 7–11 September 1974. 385. TNA, FCO 68/659, Record of a conversation between the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and the President of the Comité Francophonie at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 12 December 1974. 386. ‘Britain and the EEC’ in Ramphal: One World to Share, p.319. 387. CSA, 2008/032, Tentative agenda for the visit of the Commonwealth SecretaryGeneral to ACCT, December 1976. 388. TNA, FCO 65/1273, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO on Lady Tweedsmuir’s visit to Cameroon, 31 January 1973. 389. CSA, 2003/078, Commonwealth Foundation, Receipts and Payments Account for year ending 30 June 1973, Exchequer and Audit Department, October 1973, Public Administration and Management, Buea Institute. 390. CSA, 2003/59, Report by Rajsoomer Lallah (CFTC) on ACCT Conference, Ottawa, 22 October 1971. 391. CSA, 2006/41 (2 of 2), Note on Arnold Smith’s Call on Dan Dicko (ACCT), Paris, 7–11 September 1974. 392. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Note de la DAM pour le Secrétaire Général, 8 October 1974; Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 4 July 1975. 393. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/353, Ambassade de France (Ottawa), Aide canadienne à l’Afrique francophone, 18 October 1974. 394. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/465, Le Soleil, 10 November 1975. 395. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/243, PL.I.11., Note du service culturel de l’Ambassade de France au Cameroun, 30 January 1984. 396. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 397. Tabi-Manga: Langues, pp.71–72.

Notes_New.indd 375

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376

DIPLOMACY

AND

NATION-BUILDING

IN

A FRICA

398. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/138, R.C.II., Note à l’attention de Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, Yaoundé, 2 May 1979. 399. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 400. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 401. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Note sur les problèmes culturels au Cameroun, 1 March 1973. 402. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 403. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/415, Note de l’ambassadeur de France sur le Voyage de M. MacEachen en Afrique, 5 May 1975; MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/134, ACCT, Notes de l’ACCT, Note du ministère république française, relations extérieures, 18 August 1983. 404. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 4 July 1975. 405. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/465, note sur le Conseil d’administration de l’ACCT, 17 June 1975. 406. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/414, Commonwealth and Canada, Allan MacEachen, Royal Commonwealth Society, Toronto, 27 November 1974. 407. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/465, ACCT, Conseil d’administration, 17–19 June 1975. 408. Smith: Stitches, p.181–182. 409. CSA, 2006/41 (2 of 2), Note on Dan Dicko’s visit to the Commonwealth Secretariat, 9 December 1974; see also 2008/32, Statement made by Shridath Ramphal, Paris, press conference, 10 December 1976. 410. CSA, 2006/41 (2 of 2), Notes on a Meeting in Dr Cookey’s Office, 20 November 1974. 411. Ibid. 412. CSA, 2010/113, Commonwealth Foundation, 1978/1979, Foundation Director to Assistant Director, Commonwealth Secretary-General’s Office, 15 May 1979. 413. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/465, MAE à Ambassade de France (Ottawa), 2 February 1976. 414. CSA, 2006/151 (1 of 2), Note by Victor Kyaruzi, 10 April 1970. 415. CSA, 2003/59, Report by Rajsoomer Lallah (CFTC) on ACCT Conference, Ottawa, 22 October 1971. 416. CSA, 2002/72 (part 2 of 2), W. Peters (International Affairs Division) to Secretary-General, Note of a discussion on La Francophonie at the Foreign Affairs Club, 9 June 1971. 417. CSA, 2006/41 (part 2 of 2), D. Sagar to Mr. Husain, 19 November 1973. 418. CSA, 2006/041 (part 2 of 2), Snyson to Arnold Smith, 27 November 1974. 419. TNA, FCO 65/1512, Canada/UK Consultations on Africa and the Middle East, Ottawa, 19 February 1974.

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NOTES

377

420. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/1, Politique de Coopération militaire en Afrique, June 1970. 421. CSA, 2006/41 (1 of 2), Annex, Village du Benin project, Liaison between the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Secretariat of the ACCT, Report by A.N. Papadopoulos, 29 May 1975. 422. Ibid. 423. CSA, 2008/32, Visite d’Arnold Smith à l’ACCT, 9–10 December 1976. 424. CSA, 2006/41 (2 of 2), Note on Arnold Smith’s Call on Dan Dicko (ACCT), Paris, 7–11 September 1974. 425. CSA, 2006/41 (2 of 2), Dan Dicko au Ministre de l’Education nationale, 9 December 1974, copied to Arnold Smith. 426. CSA, 2006/151 (1 of 2), Note by P.D. Snelson, 10 September 1974. 427. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 4 July 1975. 428. CSA, 2006/41 (2 of 2), Memorandum on Co-operation with ACCT, S.J. Cookey, 19 November 1974; Note by J.A. Mudavadi, 1 April 1974. 429. CSA, 2006/41 (2 of 2), Note on Arnold Smith’s Call on Dan Dicko (ACCT), Paris, 7–11 September 1974. 430. CSA, 2008/032, A.N. Papadopoulos, ‘Secretary-General’s visit to the Headquarters of the Agence in Paris, 8–9 December 1976’, 10 November 1976. 431. FD, Herbert John Spiro, 25 April 1994. 432. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 1 June 1973. 433. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 434. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 435. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975; see also MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 436. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 437. FD, C. Roberts Moore, May 1988. 438. Nkoum-Me-Ntseny: La dualité culturelle, p.431. 439. AN, AG/5 (FPU) 793, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à DAM, 31 May 1974; MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 4 July 1975. 440. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/7, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 1 June 1973. 441. TNA, FCO 65/1615, Cameroon, Annual review for 1974. 442. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Dawbarn, FCO, to Given (Yaoundé), 8 February 1974. 443. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975. 444. TNA, FCO 65/1832, ‘British Policy Towards Francophone Africa’, WAD paper for the visit of Mr Rowlands to Francophone Africa, 19 May 1977. 445. LAC, RG25, vol.11109, Accord d’association entre l’Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique et le Gouvernement de la République Unie du Cameroun, Yaoundé, 3 March 1976. See also CSA, 2006/41, ACCT, Liaison

Notes_New.indd 377

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378

DIPLOMACY

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NATION-BUILDING

IN

A FRICA

with Commonwealth, ACCT, Rapport de la commission des chefs de délégation, Conférence générale, Mauritius, 12–15 November 1975; and MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744PO/1/650, Ambassade (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 April 1976 and 18 May 1979. 446. Ibid. 447. In Le Monde, 18–19 July 1976, p.5. 448. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 449. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Cameroon, Annual review for 1975. 450. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/136, R.C.II., Note, July 1981. 451. El Hadj Makassouba Moriba, Secrétaire d’Etat à la Présidence, Guinée, Horoya, July 1966 in Agecop Liaison, ‘Les Francophonies en Question’, February 1975. 452. TNA, FCO65/1616, British Embassy (Yaoundé), Valedictory despatch, 18 July 1975. 453. TNA, FCO 65/1459, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1973; MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (MCAC), 744/1/173, Organisations spécialisées de l’OCAM, August 1974. 454. LAC, RG25/9175, 20-CAM-9, External Affairs to Canadian Embassy (Yaoundé), 18 February 1970; TNA, FCO 65/921, Cameroon, Annual Review for 1970. 455. LAC, RG25, 8627, 20–1-2-CAM, Relations avec le Cameroun, 23 December 1971. 456. LAC, RG25, 8607, file 17, ‘Canada-Africa’. 457. MAEE, La Courneuve, Amériques, Canada, 83QO/406, Ambassade de France (Ottawa) à MAE, 4 July 1975. 458. LAC, RG25, 8627, 20–1-2-CAM, pt.5, Relations Canada-Cameroun, Aperçu général, 1 June 1977. 459. LAC, RG25, vol.8697, file 20, Annex to confidential memo, Bureau of African and Middle Eastern Affairs, 15 February 1978. 460. CSA, 2008/032, Brief for the Secretary-General’s visit to the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique, Draft 6, 1976. 461. CSA, 2009/077, Commonwealth Foundation, Part 3, Director’s Report, ‘A further African Journey, January-April 1977’, 11 May 1977. 462. CSA, 2006/41 (1 of 2), Annex, Village du Benin project, Liaison between the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Secretariat of the ACCT, Report by A.N. Papadopoulos, 29 May 1975. 463. CSA, 2006/151, Note by J.A. Mudavadi, 1 April 1974. 464. CSA, 2006/41 (1 of 2), Annex, Village du Benin project, Liaison between the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Secretariat of the ACCT, Report by A.N. Papadopoulos, 29 May 1975. 465. CSA, 2006/41 (2 of 2), Note on visit to the CW Secretariat by the SG of the Agence de Co-operation Culturelle et Technique, H.E. Prof. Dankoulodo Dan Dicko, 9 December 1974. 466. CSA, 2010/113, Commonwealth Foundation, 1978/1979, Director’s Journey Report, January-March 1978.

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NOTES

379

467. CSA, 2006/041 (2 of 2), Draft memorandum prepared for Dan Dicko’s visit to London, “Cooperation in language training among Anglophone and Francophone countries in West Africa”, 27 November 1974. 468. CSA, 2006/151 (1 of 2), Note by P.D. Snelson, 10 September 1974. 469. CSA, 2008/32, A.N. Papadopoulos to Mr Husain, 28 January 1976. 470. CSA, 2010/113, Commonwealth Foundation, 1978/1979, Director’s Journey Report, January-March 1978; J. Chadwick noted the very encouraging attendance at the congress of the African Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology in Dakar in April 1979 and around £10,000 were spent in the first year or so, 2010/113, Commonwealth Foundation, 1978/1979, J. Chadwick (Commonwealth Foundation Director) to C.R. Laidlaw (Assistant Director, Secretary-General’s Office), 15 May 1979. 471. CSA, 2010/068 (2 of 2), Commonwealth Foundation, Part 4, Conference and Minor Grants Committee meeting, 23 November 1978. 472. CSA, 2008/32, Commonwealth Liaison with ACCT, 1976.

Conclusion 1. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/243, PL.I.11., Note du service culturel de l’Ambassade de France au Cameroun, 30 January 1984. 2. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/243, PL.I.11., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 15 mai 1981. 3. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 4. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/243, PL.I.11., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 15 mai 1981. 5. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/9, CI.1.d., Note de synthèse à l’occasion de la visite du Président Ahidjo en France, July 1976. 6. Ibid. 7. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Annual Review for 1976. 8. TNA, FCO 65/1972, Francophone West Africa: Meeting of some Ambassadors, 3 October 1978. 9. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/134, ACCT, ACCT Divers, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Ministère Francophonie, 27 May 1978. 10. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/415, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 2 August 1979. 11. MAEE, Nantes, Ottawa (Ambassade), 496PO/1/467, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 18 January 1978. 12. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/143, Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à Ambassade de France (Ottawa), 6 August 1979. 13. CSA, 2008/32, Statement made by Shridath Ramphal, Paris, press conference, 10 December 1976.

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14. TNA, FO 371/154739, ‘The ex-French States of West and Central Africa’, Notes by Her Majesty’s Representatives in West and Equatorial Africa in Preparation for their Meeting in London, 16–18 May 1961. 15. TNA, FCO 31/2195, Note from the European Integration Department (External), 20 January 1978. 16. TNA, FCO 65/2045, British Embassy (Paris) to FCO, 30 November 1977. 17. TNA, FCO 65/1841, Annual Review for 1976. 18. LAC, RG25, 8607, 20–1-2 AFRICA/FRANCO, 1, Memorandum to the Minister (Don Jamieson), from Allan Goetlib, Subject: Canadian/American Cooperation in Francophone Africa, 1978. 19. LAC, RG25, 8607, 20, Direction de l’Afrique francophone et du Maghreb, ‘Politiques française et canadienne en Afrique’, 5 July 1978. 20. MAEE, Nantes, Yaoundé (Ambassade), 743PO/2/243, PL.I.11., Ambassade de France (Yaoundé) à MAE, 15 mai 1981. 21. TNA, FCO 65/1881, British Embassy (Yaoundé) to FCO, 22 April 1977. 22. TNA, FCO 65/1992, Annual Review for 1977. 23. TNA, FCO 65/1972, British policy towards the Francophone countries of West Africa, 14 April 1978. 24. CSA, 2009/77, Commonwealth Foundation, Part 3, A further African Journey, Report from the Director, January-April 1977, 11 May 1977. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Pondi, Jean-Emmanuel, ‘Cameroon and the Commonwealth of nations’, The Round Table, 86:344 (1997). 28. Nwanja Nwanja, Junior, ‘Public Relations on a state ceremony in Cameroon: case study of the Commonwealth Day’, Mémoire de recherche (Université de Yaoundé II – SOA. École Supérieure des Sciences et Techniques de l’Information et de la Communication (ESSTIC), 2000–2001). 29. TNA, FCO 65/1881, Nicholas Henderson (Paris) to David Owen (FCO), 7 October 1977. 30. MAEE, Nantes, Londres (Ambassade), 378PO/1/1976, Note sur la politique britannique en Afrique, 14 March 1960. 31. TNA, FCO 65/1881, Note from J.A.N. Graham, to British Ambassador (Lagos), 1 November 1977. 32. Chafer, Tony, Cumming, Gordon, ‘Punching Below Their Weight? Critical Reflections on Anglo-French Cooperation in Africa’, Report presented at Chatham House, 28 June 2010, pp.4–5. . 33. Ibid., p.9. 34. Hyden, Goran, Bratton, Michael (eds), Governance and politics in Africa (Boulder, Colo, London, Rienner, 1992); Weiss, Thomas G, Thinking about Global Governance: why People and Ideas Matter (London, Routledge, 2011). 35. In 2011, current joint members are Canada, Cameroon, Dominica, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, St Lucia, Vanuatu. Ghana and Cyprus became associated members in 2006 and Mozambique has also been an observer since then. See also Mulligan, Martin, The Commonwealth and La Francophonie: roles for the future,

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Report of a seminar at the Fondation Singer-Polignac, Paris, 23 January 2003 (Paris, Franco-British Council, 2002); Shaw, Tim, ‘Comparative Commonwealths: an overlooked feature of global governance?’, Third World Quarterly, 31:2 (2010); Shaw, Tim and Ashworth, Lucian, Commonwealth Perspectives on International Relations, International Affairs, 86:5 (2010); and Torrent, Mélanie, ‘Common grounds? Strategic partnerships for governance in the Commonwealth of Nations and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF)’, The Round Table, The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 100:416, December 2011. On the contemporary Commonwealth, see also Mayall, James (ed.), The Contemporary Commonwealth: An Assessment, 1965–2009 (London, Routledge, 2010). 36. Cooper: Africa since 1940, p.186.

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Archives and official records Cameroon The National Archives of Cameroon, Yaoundé The National Archives of Cameroon (Annex), Buea

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INDEX

Abbia, 150 Abelin, Pierre, 243 Afghanistan, 35 Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT), 176–177, 207– 210, 231–232, 244, 258, 261 cooperation with Commonwealth, 170, 213, 251–256, 259–260, 264–272 emergence, 14, 158, 163–170 see also Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) Ahidjo, Ahmadou, 2, 35, 40, 44, 59, 94–95, 119, 121, 125, 128, 131, 184, 187, 261–262, 264, 270 and ACCT, 163–170, 209, 235, 253–255, 264, 269 and Commonwealth, 3, 40–41, 48, 115, 145, 148, 162, 164, 209, 236, 264–265, 268 and French Community, 40, 48, 162 and OCAM, 159–163, 166, 233–234 centralisation of power, 6–7, 22, 25, 31, 57–62, 69, 71, 73–75, 77, 99, 103, 117–118, 126, 133, 200–203, 210, 238 distance from French, 140, 222–223, 236–243, 269

Index.indd 399

and EEC, 49, 129, 134, 186, 216–217, 234–239, 248 imperial preference, 83–85, 95–97, 98 international visits, 95–97, 101, 153, 156, 165, 180, 267 language, 3, 102, 280 liberation movements in Africa, 68, 144, 147–149, 183–184, 199–200, 227–229, 257 and the nation, 99, 100–101, 108, 110, 115, 129–130, 140, 143, 150, 155, 192, 200–205, 246, 258, 267 Nigerian civil war, 142–144, 221– 222 plebiscites, 41, 45, 54–55, 60, 67, 85 rise to power, 3, 5–6, 36–37, 47, 55–57, 265 strong links with France, 7–8, 21, 37, 79, 104, 136–137, 162, 182, 263 Air Afrique, 82, 187, 259 Air France, 187 Algeria, 41, 43, 82, 86, 93, 138, 145, 148, 161, 239, 246, 350 Alliance Française, 152, 154, 195 Amery, Julian, 218 Amin, Idi, 208, 242 Angola, 14, 28, 146, 228, 246

3/16/2012 5:14:39 PM

400

DIPLOMACY

AND

NATION-BUILDING

Anyaoku, Emeka, 237–238, 259 Arab League, 163 Arikpo, Okoi, 217, 219, 229–230 Association des Parlementaires de Langue Française (APLF), 164, 166, 259 Association des Universités Partiellement ou Entièrement de Langue Française (AUPELF), 112 Australia, 81, 178, 182 Balewa, Abubakar Tafawa, 45, 120 Bamileke, 21, 38, 51, 141, 222 Banque centrale des Etats d’Afrique centrale (BCEAC), 20, 50, 223 Belgium, 12, 20, 129, 165, 168, 215, 233, 343 Bétayéné, Jean-Faustin, 7, 65, 85, 87, 96, 241 Bettencourt, André, 8, 229 Biafra, see Nigerian civil war Bilingualism, 3, 6, 88, 99, 101–103, 106–110, 125, 127, 150–158, 190–191, 197–199, 204–207, 221, 225, 235, 246, 254, 257, 263–264, 266 Billecocq, Pierre, 204 Biloa, Pascal, 199 Biya, Paul, 7, 70, 125, 199, 210, 270 Board of Trade, 65, 69, 84, 88, 96–97, 113, 186 Bongo, Omar, 144, 165, 183, 223 Boothby, Basil E., 43–44 Botswana, 212, 230 Bourges, Yvon, 137, 177 Bourguiba, Habib, 160, 163, 165 Brimelow, Thomas, 250 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 171, 206 British Council, 107, 176, 190–192, 194, 196, 205–206 Broglie, Jean de, 165 Burma, 63

Index.indd 400

IN

A FRICA

Burundi, 135, 168, 188, 236, 347 Business interests, 40, 64, 80–81, 90–91, 94, 134, 175, 178, 180, 186, 193–194, 225–227, 246, 250, 261–262, 373 Caccia, Sir Harold, 12 Cadieux, Marcel, 87 Callaghan, James, 9, 250 Cambodia, 170 Cameroon Development Corporation (Camdev), 29–30, 64, 76, 84, 91, 127, 132–133 Cameroons Federal Union, 16 Cameroon National Union (CNU), 126, 129, 146, 149, 228, 236, 244 Cameroons People National Council (CPNC), 24, 51, 57–58, 70 Canada and ACCT, 165–170, 208–209, 244–245, 253–255, 259, 264, 272, 343, 380 and bilingualism in Cameroon, 15, 110–111, 112–113, 155–158, 190, 205, 207, 244–246 and Commonwealth, 27–28, 81, 110–111, 139, 143, 168, 209, 245, 254, 264, 380 and French in Africa, 93, 134–135, 140, 156–158, 175, 178–179, 182, 197, 204, 242–246, 249, 255 British support, 12, 110, 196, 218, 226, 244–245 Canadian International Development Agency, 155, 205, 244, 247, 252, 270 internal dynamics, 139, 161, 165–166, 178–179, 204, 209, 261, 266–268 relations with Ahidjo, 6, 115, 126–127, 129, 140, 164–165, 180 Cape Verde, 188, 228

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INDEX Caribbean, 14, 20–21, 27, 63, 94, 168, 215, 230, 235, 239–240, 261 Central African Federation, 11, 28, 33, 78, 96–97, 147 Central African Republic (CAR), 82, 136, 181, 190–191, 228, 249, 287, 369 Ceylon, 27 Chad, 82, 112, 120, 136, 181–182, 190–191, 228, 232, 235, 249, 287 Chadwick, John, 254 Cheysson, Claude, 235 China (nationalist), 36, 39 China (People’s Republic), 12, 36, 53, 140, 187, 202, 241, 247 Churchill, Winston, 9, 26, 262 Clark, Joe, 264, 268 Cohen, Andrew, 35, 59, 66 Cold War, 1, 101, 111, 112, 270–271 Fear of Communist penetration in Africa, 12, 29, 32–34, 36, 46, 48–49, 53, 55, 66–67, 79, 84, 93, 114, 224, 265 Colonial Development Corporation, 29–30, 76, 83–84 Colonial Office, 8, 104 and France, 33–34, 38, 42 and the Southern Cameroons, 25, 29–30, 45–46, 59 and imperial preference, 66, 68, 84, 89 Combal, Michel, 214, 217, 229, 242 Comité d’Action pour l’Afrique de Langue Française, 112 Commemorations, 71, 73–74, 76, 79, 85, 100, 129–130, 136–137, 146, 200–202 Commission for the Lake Chad Basin, 120, 235 Common Law, 3, 74, 193 Commonwealth of Nations, 44, 136, 159, 167–168, 170, 178, 204, 246, 265, 268

Index.indd 401

401

as perceived in Cameroon, 3, 40–41, 48, 52, 81, 85, 108, 115, 117, 145, 148, 162, 164, 209, 212, 236, 261, 264–265, 268 cooperation with Francophone bodies, 6, 206–208, 211–212, 230, 232, 250–251, 253–255, 257–259, 268–271 declarations and statutes, 14, 26, 207–208, 266, 268 membership, 26–29, 46–47, 63, 97, 208 primordial for Britain, 17–18, 33, 65, 105, 107, 151, 195, 209, 248, 250 relations with EEC, 90, 95, 104, 135, 188, 215–221 tensions between Britain and African members, 1, 84, 114, 147–149, 182–184, 269 see also imperial preference Commonwealth-American Current Affairs Unit, 189, 199 Commonwealth Development Corporation, 132–133, 227, 247 Commonwealth Foundation, 115–117, 160, 164, 212–213, 251–252, 254, 259–260, 269–270, 379 Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation, 212–213, 231, 252, 254, 270 Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, 97, 115–117, 121–123, 129, 164, 188 Commonwealth Relations Office, 8, 32, 37, 40, 42, 46, 86, 89, 94, 97, 104, 110, 112 Commonwealth Secretariat, 14, 26, 112, 135, 159–160, 208, 212, 215–221, 231, 237–241, 251–256, 259–260 Commonwealth Youth Programme, 231 Comoros, 249, 287 Conférence des ministres de la jeunesse et des sports des pays de langue française, 169

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402

DIPLOMACY

AND

NATION-BUILDING

Congo-Brazzaville, 82, 112, 114, 139, 148, 170, 232, 283, 347 Congo-Léopoldville/Kinsasha, 9, 12, 28, 53, 66, 136, 138–139, 159– 160, 168, 170, 193, 329, 343, 347; see also Zaire Conservative Commonwealth Council, 26, 31, 82 Coopération, 9–10, 12–13, 118, 137–138, 140, 181, 196, 198, 255, 263 Agreements with Cameroon, 37–38, 50–51, 178, 187, 222–223, 229– 231, 236, 238, 240–243, 250 Education in Cameroon, 102–103, 106–107, 109, 154, 156–158 Jeanneney Report, 138, 140, 161 Relations with Britain, 78, 174, 177 Tensions with Canada, 157, 204 Couve de Murville, Maurice, 8, 9, 10, 21, 28, 31, 33, 37, 39, 48, 139, 153, 156 Couvrette, André, 179, 205, 209, 245–246 Cuba, 54 Customs and Excise, 69, 88–89, 94 Cyprus, 28, 380 Dahomey, 82, 112, 162, 189–190, 224, 235, 249, 283, 287, 326, 369 Dan Dicko, Dankonlodo, 251, 254, 256, 259–260, 264 De Gaulle, Charles, 11, 12, 52, 76, 79, 142–143, 161, 175, 184, 186, 223, 265 and Ahidjo, 7–8, 153 and Canada, 157 and the Commonwealth, 32, 119, 136 and the French Community, 42, 64, 183 French grandeur, 8, 93, 138 Relations with Britain, 12, 89–90, 92–93, 108, 135, 138, 144, 262 Debré, Michel, 8, 16, 31–32, 49, 55, 143, 185

Index.indd 402

IN

A FRICA

Defferre, Gaston, 20 Deniau, Xavier, 251, 254, 343 Derwent, Lord, 98 Development plans, 9–10, 76, 128, 270 Diefenbaker, John, 111 Diori, Hamani, 161, 163, 166–167 Dixon, Pierson, 92, 138–139, 152 Dominica, 317, 380 Douglas-Home, Alec, 9, 50, 176, 189, 195, 199, 218, 224–225 Dubois, Hubert, 244 Dupuy, Jacques, 180, 203–204 Eastwood, Christopher, 24, 59 Economic Community of West African States, 239 Ecuador, 95 Edden, Alan, 131, 133, 136, 144, 152, 170, 182, 198 Eden, Anthony, 19 Education in Cameroon, 3, 116, 132, 150, 198 external assistance, 106–109, 112– 113, 130, 150–158, 179, 190–199, 204–207, 245–247, 310 primary education, 102–103, 151, 193, 204, 247 secondary education, 4, 102–103, 152–154 university, 104, 107–108, 130, 135, 152, 181, 190–193, 195, 202, 206, 253, 270 Efon, Vincent, 227, 241 Egypt, 148 Eisenhower, Dwight, 32 Ekangaki, Nzo, 6, 70, 102, 201, 233, 237–239 Elf, 142 Elizabeth II, 52, 71, 207, 236, 308 Endeley, Emmanuel, 16–18, 24, 26–27, 29, 35, 47, 116 English-speaking Union, 107, 189 Epie, Martin, 7, 70

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INDEX Equatorial Customs Union, 82 Equatorial Guinea, 136, 146, 257, 347; see also Fernando Po and Rio Muni Ethiopia, 212, 333 Etoungou, S. Nko’o, 36 European Economic Community, 39, 265–266, 271 associated territories, 13, 48–49, 66, 89, 97, 99, 119, 135, 188, 174, 177, 187, 193, 229–231, 234, 237–240, 242; see also Yaoundé and Lomé Conventions association with Cameroon, 3, 62–65, 80, 83, 97, 100, 129, 133, 182, 186, 237–240, 246, 261 British membership, 4, 14–15, 61, 65, 69, 85–87, 89–91, 95–97, 114, 134, 171–174, 176–178, 186, 204, 208, 216, 223–227, 239, 250, 262 European Development Fund, 20, 80, 87, 99, 104, 110, 132, 135, 138, 173, 196, 220, 229–230, 234–235, 238, 246–247 Treaty of Rome, 20, 63–65, 214, 216 Ewart-Biggs, Christopher, 13, 231 Eyidi, Bebey, 75 Fashoda, 13 Federal Assembly, 74–75, 99, 115, 122–123, 128, 150, 201, 233 Fernando Po, 146–147 Field, John, 46, 59, 61 Field, Winston, 147 Fiji, 234 Foccart, Jacques, 8, 13, 119, 136–138, 142–144, 175–177, 185–187, 201, 217–218, 223–224, 229–230, 236, 241–242, 250 Foley, Maurice, 7, 137, 198, 247 Foncha, John Ngu, 19, 27, 31, 35, 46, 60–62, 65, 78, 102–103, 116–117, 120 relations with Ahidjo, 3, 45, 47, 56–59, 71, 75, 126

Index.indd 403

403

relations with the British, 23–24, 40, 46, 60–62, 65, 77, 90–91, 98–99, 262 Fonlon, Bernard, 6, 36, 56, 70, 77–78, 102, 108–109, 116, 133, 148, 150, 153, 160, 200–201 Foreign Office and France, 8, 12, 33, 38, 42–44, 77, 92, 107, 114, 144, 262 and imperial preference, 66, 69, 83–87, 89–90, 94, 96 and language teaching, 104 and the Southern Cameroons, 25, 30, 40, 46 small presence, 132 see also Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Africa, 9, 225–227, 245 and France, 208, 214–220, 229–231, 263 small presence, 248–250 teaching in Cameroon, 192–194, 205–206 Foulon, Robert, 22 Franc zone, 20, 47, 49–50, 63–64, 75, 80, 93, 99, 114, 133, 174–175, 183, 220, 246 Franco-African summits, 232, 235–237, 255, 263, 268–269 Fredenburgh, Ronald, 189, 215 French Community, 3, 14, 22, 32–34, 40, 42, 47–49, 72, 97, 111, 162, 170, 206, 260–261, 267, 286 French Union, 3, 17, 19, 21 Gabon, 38, 82, 112, 136, 142, 144, 162, 165, 174, 181, 183, 222–223, 227, 248, 256, 268, 286, 347, 369 Gambia, 17, 27–28, 81, 107, 122, 136, 139, 159, 211, 212, 225, 227, 230, 277 Gaschignard, Paul-Henri, 229 Gendarmes, 37, 39, 74, 106, 127, 136, 147, 204, 234

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404

DIPLOMACY

AND

NATION-BUILDING

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 63, 85, 95 Germany, Federal Republic of, 20–21, 37, 39, 62, 91, 95, 97, 101, 104, 110, 131–132, 134, 183–184, 190, 192, 214, 245–246, 289 Ghana, 2, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 33, 36–37, 44, 55, 66–68, 81, 85, 87, 110, 115, 136, 138, 148, 153, 159, 180, 190, 194, 211, 221, 258, 333, 380 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 8, 12–13, 236–237, 243 Given, Edward, 176, 190, 204, 206, 210, 220, 222, 224–228, 233–234, 239, 241–242, 245–248, 252, 256–257 Gold Coast, see Ghana Golds, Anthony, 170, 183–187, 190–192, 195, 198–200, 206, 226, 246 Gorse, Georges, 118, 188, 241 Gowon, Yakubu, 144, 184, 221 Guinea, 2, 11, 23, 33, 36, 44, 55, 64, 68, 112, 148, 160, 170, 183, 256, 257, 258, 277, 347 Guinea Bissau, 188, 227, 347 Guiringaud, Louis de, 13 Gyles, J.P., 94–95 Haiti, 161, 168, 188, 344 Haut Comité pour la Défense et l’Expansion de la Langue Française, 164 Head, Lord, 55, 66 Heath, Edward, 9, 176, 183, 213, 217, 230 Heichler, Lucian, 76, 134 Henderson, Nicholas, 13, 270 Houphouët-Boigny, Félix, 7, 42, 55, 140, 142, 144, 165, 183, 203, 222, 231 House of Chiefs, 57, 74 House of Commons, 25, 63, 70, 98 House of Lords, 98

Index.indd 404

IN

A FRICA

Huggins, Sir John, 97 Hungary, 54, 329 Huré, Francis, 140, 142, 148, 154, 163

Ibo, 116, 140–144, 171–172, 221 Imperial preference, 20, 62–69, 82–99, 129, 262 India, 18, 27, 81, 110 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), 132, 247 International Court of Justice, 54, 85 Iraq, 35, 229 Ireland, 63, 116, 177, 221 Israel, 131, 140, 257 Italy, 20–21, 89, 204, 215 Ivory Coast, 9, 13, 36, 81–82, 112, 129, 136, 140, 142, 144, 160, 165, 168–169, 180, 190, 209, 245, 259, 269, 287, 363, 369 and Britain, 1, 42, 55, 139, 174–176, 194, 206, 223–225, 234, 239, 242, 249–250, 263, 347 Jacquinot, Louis, 16 Jamaica, 83, 94–98 Jobert, Michel, 8 Johnston, Sir John, 173, 189 Journiac, René, 177, 217 Jospin, Lionel, 271 Jua, Augustine, 58, 60, 65, 116, 121, 126, 131, 201 Kale, Peter, 46, 116–117 Kamerun National Congress (KNC), 17, 19 Kamerun National Democratic Party (KNDP), 19, 31, 40, 46, 57–58, 70–71, 262 Kamerun People’s Party (KPP), 46 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 53 Kenya, 9, 28, 33, 56, 81, 96, 135, 159, 212, 350

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INDEX Kisob, J. Achidi, 7 Korea, 54 Kosciusko Morizet, Jacques, 137 Lake Chad Basin Commission, 120, 235 Language barriers in Africa, 3, 103–104, 107, 125, 138, 152–153, 172–173, 188–190, 193–197, 212–213, 215, 239, 251–253, 255–260 Laos, 170, 259, 343 Le Quesne, Martin, 195, 216, 218, 226, 230 Lebanon, 39, 161, 170 Léger, Jean-Marc, 112, 167–169, 212, 251 Lennox-Boyd, Alan, 26, 29, 31, 70 Leusse, Bruno de, 171, 174–175, 177, 185, 189, 196, 214 Lévesque, René, 166 Lesotho, 159, 212, 230 Liberia, 11, 36, 39, 49, 118, 136, 159, 333 Libya, 239 Ling, John de Courcy, 177, 192 Lloyd, Selwyn, 32–33, 41 Local government, 121, 131, 198, 211 Lomé Convention, 14, 216, 239–240, 248, 261, 266 Luxembourg, 20, 161, 168, 215, 343 MacEachen, Allan, 244–245, 253–254, 259 Macmillan, Harold, 9, 11, 19, 31–33, 96 Madagascar, 23, 82, 139–140, 193, 232, 247, 249, 269, 287 Malawi, 148, 159, 230 Malaya, 27 Mali, 42, 67, 129, 135, 287, 347, 350, 363, 369 Martin, Paul, 113, 156, 168 Maudling, Reginald, 69

Index.indd 405

405

Mauritania, 82, 135–136, 148, 159, 174, 176, 232, 287, 347, 363 Mauritius, 13, 168, 188, 209, 231, 236, 239, 252–253, 257, 260, 264, 272, 380 Mayi-Matip, Théodore, 75 Mbida, André-Marie, 19, 75 Mbile, Nerius, 58, 71, 192 Mboumoua, William Eteki, 70, 103, 257 McGurk, Colin, 76, 87, 92, 121 Messmer, Pierre, 185, 243 Military assistance, 38–39, 50, 55, 59, 106, 114, 136, 142–143, 154, 180, 183, 220, 241, 250, 256, 259 Milne, Malcolm, 30, 59–60 Ministry of Cooperation (France), see Coopération Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Cameroon), 128, 135 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (France), see Quai d’Orsay Missionaries, 109, 111, 156 Mitterrand, François, 8 Mobutu, Joseph-Désiré, 233 Mongo Soo, Zachée, 167, 169, 206 Monrovia group, 67, 99, 120 Moreux, Michel, 154 Morocco, 82 Moukouri, Jacques Kuoh, 87, 112 Moumié, Félix, 36, 51 Mozambique, 14, 146, 228, 380 MPLA, 228 Muna, Solomon Tandeng, 59–60, 65, 90, 116, 126, 130, 200–202 Namibia, 14, 228 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 53 Neo-colonialism, 90, 105, 113–114, 118, 134, 182, 194, 207, 232, 267 Netherlands, 20–21, 62, 97, 215 New Hebrides, 63 New Zealand, 27, 31, 81

3/16/2012 5:14:39 PM

406

DIPLOMACY

AND

NATION-BUILDING

Niamey conferences, 158, 166–169, 255 Niger, 36, 82, 112, 120, 136, 161, 175, 180, 189, 251–252, 287, 333, 347, 363, 369 Nigeria, 9, 118, 120, 159–160, 171, 182, 189–190, 235, 245–246, 252, 259, 310 and the British Cameroons, 2–3, 17–26, 29–30, 35, 38, 40, 45–47, 51, 54, 63–65, 76, 115, 131, 265 and Cameroun, 68, 85, 91, 92 and Commonwealth, 41, 82, 85, 148, 256, 260 and EEC, 21, 135, 215–221, 223– 224, 229–231 and France, 79, 152–153, 186, 229–230, 242, 256 civil war, 12, 141–145, 165, 171, 201, 221–222, 262 currency, 75 dominance in Africa, 13, 33, 66, 78, 105, 108, 113, 138, 194–195, 223–225, 249 Nkrumah, Kwame, 6, 28, 36–37, 41–42, 53, 160 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 11, 53, 137 Northern Cameroons, 2, 25, 27, 31, 54–55, 61, 67–68, 83–84, 120, 221, 265 Ntheppe, Raymond, 183–184 Nuclear tests, 43, 105 Nyasaland, 97 Ojukwo, Odumegwu, 140–142 Okala, Charles, 7, 36, 41, 45, 54, 65, 68, 75, 241 One Kamerun (OK) Party, 19, 55, 57 Organisation de Coopération Africaine et Malgache (OCAM), 36, 143, 159–161, 163, 166, 168, 189, 194–195, 207–208, 219,

Index.indd 406

IN

A FRICA

232–234, 236, 252, 258, 259, 262–263 Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), 271–272 Organisation of African Unity (OAU), 36, 69, 115, 118–119, 141, 146–149, 159–160, 163, 174, 183, 189, 221, 228, 233, 236–239, 257, 265, 271 Ortoli, François-Xavier, 234 Ouandié, Ernest, 202 Overseas Development, 10, 13, 113, 131–134, 185, 192–194, 196–198, 206, 211, 213, 219–220, 250 Owen, David, 270 Pacific, 14, 27, 215, 230, 235, 240, 261, 287, 361 Pan-African Institute for Development (PAID), 210–213, 252, 260, 269–270 Pan-africanism, 6, 12, 17, 28, 41, 50, 118 Pakistan, 27–28, 312 Palliser, Michael, 171, 175 Parliamentary Commonwealth Affairs Committee, 26 Pearson, Lester, 28, 113 Peck, John, 107 Petitions against reunification, 51–53 Pidgin, 4, 102, 106, 193, 280 Pineau, Christian, 20 Poland, 84, 187 Pompidou, Georges, 7–8, 12, 139, 176–178, 182, 185–187, 191, 201, 218, 229, 236, 241, 243 Portugal, 14, 145–146, 228 Pré, Roland, 18 Quai d’Orsay, 11, 13, 22, 23, 77 cooperation with Britain, 12, 44, 57, 83, 92, 105, 107, 171, 174, 185–186, 214, 229–231

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INDEX and Anglophone Africa, 105, 160, 230–231 tensions with other departments, 138, 142–143, 163, 185, 250 Quebec, 113, 139, 155, 157, 161, 165–166, 169, 204, 253, 264, 267–268 Radio, 49, 67, 150–151, 154, 191, 206, 263–264 Ramphal, Shridath (Sonny), 14, 239, 251, 256, 264 Rebeyrol, Philippe, 137, 143, 166–167, 214, 236, 238, 242–243 Red Cross, 142–143 Reilly, Patrick, 139 Renwick, Robin, 219 Reunion, 249, 269, 287 Rhodesia, 1, 9, 67, 78, 97, 122, 139, 145–149, 182, 184, 199–200, 215, 228, 242, 269 Rio Muni, 146–147 Robert, Maurice, 38 Romania, 187, 329 Royal Commonwealth Society, 212 Rwanda, 119, 165, 188, 225, 236, 380 Saint Lucia, 83, 380 Salter, Noel, 251 Sao Tome, 188, 228 Saudi Arabia, 229 Saunders, Albert, 7, 206, 247–248, 257 Sauvagnargues, Jean, 34 Schumann, Maurice, 8, 171, 173, 175–176 Secretariat for African and Malagasy Affairs (SGAAM), 8, 13, 23, 39, 76, 118–119, 136, 138, 174, 185– 186, 217–218, 223, 229–230 Senegal, 82, 112, 119, 136, 140, 142, 156, 165, 168–169, 180, 188, 195, 207, 239, 263, 268–269, 287, 343, 363, 369

Index.indd 407

407

relations with Britain, 27–28, 67–68, 71–72, 107, 122, 139, 174, 176, 189–190, 193, 206, 224–225, 227, 234, 246, 249–250, 308, 347 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 67–68, 71–72, 140, 158–160, 161–163, 165–166, 204, 206, 207, 219, 224–225, 232–236, 255, 268 Seychelles, 168, 188, 252, 257, 264, 272, 380 Sierra Leone, 17, 21, 28, 42, 81, 118, 310 Single party, 4, 74 Sharp, Mitchell, 178–179, 209, 233 Singapore, 6, 30, 207, 208 Smith, Arnold, 14, 27, 112, 135, 164, 215–219, 237 Smith, Ian, 1, 122, 147–149, 199 Snelling, Arthur, 53, 66 Soames, Christopher, 175 Somalia, 47, 96, 135, 194, 228, 257 Somaliland (British), 28, 47, 65, 96, 262 Somaliland (French), 140, 287 South Africa, 9, 11, 14, 27, 33, 41, 66, 78, 143, 145–146, 182–183, 208, 228–229, 233, 246, 250, 270 South Asia, 110–111, 265 South East Asia, 161 Southern Africa, 9, 12–14, 17, 67–68, 145, 149, 156, 164, 183–184, 200, 207, 209, 211, 227–228, 232–233, 245, 248, 269 Soutou, Jean-Marie, 92, 114 Soviet Union, see Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Spain, 146 Stevens, Sir Roger, 34, 53–55, 58, 92, 152 Stewart, Michael, 9, 139, 171, 173, 175 Sudan, 148, 262 Sudan (French), 82; see also Mali Swaziland, 1, 159, 212, 230 Switzerland, 91, 131 Tafawa Balewa, Abubakar, 45, 120 Tahourdin, John, 174, 176, 195

3/16/2012 5:14:40 PM

408

DIPLOMACY

AND

NATION-BUILDING

Tanganyika, 28, 56, 87 Tanzania, 81, 135–136, 143, 148, 159, 212, 222, 228, 255, 259 Tchoungui, François-Xavier, 209 The Two Alternatives, 3, 47, 63, 164 Thomson, George, 124 Tilney, John, 26, 29, 63, 70, 84 Togo, 10, 17–18, 42, 55, 82, 112, 190, 219, 224, 249, 252, 255, 269 Touré, Sékou, 23 Trade unions, 32, 128 Treasury, 98 Trinidad and Tobago, 312 Trudeau, Pierre, 178, 231, 244 Tunisia, 82, 156, 160, 168, 170, 343 Tweedsmuir, Lady, 7, 205, 227 Uganda, 28, 37, 56, 135, 139, 159, 208, 242 Um Nyobé, Ruben, 2, 16–17, 29 Union Africaine et Malgache (UAM), 82, 118–119, 135, 138, 145–146, 158–159, 262–263 Union Camerounaise (UC), 3, 74, 126 Union Douanière et Economique d’Afrique Centrale (UDEAC), 120–121, 133, 182, 189, 233 Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), 2, 16, 18–19, 21, 29, 34–38, 40–41, 45, 48, 53–55, 60, 66, 115, 162, 187, 202, 207, 209, 223, 229 Unitary State in Cameroon, 4, 15, 62, 69, 197, 200–207, 253, 261, 263, 265–266 United Arab Republic (UAR), 2, 34, 36 United Nations, 11, 15, 29, 41, 66, 84, 140, 146, 149, 172, 182–184, 212, 228–229, 250, 271 Economic Commission for Africa, 237 Fourth Committee, 17, 31, 35, 54

Index.indd 408

IN

A FRICA

Plebiscites in Cameroon, 3, 22–25, 27, 29, 35, 45, 51, 54, 61, 65, 67–68, 70–71, 78, 120, 201, 221, 261 Trusteeship in Cameroon, 2, 18–19, 40, 44, 47, 265 United Nations Development Programme, 266 United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 111, 190, 244 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 255 United States, 13, 45, 116 Involvement in Cameroon, 39, 75, 79, 91, 103, 109–110, 114, 131–132, 187, 190, 205, 256–257, 310 Peace Corps, 91, 109–110, 181, 191 Relations with Ahidjo, 6, 22, 129–130 Relations with Britain, 9, 12, 89, 92–93, 109, 184, 218, 226, 372 Relations with France, 44, 86, 135–136, 138, 158, 180–181, 311 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 80, 181 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 12, 84, 95, 129, 184, 187, 247; see also Cold War Upper Volta, 82, 112, 119, 136, 139, 175, 180, 245, 259, 283, 287, 326, 347, 363, 369 Vanderfelt, Robin, 116–117, 122 Vanuatu, 380 Vietnam, 168 Village du Benin, 255–256 Voluntary Overseas Service (VSO), 108, 130–131, 191–192

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INDEX Warner, Edward, 91, 97, 115, 121, 125, 147–148, 182 West Indies Federation, 63, 83, 85, 89 Western Samoa, 31 Wilson, Harold, 9, 12, 138–139, 147, 149, 172, 250 Wilson, John, 185–186, 219 Windward Islands, 83, 96 World Bank, 132, 266

Index.indd 409

409

Yameogo, Maurice, 119 Yaoundé Conventions, 99, 134–135, 214–218, 223–225, 230–231, 237–238, 262 Yugoslavia, 129 Zaire, 13, 180, 188, 208, 224–225, 228, 232–233, 236, 249 Zambia, 138, 143, 159, 210–212, 257, 333, 350

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