The Cameroon War
A History of French Neocolonialism in Africa
The shocking history of France's secret war in Cameroon and its neocolonial afterlives
Legend has it that the end of France’s empire in sub-Saharan Africa was a peaceful affair. This book tells a very different story, exposing the shocking violence of a secret war.
Its theater was Cameroon in the 1950s and ‘60s, where a mass movement for self-determination emerged under the leadership of a pro-independence party, the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC). In response, the colonial power opted for brutal repression.
Employing the same methods as in Algeria, French forces waged a counterinsurgency campaign of extraordinary violence, eventually eradicating the opposition and installing a client dictatorship in Yaoundé. At the height of the Cold War, with attention focused on the…