Kingdom on Mount Cameroon: Studies in the History of the Cameroon Coast 1500-1970 Cameroon Studies

The Bakweri people of Mount Cameroon, West Africa have had a varied and at times exciting history which has brought them into contact, not only with other African peoples, but with merchants, missionaries, soldiers and administrators form Portugal, Holland, England, Jamaica, Sweden, Germany and more recently France.

Edwin Ardener, the distinguished social anthropologist who spoke their language, wrote a number of studies on the history and culture of the Bakweri Kingdom. Some of his unpublished writings, as well as out of print materials are presented here for the first time. The book covers the early contacts with the Portuguese and Dutch from the sixteenth century, the arrival of the missionaries in the nineteenth century, the dramatic defeat of the first German punitive expedition, the subsequent establishment by the Germans of the plantation system, and the British Trusteeship period until independence in 1961 as part of the Federal Republic of Cameroon.