Environment and Identity Politics in Colonial Africa

Fulani Migrations and Land Conflict

Emmanuel Mbah

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138239555
• eBook ISBN: 9781315294155
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts

Economic, political, and ethnic favoritism are common themes in the historiography of colonial Africa. Land ownership and control, and the abilities of the respective landscapes to sustain Africa's growing population amidst the throes of climate change, have created recurrent identity crises throughout Africa.

The book's chapters elevate the discussion on recurrent environmental issues, the problems of contested ownership of land, autochthonism as well as the interaction and blending of different cultures in a restricted geographical space. The study highlights a neglected aspect of the history of Fulani migrations in West Africa - the colonial extension of the Fulani into the Southern Cameroons (the Fulani as a group did not exist in the region prior to 1916). Therefore the introduction of the Fulani in the region, at a time when ethnic affinities and control over land had already crystallized, resulted in problems of a wider magnitude that have been carefully and meticulously addressed in this book.

Environment and Identity Politics in Colonial Africa makes a major contribution to colonial African historiography. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Modern Africa, African Environmental History and Colonial History

1 Introduction

The environment in colonial Africa

Introduction

This study examines emerging conflicts over land and identity created by a British colonial decision to allow Fulani pastoralists to settle – with their cattle – the Southern Cameroon grasslands of Bamenda when that region became part of a British mandate after the First World War. These conflicts hinged on a colonial economic policy geared toward making cattle the mainstay of the Bamenda region and led to undue tension between farmers and Fulani pastoralists especially when indigenous communities wrongly perceived the policy as pro-Fulani, implying favoritism for Fulani cattle owners over them. It started when British authorities decided to encourage the pastoral Fulani of their neighboring colony of Nigeria and some from French Cameroon to migrate with their cattle and settle parts of the grasslands of Bamenda. Cattle, British authorities calculated, would make better use of the temperate climate as well as the disease-free good pastures of the region and would provide revenue to the colonial administration in the form of cattle taxes. Within a few years of the arrival of the Fulani, environmental issues such as overgrazing, soil erosion from cattle trampling, the setting of bushfires for pasture renewal, deforestation resulting from the need of logs to construct cattle enclosures and other economic issues such as cattle destruction to crops belonging to indigenous farmers and ownership of the grazing ranges became veritable challenges to the British throughout their tenure in the region; these challenges have still not been resolved to this day.¹

Background

Economic, political and/or ethnic favoritism are common themes in the historiography of colonial Africa. They entail colonial preference and support for particular ethnic groups over others for economic, military, administrative and even racist reasons and the results were often devastating. During German colonial rule in Cameroon (1884–1916), for example, their support for Bali Nyonga over surrounding village-groups led to arbitrary demarcation of boundaries that have had serious repercussions on the region to this day.² The French, during their tenure in the Ivory Coast, pursued an ethnic policy where favored groups were assigned particular territorial spaces for various reasons.³ Belgian support and preference for the Tutsi over the Hutu in Rwanda and Burundi and the consequences of that dispensation are common knowledge to historians of Africa. In a majority of cases where European colonizers favored groups in Africa, the notion of divide-and-rule was a significant factor in such decisions. That was, however, not the case with British preference for the pastoral Fulani in Southern Cameroon where the logic was simply economic. Preference for the Bororo (that is, “pastoral”) Fulani in anticipation of increased revenue from their cattle through taxation was what motivated the British to encourage these pastoralists to relocate, with their cattle, to the Bamenda ranges. Environmental problems and, of course, conflict between the Fulani and indigenous grassland communities of Southern Cameroon commenced not long after their arrival, although these became major concerns for British colonial authorities only during the interwar years, specifically from 1929 to 1939 and thereafter.

In a memorandum prepared by the Civil Secretary’s Office at Enugu, the capital of the then Eastern Region of Nigeria, and forwarded to both the commissioner of the Cameroons stationed in Buea and to the Resident (that is, local administrator) of Bamenda Province stationed in Bamenda, the worries of British colonial authorities over the policy that allowed uncontrolled migration of the Bororo Fulani into the region for economic gains became obvious.⁴ The main concerns as summed up by the Civil Secretary’s Office in Article 17 of the “Memorandum on Fulani Settlement in Bamenda Province” dealt with the issues of environment, destruction to indigenous farms by Fulani cattle, the land/settlement question and cattle control, as well as the issue of cattle taxes.⁵ These concerns became urgent in the 1950s because of the unprecedented number of farmer-grazer, grazer-grazer and other land disputes between immigrant pastoral Fulani communities and indigenous Bamenda village-groups.

Administering their portion of the Cameroons as part of Nigeria, British colonial authorities decided in 1916 to introduce cattle grazing, which had been quite successful in northern Nigeria, into the Bamenda grasslands of Cameroon. The introduction of cattle would not only provide meat, hides and skins and manure to the inhabitants of Southern Cameroon, it would also constitute an important source of colonial revenue through cattle taxes, known as jangali. Without any thought to environmental outcomes, British authorities concluded that because of the relatively low population density of Bamenda, coupled with the vast mountainous grasslands, the region could support large herds of Fulani cattle. Behind these general objectives was the notion by some British authorities that these immigrant Fulani cattle owners were racially superior to ‘natives’ and hence, had to be treated differently. Thus, it was also based on such convictions that British authorities encouraged the cattle Fulani of northern Nigeria to migrate to the Bamenda region with their cattle.

Fulani migrations were further encouraged between 1930 and 1950 as proceeds from cattle taxes increased. As many more Fulani migrated to the region, British colonial administrators decided to grant permits or ‘certificates of occupancy’ to individual migrants, to settle on land that belonged to indigenes. These certificates were granted over periods of between seven and twenty-five years,⁶ in violation of native laws and custom. To appease the Fulani, who the British now regarded as principal contributors to the colonial treasury, the authorities also attempted to introduce legal provisions to create a separate Fulani identity in the region. This was to be done through the establishment of separate educational, healthcare, legal and local administrative systems for the Fulani in a region where they were regarded by the locals as strangers. Because more Fulani meant more cattle, and hence more revenues from cattle taxes, British authorities paid scant attention to the progressive decimation of the environment due to too many cattle that resulted in carrying capacity problems. They also ignored the rights of ‘natives’, whom they stereotypically labeled ‘pagans’. The problem of settling the Fulani, the emerging land and farmer-grazer disputes between the Fulani and locals, the ensuing environmental problems and the problem of a Fulani identity in the region became issues that preoccupied British colonial authorities in Southern Cameroon throughout their tenure. It is the story of these emerging problems and the solutions attempted by British colonial authorities that this book seeks to address.

In this introductory chapter, I examine African environments before and during European colonial rule, beginning with the precolonial period.

Understanding precolonial African environments

The history of the environment is broad and continues to broaden with increasing scholarship on the effects of climate change on landscapes and environments – the result of global physical/geographic occurrences as well as human and animal interactions. Jane Carruthers defines environmental history as the discipline that “focuses on geography and topography, climate, water resources, and biota (floral and faunal) and links these to particular human histories (social, economic, cultural, or political) in terms of how they have changed over time.”⁷ The environment, ecology, biodiversity, migration, settlement and identity conflicts are, therefore, relevant aspects of world history; they have affected relations between humans from time immemorial.

While environmental issues had been preoccupying for a very long time, examining its impact on mankind became increasingly significant to scholars from the time of the enlightenment. Specifically from the mid-eighteenth century, reflections on the environment and its influence on modernism became a recurrent topic in the study of environmental history. This was particularly the case in discussions on the impact of European imperialism in the world in general and in Africa in particular. Writing about the spread of Eurasian diseases and technology that facilitated the devastation of plant, animal and human species in the Americas during the period of conquest, William Beinart notes that “Alfred Crosby placed the earth-shattering environmental consequences of European expansion over the last five hundred years at the heart of world history.”⁸ Such knowledge has led to a new understanding of the African past by motivated scholars of Africa who, through research, are now able to provide evidence of past African contributions on environmental issues, including a historical understanding of the role of ‘nonhuman’ actors such as plants, animals, water and fire.⁹

The new understanding of Africa’s environmental past saw the development of two polar views on African environmental history in the twentieth century; the first conceptualized a ‘primitive’ precolonial Africa where “man lived in a constant state of war against nature until he was introduced to modern agriculture and industry through the imposition of Western science and technology,” while the second saw precolonial Africans living “in harmony with their surroundings, and that colonialism robbed them of their natural wealth and abundant resources.”¹⁰ Scholars now regard both perspectives as ‘simplistic’ because they ignored “the fact that humans have always lived in constantly changing relationships with their environments.”¹¹ In the case of Africa, both perspectives ignored the fact that its inhabitants had, for centuries, been living in some of the most challenging environments – in the arid/grassy edge of the Sahara as well as in the thick woodlands further south – and they had adopted coping mechanisms to address adversity. Examples of such coping mechanisms include the sharing of culture and technology, such as tool making and fire use that enabled Africans to shape their respective landscapes and environments.¹² As James L. A. Webb Jr. remarks:

In order to improve their hunting prospects, they burned patches in the grasslands and woodlands to draw wild game to the resulting fresh plant growth. In the rainforests, where lightning and natural tree fall had already torn holes in the green canopies, they charred out biologically productive edge environments, or ecotones, that likewise enhanced their opportunities to harvest wild game.¹³

Thus, before the colonization of the continent, Africans understood their landscapes and environments and were able to shape these in order to survive. It is in this regard that knowledge of ecological connections – the interaction between organisms and the environment – and how to decipher such knowledge in a changing historical and ecological context becomes important. Past ecological scholarship that perceived ‘good environments’ as those that had “internal balance or stability” have been discounted today because we now know that all environments are continuously changing and in different ways,¹⁴ either through human activities or through physical changes independent of human action.

An important aspect of the environment is its biodiversity, or “the total number of species in an area and their complex interactions.”¹⁵ While biodiversity is difficult to measure or estimate because of constant changes, it remains an important factor on the state of any environment. Because humans are part of the biodiversity of env...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: the environment in colonial Africa
• 2 British Cameroon grasslands of Bamenda: geography and history
• 3 Heterogeneous societies and ethnic identity: Fulani and cattle migrations
• 4 Resource conflicts: farmers, pastoralists, cattle taxes and disputes over grazing and land
• 5 Toward a resolution: the land settlement question
• 6 Transforming British Bamenda: cattle wealth and development
• 7 Semiautonomy for pastoralists: Native Authority and Court for the Fulani
• 8 Modernizing the minds: the introduction and impact of Western education
• 9 Managing development: grazing innovations
• 10 Continuity and change: the limits of colonial modernization
• Index