ARCHIVAL REPORTS

The National Archives of Cameroon

Ralph A. Austen
University of Chicago

Editor's Note: This article is republished with permission of the author and publisher.  It originally appeared in History in Africa, 1 (1974): 153-155.

As of July, 1973, the National Archives of Cameroon were located in two offices: a main branch at the capital, Yaoundé, and a second collection at Buea, the former West Cameroon capital. Both centers are open to researchers during normal government office hours. Access to the Yaoundé collection requires no special formalities for any bona fide academic researcher (manuscript documents are closed to individuals working on their own private economic or legal affairs). To work in Buea it is necessary to have the written permission of the Yaoundé Director of Archives. Documents are considered 'open' if they are more than thirty years old. Conditions of work in both centers are reasonably comfortable and pleasant. Relatively few scholars are usually to be found in the reading rooms, and documents are produced fairly rapidly and in generous quantities.

I. ENGLISH LANGUAGE MATERIALS

These are all to be found in Buea: they cover the period beginning with the earliest British administration in 1914. Files for the Buea Residency (covering both the Bamenda and the southern regions of former West Cameroon) are well catalogued. Efforts were also being made to catalogue files from subordinate administrative centers. Some material relevant to the British administration of Cameroon is also to be found in various Nigerian archives.

II. FRENCH LANGUAGE MATERIALS

These are all in Yaoundé. The major series presently available are the APA (Affaires Politiques et Administrative; i.e., the general files of the territorial government) and the NF (Nouveaux Fonds, a continuation of the above, with some chronological overlap and a less complete catalogue). There is also a short collection of translations from German documents of various sorts listed as TA (Translations Allemandes). The catalogues are arranged by subject in a reasonably logical manner, although this bears little relationship to the shelf numbering system; the variance sometimes causes difficulties in locating files. A good deal of uncatalogued material from regional administrative offices and some technical government departments appears to be on the archives shelves but has not yet been catalogued.

III. GERMAN LANGUAGE MATERIALS

This requires more extensive description because it is not properly catalogued. It is also of unique value, since it covers a relatively early Period of Cameroon history in considerable detail (with exaggerated emphasis on the coastal region) and also records an aspect of European colonial history which is not generally as well known as the British and French experiences. The files are not easy to use because some (although surprisingly few) are in very bad condition and they are mostly handwritten in Gothic script; without special study not even a well-educated native German can read them.

Worse yet, the only records of outgoing correspondence (before the introduction of typewriters and carbon paper about 1906-10) are the first drafts of letters, in which the script is particularly obscure and further marred by various corrections. It is to the credit of the Cameroonian clerks in the German government that their handwriting, even in rapidly made court transcriptions, is generally easier to read than that of their European employers. The value of the administrative records is obvious enough; the court records are especially to be recommended to legal and social historians, since they present in close detail the original situation and colonial evolution of such matters as slavery, marriage, property rights in general and landholding in particular. The private records, once they have been put into order, may also be of unique value, since the home offices of most German firms have not kept or given access to materials on Cameroon, but at first glance the surviving collection appears to be fragmentary and in poor condition.

The Buea German collection can be described simply, since it contains only about 300 dossiers arranged in a fairly orderly fashion. All refer to matters affecting former West Cameroon, particularly the affairs of European plantations. A catalogue of this material was prepared by Dr. Edward Ardener, now of Oxford University, but it is not presently available in Cameroon.

The following material applies only to the Yaoundé German holdings.

A. Description.

There are about fifty metric shelf feet, mainly of manuscript material, in the German section of the Yaoundé archives. About ninety percent of this material consists of government files divided into the following categories:

1. Territorial government records on general administrative matters.

2. Douala district administration records on general matters.

3. Yabassi and Edea district administration records in fairly small numbers, mainly dealing with land matters.

4. Land office records for the entire territory; i.e., land purchased and registered as private property or government domain.

5. Douala court records dealing with European disposal of cases involving Africans or Africans and Europeans (these form almost forty percent of the entire holdings).

Another five percent of the section consists of private records. The majority of these am commercial and plantation correspondence, account books, etc., for the period of German occupation. A smaller subsection includes records of German commercial operations in the inter-war (1920-39) period as well as some publications (mostly 1930s economic and colonial journals) seized from the Germans.

B. Organization.

Categories 1-4 of the government records are arranged on the shelves in a completely arbitrary numerical order which does not distinguish one category from another and also includes some of the court records belonging to category 5. Over ninety percent of this latter collection, however, is shelved separately according to subcategories and in chronological order. The private records are not yet placed in any order, although they have been separated from the court records with which they were previously bound and now occupy their own shelf space.

C. Cataloging.

There are four sets of catalogues for the German materials, none of which is complete in itself, nor does the whole cover the entire collection.

1. General catalogue, according to the original German system. This exists as a card file, a typed list, and a mimeographed (roneotyped) book published, under the authorship of Eldridge Mohamadou, by the Cameroon Historical Society and the Goethe Institute (Catalogue des Archives allemandes du Cameroun [Yaoundé, 1972]). It is the most useful overview of the type of documentation available, but it is extremely faulty in detail and difficult either to use or to check. About fifty percent of the files actually hold (most land and court records and all private records) do not appear in the catalogue at all. Many other files listed in the catalogue do not exist in the archives. For the files which are listed, many of the shelf numbers (which do not correspond to the order in which the catalogue is presented) are incorrect. At some point it will be necessary for an archivist to reorganize all the files but the court records and make up an entirely new general catalogue.

2. Supplement to general catalogue, according to shelf order. This is a typed list, held in the archivist's catalogue file, which tabulates accurately the last one hundred files in the shelf series supposedly covered by the general catalogue; i.e., files belonging to categories 1-4 in section A above.

3. Land (Domainale) files, in various orderings. Because of their importance to the functioning of post-German Cameroon governments, the Land Office files have been fairly carefully catalogued both as a typed list and as several card files arranged by regions and major landholders. Useful as this listing is, it does not cover all the land files actually held.

4. Douala court records, by subject and chronology. There is an old register of these files, typed and held in the archivist's catalogue file, which gives a general view of the holdings but is not entirely accurate or clear. In the process of reshelving these files, a temporary card catalogue was made indicating the entire series in some detail. Neither the catalogue nor the actual collection has yet assimilated the court records still included in the general government section