Abstract

The Bakweri people of Mount Cameroon, an active volcano on the coast of West Africa a few degrees north of the equator, have had a varied and at times exciting history which has brought them into contact, not only with other West African peoples, but with merchants, missionaries, soldiers and administrators from 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 Some of the unpublished writings, and some of the published but now out of print materials are here brought together for the first time.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.

Shirley Ardener, a well-published social anthropologist, is a Senior Associate of Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University. She was the founding director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, now the International Gender Studies Centre, of which she remains an active honorary member.

“ … collected in a single volume, [these papers] become a rich case study of an African people's relations with various European agents over more than four centuries.” • Choice

“… a true treasure… challenging example of how history and anthropology can be combined in practice… such a combination can offer a deeper understanding of present-day issues and tensions.” • Africa