The Agro-Pastoral Economy and the Development of British Southern Cameroons, 1922-1945
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47941/jhs.3567Keywords:
Agro-pastoral Economy, British Southern Cameroons, Dependency Theory, Farmer-Grazier Conflicts, Historical Institutionalism Mandate, Njangali Tax.Abstract
Purpose: This paper critically examines how the British colonial administration, operating through the indirect rule system, structured the agro-pastoral economy of British Southern Cameroons between 1922 and 1945 within the framework of the League of Nations Class "B" Mandate, and assesses whether these efforts genuinely promoted indigenous welfare or served the structural interests of colonial extraction.
Methodology: The study employs a qualitative historical methodology, drawing on primary sources, colonial administrative reports, veterinary records, Native Authority correspondence, and League of Nations visiting mission reports, alongside secondary literature in African colonial history and agrarian economics. Analysis is conducted within a dual theoretical framework combining Dependency Theory and Historical Institutionalism.
Findings: The study reveals that colonial agro-pastoral institutions, including experimental farms at Barombi-Kang and Bambui, and veterinary centres at Jakiri and Nkambe, were not designed to ensure indigenous food sovereignty but to protect cattle as taxable, exportable assets. The njangali tax, constituting over fifty percent of Native Authority revenue, functioned primarily as a fiscal extraction mechanism. The institutionalization of Fulani grazing rights alongside fixed farming allocations created path-dependent conditions for farmer-grazier conflicts, land use disputes, and inter-ethnic tensions that persist into the twenty-first century.
Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study deploys Dependency Theory and Historical Institutionalism as mutually reinforcing analytical lenses, the former explaining the structural orientation of the economy toward metropolitan extraction, the latter illuminating the precise institutional mechanisms of layering, path dependence, and critical junctures through which that dependency was constructed and made durable. This dual-theoretical approach offers a replicable model for analyzing colonial economic legacies across sub-Saharan African mandate and trust territories.
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