Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence: Nationalism, Grassfields Tradition and State Building in Cameroon

Drawing on the archives of the United Nations, France, Great Britain, Ghana, and Cameroon, as well as oral sources, Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence chronicles the spread of the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) nationalist movement from the late 1940s into the first postcolonial decade. It shows how, in the French and British Cameroon territories administered as UN Trusteeships after the Second World War, notions of international human rights, the promise of Third World independence, Pan–African federation, and national citizenship blended with local political and spiritual practices that resurfaced as the period of European rule came to a close. This book traces the connection between local and transregional politics in the age of Africa's decolonization and the early decades of the Cold War. Rather than stop at official independence as most conventional histories of African nationalist movements do, this book considers post-independence events as crucial to the history of Cameroonian nationalism and to an understanding of the postcolonial government that came to power on 1 January 1960. While the history of the UPC is a story that ends with the party's failure to gain access to political power with independence, it is also a story of the postcolonial state's failure to become a nation.