2010/07/01 by Meredith Terretta · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #African history and culture studies #Ancient history #Anthropology #Decolonization #Ecology #Ethnology #Geography #Global Political and Social Dynamics #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #History #Independence (probability theory) #Kwame #Law #Nationalism #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Proscription #Resistance (ecology) #Sociology #Sovereignty
paper · doi:10.1017/s0021853710000253
openalex publication_date 2010/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
ABSTRACT This article reassesses the political alternatives imagined by African nationalists in the ‘first wave’ of Africa's decolonization through the lens of Cameroonian nationalism. After the proscription of Cameroon's popular nationalist movement, the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), in the mid-1950s, thousands of Cameroonian nationalists went into exile, most to Accra, where they gained the support of Kwame Nkrumah's Pan-African Bureau for African Affairs. The UPC's external support fed Cameroon's internal maquis (as UPC members called the underground resistance camps within the territories), rooted in culturally particular conceptions of freedom and sovereignty. With such deeply local and broadly international foundations, the political future that Cameroonian nationalists envisaged seemed achievable: even after the Cameroon territories' official independence, UPC nationalists kept fighting. But, by the mid-1960s, postcolonial states prioritized territorial sovereignty over ‘African unity’ and Ghana's support of the UPC became unsustainable, leading to the movement's disintegration.