Paradise Lost? A Political History of British Southern Cameroons from 1916 to 1972

Description

This captivating and detailed book should be required reading for anyone interested in learning about the current conflict in the Southern Cameroons region of Cameroon where oppression by the central government has incited an armed insurgency aimed at creating a new state called Ambazonia. The author, currently a political prisoner in Cameroon, correctly points out that this conflict is rooted in the reconfiguration of Africa by colonial powers after the First World War and particularly in the “botched decolonization” of Southern Cameroons during the 1950s.

Tim Stapleton, Professor, Department of History, University of Calgary, Canada Author, Africa: War and Conflict in the 20th Century (2018)

This inspirational book is not only insightful and well-written, but also well-researched and historically grounded. It captures the complexity and multi-layered complicity of the UN, France, Cameroon Republic, and the UK as well as their roles in the 1961 botched decolonization process that led to the annexation of British Southern Cameroons which had attained self-government in 1954. The book draws both national and international attention to an end to the glaring injustice suffered by the territory and its people at independence. The author’s depth of knowledge regarding the reasons for the current struggle for the restoration of statehood of Southern Cameroons, is balanced by depictions of the people’s long suffering and their inherent right to freedom and independence. The book will definitely be of interest to political scientists, historians, economists, students and friends of British Southern Cameroons and Africa.

Bridget A. Teboh, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, USA

This book is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on the Southern Cameroons Question. It will enrich the compelling repertoire of scholarship on the Southern Cameroons heroic struggle for liberation from a vile black-on-black colonization. The author, a prisoner of conscience, is one of Southern Cameroons’ indefatigable liberation fighters, a man who has suffered torture and unlawful imprisonment countless times since the mid-1990s and is currently serving a pre-determined life sentence peremptorily imposed in 2019 under cover of darkness by French Cameroun’s Kangaroo military tribunal.

Professor Carlson Anyangwe, Former Executive Dean of Law & a Rector at Walter Sisulu University, South Africa, Author, Betrayal of too Trusting a People: the UN, the UK and the Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons (2009)