Colonial Violence, Collective Memory and the Politics of Restitution in Cameroon
German Kamerun and Its Aftermath, 1884 to the Present
Towards a Shared Historiography of Silence, Survival and Repair
DAAD Alumni Symposium · Methods Training Workshop · Edited Volume / Special Journal Issue
About the call
Colonialism did not end with formal decolonisation; it persists as a living architecture of power, perception and pain. Cameroon — shaped successively by German rule from 1884, British and French mandates and trusteeship, a war of independence, reunification in 1961 and present-day tensions — offers one of the most generative and still insufficiently examined terrains for interrogating how colonial violence settles into durable, intergenerational memory.
This call invites scholars to examine German colonialism in Cameroon, and the colonial orders that succeeded it, not as a closed episode consigned to the archive but as an ongoing structure of memory and meaning — across the coast, the forest zone, the Grassfields, the Adamawa plateau and the Lake Chad basin — that continues to shape relations between Cameroon and Germany.
The symposium places archival and oral sources in dialogue and brings together scholars from Cameroon, Germany and beyond to build a shared, multi-vocal historiography. It is conceived as a DAAD alumni event; at least half of participants are expected to be DAAD alumni, while non-DAAD scholars, early-career researchers and community historians are warmly welcome.
Suggested themes
I. Sovereignty, Governance and Political Order
- Colonial encounters and the reconfiguration of sovereignty on the coast, forest zone, Grassfields and north
- Indigenous political responses: negotiation, alliance, collaboration and resistance
- Treaties, protection and dispossession: the Duala and the politics of land, 1884–1914
- Chieftaincy, kingship, lamidates and the colonial remaking of traditional authority
- Divide and rule, intermediaries and fragmentation of relations between polities
- Missionary Christianity, Islam and the colonisation of the sacred
II. Memory, Narrative and Epistemology
- Collective memory and intergenerational transmission across Cameroon's regions
- Oral traditions, songs, proverbs and the epistemology of memory
- Colonial archives in Berlin, Buea, Yaoundé, London, Paris and Basel
- Layered memories: the German period remembered through later regimes
- Digital humanities and the future of memory archiving
III. Violence, Labour, Trauma and Psychological Aftermath
- Punitive expeditions, structural violence and their psychological afterlives
- Plantations, porterage, rubber and road building
- Land expropriation, concession companies and environmental change
- Gender, sexual violence and the politics of silence
- Everyday resistance, flight and survival strategies
- The First World War in Cameroon: soldiers, carriers and civilians
IV. Restitution, Material Culture and the Politics of Return
- Provenance research on Cameroonian objects in European museums
- Colonial looting and sacred objects: Ngonnso, the Tangué of Lock Priso and beyond
- Human remains in European collections and the ethics of return
- Restitution, repatriation and the roles of communities, state and museums
- Restitution as historical justice: memory, identity and redress
V. Contemporary, Comparative and Transnational Resonances
- Colonial memory, national unity and political consciousness
- The Anglophone crisis and the long shadow of colonial partition
- Memory of the war of independence and of German rule
- Germany and Cameroon: acknowledgement, apology, reparations
- Comparisons with Togo, Namibia, Tanzania and other former German colonies
- Diaspora, memory activism and transnational restitution claims
Submission guidelines
- An abstract of 300–400 words outlining the argument, sources, methodology and contribution, indicating the region(s) of Cameroon addressed.
- A biographical note of 100–150 words with institutional affiliation and, where applicable, DAAD alumni status (programme and year).
- Whether you will participate in person or online, and whether you would serve as a methods-workshop trainer or mentor.
- English preferred; abstracts in French or German are also accepted.
Send your abstract
Submissions go directly to research@globalresearchassociation.org. You can also email your abstract with the subject line “CFP: Colonial Memory in Cameroon”.