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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Indirect Rule in Colonial and Post-Colonial Cameroon
Author:Jua, Nantang BenISNI
Year:1995
Periodical:Paideuma
Volume:41
Pages:39-47
Language:English
Geographic terms:Northern Cameroons
Cameroon
Great Britain
Subjects:colonialism
indirect rule
political economy
History and Exploration
Politics and Government
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/40341691
Abstract:This paper examines indirect rule in the North-West Province of Cameroon during the colonial and postcolonial periods. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach and focuses on questions of political economy. Indirect rule in British Cameroon involved the use of local chiefs to implement colonial policies. These chiefs were educated at Government or Native Authority Schools. This policy was tantamount to cultural imperialism, served to create an environment for maximum economic exploitation. The system of indirect rule was inherited by the postcolonial State, but the determination of the State to achieve its 'hegemonic project' prompted a modification of the relations that existed between the State and traditional authority. The State manipulated traditional authority by seeking to convert chiefs into clients. Relations between the two have taken on the semblance of parasitism rather than symbiosis. On the whole, the colonial State ostensibly sought to justify indirect rule as an efficient way of creating a Weberian State on a legal-rational basis. But indirect rule in the postcolonial State has contributed to the generation of the neopatrimonial State that is the antithesis of the Weberian State. The chiefs have been used as instruments to achieve this end. Bibliogr., ref.
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