The Cameroon War: A History of French Neocolonialism in Africa

A hidden history of anticolonial struggle in Africa uncovered

According to conventional wisdom, France’s empire in sub- Saharan Africa ended peacefully. But this book tells a different story. The shocking violence of a secret war roiled Cameroon in the 1950s and ’60s. A mass movement for self-determination had emerged under the leadership of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), and France responded with brutal repression. As in Algeria, French forces waged a bloody counterinsurgency campaign. They eventually eradicated the opposition and installed a client dictatorship in the capital, Yaoundé.

With the world focused on the Algerian bloodbath, the conflict in Cameroon received little attention at the time. Its devastating aftermath — and tens of thousands of victims — were intentionally obscured by French authorities and their local collaborators. The Cameroon War uncovers this hidden history. It illuminates a forgotten struggle for decolonisation at the origin of neocolonial rule in Francophone Africa, a story that is still unfolding today.