Philip Burnham

‘Regroupement’ and mobile societies: two Cameroon cases

This paper is a comparative study of the impact of colonial rule on two African societies, the Gbaya and the pastoral Fulani, inhabiting the Adamawa Plateau in central Cameroon. The main discussion focuses on the difficulties experienced by the French in their attempts to administer these two politically uncentralized and geographically mobile peoples. Geographical mobility was not the result of population pressure or other ecological constraint but was a political strategy and means of dispute regulation frequently employed by these societies living in a lightly populated region. Conflicting with this structural tendency towards mobility in both societies was the French policy of regroupement , the concentration and resettlement of subject peoples in stable villages. Examination of the historical record reveals that despite more or less stringent attempts on the part of the colonial powers to restructure Gbaya and pastoral Fulani societies along more politically amenable lines, these societies have changed little in this respect up to the present day and continue to pose the same problems of administration for the modern government of the United Republic of Cameroon.