Incidental Socio-Cultural Outcomes of Precolonial and Colonial Long Distance Trade in the Bamenda Grasslands, Cameroon

Abstract

Material relics like beads, cowries, iron brass, Dane guns, tie-dyed garments in some households and families in the Bamenda Grasslands today bear proof of a period of specialized professional   trade. In the same vein, repeated and consistent narratives of travels and contact experiences by some commercial retirees, especially with centers like Nkongsamba and Douala in former French Cameroun, Takum, Kentu, Calabar and Yola in Nigeria provoke a desire to explore not only the circumstances that contributed to these developments but to appreciate the unintended outcomes that the commercial activity engendered. It is in this connection that this paper devotes attention to examining the socio-cultural bearing of long distance trade[1] in the Bamenda Grasslands, the area conterminous to the North West Region of Cameroon. The paper argues that although long distance trade was centrally masterminded by a siege mentality for profit maximization, it produced inadvertent but strongly imposing social outcomes. The methodology used has been mainly qualitative historical analysis.