Cover art for The Cameroon War
Published
Verso, December 2025
ISBN
9781788733762
Format
Softcover, 192 pages
Dimensions
21cm × 14cm × 1.2cm

The Cameroon War A History of French Neocolonialism in Africa

Not yet released
Due December 2, 2025.
Fast $7.95 flat-rate shipping!
Only pay $7.95 per order within Australia, including end-to-end parcel tracking.
100% encrypted and secure
We adhere to industry best practice and never store credit card details.
Talk to real people
Contact us seven days a week – our staff are here to help.

Legend has it that the end of France's empire in sub-Saharan Africa was a peaceful affair. This book tells a very different story, exposing the shocking violence of a secret war. Its theater was Cameroon in the 1950s and '60s, where a mass movement for self-determination emerged under the leadership of a pro-independence party, the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC).

In response, the colonial power opted for brutal repression. Employing the same methods as in Algeria, French forces waged a counterinsurgency campaign of extraordinary violence, eventually eradicating the opposition and installing a client dictatorship in Yaounde. At the height of the Cold War, with attention focused on the Algerian bloodbath, the conflict in Cameroon received little attention at the time. Subsequently, its devastating consequences - and tens of thousands of victims - would be intentionally obscured by French authorities and their local collaborators. The Cameroon War uncovers this hidden history for the first time. It illuminates a forgotten struggle for decolonization at the origin of neocolonial rule in Francophone Africa that persists to this day.

Related books