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First Foreigner Discovers Mt. Cameroon (BC)
Cameroon500 BC: The explorer Hanno from Carthage in North Africa (Tunisia) is the first foreigner who reports seeing Mount Cameroon. In the following centuries a trade of slaves and goods develops from northern Cameroon across Sahara to North Africa. -
First Bantu Tribes Immigrate (BC)
Cameroon Timeline 200-100 BC: The first Bantu-tribes immigrates to Cameroon from North (Nigeria). Bantu speaking tribes are traditionally agricultural requiring lots of space for farmland. The original inhabitants, the so-called "Pygmies", are gradually being forced deeper into the forests by the newcomers. The Sao culture develops in the area south of Lake Chad and more than 150 different ethnic groups inhabits Cameroon (Today it is approximately 250 different groups!). -
Fulani Conquer North Cameroon
Cameroon During the late 1770s and early 1800s, the Fulani, a pastoral Islamic people of the western Sahel, conquered most of what is now northern Cameroon, subjugating or displacing its largely non-Muslim inhabitants -
European Settlement
CameroonEuropean settlement and conquest of the interior until the late 1870s, when large supplies of the malaria suppressant, quinine, became available. The early European presence in Cameroon was primarily devoted to coastal trade and the acquisition of slaves -
German Colony
CameroonBeginning in 1884, all of present-day Cameroon and parts of several of its neighbors became the German colony of Kamerun, with a capital first at Buea and later at Yaounde -
League of Nations mandate
Cameroon After World War I, this colony was partitioned between Britain and France under a June 28, 1919 League of Nations mandate. France gained the larger geographical share, transferred outlying regions to neighboring French colonies, and ruled the rest from Yaounde