CAMEROON. – A region of Equatorial Africa stretching from the depths of the Gulf of Guinea to Lake Chad and the lower course of the Congo. The German colony of the same name embraced, on the eve of the First World War, an area of 745,000 sq. km. By the Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919; arts. 119–58), the eastern territories (on the left bank of the Logone; 225,000 sq. km.), ceded to the German Cameroon in 1911, were returned to France (A.E.F.), while the remainder was divided into two mandates. The larger, entrusted to France, covers 431,300 sq. km. with 2.8 million inhabitants (of whom 1.6 million are Bantu, 800,000 Sudanese and about 4,000 Europeans); the smaller, comprising the western fringe of the country, was assigned to Britain (88,266 sq. km. with 926,000 inhabitants), which administratively annexed it to neighboring Nigeria.
The coastal zone, low and marshy, has a hot, extremely humid and unhealthy climate; inland, the terrain rises into hills and then into a plateau (800–1,500 m.) with a less extreme climate, a dry season, and better settlement. Equatorial forest and savannas dominate the landscape, but the soil lends itself to a great variety of crops (cocoa, peanuts, sesame, bananas, coffee, tobacco, etc.) and is capable of considerable development. Unfortunately, the population
is decimated by disease (typhus, tuberculosis, sleeping sickness), malnutrition, alcoholism, and the hardships of human porterage. Mineral and livestock-raising possibilities are not lacking (tin, gold, silver, titanium), but Cameroon’s greatest wealth remains its forest, which covers about 18 million hectares and yields valuable timber and oil palms. Communications are scarce (508 km. of railways) and difficult; the French Cameroon, however, possesses the fine natural port of Douala. Yaoundé (25,000 inhabitants) and Buea (3,000 inhabitants) are the administrative centers of the French and British zones, respectively.
Missions in Cameroon. – Before the Catholics, Protestant missionaries penetrated the present-day Cameroon region around the middle of the last century. Catholics arrived, one might say, with German colonization, after which the entire territory of the colony was erected into an Apostolic Prefecture of the same name (1890), entrusted to the German Pallottines, and later raised to a Vicariate (1904).
Missionary activity first extended to the coastal region and then to the interior, with the result that in 1913—one year before the outbreak of the European war—the mission counted 28,469 Catholics and 17,650 catechumens distributed across 14 main stations and served by 34 priests, 36 brothers, 29 sisters, and 223 catechists. Educational work was highly developed (200 schools with 20,000 pupils), as was written propaganda (catechisms, prayer books, linguistic studies) and agricultural and economic labor. In 1907, the apostolic experience of those years was codified in the norms of a Synod. Shortly before the war (1912), the eastern interior portion (New Cameroon) was detached from the Vicariate to form the Apostolic Prefecture of Adamawa, entrusted to the priests of the Sacred Heart, while the region of Butiko in the south was assigned to the German Fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. The war also reached Cameroon, and the mission suffered the destruction of churches and stations, the deportation of several missionaries to England, and the imprisonment of others. The missions in the French zone passed to French Fathers of the Holy Spirit, while those in the British zone went to the Fathers of the Mill Hill Institute. At present, the missions of Cameroon are as follows: Douala (v.), Yaoundé (v.), Foumban (v.), Garoua (v.) in French Cameroon, Buea (v.) in British Cameroon, with a Catholic population approaching half a million.