|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
From Cameroon to Germany and Back via Moscow and Paris: The Career of Joseph Bilé (1892-1959) Exchange and Knowledge Transfer within Networks of Anti-Colonialism
| Panel |
70. Trading Places: Knowledge Production and Transfer between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa - the Missionary Context
|
| Paper ID | 355 |
| Author(s) |
Aitken, Robbie
|
| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
|
| Abstract | The proposed paper looks at some of the political activities of Cameroonians based in Germany during the late 1920s and early 1930s. In particular it focuses on the political career of Joseph Ekwe Bilé from Bonamikengue, Douala and the group the Liga zur Verteidigung der Negerrasse in Berlin. His biography demonstrates the importance of the German metropolitan setting in articulations of Duala, and by extension, Cameroonian anti-colonialism and nationalism. The metropolitan contact zone exposed members of the African Diaspora to the ideas of socialism and communism and the concepts of freedom and democracy as well as bringing them into contact with German political agents. Such contact often occurred in connection with the Communist International. In turn this influenced the form of, and gave a language to, their protest. Similarly, the metropolitan contact zone allowed for unique collaborations and exchanges amongst heterogeneous groups of Africans and colonized people who were otherwise geographically separated leading to the construction of transnational social and political support networks. Bilé in particular played a prominent role as an anti-colonial activist and representative of Cameroonian interests on the German political stage and within the wider transnational networks of African anti-colonialism and black internationalism. The paper will investigate the various intersecting levels of exchange and knowledge transfer within this transnational network of black internationalism as well as the transfer of ideas between the colony and the metropole. |
|