Charles Atangana

Charles Atangana (c. 1880 – 1 September 1943), also known by his birth name, Ntsama, and his German name, Karl, was the paramount chief of the Ewondo and Bane ethnic groups during much of the colonial period in Cameroon. Although from an unremarkable background, Atangana's loyalty and friendship with colonial priests and administrators secured him successively more prominent posts in the colonial government. He proved himself an intelligent and diplomatic administrator and an eager collaborator, and he was eventually named paramount chief of two Beti-Pahuin subgroups, the Ewondo and Bane peoples. His loyalty and acquiescence to the German Empire was unquestioning, and he even accompanied the Germans on their escape from Africa in World War I.

After a brief stay in Europe, Atangana returned to his homeland in Cameroon, which by then was a League of Nations mandate territory under the administration of the French Third Republic. The French doubted his loyalties at first, but Atangana served them with the same ardour he had shown the Germans and regained his post as paramount chief. During the remainder of his life, he oversaw the Westernisation of his subjects and the improvement of his domains despite the erosion of his powers due to French policies and unrest among his people. He never advocated resistance to the European powers, preferring to embrace the European as a means of personal enrichment and in the service of African interests. After his death in 1943, Atangana was largely forgotten. However, since Cameroon's independence in 1960, Cameroonian scholars have rediscovered his story.

Little is known about Atangana's childhood. Like other Beti boys, he would have learned to fish, hunt, and trap, and would have memorised his family's genealogy and folk wisdom. Explorers from the German Empire appeared near his village in 1887 in search of a direct route to the ivory trade in the savannas to the north. They had claimed Beti lands as part of their Kamerun colony in 1884, and by February 1889 they had established a permanent base in the area, which they named Jaunde after the local people. The Ewondo opposed the foreigners at first, although Atangana was probably not yet old enough to participate in the fighting. After the defeat of Omgba Bissogo in 1895 and others like it, Ewondo resistance waned. The Germans randomly appointed chiefs and mayors to serve under them, and took local youths to perform menial tasks; Atangana was among them, sent by his uncle to be a houseboy.

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