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A Colonial Demarcation Process. Investigating the Formation of the British-German Border between Nigeria and Cameroon

In 1903 a complaint by a British official about “leaking German-Cameroonian borders” (Weiss 2000: 168) reached Garoua, the centre of German colonial administration in German-Adamawa, Cameroon. More complaints from the British Protectorate of Nigeria followed but German officials rejected the accusations although they were aware of the ongoing slavery and cross-border slave trade (ibid.: 167–172). Why did the colonial border as a supposedly “civilising” means not stop the intra-African slave trade between the two colonies although both the German and British empires had justified their colonial intervention with abolitionist intentions?1 While there has been some research on the correlation of slavery and indirect rule in northern German-Cameroon (Midel 1990; Eckert 1999; Weiss 2000; Gottschalk 2017), the issue of the border’s formation has so far received little attention in this context. With a special focus on cartography this article seeks to analyse the demarcation process of the British-German border between Nigeria and Cameroon from 1884 to 1906. Due to practical constraints, the analysis is limited to the northernmost boundary section from Lake Chad in the north down to the city of Yola, which is located on the southern bank of Benue River in today’s Nigeria. This article asks by which factors and with what methods the border was imagined and fixed on maps and locally. With special attention to the slave trade that remained invisible on German maps the article suggests to further investigate the silence of maps as a powerful tool of cartography.

The Influence of Pre-Colonial Travel Reports on Colonial Policy

Gustav Nachtigal’s hoisting of the German Empire’s flag in Douala in 1884 marked the official beginning of the German “Protectorate of Cameroon” which remained under German rule until World War I. Except some parts in the coastal area and alongside nearby rivers, where trading companies like C. Woermann from Hamburg had established trading posts since the 1860s, large parts of the freshly claimed area were relatively unknown to the German officials. This applied particularly to the so-called Hinterland. In the case of Cameroon, Hinterland referred roughly to remote areas up to Benue River in the north-west and further north, as the first colonial expedition reports2 from the late 1880s indicate (Fossi 2023: 30–37). At this time the extreme north up to Lake Chad had been studied by European travelers, starting with Dixon Denham in 1824 and Heinrich Barth in the 1850s (fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Petermann’s map of the area south of Lake Chad from 1872, showing the routes of Dixon Denham (1824), Heinrich Barth (1851/54), Adolf Overweg (1852) and Gerhard Rohlfs (1866).
August Petermann: Specialkarte der Länder im Süden des Tsad-See’s, 1:800.000, in: Gerhard Rohlfs‘ Reise durch Nord-Afrika vom Mittelländischen Meere bis zum Busen von Guinea 1865 bis 1867. 2. Hälfte: Von Kuka nach Lagos (Bornu, Bautschi, Saria, Nupe, Yoruba), (Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen Ergänzungsheft 34), Gotha 1872, pl. 1. Link↗

Hence, the extreme north, including Adamawa, which then was an emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate, and also a part of the Kingdom of Bornu, was no terra nullius by the time of colonisation. Despite travel reports and large-scale maps, the geographic area north of Benue River as well as the variety of differing communities and systems of rule such as the Mandara Kingdom, Adamawa and Bornu and their political relations were known rather superficially by German officials (Midel 1990: 123, 196). Due to Barth’s misinterpretation of Denham’s journal and his false classification of Mandara as a minor mountain state, the Europeans perceived the Muslim Fulbe who ruled Adamawa as the most influential people that must be used by colonisers to rule the northern territories. Influenced by Barth’s and other travelers’ reports, Britain, France and Germany considered Adamawa as the most prosperous emirate, while at the same time underestimating Mandara’s power (Barkindo 1985: 31–33). It was only later to be realised that Adamawa’s wealth was mainly due to excessive slave trade and thus incompatible with the Europeans’ alleged plan to abolish slavery (Wirz 1972: 169).

Exploring, Administrating and Desiring Control in the Northern Territories

The boundary on the map was based on a fixed point at the coast that was connected with two other points further landwards. The point on the coast was believed to be the mouth of Rio del Rey, which was later found to be an estuary and not a river. This point was connected to a point at 9° 8’ E near Calabar River and around one year later another point further north was added where the city of Yola was believed to be located (Hermann 1907: 37f.). After Nachtigal’s claim in 1884, contracts with the British Empire were signed to define a boundary between the territories of the two colonial powers. In the same year the Berlin Conference solidified the territorial claims with its Principle of Effective Occupation. Considering the fact that the first Germans settled down in the fertile coastal area close to Mount Cameroon, the direction of this first step of the demarcation process – a line on a map from coast to inland – seems perspicuous. In contrast to the usual procedure of demarcation from coast to Hinterland, in the case of Cameroon the inland section of the border between Yola and Lake Chad was the first section of the border that was physically established on land. Following the narrative of the civilising mission, colonial enthusiasts promoted the border as a pacifying element that was necessary to restrain the “native semi-states”3 (Hermann 1907: 39) because the colonial empires were aware of the power of the Sokoto Caliphate and Bornu in the north. Hence the colonisers planned to “pacify” the dynamic political situation by occupying and limiting the northern area with their own border, although their hopes for mineral resources in the far north remained unfulfilled. This region turned out to be not profitable, but colonial enthusiasts knew how to disguise this fact. Fritz Bauer, leader of the German expedition to the Niger, Benue and Lake Chad, stated: “The treasures of northern Cameroon are called: Fertility and labour!”4 (Bauer 1904: 137). The lack of gold, silver and diamond deposits, Bauer argued euphemistically, enabled a promising future for the agricultural sector as soon as some arrangements would be made (Bauer 1904: 137).

Among those requirements was the control over people and land. And thereby another unfavourable factor from the colonists’ perspective became apparent. German-Cameroon, especially the north, had a lack of trained and persistent personnel. Sickness, furlough and frequent relocations of colonial officials caused difficulties in the already sparsely administrated north. To solve this problem, northern Cameroon was parted in two residencies that were managed through indirect rule by some Fulbe individuals who were believed by the Germans to be most powerful on a local level. As mentioned before, Barth’s former appraisal of the Fulbe as a major power in the region influenced this choice. Nevertheless, this plan did not go off without a hitch. Not every Fulbe the Germans chose had the needed reputation among the people he was supposed to control, especially when they were non-Fulbe or non-Muslim. Without an adequate understanding of the local conditions the Germans lacked control and entered into a relationship of dependence to bring the northern territories under control (Midel 1990: 133f., 141, 194–197). In terms of their supposed interest to end slavery this dependance and the deeply enrooted role of slavery on an economic and social level for the Fulbe in former Adamawa Emirate urged German officials to tolerate the ongoing slave trade (Weiß 2000: 151–155).

Mapping, Negotiating and Demarcating

The prerequisite for drawing a border on a map is the map itself. The creation of the map requires geographical knowledge that was based on Barth’s and other travellers’ sketches, itineraries and reports, and supplemented by the colonial Hinterland expeditions that were undertaken with economic or military intentions.5 As will be shown, the course of the border on maps and the creation of the border on site were mutually dependent.

The first section of the border was drawn around Yola in 1893. By the time the political situation in Adamawa was tensed by local disputes, the Emir of Yola, Zubayru (1890–1901), decided to open Yola for trade with the Europeans, hoping to get access to weapons and ammunition to secure his own power. The Europeans concluded contracts with Zubayru in 1893 (Midel 1990: 104–106). Consequently, being aware of the Emirate’s power, Britain and Germany separated Yola from the main part of Adamawa on their maps. This first border was visualized by a semi-circular line around Yola, up to Benue River, continuing straight from 10° N and 13° E to 14° E up to Lake Chad (fig. 2).

Fig. 2: The map of Fritz Bauer’s expedition depicting the early border (1893–1903).
Max Moisel: Deutsche Niger-Benue-Tschadsee-Expedition. Das Benue-Tschadsee-Gebiet mit dem Reiseweg von Garua bis zum Tschad und von Garua nach Kontscha (September 1902 – Juni 1903), 1:2.000.000, in: Fritz Bauer: Die Deutsche Niger-Benue-Tsadsee-Expedition 1902–1903, Berlin 1904. Gotha Research Library, SPK 40.15 A (12), fol. 13. Link↗

The shape of this borderline that was drawn on the map to divide the occupied areas of the two colonial powers changed after only ten years. In the meantime, more expeditions had been undertaken to gain more knowledge about and control over the territories that were to be demarcated. The new information about the course of rivers, data from trigonometric measurements and other observations determined the demarcation on site. In 1903, a British and a German border commission6 were sent out to take more measurements, compare them and agree on a borderline (fig. 3). In 1906 the commissions had decided on the final shape of the border that mainly followed the line that was drawn on maps in 1903, still including the semi-circle around Yola. The major change of the border was its shape which was transformed from a straight line to a curved one. Visually, the altered borderline made its way through the land almost like a river on a map.

Fig. 3: “Compared and found correct”, British and German representatives agreeing on the altered border (1906).
Section of: Nigeria Kamerun Boundary Commission Survey: Annex II (b) to the Agreement of March 19.1906, 1:250.000, Gotha Research Library, SPK 40.15 C (05), fol. 11. Link↗

Indeed, most of the border was formed by the centreline of rivers, like Yedzaram or “Jadseram” River. Following the concept of natural borders (see Ratzel 1903) the commissions agreed on hydrographic and orographic features to mark the borderline. As a result of the commissions’ agreement a contract was concluded. The contract, together with a map visualising the new border as a prominent red line, was published in Deutsches Kolonialblatt on 15 November 1906 (fig. 4). Not only did the contract explain the detailed course of the altered borderline, but it also stated how and under what conditions the boundary was supposed to be marked locally (Kolonial-Abteilung des Auswärtigen Amts 1906: 593–595).

Fig. 4: The Anglo-German border in 1906.
Anonymous: Kolonial-Abteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes: Übersichts-Karte zu dem deutsch-englischen Vertrage vom 16. Juli 1906 betreffend den Verlauf der Grenze zwischen Yola und dem Tschad. Nach der von M. Moisel in 1:250.000 bearbeiteten Originalkarte, 49,5 × 42,5 cm, 1:1.000.000, in: Deutsches Kolonialblatt 16 (1906), Gotha Research Library, Perthes Collection, SPK 40.15 B (07), fol. 20. Link↗

According to the 12th sub-item in the contract, the border was supposed to be marked in the presence of a German official and the local chiefs whose territories were affected. This addition indicates, first, the importance of local chiefs whose influence on the local populations was still higher than the German officials’, and second, that the local chiefs’ presence was necessary for the border to be acknowledged by locals. Following the contract’s description of marking the border with boundary posts at a maximum distance of 20 kilometers, if the boundary was not formed by a river, the border was invisible for those who did not know of its existence. In this context attention should be paid to locally and culturally varying understandings of rivers as spheres of connection.7 Regarding possible misconceptions it also should be added that the contract neither mentioned regulations for crossing the border, nor did it consider extreme weather conditions that could cause droughts or floods and change courses of the rivers that would affect the border’s course too.

Evaluating the Border’s Formation in Gotha (1907)

After the British-German border between Nigeria and Cameroon was established locally, its formation was evaluated in a six-page article in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen (PGM) that was accompanied by a comparative map. The map showed four equally sized single maps of the different stages of the north-western border in 1885/86, 1890, 1893 and 1906 (fig. 5). In the article the author R. Hermann8 distinguished the Cameroonian border as “a novelty in world history”.9

Fig. 5: A comparative map of the demarcation process in PGM (1907).
Carl Schmidt: Die Entwicklung der Nordgrenze von Kamerun, 37,5 × 30 cm, 1:6.000.000, in: PGM 53 (1907), pl. 3. Link↗

According to Hermann the formation of borders was an “element of European culture”,10 a consequence of nationalisation and a necessary symbol of power that was supposed to implant control and order. Hermann pursued an evolutionist approach assessing the development of borders. While the borders of the modern European nation states would embody the highest stage of development, “primitive” societies would have rather unspecific frontiers that would either be formed by deserts or forests, or not at all, being opaque and ambiguous. In his interim conclusion Hermann picks up the narrative of the civilising mission and states: “The German-British border has thus helped to accelerate a decades-long process of disintegration of intra-African state structures and brought it to a formal end”.11 Promoting the formation of the British-German border as a precise project that was based on cartography and scientific processes (and thus “objective”), Hermann emphasised the peaceful negotiations between British and German commissioners.

The Silence of the Map

While celebrating the demarcation as a colonial achievement, Hermann neither mentioned the violence and injustice towards the local peoples who lost their territories and faced suppression, nor did he describe the changes in social geography. Similarly, the maps that accompany Hermann’s article seem to keep silent about these issues by barely providing any information on the pre-colonial situation but Germanised toponyms. Instead, the maps in PGM and the map in Deutsches Kolonialblatt both construct a certain image in favour of the colonisers by leaving out specific knowledge.12 Both maps focus on the visualisation of the border, which is embedded in the topographic features that were of major significance in the final phase of demarcation. Besides its prominent red colour, the border seems to “naturally” blend into the landscape. Going beyond the mere development of the border, it can be observed that more localities were added on the maps over time due to growing knowledge that was gained during expeditions between the 1890s and 1906. At second glance, some towns, like Segero, disappeared after the border was fixed in its final shape. This brings us back to the initial complaint by the British official about the problem of “leaking borders”.

As was explained earlier, the border on site was made up by rivers and boundary poles with a distance of a few kilometres between them. Due to the administrative situation in the north, the border, which was barely recognisable for those who were not informed, was not guarded persistently. Regulations to cross the border were made only after receiving British complaints. In 1906, a license for travelling traders (Wandergewerbeschein) was introduced to gain better control of cross-border traffic, trade and taxation (Weiss 2000: 181). Not only traders but also Muslim pilgrims were accused of smuggling slaves when crossing the border. For the German officials it remained a challenge to investigate whether somebody was a trader or a pilgrim and crossed the border voluntarily or if they were slaves that were to be sold outside Cameroon (Gottschalk 2017: 235–239). In general, slavery did not seem to be a major concern for German officials and thus the border and its restrictions, that had not had any effective impact as the German officials had to admit in 1910, did not stop the persistent flow of slaves from German to British territory (Weiss 2000: 182, 196f.). Since an increase in crimes in the border area was documented by both administrations, it is suggested that the border itself benefited slave raids and slave trade because it divided jurisdictions. By crossing the border after committing a crime and entering another jurisdiction, criminal prosecution was legally more difficult. Because of the increase in crime, people fled the border area and some towns near the border became deserted (Barkindo 1985: 43; van Beek 2012: 312). It is not unlikely that this also applies to Segero. However, reconstructing the demarcation process of a colonial border by approaching critical cartography indicates how the power of maps was used to promote colonialism.

Related Posts

Sources

Bauer, Fritz: Die Deutsche Niger-Benue-Tsadsee-Expedition 1902–1903, Berlin 1904.

Hermann, R.: Die Nordwestgrenze von Kamerun. Ein Typus moderner Grenzentwicklung, in: Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 53 (1907), pp. 36–41.

Kolonial-Abteilung des Auswärtigen Amts: Grenzsetzung zwischen dem deutschen Gebiete Nordwest-Kamerun und dem britischen Gebiete Nigeria von Yola bis zum Tschad-See, in: Deutsches Kolonialblatt 17 (1906), pp. 593–595.

Ratzel, Friedrich: Politische Geographie. Oder die Geographie der Staaten, des Verkehres und des Krieges, München/Berlin 1903.

References and further reading

Barkindo, Bawuro M.: The Mandara astride the Nigeria-Cameroon Boundary, in: J. F. A. Ajayi, Michael Crowder (eds.), The History of West Africa: Volume Two, London 1974, pp. 57–92.

Eckert, Andreas: Slavery in Colonial Cameroon, 1880s to 1930s, in: Suzanne Miers, Martin Klein (eds.): Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa, London 1999, pp. 133–148.

Fossi, Richard Tsogang: „Cameroons“ wird deutsch. Geschichte einer manipulativen Wegnahme, in: Bénédicte Savoy et al. (eds.): Atlas der Abwesenheit. Kameruns Kulturerbe in Deutschland, Berlin 2023, pp. 30–43.

Gottschalk, Sebastian: Kolonialismus und Islam. Deutsche und britische Herrschaft in Westafrika (1900–1914), Berlin 2017.

Habermas, Rebekka, Alexandra Przyrembel (eds.): Von Käfern, Märkten und Menschen. Kolonialismus und Wissen in der Moderne, Göttingen 2013.

Harley, J. B., Paul Laxton (eds.): The New Nature of Maps. Essays in the History of Cartography, Baltimore 2002.

Huzzey, Richard: Freedom Burning. Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain, Ithaca 2012.

Midel, Monika: Fulbe und Deutsche in Adamaua (Nord-Kamerun) 1809–1916. Auswirkungen afrikanischer und kolonialer Eroberung, Frankfurt (Main) 1990.

Schürmann, Felix: Vom Kopf der Schlange bis zum Ende der Welt: Kartierungen verschwimmender Übergänge an der Kongo-Mündung, 1859–1887, in: id., Iris Schröder, Wolfgang Struck (eds.): Jenseits des Terrazentrismus. Kartographien der Meere und die Herausbildung der globalen Welt, Göttingen 2022, pp. 267–302.

Van Beek, W. E. A.: Intensive Slave Raiding in the Colonial Interstice: Hamman Yaji and the Mandara Mountains (North Cameroon and North-Eastern Nigeria), in: Journal of African History 53 (2012), pp. 301–323.

Weiss, Holger: The Illegal Trade in Slaves from German Northern Cameroon to British Northern Nigeria, in: African Economic History 28 (2000), pp. 141–197.

Wirz, Albert: Vom Sklavenhandel zum kolonialen Handel. Wirtschaftsräume und Wirtschaftsformen in Kamerun vor 1914, Zürich 1972.

  1. For further reading see Huzzey 2012. ↩︎
  2. Regarding the expeditions Fossi (2023: 38f.) points out the violence in this process of capture. Many expeditions were so-called “punitive expeditions” to punish the people who resisted the colonial power. ↩︎
  3. “Eingeborenen-Halbstaaten“. ↩︎
  4. “Die Schätze von Nord-Kamerun heissen: Fruchtbarkeit und Arbeitskraft!” ↩︎
  5. Regarding expeditions and the collection of knowledge, the role of local actors and their knowledge must be considered. For further reading see Habermas/Przyrembel 2013. In Bauer’s expedition report the role of locals is only subtly hinted at, e.g. when Bauer writes about food supply during his expedition (Bauer 1904: 9). ↩︎
  6. The commissions consisted of military officers and geographers. The British commission was led by Louis Jackson, the German one by Schutztruppenoffizier Hans Glauning, along with geographer Hugo Marquardsen and others. ↩︎
  7. For further reading on the meaning of watercourses as spheres of transition see Schürmann 2022: 276f. ↩︎
  8. On the list of contributors in PGM’s Geographischer Literatur-Bericht in the same issue (1907) a “Dr. Hermann” from Dachau near Munich is mentioned. Other than that, no information on the author is provided in PGM. ↩︎
  9. “Diese Art von Grenzbestimmung bedeutet ein Novum in der Weltgeschichte” (Hermann 1907: 38). ↩︎
  10. “Element europäischer Kultur” (Hermann 1907: 37). ↩︎
  11. “So hat die deutsch-britische Grenze einen jahrzehntelangen Zersetzungsprozeß der innerafrikanischen Staatengebilde beschleunigen helfen und zu einem formellen Ende gebracht” (Hermann 1907: 40). ↩︎
  12. See more on cartographic silence in Harley/Laxton 2002. ↩︎

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Nele Tschuschke (January 13, 2025). A Colonial Demarcation Process. Investigating the Formation of the British-German Border between Nigeria and Cameroon. Mapping Africa and Asia. Retrieved May 13, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/133j7


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