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Jean Joseph Atangana Biography & Facts

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 Europeans 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, he has been the subject of renewed attention by Cameroonian scholars. Early life Atangana was born sometime between 1876 and 1885 in Mvolyé, a small village in what is today Yaoundé, Cameroon. His parents gave him the drum name "He who is known by the nations". He was the eleventh of twelve children born to Essomba Atangana, a headman of the Mvog Atemenge sublineage of the Ewondo ethnic group. Essomba Atangana was one of thousands of minor Beti leaders living between the Sanaga and Nyong rivers, each charged with providing for his compound and the extended family and slaves who lived there. His father died when Ntsama Atangana was about six years old. 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. Ewondo who learned were highly favoured in the early days of the colonial regime. Station commander Hans Dominik sent four such individuals to attend the mission school of the German Pallottine Fathers in Kribi, a settlement on the coast. There, Atangana learned German language, history, and geography; mathematics; and Roman Catholicism. Father Heinrich Vieter especially liked the boy, and Atangana became the first Ewondo baptised a Roman Catholic; he took the Christian name Karl. Atangana's schooling had just ended when members of the Bulu ethnic group, one closely related to the Ewondo, invaded Kribi and sacked the school and church in 1899. Atangana waited out the revolt in Douala with the Fathers until the colonial militia defeated the rebels the following year. Early career In August 1900, the commander of German forces at Victoria (present-day Limbe) appointed Atangana interpreter for 500 Bulu hostages, who were being pressed into labour. Atangana kept the post for six months and took up extra duties as a nurse. The colonisers next sent Atangana to Buea to work as an office clerk. At some point between the end of his schooling in Kribi and the end of his service in Victoria, Atangana met Marie Biloa, a woman from a village called Mekumba. Although she was a little older and living as a kept woman by a German functionary, Atangana married her. She would eventually bear him two children: Jean Ndengue and Katerina (or Catherine) Edzimbi. Atangana was a devout Christian, and he supported the church throughout his life with land and gifts. He opposed popular Beti syncretist practices, and he was an opponent of an Ewondo initiation rite called the Sso; his efforts led to its eventual eradication from Beti society. In 1901 he secured land for the Pallottine Fathers to build a mission in Jaunde, thus opening East and South Kamerun to Catholic proselytisation. Nevertheless, Atangana supported traditional Ewondo customs on marriage. On widows, he said,My colleagues and I . . . can only reply in demanding the upholding of custom, which requires the widow to be the property of the heir until her liberation, which can only take effect after the return of her bridewealth. She must remain with him as long as this return is not made. Early in 1902, the colonial government appointed him their representative to the Ewondo people, and interpreter and clerk for the Germans posted in Jaunde. He was tasked with organising a census and tax collection system. He chose 300 headmen to be tax collectors, of whom the Germans approved 233. Atangana negotiated a cut of 5% for the collectors, much to their delight. Hans Dominik became the Jaunde post commander in 1904. For the next six years, Atangana accompanied him on at least fifteen administrative patrols and probative excursions. Atangana proved an astute diplomat, in one case negotiating with a group of rebellious Manguissa and thus averting a confrontation between the tribesmen and the Germans. Atangana helped open posts in such wide-ranging places as Bafia, Abong-Mbang, Mouloudou, Ngaoundéré, Garoua, and Maroua. The Germans largely kept themselves segregated from their African subjects, but Dominik and Atangana defied these standards and grew close, even dining together in the same tent on occasion. Back in Jaunde, Atangana gained responsibilities valued by the regime, such as overseeing a poll tax in October 1908. In 1907, members of the Mvog Ada sublineage revolted against the colonial government over Atangana's appointment as their official interpreter. The plot included a conspiracy to poison Atangana, but word leaked to him. He informed his masters, and on 11 April, six plotters were put to death and two others imprisoned. Dominik died on 16 November 1910. That same year, Atangana returned to Jaunde and received an administrative post, perhaps as h.... Discover the Jean Joseph Atangana popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jean Joseph Atangana books.