![Duala ethnic groups](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Duala_ethnic_groups.png)
Bimbia was an independent state of the
Isubu people
The Isubu (Isuwu, Bimbians) are a Bantu ethnic group who inhabit part of the coast of Cameroon. Along with other coastal peoples, they belong to Cameroon's Sawa ethnic groups. They were one of the earliest Cameroonian peoples to make contact wit ...
of
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...
. In 1884, it was annexed by the Germans and incorporated in the colony of
Kamerun
Kamerun was an African colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1916 in the region of today's Republic of Cameroon. Kamerun also included northern parts of Gabon and the Congo with western parts of the Central African Republic, southwestern p ...
.
It lies in
Southwest Region, to the south of
Mount Cameroon
Mount Cameroon is an active volcano in the South West region of Cameroon next to the city of Buea near the Gulf of Guinea. Mount Cameroon is also known as Cameroon Mountain or Fako (the name of the higher of its two peaks) or by its indigenous n ...
and to the west of the
Wouri estuary. Is situated at the East coast of the
Limbé sub-division.
Bimbia consists of three villages:
*
Dikolo
*
Bona Ngombe
*
Bona Bille
In 1932, the population of Bimbia was about 2500 peoples.
Bimbia was the first place white men, the Jamaican and English Baptist missionaries led by
Rev. Alfred Saker set foot on the Cameroon shores in 1858, from
Fernando Po. There, he built the first school and first Church. Later, he went to
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
where he built the Ebenezer Baptist Church. The Bimbia man was the first person to go to Saker's school and the first to become Christian.
History
Origins
The predominant Isubu
oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...
holds that the ethnic group hails from
Mboko, the area southwest of
Mount Cameroon
Mount Cameroon is an active volcano in the South West region of Cameroon next to the city of Buea near the Gulf of Guinea. Mount Cameroon is also known as Cameroon Mountain or Fako (the name of the higher of its two peaks) or by its indigenous n ...
.
Tradition makes them the descendants of
Isuwu na Monanga
The Isubu (Isuwu, Bimbians) are a Bantu peoples, Bantu ethnic group who inhabit part of the coast of Cameroon. Along with other coastal peoples, they belong to Cameroon's Sawa (ethnic group), Sawa ethnic groups. They were one of the earliest Came ...
, who led their migration to the west bank of the
Wouri estuary. When a descendant of Isuwu named
Mbimbi became king, the people began to refer to their territories as Bimbia.
Early European contacts
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
traders reached the Wouri estuary in 1472. Over the next few decades, more Europeans came to explore the estuary and the rivers that feed it, and to establish
trading post
A trading post, trading station, or trading house, also known as a factory, is an establishment or settlement where goods and services could be traded.
Typically the location of the trading post would allow people from one geographic area to tr ...
s. The Isubu carved out a role for themselves as middlemen, trading
ivory
Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mammals is ...
,
kola nut
The term kola nut usually refers to the seeds of certain species of plant of the genus ''Cola'', placed formerly in the cocoa family Sterculiaceae and now usually subsumed in the mallow family Malvaceae (as subfamily Sterculioideae). These cola ...
s, and
peppers
Pepper or peppers may refer to:
Food and spice
* Piperaceae or the pepper family, a large family of flowering plant
** Black pepper
* ''Capsicum'' or pepper, a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family Solanaceae
** Bell pepper
** Chili ...
from the interior. However, a major commodity was
slaves
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
, most bound for
plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
s on nearby islands such as
Annobón
Annobón ( es, Provincia de Annobón; pt, Ano-Bom), and formerly as ''Anno Bom'' and ''Annabona'', is a province (smallest province in both area and population) of Equatorial Guinea consisting of the island of Annobón, formerly also Pigalu a ...
,
Fernando Po,
Príncipe
Príncipe is the smaller, northern major island of the country of São Tomé and Príncipe lying off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea. It has an area of (including offshore islets) and a population of 7,324 at the 2012 Census; , and
São Tomé
São Tomé is the capital and largest city of the Central African island country of São Tomé and Príncipe. Its name is Portuguese for " Saint Thomas". Founded in the 15th century, it is one of Africa's oldest colonial cities.
History
Álva ...
.
Some Bimbia legend grants Ekum’a Makundu, a former
Dikolo chief, to have said that "it was when
Alfred Saker
Alfred Saker (21 July 1814 in Wrotham, Kent – 12 March 1880 in Peckham) was a British missionary of the London Baptist Missionary Society. In 1858 he led a Baptist Mission that relocated from the then Spanish island of Fernando Po and landed ...
came with his Christian religion we stopped the slave trading. The Bimbia used to catch some non natives and sell them as slaves to the Spanish ships that came to Bimbia but never landed because they were afraid of the natives whom they termed “savages” ". Ekum’a Makundu used to be a pirate and fought the Spanish people for their properties. The Spanish people got furious and decided to bomb
Dikolo - Bimbia. When the information reached the locals, they made visible peace signal; when the Spaniards came back, some indigenes went to the sea to meet them and make a peace pact and promised never to worry them again.
By the 16th century, the Isubu were second only to the
Duala in trade. The earliest Isubu merchants were likely
tribal chief
A tribal chief or chieftain is the leader of a tribal society or chiefdom.
Tribe
The concept of tribe is a broadly applied concept, based on tribal concepts of societies of western Afroeurasia.
Tribal societies are sometimes categorized as ...
s or headmen.
Bimbia, the primary Isubu settlement, grew quickly.
Europeans traders did their best to support friendly chiefs against their rivals, adulating them with titles such as ''King'', ''Prince'', or ''Chief''. In exchange, these indigenes offered trade
monopolies
A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a speci ...
to their patrons and sometimes ceded land. An Isubu chief named
Bile
Bile (from Latin ''bilis''), or gall, is a dark-green-to-yellowish-brown fluid produced by the liver of most vertebrates that aids the digestion of lipids in the small intestine. In humans, bile is produced continuously by the liver (liver bile ...
became leader of the Isubu as King William, although
Dick Merchant
Dick, Dicks, or Dick's may refer to:
Media
* ''Dicks'' (album), a 2004 album by Fila Brazillia
* Dicks (band), a musical group
* ''Dick'' (film), a 1999 American comedy film
* "Dick" (song), a 2019 song by Starboi3 featuring Doja Cat
Names
...
of
Dikolo village and other chiefs eventually opposed his dominance.
British influence
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
traders became the dominant European presence in the region by the mid-19th century, and the Crown used them to enforce
abolition of the
slave trade
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
in the
Gulf of Guinea
The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean from Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian (zero degrees latitude and longitude) is in the ...
. In 1844 and 1848, King William signed anti-slavery treaties. In exchange, the traders provided him with annual gifts of alcohol, guns, textiles, and other goods.
William was also asked to forbid practices the British viewed as barbaric, such as
sacrificing
Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly ex ...
a chief's wife upon his death.
With William's blessing, Bimbia became a haven for repatriated slaves and escapees from the illicit trade, which continued for many more years.
The British also endeavored to educate and Christianise the Bimbians.
King William rebuffed the earliest
missionaries
A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...
because he did not agree with their insistence on prayer and opposition to
polygamy
Crimes
Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is married ...
. In 1844, however,
Joseph Merrick
Joseph Carey Merrick (5 August 1862 – 11 April 1890), often erroneously called John Merrick, was an English man known for having severe deformities. He was first exhibited at a freak show under the stage name "the Elephant Man" and then wen ...
convinced William to let him open a church and school in Bimbia.
In 1858, the Spanish ousted Protestant missionaries from their base at Fernando Po. King William sold a portion of his domains to the missionary
Alfred Saker
Alfred Saker (21 July 1814 in Wrotham, Kent – 12 March 1880 in Peckham) was a British missionary of the London Baptist Missionary Society. In 1858 he led a Baptist Mission that relocated from the then Spanish island of Fernando Po and landed ...
, who then founded Victoria (today known as
Limbe). By 1875, numerous missions and schools sprung up in Victoria and other settlements. Victoria came to be a mixture of freed slaves, working Cameroonians, and Christianised Cameroonians from the various coastal groups.
Cameroonian Pidgin English
Cameroonian Pidgin English, or Cameroonian Creole ( wes, Wes Cos, from West Coast), is a language variety of Cameroon. It is also known as Kamtok (from 'Cameroon-talk'). It is primarily spoken in the North West and South West English speaking re ...
began to develop at this time.
Isubu society was changed fundamentally by the European
trade
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...
. European goods became
status symbol
A status symbol is a visible, external symbol of one's social position, an indicator of economic or social status. Many luxury goods are often considered status symbols. ''Status symbol'' is also a sociological term – as part of social and soci ...
s, and some rulers appointed Western traders and missionaries as advisors. Large numbers of Isubu grew wealthy, leading to rising class tensions. Competition escalated between coastal groups and even between related settlements. Between 1855 and 1879, the Isubu alone engaged in at least four conflicts, both internal and with rival ethnic groups. Traders exploited this atmosphere, and beginning in 1860, German, French, and Spanish merchants had established contacts and weakened the British monopoly. The Duala had gained a virtual hegemony over trade through the Wouri estuary, and the Isubu had little power left.
Young King William was virtually powerless when he succeeded his father in 1878.
Treaties
On 17 February 1844, King
William I of Bimbia
William I of Bimbia, born Bile, was the chief and king of the Isubu ethnic group, who lived in Bimbia on the coast of Cameroon in the mid-to-late 19th century. British traders recognised the sovereignty of William's Bimbia and titled him "king". ...
and the chiefs of Bimbia concluded a treaty with Lieutenant Edward Charles Earl, commander of the English brig ''Rapid'' in which the slave trade was prohibited in exchange for goods worth $1,200, and free trade was guaranteed.
On 19 December 1850, a further treaty with Thomas Rodney Eden, captain of the ''Amphitrite'', regulated trade terms, covering subjects such as payment of "comey", a customary fee paid by trading vessels to chiefs in exchange for permission to trade.
On 7 February 1855, the British Acting Consul, J.W.B. Lynslager, witnessed an engagement in which the chiefs of the Boobee (
Bubi
BuBi (officially: MOL BuBi) is a bicycle sharing network in Budapest, Hungary. Its name is a playful contraction Budapest and Bicikli (bicycle in Hungarian), meaning "bubble" in an endearing manner. As of May 2019 the network consists of 143 dock ...
) Islands, adjacent to the Amboise (
Ambas) Islands, settled the recent dispute and acknowledged King William of Bimbia's authority.
Artifact.JPG, Slavery Artifacts
Prison pour esclaves récalcitrants à Bimbia.jpg, Prison for recalcitrant slaves
File:Bimbia Slave Port.jpg, Bimbia Slave Port
German protectorate
A German protectorate over the Cameroons was declared on 12 July 1884.
In a communication of 15 October 1884 the German Government described the territories included in the protectorate, which included Bimbia.
Economic activities
Fishing and Farming
The Bimbia are mostly fishermen.
In the thirties, the fishing industry was flourishing. Fishing is a communal labour as it was not possible for one man to be able to set up his fishing equipment. Therefore, the men of the village came together and made the equipment of one person then went to the other.
Technics
The Bimbia man fishes in many different ways namely:
Ndemba,
Ngoto,
Mbunja,
Efese
and
Moleke.
The women are
yam planters. People come to buy
benyanya, smoked
njanga, smoked
mwanjamoto and other fish. Women come from chop farm with raw food to exchange for fish and bring things like
accra banana,
groundnuts and
koki beans.
The women dry all the fish, sell it or battler for household needs. During the dry season, the men go to sea in the night. The women work until morning on the
efefe to sort out the fish in their different species, put on very big baskets called ‘ndenge’ and start drying them on the ‘wokas’. Woka is a stab make of
bamboos
Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, ...
from the
palm tree
The Arecaceae is a family of perennial flowering plants in the monocot order Arecales. Their growth form can be climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants, all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm trees ...
. Then carry the wokas to the ‘etaka’ or bandas where a long fire is made to smoke the fish at night. The dried
benyanya is stored away to give way for other fish to be dried also. When the season for
meyo is over, the season for
mwanjamoto and crayfish (njanga) starts.
Women are, from the sale of fish, responsible for looking after of all the house needs such as soap, oil, salt, kerosene etc.
Men are responsible for the sale of the big
benyanya to pay school fees.
Chiefs
Dikolo has six quarters : Mbeng’a Liwoka, Bali, Wona Wonanya, Wona Ngowe, Wona
Mbimbi and Mabetefutu with their family heads and a traditional chief.
Bimbia chieftaincy stool does not rotate. It is in the same family for all generations.
* In
Dikolo the Ekum’a Makundu family have the chieftaincy and it is not contested for.
* In
Bona Ngombe the Musuka family have the chieftaincy.
* In
Bona Bille the Billa Lozenge family have the chieftaincy, the descendants of king
William of Bimbia.
References
Citations
Sources
*
*
*
*
{{coord, 3, 57, 14, N, 9, 14, 42, E, display=title
Populated places in Cameroon
Southwest Region (Cameroon)