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Reconsidering Patrimonialization in the Bamun Kingdom: Heritage, Image, and Politics from 1906 to the Present

Behind the photograph depicting the facade of the palace of the kings of Bamun in west Cameroon, reproduced at two-thirds of its real size, the Chicago Field Museum also presents a vitrine dedicated to the Palace Museum.1 The photograph is not a representation of the original structure created by King Njoya (ca. 1860–1933) in the 1920s, or of the later building established at the palace entrance by his heir King Njimoluh (r. 1933–1992), but rather it encapsulates the fourth version produced by a Swiss expert during palace repair works in 1985 (Bosserdet 1985). Another restructuring was carried out in 1996 and the latest, involving the construction of a new museum, is ongoing.2 The Field Museum vitrine is therefore obsolete and has always been incomplete. It does, however, acknowledge the existence of an endogenous patrimonial process, presenting objects presumed representative of it, namely masks, a portrait of King Mbuembue (r. first half of the nineteenth century), objects associated with King Njoya, manuscripts in Bamun script, and products of the encounter with the European world. As artificial as it may seem, this mise en abyme of an “African” museum in a “Western” museum is therefore significant. In the mid-1920s, there already existed a museumlike institution in the royal palace founded by King Njoya following the dismantling of his kingdom by the French colonial administration. Unique in Cameroon and Central Africa, this display, which corresponded more to an exhibition of dynastic legitimacy and of a “royal treasury” than a museum per se, responded primarily to a local political agenda. In fact, the stakes of controlling regalia pitted the palace museum against the collection put together by the King’s cousin, Mosé Yeyap (ca. 1875–1941), a Christianized interpreter at the local colonial post. While this context of increasing political tensions was central to the creation of the royal museum, its importance also resided in the crystallization of multiple parallel patrimonialization processes, which characterized the emergence of a “Bamun modernity” between 1895 and 1933, during the long reign of King Njimoluh, and up to the present. These processes derive from the existence of Bamun script and historiography; the large-scale circulation of photographs and printed materials; means of self-representation; the continuous presence from the end of the nineteenth century of external third parties, namely Muslim proselytes, Protestant missionaries, colonial administrators, researchers, and even internal opponents who stimulated creations or reactions; and the personality of protagonists, specifically that of King Njoya. The reciprocal influence of the diverse actors and vectors must be viewed in a synchronic manner in order to bring out the contiguous and often antagonistic patrimonial arenas and, consequently, the modalities of articulating politics and patrimony in the Bamun kingdom.