7. Spatio-physical Power and Social Control Strategies of the Colonial State in Africa: The Case of CDC Workers’ Camps in Cameroon

Abstract

Among the many indelible imprints of European colonialism on the landscape of African countries are company towns. Defined as settlements built, owned and operated by corporations or individual investors, company towns have been influential in countries undergoing rapid economic development. As an instrument of “economic pioneering”, these towns played a major role in opening up previously unexploited regions in Europe and North America from the eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. In Africa, these towns were built and used by colonial authorities not only to open up previously unexploited areas but also as instruments of power and social engineering. In the first instance, company towns, and especially workers’ camps, were employed to articulate the power of colonial authorities in built space. In the second instance, company towns and the concomitant lifestyle-change they engendered were used as a conduit for transmitting Eurocentric ideals of work and general conduct to the worker. Despite their presence as a conspicuous feature of the landscape, company towns remain a largely ignored topic in academic discourse in Cameroon and other erstwhile colonial states. Consequently, many questions about company towns are yet to be answered. What is their form and function in developing countries? In what ways did/do they contribute to the realization of colonial/postcolonial development goals? This chapter seeks to address these questions. In particular, it employs workers’ camps and company towns of the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) to show how such facilities were, and continue to serve as, tools of power and social control in a developing country.