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

At a Glance

Metadata	Details
Publication Date	2016-05-04
Journal	African Arts
Authors	Alexandra Galitzine‐Loumpet
Institutions	Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université de Yaoundé I
Citations	3

Abstract

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.The existence of patrimonial processes seems to be integrated into a social organization founded on the capitalization of borrowings. From the founding of the kingdom, probably in the seventeenth century, a desire for autonomy from his homeland led the first king to use the language and elements of the rituals of conquered peoples. This policy of incorporating captured peoples, rituals, and later artistic techniques continued beyond the arrival of the first Europeans in July 1902. Fundamental in maintaining political prominence in the cultural region called the Grassfields, the politics of incorporation required a balance between processes of innovation and stabilization, both of which fall within the powers of the king, in modified forms, up to the present. As a result, patrimonial processes were closely linked to power wielding at various levels, and the power-patrimony paradigm was continuously reconfigured.Principle of heritage: from ruin to patrimony. The continuity of the power-patrimony paradigm is portrayed in the methods of transmitting and inheriting titles as property. The referent is the method of dynastic transmission, reproduced in lineages and families (Tardits 1980, Wasaki 1992). The new king “ascends to the throne of Nshare Yen,” founder of the dynasty, as the heir of an office that incarnates his forefathers. With each enthronement, the ruler reaches back multiple generations, re-entrenching an ancestral figure in the present. In assuming this statutory and symbolic heritage, the heir also receives objects related to lineage and rank—that is, both the property belonging to the private family sphere and a right to insignia of external representation or public attributes such as the machete, spear, cap, and royal blue and white ntieya fabric. Between these two spheres are found objects specific to enthronement, given by the king to his son in the palace, which include specific durable insignia such as a single brass bell called a süre and, since since the early twentieth century, a long Islamic robe called a gandoura, as well as an organic object, a red turaco feather generally kept in the house of a maternal uncle. Transmission is thus ensured through internal and related measures, besides lineage.The importance attached to maintaining patrilineal transmission underlies the conception of patrimony. As underscored by Germain Loumpet (forthcoming), the terms associated with patrimony are related to the notion of m’fom. Depending on the word stress, this monosyllabic word has the following meanings:A sacred place where the prince (nji) goes in circumstances that threaten the very existence of the lineage, to which access is otherwise forbidden under pain of a curse and death, the cemetery of lineage heads (m’fom) is also a place of conservation par excellence, where objects can be kept in greater safety than anywhere else.4 The major patrimonialization paradigm is therefore a conception based on the dread of discontinuity and of rupture, but also on the demarcation of sacred places. While the existence of ruins evokes a curse (ndon), the Bamun nevertheless respect ruins as a place where something had existed and continues to maintain a presence. From this standpoint, the same ambivalent word designates both the patrimony of a lineage and its possible absence, its material (cemetery) and immaterial (lineage transmission) aspects.It is therefore possible to consider the need for lineages, as with the palace, to continuously maintain and add on a level both symbolic and actual. The value of patrimony stems from the capacity to incorporate additional elements taken or borrowed from others. The distinct notion of collective patrimony must thus be underscored, not because it was absent from the transmission of royal power and its function of invoking dynastic continuity, but because it supposes an external conception imposed on internal and local usages.A translation process: iconography and script. Preceding the arrival of Europeans by several decades, the first major documented transformation of Bamun society is linked to the introduction of Islam. The presence of Hausa traders from the 1860s, followed in approximately 1894 by Fulani cavalry from Banyo during the civil war of Gbetnkom Ndombouo, popularized the dissemination of copies of the Qu’ran and the wearing of long robes. Islam and its material culture appeared then as the vectors of a new political power, and it is probably this point that interested the young King Njoya when he invented the first version of the Bamun script around 1895.In several accounts, Bamun script is a medium of conservation and patrimonialization. Not only did it enable the emergence, between 1906-1910, of an official royal historiography, drafted in later cursive versions of the writing, as well as counternarratives from persons opposed to the king, but its very first ideographic version, lewa, also acted to conserve iconographic signifiers transformed by the revealed religions. The most vivid example is perhaps that of the stylized spider, the meaning of which, imposed by Islam and later by craftsmen, is “work.” The original meaning, however, is “wisdom” or “truth,” in line with the creature’s divinatory function. The trapdoor spider is the messenger of the ancestors that also delivers their message by dreams assimilated to spider webs. More generally, a semiological analysis of lewa shows the predominance of square and rectangular signs for designating space and triangular signs for social status. Ontological signs are circular, while radiating signs indicate periodicity and duration. Lastly, the sign of the king, mfon, combines space (a square), with status and position (a diamond terminating in circles) (Fig. 1). This ideographic system therefore recalls the more ancient iconographic one and is found both in the form of the throne (a round chair on a square base) and on the map of the kingdom (Galitzine-Loumpet 2011b). Moreover, the more ancient iconographic system as well as lewa functions, with nuances, at the level of the micro-states throughout the region called the Grassfields.King Njoya and his entourage were certainly not aware of the double patrimonial function with which the lewa signs were a posteriori invested, no more than we can fathom the local evidence of iconographic readings. The means of transition from one system of graphic communication to another, however, highlights the importance attached to the notion of permanence and reincorporation, the functionality of iconographic signs being transferred to the ideograms of a version of writing that was itself evolving. Seven versions were ultimately required, the latest dating to 1910, for the Bamun script to be able to serve a wide variety of purposes, including historiography, etiquette and palace administration, accounting, pharmacopoeia, and various narratives.The arrival of the Germans on July 6, 1902, further transformed the perception of objects by introducing new regimes of value. These involved a distancing, as attested to by various events, photographs, and letters. Several periods can thus be distinguished, which are not exclusively chronological. The first period (ca. 1902-1920), itself divided into many stages, is that of the encounter and gradual matching between various patrimonial processes. It corresponds to the emergence of a market and can hardly be discussed without mentioning the growing influence of the photographic medium. It ended with the reassertion of royal power for a short period corresponding to World War I. The second era (ca. 1924-1940) is that of the emancipation of the category of “Bamun art.” Patrimony became a field of direct confrontation. For King Njoya, it was a period of relinquishment in favor of new actors and patrimonial media. Finally, the last period, which appeared in the mid-1940s and continues until the present under renewed forms, is marked by the patrimonialization of the early actors, principally King Njoya himself. I will come back to these different phases and also underscore the introduction of new vectors of patrimonialization, namely photography and drawings.The photographic medium and the art market: the skull, the throne, and European appreciation. Major political and symbolic events explain the introduction of new patrimonial paradigms between 1906 and 1910. The first patrimonialization process is linked to the restitution of the skull of King Nsangu (r. ca. 1865-1885), King Njoya’s father, during the joint German-Bamun expedition against the neighbouring Banso Kingdom in 1906. This episode was crucial for a young, contested king and also corresponds with the beginning of his great historiographical work entitled “Book of Past Things and Wars among the Bamun” (Nda lewa nga pamom pua pit). The return of the skull opened a field of reciprocity and recognition between the Germans and the Bamun within which objects were immediately integrated. This exchange was at first political, as part of the old game of alliances between peers. An example is the effigy statue offered to the German authorities at the death in 1908 of Captain Glauning, a friend of the king who was very closely involved in the acquisition of objects for the Museum of Berlin (Geary 1994:25, 2011:49-55). These exchanges were thereafter rapidly monetarized. King Njoya became the authority over a new value of objects which he could transfer, keep, or try to monetize beyond the normal circles within which objects were disseminated.A posteriori, the most outstanding episode of the ongoing transformations is undoubtedly King Njoya’s visit to Buea in 1908. The main intent of this journey was to present the German governor with a promised copy of the Bamun throne. The copy of the throne was not completed on time. It was the throne of his father, King Nsangu, that King Njoya reluctantly removed from the palace premises, then from the fortified town of Fumban, and beyond the Noun border river—a journey that crossed various fundamental concentric thresholds in the conception of the pureness of the kingdom. It was the throne of the king of the Bamun, still recognized by small neighboring kingdoms; but it was already considered as an object, a gift intended for Emperor Wilhem II, when King Njoya posed in front of the throne while wearing a pseudo-German uniform, his transformation a metaphor for that of the object. In Buea, the royal present became a trophy for the Governor, and it took at least two decades for the throne to finally be exhibited as a masterpiece of African art (Galitzine-Loumpet 2008, Oberhofer 2012:36). Initially, the radical metamorphosis was considered a misunderstanding, as King Njoya did not receive the tokens of gratitude he expected, such as European horses, guns, and clothing. One can imagine the effect produced by this separation through the continuous production, to date, of Bamun counternarrations. King Njoya’s transformation of disappointment into the mastery of new European techniques (Njoya 1952:135) was matched by popular explanations of a Bamun ruse, maintaining that the “real” throne was in Fumban.The introduction of this distinction in use constituted an important new element which paved the way for the liberalization of the royal rights to materials and motifs through reforms initiated by King Njoya between 1910-1920 in the areas of the rights of ownership and sale. Henceforth, many materials, patterns, and articles of clothing were usable by or accessible to the most affluent, irrespective of their rank. A Bamun art market was being gradually established under the control of the king, but with the support of a new vector, namely photography.The photographic medium. The value of objects was mostly contingent upon the dissemination of German photographs of objects. The photographic plates were developed on the spot and immediately became part of a system of gift-giving and prestige property, raising great interest on the part of the royal family (Geary 1988:37).The objective and future of photographs were therefore various and, at times, oppositional depending on whether they were taken by Europeans or Bamun. The codes of representation and technical know-how were European, however; Christraud Geary mentions the dissemination of ethnographic conventions through a number of colonial-era pictures (1988:34). While close-ups and frontal portraits of individuals dominated the often intimate photographs taken by the Swiss missionary Anna Wuhrmann, who had particularly friendly relations with the king, other authors preferred more open shots comprising architectural objects and elements aimed at documenting the Bamun Kingdom. This external approach for a long time influenced the relationship between the Bamun people and their photographed image. Having quickly realized the symbolic and political importance of photographs, King Njoya, as early as 1912, arranged his own pictures taken with his various wives, the most famous being the head-and-shoulder pictures of himself and Queen Ndayie, both wearing partially European garb and in unusual poses.5 Other photographs of the same series are conserved in King Njimoluh’s office in the royal palace. These images are related to a series of portraits of queens largely with bare chests.6 Were these photographs of the same period and personally selected by the king? It is likely. These pictures of the palace highlight the existence of parallel standards and call into question the dominant canons.What should be noted here is the influence of photographs on the development of an art market. This patrimonialization through photographs was somehow doubled ten years later with the arrival of French colonial military, and later civilian authorities, who the Germans and the in In the French “Bamun and an market that was already a number of In an thus documented the various and the objects produced by the Bamun (Fig. In to this interest in “Bamun from documenting the growing between King Njoya and the French colonial World War I. The years which to the of the the in of the Swiss missionaries, the of the of the and the in of the French marked the reassertion of royal power as well as a of the political and patrimonial of the Bamun a of the political King Njoya also to his position These years were marked by major aimed at royal and the in of the the of a map of the kingdom beginning in followed by one of the of the royal for Bamun writing through the of Bamun and the of construction work on the new palace in marked a first the of the missionary imposed further the Christianized from royal and Mosé Yeyap as a and interpreter at the colonial post. for events, the context of this can only be within a namely the of two in Bamun script in the the German in In a later was very when he that were and writing that was the and to to enable to the of the (Njoya and In fact, these two belonging to a version of the Bamun of the and an of the nineteenth century war with were a of the official at the palace more the of the royal to This to the from King Njoya and the palace from the processes of and The liberalization of the of objects in the opened a new space still under the control of the to “Bamun objects mostly produced for European and in a of objects by the in King Njoya could still a portrait of King Moreover, to its linked to Bamun and not to a specific this that took place right within the art of the influence of Mosé The that took place at the end of the from the of the political and its In led to the of the to on the Njoya (ca. an and In the royal were the use of Bamun script and the for in Bamun script In was as a to up the Bamun kingdom. under house in his palace and later at his to the in the were and his political power among several The same and and created a from the palace, the colonial post. As can be these the of royal which did not art from influence of Mosé Yeyap in the that led to the and death of King Njoya seems in Bamun, and he a central position in the colonial and was the only one who the is, however, the of the transformations that took place during this period to the between two and of the context which The at a Bamun society was certainly but one of the of the between the French Protestant and the colonial was the of “Bamun that is, a and that was a element of social control on which French was based (Galitzine-Loumpet can be however, that the between the two the emergence of a of patrimony of the between legitimacy and politics and In the Bamun patrimony from a of political art of between two individuals and two social each to the A from various presents the following of events the colonial as the of royal prestige and of a sacred Bamun considered a political While the was not it was in beyond its own objects. by the of and by various established in Cameroon to this symbolic field of The very of objects from the lineages and in should be it is to this in the Bamun an open to royal A photograph Mosé Yeyap in front of various objects and the authority on by his central position revealed his political influence (Fig. Several pictures in front of his collection in a In the Bamun this message is the more as the did not his dynastic It was not only the representation of “Bamun to but also a on a the palace, at the of the and the colonial administration. It was not only the exhibition of but also the representation of a new was also an of to various or The of the Museum of between its and Yeyap which is the more important as it also to the of palace objects during King Njoya’s and the that to there were or no photographs of the king in the King Njoya’s political corresponded to his from in the early King Njoya still posed for in front of his throne, pictures gradually to Bamun or which became This was on and by the of and in Other for example a young who of at the of and who became the representation of or (Fig. the of Njoya, his death and in Fumban, and the of his heir were is that this to the of the and Bamun as the first acted as local regalia to Bamun kings and objects and part of which was for royal use and, to a in a language out of the One of the royal was to these for while were to be kept The and of palace objects no however, did of form a collection from the European The and public exhibition of royal objects in a place for that was a new and most use the word as an category Geary This a posteriori seems as the of of the the public of the objects by Mosé Yeyap were The notion of collection seems more Bamun collection the transformations by the The creation of the Museum of Bamun and in was a new in which the palace and which I will a still date, but probably around King Njoya created in as a that is to a public exhibition point because many objects were forbidden to and the and even when the palace a sacred is a on the Geary the of the or by of the and of the at times, to the palace museum and in by and the palace the palace museum the palace are which specifically to a place where the of the the and of the kings and other are the museum to the of an and it be to the when the word was imposed the of as an of the transformation of sacred objects into cultural property. Lastly, the of the museum has itself from the Museum of King Njoya to the Palace Museum and, in the most construction to the Museum of Bamun of Bamun The development of Bamun to the increasing of the The for the is still Njoya, the and very early around of royal and of the kingdom and the portraits appeared in the and from the to fall within the King Njoya a place of at the of the dynastic or in front of the palace a and by the main including the throne, the double a of and royal ntieya fabric. was to the by a photograph taken with his in the same the of the other kings were based on the photographs of King Njoya, as for example in an produced by in 1908 The was thereafter on and reproduced in many the king or with his this attested to the of one medium in It also the number and dissemination of pictures and the importance given to photographs as elements of were in the of was given to that to and the of European through and it is to the number of in circulation around and their various it seems that Njoya was not the only in the political at least until the death of King Njoya. however, quickly as by the for the map of the

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00287

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