Les textiles dans l’économie coloniale au Nord-Cameroun (XIXè-XXè siècles)

Abstract

It is general knowledge today that the interest by European powers in the unknown world was not to civilise, but to solve their own internal problems. The colonial propaganda which backed the view that dominating powers of the 19^th and 20^th centuries had to impose a civilisation to the `non-civilised' vamoussed as time went on, giving room for historical truth. The truth was that, technologically more advanced nations needed weaker ones to snatch out their raw materials. It was actually the wealth that contributed to the industrial empowerment of the western world. In terms of wealth, how can a raw material like textile which mobilised political and economical efforts, brains of imperialism of the 19^th and 20^th centuries be left out? In a bid to provide an answer to this question, the present paper sets out to shed light on the contribution of Northern Cameroon in the process of colonial economy. This process comes to fruition by the valorisation of the the textile-cotton and other economic strategies such as the trade of the of clothes, the valorisation of local textile handycraft.