Lela in Bali : : History through Ceremony in Cameroon / / Richard Fardon.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Fardon, Richard,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2006]; ©2006
• Year of Publication: 2006
• Language: English
• Series: Cameroon Studies ; 7
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (176 p.)

Lela in Bali tells the story of an annual festival of eighteenth-century kingdoms in Northern Cameroon that was swept up in the migrations of marauding slave-raiders during the nineteenth century and carried south towards the coast. Lela was transformed first into a mounted durbar, like those of the Muslim states, before evolving in tandem with the German colonial project into a festival of arms. Reinterpreted by missionaries and post-colonial Cameroonians, Lela has become one of the most important of Cameroonian festivals and a crucial marker of identity within the state. Richard Fardon’s recuperation of two hundred years of history is an essential contribution not only to Cameroonian studies but also to the broader understanding of the evolution of African cultures.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Map -- 1. Lela: Past Present, Present Past -- Lela in the Early Post-Colony -- Bali Nyonga: A Thumbnail History -- 2. Lela in 1908: The Photographic Record -- Lela and Voma in Bali -- The Ethnologist and the Missionaries -- Ankermann and the Missionaries Photographed: The Second Photographer -- The Texts and the Photographs -- An Inventory of the Photographic Record of the 1908 Lela -- Conclusion -- 3. Lela: The Texts, 1890s to 1960s -- Missionaries’Version 1903 to 1913 -- The Ethnologist’s Version 1907 to 1908 -- The Soldier’s and Trader’s Versions 1889 to 1906 -- Interlude: The Bali Axis Unravels -- The Anthropologist and the Historian: A 1960s Version -- 4. Lela: Incorporation, Ascendancy and the Means of Violence -- The Ba’ni before the Germans -- The Apogee of Germano–Bali Majesty: The 1905 Paramountcy -- Illustrations -- 5. Lela in the Grassfields and the ‘Graffi’ in Lela: Or,More is More -- The Importance of Origins -- More is More -- Lela Adopted in the Grassfields -- Lela and Voma in the Bali Kingdoms -- 6. Lela Precedents: Beyond and Before the Grassfields -- ‘Spear Washing’ in the Benue Chamba Chiefdoms: Flags, Gowns and Horses -- Adamawan Elements in Lela: Death, Killing and Commemoration -- 7. Fast Forward: From Adamawa to Late Post-Colonial Cameroon -- References -- Published References -- Unpublished References -- Index