The Defence of Gagadama: Siege Warfare and Ethnographic Knowledge

Summary

The extension of European rule into the southern Lake Chad Basin was one phase in a process of impingement into the area of globalising systems of power and connection that began centuries earlier. It contributed to the disruption of indigenous systems of regional domination, but took place sporadically, especially in the rugged and densely populated terrain of the Mandara Mountains. One significant episode in that process was the First World War siege of a German military unit along the Gagadama ridgeline. This siege combined the familiar accouterments of European colonial warfare  (‘native’ troops, European weapons) with elements of pre-colonial politico-military activity (retreat into the hills by plains elites under pressure, alliance with non-Muslim montagnards), in a struggle for control of an intensely domesticated landscape. It marked the first time that Europeans intensively interacted with Mandara montagnard communities, and its memorialisation in mountain localities remains a significant element in montagnard histories.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Late Empires: the archaeology of recent colonialism and imperialism - 1860s to the present   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 113