French Cameroons

French Cameroons was the eastern part of the former German colony of Kamerun, administered by France from the First World War until independence in 1960. British and French troops occupied the German protectorate in 1914-16, and after the war the League of Nations divided it into mandates: Britain took two strips along the Nigerian border, while France received the much larger eastern territory. The French mandate was confirmed in 1922 and governed from Yaoundé as an autonomous commissioner's territory, separate from French Equatorial Africa. Paris pursued an assimilationist policy, teaching French, imposing French law and erasing German memorials, while developing cocoa, coffee, cotton and timber exports. After the Second World War the mandate became a United Nations trust territory within the French Union, with a representative assembly and elected deputies in Paris. The Union of the Peoples of Cameroon, founded in 1948, demanded reunification and independence, was banned in 1955 and began an insurgency that France repressed harshly. Internal autonomy came in 1956, and the Republic of Cameroon became independent on 1 January 1960.