Context: Cameroon Campaign
This was part of the confrontation between Britain, France and Belgium on one side and Germany on the other. The former nations invaded Cameroon (Cameroon), which was then a German colony, in August 1914.
By February 1916, most German military and civilian personnel had fled to Rio Muni, the neutral colony of Spanish Guinea that now forms mainland Equatorial Guinea.
As in the Middle East, Britain and France shared the spoils of war and agreed to divide Cameroon along the “provisional Picot Line,” with Britain taking about a fifth of the colony on the border with Nigeria. France acquires Douala and much of the central plateau.
The
campaign officially ended the following month, in March 1916.
Addendum
: At a meeting on February 23, 1916, George Picot, “who knew nothing of the lands and peoples he shared,” drew with a thick pencil a line that Sir Charles Strachey, the Colonial Office representative, “had to accept.” One of Strachey’s colleagues later remarked: “If only I hadn’t had a pencil in my hand back then.” »