Royal Epic Writings and Warlike Political Identity in the Bamun Kingdom (Cameroon)
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This article demonstrates how History and Customs of the Bamum, a book by the emblematic Bamun sovereign Ibrahim Njoya, contributed to building and disseminating, in the cultural memory of the Bamum community, a strategic culture of war that relies essentially on the remembering of the Bamum glorious war sovereigns and their warlike strategies. The perceived and perpetuated greatness of the Bamun Kingdom in Cameroon today is due to the dissemination of an epic story of martial traditions and resistance to external conquests. It is through the transmission of vernacular writings but also through the oralization of these texts—in particular by the heirs of a Bamun palatine notability that became the custodians of the traditions of the kingdom—that this war epic account is passed on, becoming the founding myth of a constantly revived Bamun political identity.
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