Colonial and Post Colonial Migrations and le vivre ensemble in the Cameroon Grassfields

This study attempts an analyses of the movement of peoples and communities between the Anglophone (Bamenda) and Francophone (Bamileke) parts of the Cameroon Grassfields following the Anglo-French partition of Cameroon in 1916. The objective is to identify the reasons for these within the Grassfields movements, identify the changing patterns of the movements and the impact on Grassfields solidarity and le vivre ensemble. Drawing largely from primary and secondary sources and using a chronological cum thematic approach in the presentation of the data, the article concludes that political and economic exigencies provoked the movement of populations and that these Grassfields people maintained their solidarity and cultural uniformity despite the linguistic and colonial boundary imposed by the Europeans between the North West and West Regions of Cameroon that constitute the Grassfields. This study therefore sustains the argument that the North West and West Regions of Cameroon are more united historically and culturally than is the South West and North West Regions that constitute Anglophone Cameroon as the extremists of the "Anglophone Problem" may claim.