African studies are often characterized as interdisciplinary in nature. One wonders whether, as time passes and specific disciplinary studies become distinguished by ever more technical methodologies, this will be less true. However, since the objects of study are entire cultures that are for the most part alien to the researchers who study them, this interdisciplinary spirit may well endure.

With regard to the inventory of sub-disciplines within the general field of African studies, two relative late-comers are African art history and African philosophy. Previously the fields of interest that constitute their special concern were significantly influenced by anthropology. But when sufficient, relevant, fieldwork studies had accumulated to initiate the type of specialized inter-cultural understanding that is distinctive of these two sub-disciplines, there was reason to license them in their own right.

As African art history and African philosophy labored to accredit themselves these past decades, there are a number of expressed concerns which became common to the two disciplines. The aim of this paper is to reflect upon some of these, as expressed by African art historians, from the standpoint of students of African philosophy in the hope that their respective insights and problems may overlap, coalesce and perhaps prove mutually beneficial.

Investigating the sour grapes of the post-colonial order has led some scholars to revisit colonialism in ways antithetical to the nationalist “consecrated rhetoric” (Heesterman 1978, 31). In the perspective of this revision, colonialism is seen as its own grave digger. Constrained by conflicting local contexts, colonial administrations, it is argued, had to make ad hoc adjustments (Phillips 1989, 11-12). Decolonization is viewed by these revisionists as a “recognition of the failure of colonialism rather than a response to the powers of nationalism” (1989, 13). It is true, perhaps, that decolonization has been studied with an overemphasis on resistance. Resistance, of course, cannot be discounted in accounting for the shoddy performance of the colonial state. However, much of the self-serving discourse of the nationalists can be easily scrapped without hurting the cause of resistance. For a better understanding of resistance itself, scholars argue, it is useful to start discussing it in “a sceptical frame of mind” (Gledhill 1994, 82).

Basic to this revision of the reasons that led to the end of the empire is an investigation of the inherent disabilities of the colonial state (Robinson 1972; Phillips 1989; Darwin 1991). It has been graphically called a “facsimile of a state” (Phillips 1989, 11) for being taken out and set apart from society (Heesterman 1987, 54). This dramatic severing of the colonizer and the colonized is reminiscent of Fanon's characterization of the colonial condition, for being unswervingly divided into European and native quarters, as “manichaean.”

Research on the socioeconomic position of rural African women has been hampered by a lack of appropriate data. Indeed, macro-level data are not ideal to gain understanding of how the social and familial realities experienced by rural African women might limit their access to limited resources (Bryceson 1994; International Labour Office, 1984, 57; Whitehead 1994). Furthermore, a male head of household may not be able or willing to accurately evaluate women's economic contribution to the household. Therefore, it is necessary to interview or survey rural African women about their lives (Russell 1984). In this paper, we present Kaguru women's own opinions of how social and familial realities affect their access to resources.

In rural African societies, women are typically engaged in agricultural, household and income-earning work. Although African women often have a heavier workload than do men in these three spheres of their daily work, they typically do not experience equal access to resources, both educational and economic (Boserup 1970,1985; Goody 1976; Meena 1992; Staudt 1988). The fact that husbands and wives do not fully cooperate, and may even compete for economic resources, is problematic for many development programs.

Gradually, feminist historians are building up a formidable challenge to androcentric studies of Africa; new thinking about the personal and public lives of men and women is beginning to reflect the breadth and depth of gender structures in African societies. This article focuses on the dynamics of one such structure in the society of colonial Zimbabwe (Ranger 1985; Phimister 1988; Sylvester 1991; Schmidt 1992). This was a construction at the intersection of nationality, gender, identity, and citizenship known as the pass laws. The pass laws were developed and used in complex, gendered ways. Sharing with neighboring South Africa a concern with enforcing racially exclusive definitions of nationality, identity and citizenship, the Southern Rhodesian preoccupation with reducing labor mobility meant that the pass laws transcended the merely bureaucratic. In combination with disenfranchisement, a severely discriminatory land tenure system and crippling labor legislation, the pass laws were used for nothing less than control of the economic options of working African people. For example, passes (generally known as chitupa or plural, zvitupa) stipulated for whom and for what level of payment an African man could work; where he could travel; where and with whom he could live. They were the linchpins in a system which routinely paid workers at levels below subsistence (Ibbotson 1943; Howman 1945; Plewman 1958).

This article explores the relationship between France and Cameroon under the French administration from 1946 to 1956. Such a relationship has to be seen not as a conventional one, but as a relationship between two unequal entities: a European imperial state and an African society. The period being considered in this study, 1946 to 1956, is significant. Politically, it corresponds to the years during which the political changes that led to the process of decolonization occurred. Economically, it was the period during which the French implemented a long term program for the development and modernization of their overseas territories. This program led to large investments in Cameroon by France and therefore to development of an important financial and economic relationship between the two countries.

Although both political and economic aspects are important, the latter will be our main concern. Economic and financial factors will be emphasized here because in the few existing studies on the relationship between Cameroon and France, the main focus is on the political factor. It has been demonstrated that international relations are also influenced by economic and financial interests, what Pierre Renouvin has called forces profondes (underlying forces). As this French scholar wrote, “to understand the diplomatic action it is necessary to perceive the factors that directed its progress. Geographical conditions, movements of the populations, economic and financial interests, trends of the collective mentality, broad national feelings, are some of the underlying forces which shaped the framework of the relationship between human groups and which determined their character. The statesman, when making his plans and taking his decisions, cannot neglect these factors. He is subject to their influence and has to realize the limits they impose on his action” (Renouvin and Duroselle 1991, 2).