Colonial Built Remains in Douala (Cameroon): Approaches to the Enhancement of Dissonant Heritage

Douala is a Cameroonian city located on the banks of the Wouri River, that experienced various economic, social, and spatial evolution due to the succession of colonial systems: German protectorate from 1884 to 1916, Franco-British condominium from 1916 to 1919, Mandate then Trusteeship regimes under the French supervision from 1919 to 1960. These Successive colonial systems have reshaped the urban space of Douala, through numerous projects and town planning initiatives. Some of these urban projects have been designed on the basis of massive expropriation of local populations, as well as urban segregation, for reasons of so-called hygiene. Urban construction and architectural forms in colonial Douala were conceived to impose Western hegemony. True support of power, colonial architecture in Douala reflects antagonistic urban initiatives, opposing the locals to the German and then French administration. Some of these buildings bear memories of forced labour, assassinations, racism, the imposition of cultural values, whips, and other inhuman and humiliating treatment that colonial administrators inflicted on local populations. On the other hand, within the former colonial powers in the postcolonial context, the imperial past in Cameroon is often equated with a glorious past of empire, which arouses nostalgia contrary to the difficult and painful tendencies of colonial memories in Africa. It is in this logic that the colonial past is subjected to selective oblivion, and idealisation aiming at its polishing. In this regard, the colonial buildings in Douala are the object of memory tensions that complexify their enhancement. Colonial memory discrepancies can be explained by the dissonant heritage approach, theorised to highlight the tensions likely to affect the enhancement of historic sites in relation to atrocities. These are the sites of painful memories, with which various interest groups recognise linkages. The paradigm of Dissonant Heritage that emerged in the 1990s, inspired various other concepts in the study of heritage and heritage tourism, among which Difficult Heritage and Rejected Heritage. These evolving concepts recall the different possibilities to inspire from the Dissonant heritage, with a view to enhancing historical sites. In this logic, heritagisation models have emerged and inspired a specific heritage model applied to colonial built remains.