When Did The First Europeans Arrive In Cameroon?

The first Europeans arrived in Cameroon in the late 1400s. Contact with Europeans only began in 1472, with the arrival of the Portuguese. In 1472 Portuguese sailors reached the coast at the Wuori River estuary.

The abundance of prawns and crayfish did not escape their attention and they named the Wouri River, Rio dos Camarões, which is also the phrase that gave Cameroon its name. The European arrival heralded the beginning of a large-scale slave trade, carried on by the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, French, and English. Over the next few hundred years, European interests regularised trade with natives along the coast, whilst Christian missionaries established operations and began the gradual move inland.

Palm oil and ivory emerged as the main items of commerce in the 1800s. In the early 1800s, the British had already established a commercial hegemony over the coast. British trading and missionary outposts had emerged by the middle of the century, but the English were replaced by the Germans, in 1884.

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