Beating the British by five days, the Germans in July of 1884 signed agreements with various chieftains, establishing a German protectorate along the coast. They spend the next decade surveying and grabbing the best real estate.

They crush a revolt by the Abo of Duala (Douala) region in February 1891, and 6 months later saw the Bakweri of the Mt. Faro area mount a sustained campaign against the invader. Initially the Bakweri rout the Germans at Buea giving the Germans their first defeat in Africa. Although this stalls the German advance for 2 years, the Bakweri are inevitably blown away by modern European firepower.

The Germans push northwards to Lake Chad where they had visions of grand German steamships plying the mighty lake. They arrive in 1902, too late, the French and the British having surveyed the area a year before. The lake proves a disappointment. Although covering a large area, it is shallow with vast wetlands and marshes.

1902 saw the start of campaign to subdue the revolt of the Bulu of the interior; after 3 years of heroic struggle by the Bulu, in April 1905 a peace treaty was signed. Concession companies harvest rubber, palm oil, ivory and timber using forced labour that even by standards of the day were considered brutal and repressive. The Basle Mission does good work with schooling, basic health care and condemning the worst excesses of the companies. The locals are taxed, disenfranchised and many forced onto marginal land or reserves.

German Cameroons (Kamerun) reaches its largest land area in 1911, when France cedes two large tracts of French Equatorial Africa (about 200,000 sq. km.) in exchange for a small part of what is now southern Chad and an undertaking by Germany to withdraw it's claim for the Moroccan port of Agadir. The new territory (Neukamerun) cuts the French territory in two, making transport between these two only possible via the Congo River.

By 1914 there is a basic road infrastructure in the south and the rail connects Duala-Edea-Widimenge (300km) and a line from Duala to the Manenguba Mountains (160km). The northern border with Nigeria is still only loosely defined, but this state of affairs will only last until 1916 when French and British forces invade during WW1 and redraw the map in their favour.

In 1922, a League of Nations mandate will shave Kamerun to less than its 1910 boundaries. It gives 80% to France as a mandated territory. The British receive a mandate over two noncontiguous areas bordering the Nigeria colony.