Context:
The Kamerun Campaign was a phase of the conflict between Germany and Britain, France, and Belgium on the one hand, and France, Belgium, and Britain on the other. In August 1914, the former nations invaded Kamerun (Cameroon), then a German colony.
The majority of German civilian and military personnel had fled to Rio Muni, the neutral colony of Spanish Guinea that is now part of Equatorial Guinea’s continental portion.
Britain and France agreed to divide Kamerun along the “Picot Provisional Partition Line,” with Britain receiving approximately one fifth of the colony on the Nigerian border, as was the case in the Middle Eastern theater. Douala and most of the central plateau were acquired by France.
March 1916 marked the official end of the campaign.
Addendum:
George Picot “who knew nothing of the lands and peoples he was dividing” drew a line with a heavy pencil at a meeting on February 23, 1916, which the Colonial Office representative, Sir Charles Strachey, was forced to accept. Later, as one of Strachey’s coworkers observed, If only you hadn’t been holding a pencil at the time.
