A Nineteenth-Century Ruhr in Central Africa

Abstract

Opening ParagraphOver two hundred thousand cubic metres of slag and smelting debris, at least two hundred and seventy smelting sites, more than seven hundred recorded kaolin pits for building and lining furnaces, and probably half as many again not visited by us—these are a few figures that establish three villages of the Ndop Plain, in the highlands of Western Cameroon, as a nineteenth-century Ruhr in Central Africa. To this day, this all Sub-Saharan African record leaves Meroe, ‘the Birmingham of Africa’ well behind. Perhaps the record remains unbroken, however, just because scholars interested in African iron industries seem to have been unconcerned with the overall output of these industries.