JANE YER Head Tax Social Structure and Rural Incomes in Cameroun 1922-1937* During the interwar period the Camerounian rural population became peasantry cultivation for the market replaced gathering as the basis of the cash economy and the rural population came to occupy position in national political structure In West Africa as whole this process of peasantization followed different course than in areas of White settlement where policies in the early years of colonial rule opened up permanent structural gap between indigenous and foreign production creating as Dupre and Rey 1973 theorize situation which could be maintained by combination of property law and market forces.1 In West Africa the institutionalization of the peasantry did not on the whole involve policies which deprived them of land or access to markets for their produce The structural position of the peasantry in the national economy was determined through long-term process of experimentation and attrition over the relative shares of the peasants the state and commerce in the income generated in the rural sector The process of fixing the level of appropriation from the peasantry ancient and feudal state systems was process that spanned centuries and resulted in locally specific systems of extraordinary intricacy In Africa it was collapsed into time period which was not only very brief but was characterized by major political events and economic develop ments in the outside world The differences which emerged among African peasantries are due to the conjunction of central policy local response and economic feasibility as they affected each other during this period of general instability Taxes although not the only form of appropriation from the peasantry are crucial to understanding the process of peasantization because
The research on which this paper is based was carried out while the author was research associate at the National Advanced School of Agriculture Yaounde and at the Boston University African Studies Center It was financed by grant from the United States National Institute of Mental Health would like to thank Jeanne Henn Sara Berry and Stephen Baier for comments on first draft and Richard Joseph and Claude Tardits for comments on later draft They are not responsible for the use have made of their suggestions For brief comparison of different structural positions of African peasantries see SAUL WOODS 1971
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