By the Spring of 1916, following Allied victories, the majority of German troops and the civil administration fled to the neighbouring neutral colony of Spanish Guinea (Río Muni).

In 1911, France ceded Neukamerun (New Cameroon), a large territory to the east of Kamerun, to Germany as a part of the Treaty of Fez, the settlement that ended the Agadir Crisis.

French Equatorial Africa alone could mobilize as many as 20,000 soldiers on the eve of war while British Nigeria to the west could raise an army of 7,550.

[5] At the outbreak of war in Europe in early August 1914, the German colonial administration in Kamerun attempted to offer neutrality with Britain and France in accordance with Articles 10 and 11 of the Berlin Act of 1885.

[18] In September 1914, the Germans had mined the Kamerun or Wouri estuary and scuttled naval vessels there to protect Douala, the colony's largest city and commercial centre.

British and French naval vessels bombarded towns on the coast and by late September had cleared mines and conducted amphibious landings in order to isolate Douala.

[19] By 1915, the majority of German forces, except for those holding out at the strongholds of Mora and Garua had withdrawn to the mountainous interior of the colony surrounding the new capital at Jaunde.

A German force under the command of Captain von Crailsheim from Garua even went on the offensive, engaging the British during a failed raid into Nigeria at the Battle of Gurin.

[22] When the weather improved, British forces under Cunliffe moved further south, capturing a German fort at the Battle of Banjo in November and occupying a number of other towns by the end of the year.

[28] Many Cameroonians, including the paramount chief of the Beti people, moved to Madrid, where they lived as visiting nobility on German funds.

"[10] In February 1916, before the campaign ended, Britain and France agreed to divide Kamerun along the Picot Provisional Partition Line.