Douala

Douala , city (1991 est. pop. 1,604,500), Cameroon, on the Wuori River estuary. Cameroon's largest city and major port, it is a commercial and transportation center handling most of the country's exports (chiefly cocoa and coffee) as well as transit trade from Chad. Douala developed as a center of the slave trade after the Portuguese arrived in 1472. It later became part of a German protectorate (1884) and of the French Cameroons (1919).

Douala Chief port of Cameroon, on the Bight of Biafra, w Africa. As Kamerunstadt, it was capital of the German Kamerun Protectorate (1885–1901), became Douala (1907), and was capital of French Cameroon (1940–46). Industries: ship repairing, textiles and palm oil. Pop. (2002 est.) 1,239,100.

Douala, Cameroon Kamerun/Kamerunstadt First developed as a station for the Transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century, it came under German rule in 1884. The following year it was given the German name Kamerun or Kamerunstadt ‘Town of Kamerun’ and became the capital of German West Africa. It was renamed in 1907 after a people who spoke Douala, a Bantu language, who had come from the interior and founded this city on the coast in about 1650. From 1901 to 1916 it was the capital of the German Kamerun protectorate and of Cameroon in 1940–6.