Africa to the present. Many studies have documented the removal, whether through coercion or commercial exchange, of art from local chieftaincies and regional kingdoms; but comparatively little research has explored how local populations protected cultural patrimony from seizure and destruction or of their use of those same cultural idioms to resist colonial depredations and cultural impositions. The research of Tardits and others has also documented how recent pressure from external markets, largely European, has stimulated growth of some local workshops that produce modern, visionary artworks, while encouraging other craftsmen to create reproductions of much older pieces—even at the risk of eroding the integrity of antique African art markets. During King Njoya’s reign (c. 1886–1933), the art market was centralized; that is, it was managed and overseen by the king himself. During the initial years of his reign, when Cameroon was still under German control, Njoya was the sole authority on what styles of art objects would be produced, which works would be gifted to the colonial regime, and what artisans would be involved in this exchange. As the flow of missionaries, administrators, military officers, traders, and adventurers to the Grasslands increased—and as the renown of Bamoun artisans spread throughout Europe—a more relaxed and diversified commercial exchange bloomed, including the importing and assimilation of objects and styles from other African tribes. In the wake of Germany’s defeat in World War I, Cameroon became a French colony, and the tentative cooperation that had existed between King Njoya and the German authorities was quickly undermined. That collaborative relationship was replaced by the wholesale dismantling of local governance, imposition of French administrative control at all levels, and the acceleration of resource extraction and other forms of economic exploitation, all of which led to considerable friction between King Njoya and the French. The art market, certainly, did not escape disruption. As tensions between the king and the French escalated, conflicts within the Bamoun populace flared as well, as various Bamoun notables vied with each other to win the confidence and favor of the French administrators. One such conflict, which emerged in the early 1920s, involved Mosй Yйyap, a Bamoun noble and Christian convert, who began to challenge the king’s authority over local artisans as well as his influence with the French in the lucrative sphere of artistic commerce. Yйyap steadily expanded his commercial art enterprise with French collectors and authorities, even opening his own museum