President Emmanuel Macron has formally acknowledged that France fought a "war" in Cameroon against independence movements before and after the country gained sovereignty in 1960, breaking decades of official silence on the episode. In a letter dated 30 July and sent to Cameroonian President Paul Biya, Macron accepted "the role and responsibility of France" for the violent repression carried out by colonial authorities and French forces. The correspondence, released on 12 August, endorses the conclusions of a 1,000-page report delivered in January by a Franco-Cameroonian commission of historians headed by scholar Karine Ramondy. The report found that fighting in southern and western Cameroon between 1956 and 1961 escalated into full-scale war, causing possibly "tens of thousands" of deaths and extending beyond independence with French support for Cameroon's new government. Macron’s recognition aligns with a broader effort to reassess France’s colonial record, following earlier reviews of its roles in Algeria and Rwanda.