From 1901 the German Schutztruppe raided Bafut again and again — 1901, then 1904 and 1905, then 1907. Fon Abumbi I was taken into exile in Douala for a year. In 1907 the palace and the Achum at its centre were burned to the ground.
That could have been the end of it. It was not. After the peace treaty the complex was rebuilt between 1907 and 1910, and the palace standing today — more than fifty buildings gathered around the shrine — descends directly from that rebuilding.
Abumbi I lived another twenty-five years and never accepted the conquest, remaining openly opposed until his death in 1932. The buildings were replaceable. What they were built around was not.