During its 30-year occupation by the Germans, Togo was upheld by many European imperialists as a “model colony” primarily because the German regime produced balanced budgets after a limited period of “pacification” devoid of any major wars. In the eyes of these imperialists, impressive railway and road systems were also constructed. These achievements were realized, however, through a combination of forced labor and excessive and arbitrary taxation imposed on the native population of Togo.
Since British imperial efforts were focused on the largely Akan areas to the west, while the French were preoccupied with Dahomey to the east, part of the area known in European sources as the Slave Coast escaped the immediate attention of these would-be European colonizers. This situation provided an opportunity for Germany, the latecomer into the “scramble,” to seize a
Togo.
31-mile (50-kilometer) stretch of the West African coast between the Volta River estuary (controlled by the British) and the mouth of the Mono River (occupied by the French).
In February 1884, a group of soldiers from the German warship Sophie, led by the explorer Gustav Nachtigal, kidnapped chiefs in Aneho and forced them into negotiations. Farther west, a protectorate was proclaimed over the Lome area in a treaty signed in July by Hans Gruner, a German imperial commissioner, and Chief Mlapa III of the town of Togo, after which the new colony was named by the Germans.
It was not until the early 1890s that the German regime began expanding its occupation from the coast. Through the Heligoland Treaty of July 1890 between Germany and Great Britain, part of the Peki Ewe state, including the important towns of Ho, Kpandu, and Ho-hoe, were transferred to German rule from the neighboring Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). Through so-called scientific expeditions farther north, German agents negotiated treaties of protection, many of which were later disputed and dismissed as fraudulent by African leaders, extending German territorial claims about 156 miles (250 kilometers) inland.
The Germans never established a formal military but instead relied on a police force, never exceeding 500 members, to forcibly occupy new areas. The native population of Togo resisted these campaigns, particularly in the north, where the Dagomba and the Konkomba, sometimes in alliance, fought several wars with the Germans until the turn of the century.
The borders of Togo were formally established by the European imperial powers by the end of the nineteenth century. In the east, Togo shared the Mono River with the French colony of Dahomey (present-day Benin) up to the seventh parallel, where the river fell entirely into German-occupied territory. Togo bordered the French Sudan (in the area of what was to become Burkina Faso) in the north, while the Gold Coast was situated to the west. Although these boundaries were ratified in the Treaty of Paris in 1897, the Germans effectively occupied only about 10 per cent of the colony at that time.
The German regime attempted to link, both administratively and economically, northern Togo with the coast, especially by redirecting trade. In the southern part of the colony it pursued aggressive policies to expand the cultivation of cash crops. The Germans were especially interested in promoting increased cotton cultivation in order to reduce Germany’s dependence on imports from the United States. In January 1901, they enlisted the services of African American scientists from the Tuskegee Institute, who operated several experimental farms, distributed seeds of new cotton species, and instructed farmers in Togo. The Germans also encouraged (and sometimes sought to force) the cultivation of cocoa, coffee, coconut, rubber, and sisal, but palm oil and palm kernels consistently remained the top export crops.
The Germans strove to control trade and labor in the colony. African merchants were prohibited from exporting produce and manufactured goods and were restricted to the retail trade. In 1907, the German regime decreed that compulsory labor should be salaried and used exclusively for public works projects, yet flogging was still employed as the primary means of coercing the colonized population of Togo into forced labor.
Crucial in the process of imposing the new colonial order were the government-recognized chiefs, who received a minimal share of the taxes collected and were allowed to maintain a small police force. While they had jurisdiction over civil cases, criminal matters were handled by the German regime.
The German district commissioners exercised nearly complete administrative, judicial, and military powers. The colony’s penal code of April 1896 granted them absolute authority over the population they ruled and allowed district officers to punish the Africans by flogging, delivering sentences of hard labor, or imposing fines.
Both direct and indirect taxes were exacted, ranging from import duties, which remained the regime’s main source of income throughout the occupation, to income, urban, emigration, and dog taxes, as well as a levy for flying the German flag.
The Germans invested minimally in social services for Africans. Health care was outrageously expensive, if at all accessible, since only a few hospitals provided services to Africans. The regime mostly relied on missionary groups, notably the North German
Missionary Society, to provide schooling at their stations. Toward the end of the occupation, the regime established several governmental schools, but educational opportunities remained extremely limited. Children were often sent by their families to the Gold Coast for postprimary education. Many other Africans emigrated to the British colony to escape the harshness of the German occupation.
An extensive infrastructure was built, mostly through the use of forced labor, in order to facilitate the delivery of agricultural goods to the coast. Between 1900 and 1914, three railways and 766 miles of roads were constructed. Lome, the capital of the colony since 1897, became a commercial center boasting an efficient port.
This development, however, was mostly limited to the southern third of the colony and was vitiated by the violence and burdens which characterized German rule. When World War I began, the native population of Togo welcomed the combined forces of the British and the French, who had invaded from their neighboring colonies, as liberators. The Germans quickly surrendered, after only a few skirmishes, on August 26,1914.
Dennis Laumann
See also: World War I: Survey.
Further Reading
Amenumey, D. E.K. “German Administration in Southern Togo.” Journal of African History 10, no. 4 (1969): 623-639.
Asamoa, Ansa. “On German Colonial Rule in Togo.” In Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Kolonialismus in Africa: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Peter Sebald, edited by Peter Heine and Ulrich van der Heyden, Pfaffenweiler, Germany: Centaurus, 1995.
Knoll, Arthur J. Togo under Imperial Germany 1884-1914. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1978.
Maier, Donna J. E. “Persistence of Precolonial Patterns of Production: Cotton in German Togoland, 1800-1914.” In Cotton, Colonialism, and Social History in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Allen Isaacman and Richard Roberts. Portsmouth, N. H.: Heinemann, 1995.
-. “Slave Labor and Wage Labor in German Togo,
1885-1914.” In Germans in the Tropics: Essays in German Colonial History, edited by Arthur J. Knoll and Lewis H. Gann. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987.
Sebald, Peter. “Togo 1884-1900” and “Togo 1900-1914.” In German Imperialism in Africa: From the Beginnings until the Second World War, edited by Helmuth Stoecker. London: C. Hurst, 1986.
World History
