Togo - History
The Ewes moved into the area which is now Togo from the Niger River valley between the 12th and 14th centuries. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese explorers and traders visited the coast.Beginning in the sixteenth century, the West African country of Togo, largely controlled by the Portuguese, was a major source of slaves destined to Europe and the Americas. For the next 200 years, the coastal region was a major raiding center for Europeans in search of slaves, earning Togo and the surrounding region the name "The Slave Coast."
On 06 July, 1884, an Agreement was signed at Togoville between Germany and Togo, by which the territory of the King of Togo, situated on the West Coast of Africa from the eastern frontier of Porto Seguro to the western frontier of Lome or Bay Beach, was placed under the Protectorate of Germany. After Germany declared a protectorate over a stretch of territory along the coast, it gradually extended its control inland. Current day Togo was, from 1894, part of the German protectorate of Togoland. Because it became Germany's only self-supporting colony, Togoland was known as its model possession.
In 1914, Togoland was invaded by French and British forces and fell after brief resistance. Togoland became a League of Nations mandate divided for administrative purposes between France and the United Kingdom. In 1919, the French took over the eastern part of Togoland under a league of Nations Mandate. The British took over the western part.
After World War II, the mandate became a UN trust territory administered by the United Kingdom and France. During the mandate and trusteeship periods, western Togo was administered as part of the British Gold Coast. In 1956, in a UN organised plebiscite, the majority of the population of British Togoland chose to merge with the neighbouring Gold Coast colony as part of the new independent nation of Ghana. The following year that region became part of the newly independent state of Ghana.
French Togoland voted in 1956 to become part of the French Community. In 1960 the territory voted in favor of independence, which was granted in 1960. Sylvanus Olympio, the leader of the Comite d’Unite Togolaise, became President.
Olympio was killed in 1963 in a military coup led by then Sergeant Etienne Gnassingbe Eyadema. Eyadema invited Olympio's brother-in-law Nicolas Grunitzky to form a civilian government. However, the military refused to allow a multiparty political system to develop, and Eyadema eventually took full power in 1967, creating a one party state under a new political party, the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais, (RPT) in 1969.
Eyadema's rule was dictatorial. All independent political activity was repressed. In 1977, Gilchrist Olympio, the son of the first President, was accused of being behind an attempted invasion from neighbouring Ghana. Plots to overthrow Eyadema throughout the 1970s and 80s, whether real or not, served as a pretext for further repression of opposition activity and purges within the army.
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