British Togoland

The smaller half of a German colony, and the only United Nations trust territory ever to vote itself out of existence. German Togoland was occupied within three weeks in August 1914 and partitioned between Britain and France in 1916, with Britain taking a narrow western strip that it administered as part of the Gold Coast rather than separately. The border cut through the Ewe homeland, splitting a people between British Togoland, French Togoland and the Gold Coast, and Ewe reunification became the dominant political question of the mandate period - petitions went to Geneva and then to New York for thirty years. The northern part of the strip, largely Dagomba and Konkomba, had different interests entirely, being already integrated with the Northern Territories. That split decided the outcome. The plebiscite of May 1956 asked whether the territory should join an independent Gold Coast or continue under trusteeship pending the future of French Togoland; the north voted heavily to join, the Ewe south voted against, and the overall majority carried it. The territory became part of Ghana in 1957, the first trust territory anywhere to be terminated. Ewe communities remain divided between Ghana and Togo. The result is still disputed by some Ewe organisations. The territory covered about thirty-four thousand square kilometres. Ho was its administrative centre and is now a Ghanaian regional capital. Lake Volta, created by the Akosombo dam in 1965, flooded part of it. The plebiscite result was roughly fifty-eight per cent for union. Trans-Volta Togoland was the name Ghana used for the region afterwards.

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