French Togoland

The larger part of a German colony split between its conquerors, and the only African territory where a United Nations plebiscite reunified nothing and divided a people permanently. German Togoland had been taken in the first days of the First World War, in a campaign lasting three weeks, and was partitioned between France and Britain in 1916 and confirmed as mandates in 1922. France received the east, including the coast at Lomé and the bulk of the population; Britain took a western strip that it administered as part of the Gold Coast. The border cut through the Ewe homeland, leaving that people in three administrations, and Ewe reunification became the dominant political question of the mandate period and the subject of repeated petitions to the UN. Under the trusteeship France governed through Lomé, developing cocoa, coffee and phosphates and very little else. In 1956 the British portion voted to join the Gold Coast and became part of Ghana at its independence the following year; the Ewe on both sides of the line have been in different countries ever since. French Togoland became an autonomous republic the same year and fully independent on 27 April 1960 under Sylvanus Olympio. He was shot dead in January 1963 in what is generally counted the first coup in postcolonial Africa, and the army officer who took over held power for thirty-eight years. Lomé sits directly on the Ghanaian border, a few hundred metres from it. Phosphate remains the country's principal export. Olympio had been a manager for Unilever before entering politics. His killers were demobilised soldiers returning from the French army in Algeria.

• Type: Polity
• Government: Colonial administration