But, as Erin Jessee holds, even these approaches are not without controversy.39Oral history is valued for its humanising potential and its ability to 'democratise' history by making visible the narratives of people and communities that are normally missing from archives, thus bringing them into conversation with the narratives of the political and intellectual elites who normally write and disseminate history. However, considering her highly politicized research environment, Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jesse questions the idea that oral history allegedly promotes the democratization of history: "By uncritically disseminating the narratives of complex political actors who seek to delegitimize their governments or justify their involvement in mass atrocities, for example, oral historians risk inadvertently becoming part of the machinery of propaganda by promoting memories and myths that could be used to promote further bloodshed between communities."40 The attempt to contextualize these narratives historically or politically compromises the very goal of allowing people to tell their stories on their own terms and giving them a voice not normally found in history or the archive. In other words, it might silence them.This is precisely what oral historians seek to avoid, for it undermines efforts to share and democratize the authority of historiography.

Interviews were only possible to a limited extent. During the research stays in Togo, Ghana, Paris, and New York, interviews were conducted with only a few contemporary witnesses that are still alive, but these were of great benefit.The interviewees exchanged views on current relations between Togo and France or Ghana and Great Britain. During the conversations, it became evident how contentious the role of the trustee powers was in the decolonisation process and the unsuccessful reunification attempt. When asked about perceptions and ideas of security, reference was immediately made to the lack of fulfilment of state tasks in the social and societal sphere by the current regime under Faure Gnassingbé or the government under Akufo-Addo. However, against the backdrop of violent unrest in Togo in 2017 and 2018, and the crackdown in Ghana in 2019 to 2021, one should be wary of relegating individuals and their readings to the accuracy of historical events in a study. Kwame Kudzordzi and Kosi Kedem may have been contemporary witnesses to the fate of British Togoland, but their interpretation is regarded as rather peculiar, even among Ghanaian historians.41 Moreover, in the view of political actors seeking to delegitimize their governments, such as Charles Kwame Kudzordzi, for example, oral historiography is not immune from inadvertently becoming part of propaganda that seeks to promote memories and myths that could lead to, rather than prevent, an escalation of conflict.42 Thus, it is important to distinguish between oral history, that is, orally transmitted cultural history and personal accounts of historical events. Undertak-

38 Nicoué L. Gayibor, Dominique Juhé-Beaulaton and Moustapha Gomgnimbou, eds., *L'écriture de l'histoire en Afrique*: *L'oralité toujours en question,* Hommes et sociétés (Paris: Karthala, 2013).

39 Jessee, "The Limits of Oral History"

40 Jessee, "The Limits of Oral History," pp. 299–300.

41 Most noteably Amenumey, "The brouhaha over Togoland Plebiscite. The historical fact."

42 Jessee, "The Limits of Oral History," 300–301.

ing this study based primarily on documentary sources available in public repositories, which I am responsible for interpreting, seemed more sensible to me.43

Because of the present study's focus on archival documents, it is inherently subject to a bias,44 which considering alternative oral histories suffers from what Edward H. Carr called "fetishism of documents."45 Most of the actors who speak from the archives are colonial administrators, whose notions of threat and security are prominently foregrounded by the sources. Archive-based studies cannot avoid relying almost exclusively on the observations of European imperialists and their activities. In any case, the relevant archival materials for this study are located within Europe and North America and only to a lesser extent in West Africa. Limited to the same archival materials, few have attempted to emphasize the African experience during this historical episode, for example, through the inclusion of handed down oral histories.

# 4.2.3 Research Procedure & Evaluation

The research procedure was similar in each archive: to be successful in the search, it was essential to understand the 'logic of classification' according to which the archive and its catalogue were constituted.Often overlooked, the archival structures and accompanying comments provide information about colonial or security consideration for the provenance of the documents. For example, the accompanying commentary of the British *National Archives* candidly writes:

"The general rule, as set out in a Colonial Office guidance telegram of 3 May 1961 on the 'disposal of classified records and accountable documents', was that successor Governments should not be given papers which, might embarrass HMG or other governments; might embarrass members of the police, military forces, public servants or others e.g. police informers; might compromise sources of intelligence information; or might be used unethically by Ministers in the successor government. […] There would be little object in handing over documents which would patently be of no value to the successor government."46

Many documents were destroyed on this basis. In the case of the Ghanaian archives (PRAAD), the logic mimics the bureaucratic organization of the British colonial state. Documents from the Admiralty are kept under the entry "ADM" and are classified thereafter by topic and year. Although the archival documents were created in the same

43 Compare these reflections with Skinner, "West Africa's First Coup," p. 379.

44 Danso and Aning, "African experiences and alternativity in International Relations theorizing about security," pp. 78–79.

45 Edward H. Carr, *What is history? The George Macaulay Trevelyan lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, January – March 1961*, 2nd ed., ed. R. W. Davies, Penguin history (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 16.

46 TNA, "Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Predecessors: Records of Former Colonial Administrations: Migrated Archives," accessed 03 April 2023, available from https://discovery.nationala rchives.gov.uk/details/r/C12269323.

period, the British National Archives (TNA) arrange the documents according to ministerial jurisdiction: "CO" for Colonial Office, "FO" for Foreign Office, "FCO" for Foreign/ Commonwealth Office. This is significant because as a trusteeship territory Togoland fell under the jurisdiction of both the Colonial Office and, in terms of the United Nations, was assigned to the Foreign Office. The archival holdings of the Togolese National Archives (TNA) are not arranged thematically but according to the places of origin, that is, the administrative regions: the *cercles*. Therefore, a new strategy to read through the archive structures had to be adopted repeatedly to assign individual documents to a series and thereby reconstruct entire exchanges.

After reviewing the respective archive structure, documents relevant to the research project were requested. Depending on the importance and significance for the research question, the document pages were photographed, underwent optical character recognition, and then were transferred to a personal digital archive according to their position in the archival structure. Notes on the research work were made to record daily impressions and questions that guided the further research process.

After the material was collected, the evaluation process began. The methodology is based on the procedure of qualitative data analysis according to Mayring.47 However, the evaluation process was not inductive, but abductively designed, that is, the formation and refinement of theoretical assumptions was always compared with the collected material and modified in order to draw conclusions about regularities.48 The study uses content-analytical methods, but explicitly analyses the collected data as part of a colonial discourse.49

Based on the overarching research question, the evaluation was guided by sub-questions such as how was (in)security communicated and what experiences have been revealedin the process?Which threat constructions weremobilised (terms and categories)? What shifts in security communication seem interesting? How is threat interpreted and to which audience is it communicated? Which security mode is established and what function do individual security speech acts fulfil?

The digitized archival documents were screened using Citavi computer software. During an explorative screening, initial categories were formed according to epistemological interest and text passages were indexed accordingly. Subsequently, the items of knowledge belonging to a keyword were subjected to a second, more in-depth sequence analysis for individual arguments, to refine indexing on the one hand and to establish cross-material references on the other, for example, to reconnect documents that were separated due to the way the archive was set up with response letters in other holdings. In addition, following the pragmatic reading of the contextual strand of securitisation,50 the material was examined for security terminology in a theory-based manner by identifying text excerpts in which certain terms occur together, for example, 'Ewe' or

47 Mayring, *Qualitative content analysis*.

48 Udo Kelle and Susann Kluge, *Vom Einzelfall zum Typus*: *Fallvergleich und Fallkontrastierung in der qualitativen Sozialforschung*, 2nd ed., Qualitative Sozialforschung 15 (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010), pp. 21–27.

49 Landwehr, *Historische Diskursanalyse*.

50 Balzacq, "The Three Faces of Securitization," p. 172.

#### 130 Julius Heise: Securitising Decolonisation

'Togoland unification' and 'threat' or 'danger'.These securitisation text excerpts were also subjected to the procedure presented above and evaluated in terms of power relations, positionalities, narratives, the political background of the debates, and ideas about actors' political strategies.

# **5. Historical Background: From Slave Coast to Mandate Territory**

"I cannot forget that the natives are not represented amongst us, and that the decisions of the Conference will, nevertheless, have an extreme importance for them."1

In 1884, with the Scramble for Africa, most of the Ewe people fell under the German protectorate of Togoland. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, French-led troops occupied the eastern part and British-led troops the western part of the German protectorate. At the Paris Peace Conference, German Togoland was divided among the victorious powers; the eastern two thirds became a League of Nations mandate territory under French administration and the remaining third of (Western) Togoland became a mandate territory under British administration. Eventually, France wanted to keep French Togoland in the French Union and Britain wanted to keep British Togoland within the Commonwealth by integrating it into the Gold Coast. However, the new colonial border demarcation cut through the traditional settlement area of the Ewe people, which found itself split among three territories: the British Gold Coast Colony,British Togoland, and French Togoland.

After World War II, this division led to the formation of a unification movement, which campaigned first for the unification of the Ewe and later for the unification of both Togolands before the UN Trusteeship Council and General Assembly – a right which hardly any other dependent people had dreamed of having recourse to.While France and Britain saw their prestige at stake, the movement was perceived as a threat within the colonial administration and attempts were made to hamstring through various means. At the UN, acting as the Administering Authorities of the two territories, they presented the reunification thesis as a minority demand, unfeasible and particularly as a threat that could set a potential precedent for the balkanisation of the African continent. After years of tough negotiations at the UN between the Anglo-French and anti-colonial positions, political campaigns and colonial repression in the Togolese trust territories, an

1 TNA (London), FO 341/1, *Protocols and the General Act of the West African Conference*, Parliamentary Papers 1885 [LV mf. 91.435], Protocol No. 1, 15 November 1884, p. 11.

UN-supervised referendum in 1956 finally led to the incorporation of British (Western) Togoland into the neighbouring Gold Coast to form the nation state of Ghana.The unification leadership criticized this result, especially since it degraded the Ewe to an ethnic minority within Akan-dominated Ghana and further removed them from the Ewes in French Togoland.

# **5.1 Precolonial Era & Introduction of European Rule**

# 5.1.1 From 'Gold Coast' to 'Slave Coast'

In 1471, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach the coast of West Africa, where they encountered several African kingdoms, some of which controlled territories with significant gold deposits, which is why the Portuguese navigators named the coastal strip "Gold Coast,"where they built their first fort called "ElMina"(themine)in 1482.Eastwards along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea,2 only a few rivers manage to break through the sandbank that has been thrown up by the strong surf over centuries. One of these main rivers, 250km east of Elmina, was called by the Portuguese "Volta"(leaping water) because of its striking rapids.3 Lagoon systems formed along the coast where the rivers did not break through the sandbanks. Because of these Lagoon systems the Portuguese would call one of their settlements 600km east simply "Lagos"(lake/lagoon).The Ewe, too, which would later settle between the delta of the Volta and the Mono, would name one of their settlements on the northern shore of one of these lagoons simply "Togo" ("behind the water"). Under German colonial rule this village became the namesake of Togoland.

Despite the ever-advancing conquest of the Americas and the beginning slave trade dominated by Portugal in the early 15th century, African populations were at first able to limit European domination to the coastal forts and the area they were able to secure within range of their cannons.4 Since the number and the power of the coastal forts remained limited, the competing European powers depended for four centuries on African regents whose role in the incipient triangular Atlantic trade was that of slave procurers for the plantations and mines in the Americas. The slave trade along the coast was so important that from the 17th century onwards, Europeans marked the once Portuguesecoined "Gold Coast" on their maps as the "Slave Coast."5

2 Theories about the origin of the name "Guinea" assume either a corruption of "Ghana," the African kingdom the Portuguese heard about in the Maghreb, or "aguinaou," the Tamazight word used to refer to Black people south of the Sahara.

3 Sebald, *Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884 – 1914*, 11.

4 In any case, this limited exercise of power was primarily directed against European competitors: Even today, the cannons on the fortifications of Elmina point out to the ocean. Consequently, the ships of the other European powers, such as the Dutch, Prussians, Danish, Swedish, British, and French, sailed past Elmina at some distance and built their own forts on the Gold Coast. Even the Hohenzollerns, trying to tap into the transatlantic slave trade, maintained fort "Großfriedrichsburg" near today's Princes Town between 1683 and 1717.

5 Sebald, *Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884 – 1914*, p. 13.

#### 5.1.2 Ewe Heterogeneity

Both older and current literature emphasize the historical heterogeneity of the Ewe – the trusteeship powers argued all the way to the point that the Ewe-speaking population cannot be considered as a distinct people at all. According to the traditional history of the Ewe people, following their migration from the Niger Valley, they settled in Notsé. In the 17th century, Ewe6 and Ané settled in the coastal region between the Volta and the mouth of the Mono river. Fleeing from Asante slave hunting campaigns on Elmina, the Ané are commonly called "Mina." European cartographers and missionaries in the pre-colonial era used the term 'Mina Republics' to denote the decentralized polities along the Aného coast and its hinterland, though, the entities were neither always Mina nor politically republican.7 Though ethnically distinct from the Ewe, they eventually adopted the Ouatchi-Ewe dialect. Although described as a single language group, the variation in Ewe dialects signifies that mutual intelligibility proved to be exceedingly difficult at times.

According to a myth later popularised by German missionaries,8 the Ewe migrated from Notsé to the south around 1720 due to the excesses andinsistence of King Agokoli III (1670–1720) to build earthen walls around the royal capital of Notsé. Allegedly, the painful memories of Agokoli's brutal and autocratic rule contributed to the Ewe's later aversion to centralised monarchical rule and tendency toward political fragmentation.9 Although the accuracy of themythis widely disputed,10 the fact remains that at the beginning of the 20th century the Ewe were not a politically unified people but remained instead a series of some 120 clans ("dou" or "states"), each governed by a chief or a paramount chief.11 This is where the securitisation of Ewe cultural history diverges from Jutila's assumptions about nation-building projects: instead of putting a securitised origin story in the service of achieving national cohesion, the effect of the securitising Notsé myth led to the opposite.

The political fragmentation is substantiated by instances of Ewe states fighting one anotherin concert with non-Ewe alliesin 1750, 1767, 1776 and 1784.12 Thus, while the Notsé myth is able to explain that the political fragmentation of the Ewe was due to fear of the *internal* threat posed by a dominant central state, such as Agokoli's rule, it also explains the Ewe states' vulnerability to *external* threats, such as slave raids by larger neighbouring and more centralized kingdoms like Asante to the west.

6 Around 1720, Ewe founded the village "Alome," which means "in the Alo bushes" and later became Lomé.

7 Samuel Decalo, *Historical dictionary of Togo*, 3rd ed., African historical dictionaries 9 (London: Scarecrow Press, 1996), p. 212.

8 Skinner, *The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland*, p. 38; Greene, "Notsie Narratives"; Nugent, *Smugglers, secessionists & loyal citizens on the Ghana-Togo frontier*, p. 161; Keese, *Ethnicity and the Colonial State*, p. 233.

9 The Notsé dispersal is a major annual Ewe celebration commemorated in the *Hogbetsotso* ("Hogbechocho") festival.

10 Keese, *Ethnicity and the Colonial State*, p. 223.

11 Lawrance, *Locality, Mobility, and "Nation"*, p. 27.

12 Amenumey, *The Ewe Unification Movement*, p. 3.

*Map 4: Ewe Settlements*

Source: Own creation.

In the 19th century, the demand in slaves led in part to an alliance between the Asante and the chiefdom of the Anlo-Ewe for slave raiding campaigns east of the Volta against the Krepi-Ewe,13 who in turn fought alongside the Buems and Guans.14 As Jutila also argued, that history plays a role in the securitisation of the other,15 Skinner notes that the Togolese Ewe unificationists pressed history and past experiences of invasions and raids by neighbouring Ewe groups in their service.16 For example, the Anlo, a faction of the Ewe who would later fall within the boundaries of the British Gold Coast colony, were opposed by many Ewe from Togoland not only because of their higher levels of education and elevated status. The association of the Anlos' past with the slave trade and the memory of their role in smuggling Ashanti armies into the Ewe hinterland in the 19th century were securitised in a way that reinforced a distinctly Togolese Ewe identity. In absence of a unifying precolonial Ewe identity, Keese notes that "[i]n all the warring after 1860s Ewe solidarity didn't play a role,"17 which bears witness to the political fragmentation of the Ewe.18 Skinner, Nugent and Keese stress the absence of any ethnic nationalism amongst

13 The Ewe settlements near the coast joined together to form an Ewe state, which became known as Anlo. Europeans remained in the dark about the nature of the Ewe-speaking interior, which they referred to as the "Krepe." See Skinner, *The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland*, 5–7.

14 Keese, *Ethnicity and the Colonial State*, pp. 235–36.

15 Jutila, "Securitization, history, and identity"

16 Skinner, *The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland*, p. 26.

17 Keese, *Ethnicity and the Colonial State*, p. 239.

18 Amenumey, *The Ewe Unification Movement*, p. 3.

the Ewe while the label "Ewe" in itself has to be regarded rather as a colonial invention.19 According to Brown, the political agitation for and emergence of an Ewe identity is phenomenon of the late 19th century that was rather due to "the adjustment of boundaries in the interest of sub-ethnic collectivities."20

### 5.1.3 The Emergence of 'Eweness'

In fact, Enlightenment ideas such as that of the "Ewe-nation," were brought in from outside by a yet-to-be-formed Ewe-elite that was no longer entirely autochthonous in nature.The background for this development was the industrialisation of Britain, the number one maritime power, which changed the structure of Atlantic trade in West Africa.

Britain's need for new liberal type of 19th century Atlantic trade no longer required slave labour and the traditional coastal forts. The British banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, yet, since slavery had not yet been banned in the southern United States before 1863, there was still an extensive slave trade to North America, but also to cash crop producing states such as Cuba or Brazil.21 British warships patrolled West African ports, such as Porto Seguro (today Agbodrafo). Testimony to the once Portuguese influence in the slave trade still bears on the naming of Porto Seguro ("safe haven"), which did not refer to the ability to dock safely at the harbour (the surf was just as dangerous as anywhere else on the coastal strip), but "safe haven" referred to the safety from the pursuit from British warships for illegal slave trade. British naval predominance slowly changed the balance of power on the coast,22 monopolizing Britain's presence after 350 years of competition between various European powers. While British warships were spoiling business for Portuguese slave traders, Napoleon's campaign in Europe forced the Portuguese royal family to flee to Brazil.

The signs of the Portuguese empire's decline significantly set the stage for Brazil's independence in 1822 and several subsequent upheavals that were to become important for a forming Ewe elite. At the beginning of the 19th century, there were several slave revolts in Bahia, Brazil, to which the Brazilian state responded with violent repression and restrictions: free blacks were denied owning property and were subjected to strict taxation. When in the mid-19th century, the US-sponsored establishment of the Republic of Liberia (1847) gave rise to the repatriation wave of former slaves to West Africa, the 17-year-old Francisco Olympio da Silva, a mestizo of mixed Portuguese, indigenous and African descent, went along and migrated from Bahia, Brazil, to Keta, east of the Volta Delta in search of economic opportunities. Francisco Olympio dropped the "da Silva" part of his name, under which he had been a slave in Brazil, worked for a decade in the slave trade in various places along the coast east of Volta until he settled and founded the Olympio

19 Paul Nugent, "Putting the History Back into Ethnicity," *Comparative Studies in Society and History* 50, no. 4 (2008), available from https://www.jstor.org/stable/27563713; Skinner, *The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland*, p. 12; Keese, *Ethnicity and the Colonial State*, p. 233.

20 Brown, "Borderline Politics in Ghana," p. 579.

21 Sebald, *Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884 – 1914*, p. 15.

22 The British administration of the Gold Coast Colony (now Ghana) was able to buy out the Danish coastal forts in 1850 and the Dutch coastal forts in 1870.

family in Porto Seguro, where there was already an emerging urban society, a bustling Brazilian community, and a Catholic chapel.23

In the 1850s, German missionaries of the Bremen-based "Norddeutsche Missionsgesellschaft", known as "Brema" for short, established their first stations in the coastal area of Keta and a few years later also in its hinterland.24 Though missionary societies were not part of the approaching state colonialism (which at times they opposedin fact),25 they certainly trailblazed it.26 In their self-understanding and missionary vocation far from the life in Germany, the missionaries saw themselves as "saviours," rescuing the African population from the purgatory of the afterlife – a self-empowerment that was not far from the vocation of the *mission civilisatrice*. From the first missionary foundations of the Bremen Missionary Society in the early 1850s until the end of the German colonial period, only about 100 priests undertook missionary work, which according to Skinner was painfully slow. In the first decade of their evangelistic efforts, only fourteen conversions of 'free Africans' were recorded. This record led to about a hundred slave children being bought, 'freed' and converted between 1857 and 1868. The efforts were set back even further as the Bremen and the Basel mission station in the Volta basin were destroyed in 1869 by slave-hunting campaigns from the Asante in the Ewe settlement area.27 And yet, these missionary ventures were the reason that most Ewe later found themselves in the Ewe Presbyterian Church. Even today over half of the southern Togolese elite are still Protestant, while the majority of Christians in French West Africa, and especially the Afro-Brazilian elite in the present-day Togo are Catholic.28

Due to their knowledge of several European languages, the new generations of "Brazilians," who were born and raised on the coastline, soon assumed the role of agents for the various European wholesalers from England, France, Portugal, and Germany, who settled on the coast founding outposts of their trading companies.The first German company, Friedrich M. Vietor & Söhne, established itself in 1874 in Be Beach (later Lomé), having already operated the trading business of the North German Mission Bremen in Keta in the Gold Coast Colony since 1857, whilst the trading house Wölber & Brohm was active in "Little-Popo" (later Aného).

For the operation of the European trading posts, the coastal chiefs and family clans, who considered the shore their legitimate domain, demanded both land taxes and export duties. Fuelled by the political fragmentation of the Ewe, rival chiefs often sought support from equally rival European powers. The 50-kilometer-long coastal strip east of the Gold Coast Colony boundary, was not yet officially occupied by any colonial power. Yet,

23 Alcione M. Amos, "Afro-Brazilians in Togo," *Cahiers d'études africaines* 41, no. 162 (2001): 293–95, ht tps://doi.org/10.4000/etudesafricaines.88.

24 Skinner, *The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland*, p. 38.

25 Habermas (2016) highlights moments when the Bremen or Steyer Mission joined forces with the Togolese petitioners and denounced the ruling practices of the German colonial administrations in the Reichstag.

26 Rainer Alsheimer, *Zwischen Sklaverei und christlicher Ethnogenese*: *Die vorkoloniale Missionierung der Ewe in Westafrika (1847 – ca. 1890)* (Münster: Waxmann, 2007), http://www.waxmann.com/kat/in halt/1764.pdf

27 Skinner, *The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland*, p. 43.

28 Decalo, *Historical dictionary of Togo*, p. 74.

British merchants clearly dominated in the growing presence of Europeans traders and missionaries.29 By virtue of their own business interests, African intermediaries such as the "Brazilian" elites were trailblazers of British colonial expansion.

Francisco Olympio, who himself had grown up speaking Portuguese, initially had his two sons Epiphanio and Octaviano learn Portuguese from a Catholic priest. However, as almost all Europeans involved in the Atlantic trade used the English language, coins, weights, measures and legal norms,30 Francisco Olympio sent his two sons to London to receive higher-level education in accounting and business.Upon their return, Epiphanio worked in the British trading house Miller Brothers in Agoué (present-day Benin). In 1902, Epiphanio had a son with a Mamprusi slave (an ethnic group from the north of contemporary Togo), who was sold to the Olympio family: the later Ewe nationalism leader, independence fighter, and first president of Togo, Sylvanus Olympio, was thus not himself from an Ewe lineage. Meanwhile, Epiphanio's brother, Octaviano, worked for the British trading house A. and F. Swanzy, where he secured commercial property for coconut plantations in the northwest of Lomé.

While the Afro-Brazilian community on the coastline was expanding, Octaviano became by far the richest and most influential indigenous citizen of Lomé. For six decades and under three colonial powers, he was one of the most respected members of Lomé's commercial and political elite.31

#### **5.2 The 'Schutzgebiet Togoland'**

With 1870/71 defeat of France, which was the leading colonial power alongside Great Britain, the German Empire emerged as the new great power in Western Europe, almost inevitably turning its attention to colonial policy. Although Otto von Bismarck had little to no sympathy for the colonial ambitions of large sections of the German population, the statement written in 1897 by the then German Foreign Minister, Bernhard von Bülow, "We don't want to outshine anyone, but we also demand our place in the sun"32 soon became the new political slogan.

However, it was rather by chance that Togoland came under German control: In 1881, the French and British had received petitions from rival kings, each asking the other power for 'protection.' If it was not for consideration of other domestic power relations, either power could have occupied this territory permanently as a protectorate even before the Germans appeared.33 Yet, in the run-up to the Berlin Congo Conference, which ultimately decided the colonial division of the African continent, the German Consul-General, Gustav Nachtigal, was traveling by sea to secure claims to Cameroon. Previously, Bremen- and Hamburg-based trading houses indicated their business interests on the

29 Sebald, *Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884 – 1914*, p. 15.

30 Sebald, *Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884 – 1914*, p. 16.

31 Amos, "Afro-Brazilians in Togo," p. 296.

32 James Holmes, "Mahan, a "Place in the Sun," and Germany's Quest for Sea Power," *Comparative Strategy* 23, no. 1 (2004), https://doi.org/10.1080/01495930490274490.

33 Sebald, *Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884 – 1914*, p. 18.

'Togo coast' and demanded political and military backing by the Empire. During an unscheduled stopover, Nachtigal intervened in a local conflict between German and British trade representatives, which led to the signing of a protection agreement with the Ewechief Mlapas on 5 July 1884.34 The document was decisive for German territorial claims at the Berlin Congo Conference, thus establishing the protectorate of Togoland.

The Berlin Congo Conference, which at Reichschancellor Bismarck's invitation brought together 15 powers, ultimately cemented Germany's colonial-territorial claims to Togoland. Born out of the conference, the Berlin General Act echoed Edmund Burke's idea of humanitarian colonial trusteeship whilst the 'level of civilization,' which was still embedded in the concept of 'trust,' remained untouched. Edward Malet, the British ambassador to the Berlin Conference conveyed this conviction by saying: "I cannot forget that the natives are not represented amongst us, and that the decisions of the Conference will, nevertheless, have an extreme importance for them."35

Certainly, colonial trusteeship was only a pretext. The conference was primarily an attempt to contain an escalation of imperial tensions between European states and secure primarily private-sector access to the African continent before the onset of statedirected colonization. This was expressed through the *open-door* principle, which stipulated that the markets of the colonies were to be open to European traders and that no European power could impose preferential tariffs within its domains. This was a policy that was presented as beneficial to the economies of the metropolitan states and, in the spirit of the *civilising mission*, to the colonies as well.

Humanitarian aspects, such as the prohibition of the slave trade, were marginal, especially since the British Empire had already banned the slave trade in 1807 and abolished slavery in 1833. Yet the securitising narrative of a more regulated colonialism that had a civilizing effect by eliminating alcoholism or slavery provided legitimacy to the colonial project. It was only through the addition of trusteeship principles that a securitisation of the civilising mission and thus the legitimisation of the colonial enterprise, that is, the 'Scramble for Africa,' became possible. This colonial-securitising logic is evident in linguistic paraphrases such as 'protectorates' and self-empowerment through trusteeship responsibilities such as the abolition of the still rampant slavery – an irony, given that the European powers themselves were responsible for the emergence of the transatlantic slave trade.That this was only a hypocritical securitisation for purposes of legitimisation becomes clear when considering that the use of forced labour – as a more humane alternative to slavery –was presented as a necessary evil (exceptional measure) to civilise (or 'salvage') the 'less civilised people' (referent object). The need for trusteeship and the

34 While "occupation" was de jure only possible for territories that were unilaterally declared "terra nullius," "protectorate" presupposed an already sovereign state that voluntarily placed itself under the protection of another through a treaty. De facto, however, it was an occupation and the official designation of the German colonies as "protectorates" by no means clearly reflected the legal relationship. Rather, the choice of words "protectorate" and "pacification operations" was a linguistic de-securitisation of colonial violence. Hiding behind terms like "sovereignty" and "statehood" perpetuates the colonial logic of their emergence. Stefanie Michels, "Koloniale Beutekunst," *Forum Recht*, no. 3 (2011): 79

35 TNA (London), FO 341/1, *Protocols and the General Act of the West African Conference*, Parliamentary Papers 1885 [LV mf. 91.435], Protocol No. 1, 15 November 1884, p. 11.

civilizing mission were formulated in the *grammar of security*. Not surprisingly, during the Scramble for Africa, 'protection treaties' secured territories as "protectorates," whilst the German 'Schutztruppe' subjugated the "Schutzgebiet Togoland."36 'Pacification campaigns' were a linguistic form of de-securitisation of colonial violence. These terms "obscured responsibilities that would come with sovereignty from one state over another."37

# 5.2.1 Drawing Borders & Conquest of the Hinterland

The first years of German rule were mainly confined to the coastal region.38 Bracketed between the British-controlled coastal strips to the west and French-controlled coastal strips to the east, the German colonial officials found themselves in a race with France and Britain to negotiate the course of the hinterland border northwards. This European race to penetrate theWest African hinterland, that is, to draw the border in a north-south direction, perpendicular to the coast, cut for the most part through the population belts which tended to run parallel to the coast, that is, in an east-west direction.

*Photo 1: Schutztruppe in German Togoland*

Source: Bildarchiv der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main, N° 037–0601-35 (no date).

36 Wilde, *International territorial administration*, p. 300.

37 Wilde, *International territorial administration*, p. 300.

38 The German colonial central administration of Togo was initially located in Aného and only later in Lomé.

It was not until a decade after the signing of the protection treaty that the German colonial rulers extended their sphere of influence also factually northwards with a series of 'pacification', that is, punitive campaigns. In order to quickly enforce the colonial order, Bismarck ordered the establishment of a *Polizeitruppe*for Togoland just one year after the signing of the treaty of protection.The *Polizeitruppe* consisted mainly of African mercenaries from neighbouring territories and to some extend of 'ransomed' slaves who had to work off their purchase price at which the Germans acquired them. Since the '*Schutzgebiet*' did not have its own protection force, the police force was also used for military tasks and securing the territory against colonial competitors. An expeditionary company, the so-called *'Schutztruppe,'* was stationed in Lomé to be used in the event of uprisings.

*Map 5: German Togoland (1885–1915)*

Source: Own creation.

Acting under the maxim of exercising control through the maximum threat of violence, the Germans concealed their numerical inferiority through a policy of selective terror. Enabling them to establish a monopoly of power, massacres and burning villages were considered the best means of achieving maximum intimidation with minimum use of resources.39 Between 1894 and 1900 alone, the *Schutztruppe* was deployed on 35 campaigns and 50 smaller skirmishes. Uprisings, mainly local in nature, such as the Tovérevolt in March 1895, were soon put down. In 1896, Governor Otto Gleim used a trifle to justify an assault of the Togo-Village.40 In 1896, the Germans defeated a 7000 men strong army of the Dagomba and soon destroyed their capital Yendi.This was followed by a punitive campaign against the Bassari. In 1897 an attack by the Konkomba defeated 23 mercenaries of the *Schutztruppe*. Commander von Massow responded with a punitive campaign, destroying 50 villages. Three other punitive campaigns were conducted against the Kabré. However, unlike in German East Africa and South-West Africa, no major anticolonial uprisings took place.

# 5.2.2 Exploitation & Modernization

The German maxim was that colonies must be profitable. Yet, the colonial project was supposed to be economically affordable.The colonial administration imposed heavy taxation, which drove Africansinto production for export.Those who could not raise enough money or goods had to pay 'muscle tax.' Since the German Empire, established under the trusteeship principles of the Berlin Conference, that slavery was no longer acceptable for 'civilisation' at the end of the 19th century, German colonial officials resorted to forced labour to realize these modernisation projects. In accordance with colonial logic, this form of exploitation also fulfilled the function of 'educating Africans for labour'.The Germans used force against those who did not comply. Togoland was soon known as the land of the 25 lashes, famous for the saying 'And one for Kaiser!' for the final additional lash. One of Lomé's neighbourhoods was dubbed 'Moabit,' after the famous prison in Berlin's district of the same name. Sebald notes that "Twelve prisons but only four schools were built by the German Administration. In Western Togo, which today is part of Ghana, the Germans built not even one school but four prisons."41

The Germans were primarily interested in colonially exploiting coveted agricultural goods such as peanuts, cocoa, copra, and coffee – but in particular: cotton.42 Large cotton plantations were established along the coast and the German administration even arranged for an expedition of Afro-American cotton experts from the south of the United

39 Trotha, *Koloniale Herrschaft*, 42.

40 The Togo village was located on the northern shore of the coastal lagoon, Lake Togo, and could be reached by pirogues today as it was then. The name "Togo," which loosely translated means "behind the waters" in Ewe, was later to give its name to the entire area.

41 Sebald as cited in Kofi Amenyo, "Deutschland Uber Alles – What If Germany Had Not Lost Its Colonies in Africa?," *GhanaWeb*, 06 March 2017; Michael Weisfeld, writer, *Sonntagsspaziergang, "*Togo," aired November 17, 2013, on Deutschlandfunk, available from https://www.deutschland funk.de/togo-wie-der-niederrhein-mit-palmen-100.html.

42 Sebald, *Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884 – 1914*, pp. 93–98.

States.43 To ensure that the goods could be transported quickly to the coast, in the early 1900s, the German colonial administration initiated large economic and infrastructural development projects. Africans were forced to build roads, bridges, and several railway lines named after their purpose: In 1904 a 350-meter-long iron pier with railway tracks was built in Lomé connecting the "Coconut Railway" (Lomé-Aného) and "Cocoa Railway" (Lomé-Kpalimé), which opened in 1905 and 1907 respectively, while in 1913, the 167kmlong "Cotton Railway"(Lomé-Atakpamé) was opened. In 1907,a telegraph link from Lomé to Atakpamé went into operation. Hospitals in Lomé and Kpalimé were opened. One of the most outstanding and yet short-lived construction projects was the transcontinental radio station in Kamina, which, due to its size, was able to establish a connection to Nauen near Berlin, 5,000 km away, and which, due to its location, was important as a telecommunication point for the German Empire's overseas communications with its colonial territories of German Kamerun and German Southwest Africa.

Soon the myth of the "Musterkolonie" (model colony) developed, since it was the only colony that allegedly had a balanced budget.44 German Togoland remained a minimal state and neither became a full-scale plantation nor a settler colony. During the entire German colonial period, the number of Europeans never rose above 500. It remained a modest trading colony whose foreign trade in the colonial economic peak of the "protectorate" reached just 0.1% of the value of the total foreign trade of the German Reich.45

As to the societal effects of the German modernization campaign, Keese holds that there is no proof for a strong feeling of Ewe unity under the coming German rule.46 Amenumey and Lawrance hold that "German rule had exceptional importance for the consolidation of Ewe identity,"47 especially the missionary efforts, laying the basis for the resistance during the French and British mandate and trusteeship period: the Bremen Missionary Society, united the majority of the native society in a Protestant church. German missionaries established schools and conducted ethnological research on the Ewe language and culture. Diedrich Westermann, a pastor of the Bremen Missionary Society, standardized grammar, introducing the first Ewe language script and Ewe-Bible.48 It was precisely under missionary efforts such as by Jakob Spieth that the Ewe were intensively exposed to German Protestant ideals of the *Volk*. 49

43 Andrew Zimmerman, *Alabama in Africa*: *Booker T. Washington, the German empire, and the globalization of the new South,* America in the world (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2010), http ://site.ebrary.com/lib/alltitles/docDetail.action?docID=10640072; Habermas, *Skandal in Togo*.

44 Already in 1969 Amenumey pointed out that the "model colony" was nothing more than colonial propaganda; D. E. K. Amenumey, "The Pre-1947 Background to the Ewe Unification Question," *Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana* 10 (1969), available from https://www.jstor.org/stabl e/41406350.

45 Trotha, *Koloniale Herrschaft*, p. viii.

46 Keese, *Ethnicity and the Colonial State*, p. 246.

47 Lawrance, *Locality, Mobility, and "Nation"*, p. 123; Amenumey, *The Ewe Unification Movement*.

48 It should be noted that the Anlo dialect was used to standardize the Ewe language and Bible, that is, an Ewe dialect spoken in the British Gold Coast outside of German Togoland.

49 Andreas Jakob Spieth, *Die Ewe-Stämme*: *Material zur Kunde des Ewe-Volkes in Deutsch-Togo* (Berlin: Reimer, 1906), https://archive.org/stream/dieewestmmemat00spie#page/n9/mode/2up; Skinner, *The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland*, p. 21.

#### 5.2.3 Petitions as Anticolonial Resistance

Sebald was one of the first to document how, at the beginning of the 20th century, a protest movement was formed that did not want to wait for reforms from above, but rather, by relying on its own efforts, strove for change.50 Since, under the conditions at the beginning of the 20th century, the success of violent anti-colonial resistance was just as impossible as the open refusal of a colonial order,in the last decade of German colonial rule in Togo petitions were the means of choice.

Starting in August 1902, by employing the services of Octaviano Olympio, who was by far the most influential Afro-Brazilian in Togo, the chief of Atakpamé, Kukowina, complained in a petition to Governor of German Togoland, Woldemar Horn, about the District Officer of Atakpamé, Geo A. Schmidt, who arrested the minor, Adjaro Nyakua, for unlawful rubber harvesting and, in the exuberance of his power, abused her.51 Kukowina, whose complaint was not against colonial rule per se but merely against an excess of repressive measures, was referred back by Horn to the District Officer Geo A Schmidt. Yet, since Kukowina did not withdraw his complaint, Schmidt ordered to put Kukowina in prison, where he was subjected to such ill-treatment that he died upon his release in January 1903.

When Schmidt also took action against students of the Catholic Steyl Mission in Atakpamé, the mission made itself the advocate of complaints for Africans. The administration and missionaries turned to the higher authorities in Germany, by sending petitions and letters, including to the Reichstag, to (de)securitise the state of affairs in the German protectorate. However, in the sense of the *illocutionary disablements*, Habermas characterizes the treatment these petitions received as "eloquent silence," because stereotypical rather than realistic images of Africa and Europe were mobilized, thereby concealing more than bringing to the fore.52 Habermas notes that the "very act of writing a petition must have seemed *threatening*, since the choice of the petition as a medium for expressing dissatisfaction presupposed a considerable political will and initiative on the part of the local population (or at least its elite)."53 Habermas argues that petitioning meant using a medium of the colonial power (including writing and a European language) to gain access to a political space and to initiate a process of negotiation on one's own behalf, including a sense of entitlement to be heard as a political and social subject with legitimate concerns, which might not have had the same rights as a European, but was by no means without rights.54 The potency of a presentation of grievances classified as a petition lies in its official nature. So, even if petitions were not granted, they may have been successful through sheer visibility. In short: petitioning

50 Thea Buttner, ed., "Leadership and National Liberation Movement in Africa," special issue, *Asia, Africa, Latin America*, no. 7 (1980)

51 Habermas, *Skandal in Togo*.

52 Habermas, *Skandal in Togo*, p. 130.

53 Author's translation, emphasis added, Habermas, *Skandal in Togo*, p. 131.

54 Habermas, *Skandal in Togo*, pp. 132–35; Bright C. Alozie, "Female Voices on Ink," *The Journal of the Middle East and Africa* 10, no. 4 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2019.1684719.

expressed potential for anticolonial agency, though, petitions were part of a process by which colonial subjects sought to reform rather than to overthrow the state.55

The consequences were disillusioning Schmidt was transferred toGerman Cameroon, and the chief representative of the Steyl Mission and two critical priests as well had to German Togoland and were replaced by missionaries who subordinated themselves willingly. Octaviano Olympio concluded that no excessive hopes should be placed in the missionary societies and that the Africans should therefore formulate anti-colonial goals themselves. Starting in 1907, Octaviano Olympio, lead the indigenous leadership of Lomé, sent regularly petitions to the German governor Count Julius von Zech, demanding, among other things, equal treatment of natives under the law, the abolition of unwarranted arrests, chains and flogging, a better prison regime, the inclusion of indigenous representatives in government council meetings, tax reductions and permission to trade freely.56 The colonial administration reacted with suspicion to every criticism and proposal for change, simply because it came 'from below,' because it was put forward by the African side. Generally, the administration considered these petitions as a fundamental attack on its claim to rule and reacted accordingly. Governor von Zech and subsequent governors reacted repressively to such petitions, with corporal punishment or fines. Occasionally authors of such petitions, including Octaviano Olympio, were arrested. In addition to petitions, newspapers were also put to the service of written protest. Although Africans were not allowed to publish their own newspaper in Togo, in the British Gold Coast colony, where the colonial administration relied on the much more liberal indirect rule, the African newspaper The Gold Coast Leader appeared weekly from 1902. There were no separate articles on Togo until 1911, but from 1913 on, in each issue one or two articles, mostly from anonymous contributors, dealt exclusively with German Togoland.57

Sebald noted that Octaviano Olympio seemed to accept the legend of the model colony in his petition and never mentioned German colonialists by name.58 From a securitisation-strategic perspective, it is quite possible that Octaviano did not accept the legend of the model colony, because, after all, the Germans discriminated against the Olympio family to the utmost, but Octaviano knew how to use the legend of the model colony skilfully in his securitisation, because in Germany there would have been nothing more to fear if the legend of the 'model colony' burst like a soap bubble. Sebald himself noted that only the beginning of the World War I in August 1914 prevented the petitions from being discussed in the Reichstag. If the war had broken out only a few months later, the 'model colony' of Togo might have served as a very different role model for the other German colonies in the Reichstag, namely as a model for anti-colonial protest.59 Not naming certain colonialists could also have been a strategic means of

55 Streets-Salter and Getz, *Empires and colonies in the modern world*, p. 413.

56 Amos, "Afro-Brazilians in Togo"; Habermas, *Skandal in Togo*.

57 Sebald, *Togo 1884–1914. Eine Geschichte der deutschen "Musterkolonie" auf der Grundlage amtlicher Quellen*, p. 171.

58 Sebald, *Togo 1884–1914. Eine Geschichte der deutschen "Musterkolonie" auf der Grundlage amtlicher Quellen*, p. 184.

59 Sebald, *Togo 1884–1914. Eine Geschichte der deutschen "Musterkolonie" auf der Grundlage amtlicher Quellen*, pp. 171–72.

securitisation, so as not to incur the wrath of a few specific people, but nevertheless to securitise the colonial situation with sufficient vagueness. Regarding Togolese identity, Sebald postulates with reference to Olympio's petition that "It was not until 25 years after the German takeover that African sources prove that, for example, the spokesmen of the anti-colonial protest used the term Togo. People began to think and act in terms of the new entity 'Togo' and to transform the term originally imposed by force by the colonial power into 'our Togo,' to 'Africanise' or 'nationalise' it."60 Confronted with this constant and everyday threat, this inevitably led to communalisation among the local population.

The brutemethods of the German administrators led tomanyinhabitants emigrating westwards to the British Gold Coast, where economic opportunities, especially in cocoa and mining, were more promising. At the Gold Coast, such a poll tax existed only from 1852 to 1861, but due to misappropriation of funds, the tax was repealed, and the imposition of poll taxes was completely abandoned because the colonial government relied on import and export duties on cocoa, which were cheaper to collect and much more profitable. The notion that British administration meant leniency and better opportunities for African advancement took root in the period of German rule.61 Besides, Pidgeon-English, also spoken by the German colonial officials, was already the lingua franca on the West African coast. Africans who spoke English could simply make more of their lives if they went to the Gold Coast, where they could acquire citizenship rights.62

To regulate this migration and the flow of goods, strict restrictions were imposed between the two colonies and trade across the Anglo-German border on the Volta River was virtually halted between 1904 and 1914, until the outbreak of World War I.63 Since it was expected that the looming World War I will be fought on the battlefields of Europe, no military had been stationed in Togoland. There was only the *Polizei-* or *Schutztruppe* consisting of a dozen German officers and about 500 local policemen. Indeed, the French and British allies achieved one of their very first victories in the Great on Togolese soil, only after three weeks (6–26 August 1915) with the surrender of German troops to British and French forces. While the British occupied the western parts of the protectorate, including Lomé, the French occupied large parts of the north and east (see Map 5).

#### **5.3 Togoland under Mandate**

#### 5.3.1 Creation of the Mandates System

Bain notes that during the Paris Peace Conference, "[s]o long as the war remained primarily a European affair, colonial questions attracted little attention."Unsurprisingly for most of the press, the war took place primarily in Europe and the negotiations were thus seen as a European affair. Yet from the beginning, the mandate question was one of the most important and controversial items on the agenda of the Paris Peace Conference.

60 Sebald, *Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884 – 1914*, p. 165.

61 Welch, *Dream of Unity*, p. 53.

62 Sebald, *Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884 – 1914*, p. 158.

63 Brown, "Borderline Politics in Ghana," p. 578.

Ultimately the reasons for the establishment of the Mandates System are manifold, yet, it has been argued that political leadership, particularly in the USA, France, and Britain, was broadly committed to the development of international law in response to the crisis of World War I itself.64 However, it is noteworthy that the victorious powers agreed on the outlines of the Mandates System within only three days (27–30 January 1919),indicating that, contrary to this historiography of international relations, the Mandates System was a rather spontaneous conclusion than an inevitable evolution of international law.

From the beginning, it was clear that France and Britain were averse to the idea to return the fourteen formerly German and Ottoman enemy territories conquered during the war, especially the former German colonies in Africa. France favoured the simple annexation of these territories. In fact, when in 1919, boundary commissioners were directed to avoid separating villages from their agricultural lands,65 Hugh Clifford, Governor of the British Gold Coast, reported just a month prior to the Paris Peace Conference to the Secretary for the Colonies, Viscount Alfred Milner, that the French authorities pressured Togolese chiefs to sign testimonials in favour of French administration. The subsequent appeals made to the British led Clifford to the conclusion: "There can, I fear, be very little doubt that […] French rule in West Africa is in even worse odour among the natives than was that of the Germans before August 1914."66 But in view of the approaching Paris Peace Conference the British Foreign Office warned Clifford not to fuel further discontent among the Togolese chiefs, as it might lead to a diplomatic incident with the French.

US President Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, was aware that the League, as the new international peace organization, would become "a laughingstock if the annexation of enemy territory by the victorious powers were not invested with some 'quality of trusteeship'."67 Therefore, he proposed to include in the Covenant specific references to self-determination and direct administration by the League.

#### A-, B-, and C-Mandates

Thus, during the negotiations in Paris, the dividing line of what to do with these territories lay between the demand for simple annexation, on the one side, and some mode of international rule, on the other.68 The British defused the idea of direct international rule by advocating for indirect administration. As Pedersen pointed out, the British found Wilson's idea easy to accommodate because they fitted equally well with the British imperial practice of indirect rule.69 Using the expression of a "sacred trust" once coined by Edmund Burke, the British delegation proposed an administration "on trust," that is, by

64 Chowdhuri, *International Mandates and Trusteeship Systems*, p. 3.

65 Coleman, *Togoland*, pp. 7–8.

66 As cited in Pedersen, *The guardians*, p. 79.

67 Tom Parker, *The Ultimate Intervention*: *Revitalising the UN Trusteeship Council for the 21st Century* (Sandvika, 2003), accessed 29 July 2019, available from www.bi.edu/globalassets/forskning/cen tre-for-european-and-asian-studies/pdf/03-03the\_ultimate\_intervention.pdf, p. 7.

68 Tom Parker, *The Ultimate Intervention*: *Revitalising the UN Trusteeship Council for the 21st Century* (Sandvika, 2003), accessed 29 July 2019, available from www.bi.edu/globalassets/forskning/cen tre-for-european-and-asian-studies/pdf/03-03the\_ultimate\_intervention.pdf, p. 7.

69 Pedersen, *The guardians*, p. 25.

the victorious states under international supervision.70 The other powers, , were at first completely averse to the British compromise. Especially the French felt they should be compensated for the high price paid on the battlefields in Europe.

The proposal that eventually swayed the opposing powers was to create not a onetier but a multi-tier system of A-, B- and C-mandates: A-mandates applied mainly to the ex-Turkish territories, which were considered almost "able to stand by themselves." B-mandates applied for African territories that were to be administered by a mandate power. C-mandates encompassed territories adjacent to territories of mandate powers and were created at the instigation of Australia and South Africa, which administered these as an extension of their own territory.

This classification ultimately reflected only the positions of the negotiators, but the Covenant's Article 22 legitimized the comprise by stating that "character of the mandate must differ according to the stage of the development of the people." It was Jan Smuts, co-author of the League of Nations Covenant, who based the Mandates System on the paternalistic foundation, which Cecil Rhodes once described as "the right relationship between whites and blacks in this country was the relationship between guardian and ward.This is the basis of the trusteeship."71 Thus, in principle, the Mandates System reiterated the "sacred trust" spirit, which had been already established in the Berlin General Act.72

Yet, above all the proposed Mandate System yielded a decisively practical advantage for the French: the fact that the former German colonies, such as Togoland, were transformed into mandated territories under (limited) international supervision and did not *de jure* go to France and Britain as "spoils of war" meant that Germany could not count the loss of the territories as reparations already made.73 Robert Lansing, a contemporary witness, noted:

"Thus, under the mandatory system Germany lost her territorial assets, which might have greatly reduced her financial debt to the Allies, while the latter [France and Britain] obtained the German colonial possessions without the loss of any of their claims for indemnity. In actual operation the apparent altruism of the mandatory system worked in favour of the selfish and material interests of the Powers which accepted the mandates."74

The Mandates System functioned, thus,in part to retroactively legalize the redistribution of ex-German and ex-Turkish dependencies agreed upon in secret treaties during World War I.75 Pedersen holds that "Out of this potent brew of liberal internationalism, imperial humanitarianism, and sheer territorial acquisitiveness the British proposals for the

70 The British Labour Party was against annexation.

71 Jan Christiaan Smuts, *The basis of trusteeship in African native policy,* New Africa pamphlet 2 (Johannesburg: R. L. Esson, 1942), p. 7. Pedersen's "The Guardians" is titled after this expression.

72 Bain, *Between anarchy and society*, p. 79.

73 Robert Lansing, *The Peace Negotiations*: *A Personal Narrative*(Boston, New York: The University Press Cambridge, 1921), pp. 156–57.

74 Lansing, *The Peace Negotiations*, pp. 156–57.

75 Thullen, *Problems of the Trusteeship System*, p. 11.

mandates system emerged."76 Lansing noted that "[t]he principal European Powers appeared to be willing and even eager to become mandatories over territories possessing natural resources which could be profitably developed and showed an unwillingness to accept mandates for territories which, barren of mineral or agricultural wealth, would be continuing liabilities rather than assets."77

Given the fact that only Article 22, placed relatively at the end of the Covenant, dealt with the establishment of the Mandates System, colonial issues seemed to play a rather subordinate role in the overall composition of the Treaty of Versailles.78 Nevertheless, Article 22 is one of the most extensive articles of the Covenant, which on the one hand indicates the importance given to the mandate question in the debates, but on the other hand also showcases the difficulties in circumscribing linguistically the sensitivity of the issue in the negotiations. The rhetoric of security legalized the principle of trusteeship and the *mission civilisatrice* in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations:

"To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are *inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves* under *the strenuous conditions of the modern world*, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form *a sacred trust of civilisation* and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant."79

Here, too, the humanity-hierarchizing *mission civilisatrice* was the underling heuristic to securitising and thus legitimizing the transfer of territories under the 'guardianship' of mandate powers. Representing a precedent in the young history of intergovernmental organisations, the acceptance of the mandates as "a sacred trust of civilization" (extraordinary measure) was circumscribed to protect "peoples not yet able to stand by themselves" (referent object) from the "strenuous conditions of the modern world" (existential threat).

Another key concept expressed in the Covenant's section of the C-Mandates was the 'open door' policy. It was enshrined in the Berlin General Act, the League of Nations Treaty and later in the UN Charter articles on the Trusteeship and the Non-Self-Governing Territories. The markets of the mandated territories were to be open to traders from all European powers.This 'open door' policy was a key feature of the 'dual mandates' of the architect of British colonial policy and later member of the Permanent Mandates Commission, Sir Frederick Lugard, 80 who put it this way:

"Let it be admitted at the outset that European brains, capital, and energy have not been, and never will be, expended in developing the resources of Africa from motives

76 Pedersen, *The guardians*, p. 27.

77 Lansing, *The Peace Negotiations*, p. 158.

78 Bain, *Between anarchy and society*, p. 80.

79 *League of Nations*

80 Lugard (1858–1945) was Governor-General of Nigeria (1912–19) and the British member of Permanent Mandates Commission (1923–36).

of pure philanthropy; that Europe is in Africa for the mutual benefit of her own industrial classes, and of the native races in their progress to a higher plane; that the benefit can be made reciprocal, and that it is the aim and desire of civilised administration to fulfil this dual mandate."81

On the other hand, imperial rivalries were to be defused by the open-door policy, which thus functioned as a security warrant. In other words, the joint exploitation of colonial possessions was codified in the Covenant to create mutual securities between the major European powers.

Similar security motives found their way into the section for the B-mandates. The League of Nations' strategy for preventing future wars lay in prohibiting the construction of fortifications or military and naval bases, as well as the military training of locals for purposes other than policing and defending mandated territories. After all, the Versailles Treaty and the mandate system were negotiated at the Paris *Peace* Conference. Brokering peace and *not* security was the top priority.

While South West and Central Africa are explicitly mentioned in the Covenant, Togoland and Cameroon were also put in the B-mandates because their peoples were regarded "as unable to express a rational choice as to themandatory power to be selected."82 Though at first, France did not want to accept the mandate system at all, especially the so-called A-mandates,83 ultimately Clemenceau realised that the acceptance of the Mandate System, which largely corresponded to the norms and principles of British imperial ideals, mitigated Anglo-French antagonisms.84 Nevertheless, the price for France's approval of the Mandates System was an exception to the general formula of non-militarisation envisaged for the "B" mandates: the French secured the right to raise indigenous troops in Togoland and Cameroon to defend the homeland in the event of a general war.85 Furthermore, the C-mandates contained a clause that allowed the mandated power to administer the territory "as an integral part of its territory." France insisted on the introduction of a similar clause in the mandate agreements of Togoland and Cameroon. This clause was to reappear in the later trusteeship agreements and to cause some stir during the UN's founding conferences in San Francisco and London.

#### Redrawing Borders of Togoland: The Simon-Milner Agreement

When the main negotiators left Paris, some the sub-negotiators, who were tasked with settling all the remaining issues, seemed to want to throw some concepts out the window.86 On 7 May 1919, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Viscount Alfred Milner, met bilaterally with his counterpart, the French Colonial Minister Henri Simon, to negotiate the final boundary between French-occupied and British-occupied Togoland.

81 Frederick Dealtry Lugard, *The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa*, 3rd ed. (Blackwood, 1926), p. 617.

82 As cited in R. B. Bening, "The Ghana-Togo Boundary, 1914–1982," *Africa-Spectrum* 18, no. 2 (1983): 193

83 Pedersen, *The guardians*, pp. 33–34.

84 Pedersen, *The guardians*, p. 12.

85 Chowdhuri, *International Mandates and Trusteeship Systems*, p. 60.

86 Pedersen, *The guardians*, p. 31.

After the two-week long Togoland campaign (the first victorious battle of the allied powers in World War I), the British still occupied Lomé, its port, and large parts of the German railway network, which France was keen on.Milner eventually consented to Simon's request that, due to the narrowness of Dahomey, its limited coastline and lack of ports, Lomé and the coastal area be exchanged for territorial gains in the north, which eventually united the Mamprusi and Dagomba under British rule.87

Source: Own creation.

Simon and Milner agreed that the "small strips" of Togoland should simply be incorporated into neighbouring French Dahomey and the British Gold Coast "without any

87 TCOR, "2nd Session" (1947), p. 321.

question of mandate."88 Especially Simon championed the "pure and simple" annexation of Togoland to ensure the effective protection and development of the natives "towards a higher plane of civilization,"maintaining that the "work of civilization, could only be carried out under the auspices of the sovereignty of a country," that is, French sovereignty.89 But pressured by large sections of the British public, especially the Labour Party and the American delegation, the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, had to put a spoke in the wheel of Simon's and Milner's colonial ambitions and maintained that West Africa could not be excused from the newmandate regime. Pedersenmaintains that "[h]adMilner and Simon been left to their own devices, they might have made short work of the mandates system altogether."90 Thus, on 10 July 1919, with the signing of the Milner-Simon agreement, the eastern two-thirds of Togoland came under French control and the remaining western third came under British control.

The new colonial demarcation cur across the homeland of the Ewes,91 who were was subsequently divided between the British Gold Coast, British-mandated Togoland, and French-mandated Togoland. A look at the population distribution of the Ewe at the time shows how Milner and Simon caused the future headaches of the two mandate powers:

Source: Own creation.

Source: Own creation. Based on TCOR "7th Session: Reports of the United Nations Visiting Mission to Trust Territories in West Africa" Supplement No.2 (T/793) (1951), p. 72.

90 Pedersen, *The guardians*, p. 31.

88 Milner as cited in Pedersen, *The guardians*, p. 31.

89 Chowdhuri, *International Mandates and Trusteeship Systems*, pp. 46–47.

91 Bening, "The Ghana-Togo boundary, 1914–1982"

Since the coastal areas were more densely populated, more than half of the Ewe-speaking population was under British influence, reinforcing the already strong 'British pull factor' on the Ewe. At the same time, more than half of the Ewe lived in a mandated area, that is, under international supervision, which was to provide the Ewe representatives with the argument before the international organisations that they should have a decisive say in their future fate as a unified people. If most of the Ewe had ended up outside the mandated area, then the international organisations would have placed the Ewe issue outside their jurisdiction.92

#### Proto-Nationalist Ewe-Petitions to the League

The division gave rise to several petitions by the *Committee on behalf of Togoland Natives*, which was made up by several English- and German-speaking Ewe chiefs and merchants and led by none other than Octaviano Olympio, Lomé's wealthiest merchant.

Olympio's plea first came to the attention of Alfred Milner on 10 September 1919, that is, only two months after the publication of the accord negotiated between Milner and Simon.93 The letter, penned by Olympio, stated that the mere possibility of Togoland being transferred to another power "had filled them with great apprehension" and that they wished to be under British administration for "tribal, territorial, educational, and economic reasons." The dispatch further stated that "the absorption of Togoland in France's Colonial Possessions will sever members of the Ewe-speaking tribe in Togoland from those in the South-Eastern portion of the Gold Coast Colony and seriously interfere with their economic progress,"94 and concluded: "The feelings of his Lordship's petitioners will be more clearly understood when they are considered side by side with those of the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine at the time of their annexation to Germany in 1871."95 Olympio requested furthermore that the petition be placed before the League of Nations for due consideration.

It is difficult to say to what extent Olympio's petition was motivated by an authentic sentiment of Ewe-ness,96 or whether he was using the division of the Ewe for a rather self-serving end. For sure, Olympio, as an already-Anglophile member of Lomé's commercial elite would have greatly benefitedif his favoured protective power,Britain, would have remained in control over Lomé. Whatever the reason, it is not difficult to see that Olympio securitised the division of the Ewe by comparing it to Alsace and Lorraine – a fresh reminder of the recent horrors of World War I, as it was one of the very points of

92 There are only estimates of the size and proportion of the Ewe in the total population. The report of the first United Nations visiting mission to the trusteeship territories in West Africa puts the number of Ewe in 1947 at 800,000, of whom about 330,000 lived in the Volta Triangle of the Gold Coast, about 126,000 in British Togoland and about 290,000 in French Togoland. In British Togoland, the Ewe made up between one third and one half of the total population, in French Togoland more than one third.

93 United Nations (UN) (Geneva), R20/1/4900/3099, *Letter protesting against the present division of Togoland*, 1920, petition by Olympio to Milner, 16 September 1920 [p. 2]

94 As cited in Welch, *Dream of Unity*, p. 57.

95 As cited in TCOR, "2nd Session" (1947), p. 322.

96 Keese, *Ethnicity and the Colonial State*, p. 248.

contention that brought the archenemies, France and Germany, to the trenches of the Great War.

Although at the Paris Peace Conference, George Lloyd, Woodrow Wilson, and Jan Smuts had made proposals on the right of mandated peoples to petition,97 it was Henri Simon who argued that if a right to petition would be granted to individual inhabitants of mandated territories "all administration would be impossible."98 Thus, Milner, who had personally negotiated the partition of German Togoland, simply rejected Olympio's petition. Thus, Olympio sent his complains protesting the introduction of French rule in Togoland to promising anti-colonial advocates, the most prominent of which was US President Harding. Olympio stated:

"Togoland handed to a Government other than British is a ruin to Togoland because of its connection with the Gold Coast. […] Please allow us to say that the French method of administration as we see it is worse than that of the Germans... During the German regime there were some methods of administration which we disliked and protested against; now they are being recalled into the colony, such a as the poll-tax, markettax, forced labour, oppression, etc."99

Furthermore, Olympio made use of his contacts from his time in Liverpool, sending cables to representatives in Liverpool's Chamber of Commerce, the Liverpool-based *Association of West African Merchants*, and to correspondents of the *Daily Telegraph*, whereby his petitions made their way into English newspapers and thus, by January 1921, came to the attention of the League's Council.100

# Togobund

Not a year had passed since the Simon-Milner-Accord when in 1920 African pupils, employees, and ex-clerks of the former German Togoland, who were now unemployed due to the changed language skills required on both sides of the new border, founded the *Bund der deutschen Togoländer* (Togobund). The Togobund was largely led by Ewe-exiles from French Togoland living in Accra. Notable members were Emmanuel Bruce and Gerald Otto Awuma. It is difficult to estimate how large the audience of the Togobund was, but it may have gone beyond a few nostalgic ex-clerks as Germanophilia was widespread among the common people and the advanced elite.

97 Momirov, "The Individual Right to Petition in Internationalized Territories," p. 217.

98 As cited in Pedersen, *The guardians*, p. 78.

99 Raymond Leslie Buell, *The Native Problem in Africa* 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1928), p. 362.

100 United Nations (UN) (Geneva), R20/1/4900/3099, *Letter protesting against the present division of Togoland*; See also Pedersen's analysis Pedersen, *The guardians*, p. 79.

*Photo 2: Meeting of the Togobund, Accra (26 July 1931)101*

Source: Bildarchiv der deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main, N° 041–0235-52.

The Togobund took a strong interest in ameliorating the impoverished lives of peasant communities, claimed support throughout partitioned Eweland.With the establishment of German colonial rule, almost all the Ewe chiefdoms had been united under one rule for the first time in their history, while now since World War I they saw themselves separated again.The German period had left behind the memory of a region that was less artificially fragmented than it had been after 1919, and the memory fed resentment.This promoted nationalist efforts for unity, especially among parts of the Ewe elite, as they also manifested themselves in the German Togobund. The Togobund's own designation "Bund deutscher *Togoländer"* was the first self-reference expressing a "Togolese" identity, although its membership and activities drew mainly from the Ewe population.

Lawrance holds that "the amorphous idea of Togolese unity was superimposed on a more tangible concept of Ewe unity, […] Bundism was an evolving and changing Ewe expression of Togolese nationalism, […] its failure provides an important explanation for the failure of the post-war Ewe Reunification Movement."102

#### Petitions to the League

Octaviano Olympio also petitioned directly to the newly created League of Nations.103 Sinceits PermanentMandates Commission (PMC), responsible for the supervision of the mandate administrations, has not yet been convened, its designated director, William

101 Translation: "Our faithful Togo people in exile."

102 Lawrance, *Locality, Mobility, and "Nation"*, p. 122.

103 Amenumey, *The Ewe Unification Movement*, pp. 22–26.

Rappard, saw no other alternative than to forward selected protests (among them Olympio's petition) to individuals of the Commission and state representatives of the League's Council. As Momirov posits: "Understandably, such practice of in fact un-institutionalized blaming and shaming of certain mandatory powers was not welcomed with fanfare."104 Even before the first meeting of the PMC in October 1921, the Council had already received 71 petitions (most of them from the A-mandates, such as Palestine and Syria)105 and a petition from Palestine, received in July 1921 represented the last straw for the British.The new minister of colonies,Winston Churchill, stated that it was "obviously unsuitable that petitions of this nature which are generally *ex parte* statements directed either against His Majesty's Government or against the local Government, should be circulated in this way."106

As such, the matter of petitions and their circulation was raised at the very first meeting of the PMC in October 1921, but the commission refused to formalize the growing petition practice. Fearful of the power und publicity, which the petitions might confer on colonial subjects, the British drafted procedural rules for the petition process,107 that were modelled on the minority regime of the League of Nations and distinguished remedially between "receivable" and "non-receivable" petitions.108

Receivable petitions could not

While the rule not to question the Mandates System quite literally ruled out its securitisation in the first place, the rule on 'violent language' represented *locutionary silencing* in a particular aspect.The requirement that petitions not be written in "violent language" did not refer to the use of swear words, but to descriptive terms such as 'terror, atrocities, or bloodshed.'111

While 'receivable' petitions had to be submitted through the mandate power, oral hearings were ruled out entirely. The issue of oral hearings was discussed at the 3rd, 8th , and 9th Sessions of the PMC, which rarely was able to make an informed decision on a

104 Momirov, "The Individual Right to Petition in Internationalized Territories," p. 217.

105 van Ginneken, "Volkenbondsvoogdij," 205, footnote 9.

106 TNA (London), FO 371/7051, *League of Nations*, 1921, "Churchill to the Premiers of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa", 14 July 1921, p. 109–110.

107 Submission to the League of Nations of Petitions from Inhabitants of Mandated Territories; Memorandum by the British Representative of Procedure to be Adopted.

108 League of Nations, *The Mandate system*: *origin, principles, application,* Series of League of Nations Publications (Geneva), p. 41.

109 For the origine within the League's minority regime see Cowan, "Who's Afraid of Violent Language?"

110 The proposal presented through a report to the Council was adopted in January 1923; see League of Nations, *Official Journal* (1923) *League of Nations Official Journal* 4, no. 3, 298–300, 1427.

111 Cowan, "Who's Afraid of Violent Language?," p. 283.

petition as it was not empowered to hear the petitioner in person. As was to be expected, all mandate powers rejected this proposal because it would render the petition procedure comparable to court proceedings, which were regarded "inconsistent with the very nature of the mandatory system."112 As Balakrishnan Rajagopal rightfully noted: "The net result of this policy was that the PMC adopted or was made to adopt by the council an *attitude of containment* towards the petitions, wherein the most serious allegations were either *put off by bureaucratic techniques*."113

Petitions that were considered receivable were referred to a member of the PMC who functioned as a "rapporteur." After discussing the petition in closed session with an accredited representative of the respective mandate power, the rapporteur formulated his/her own conclusions for submission to the Council.114 After discussing petitions received, the PMC could decide which petition (if any) should be circulated to the Council. The minutes of the meeting at which the petitions were discussed had to be attached. The Council, dominated by the four permanent members, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan had the power decide if there are reasons for circulating any of these petitions to other members of the League, which they usually did not find.115

Most petitions that *reached* the League, about 87% (2,642), were considered 'receivable'. However, this seemingly positive statistic was overshadowed by the fact that petitions had to be submitted via the mandate power itself. But many potential petitioners were discouraged from submitting their petitions directly to the mandate powers for fear of consequences. Furthermore, as Pedersen notes, it is impossible to estimate how many petitions were sorted out.116 In the 25 years of the formal existence of the Mandates System, only one petition was received from British Togoland, 71 from French Togoland and 3 from both territories. Regardless,most of the petitions that were considered 'receivable' never got far because the PMC had little external information and was unable to conduct independent investigations with which to challenge the mostly negative response of the mandate powers.117

An instructive example of petitions against the abuses of rule in French Togoland is the case of the Adjigo family. Like most influential families on the Togo coast, the Adjigo family was an Anglophone merchant family that had riveled with the Lawson family over the stoolship of the Togolese town of Aného, the early capital of German Togoland. Before the war, the German colonial administration had decided to use the Lawson family for its own purposes and deported the Adjigo family to Atakpamé up north. When, after the war, the French Mandate was established, the Adjigos hoped to be rehabilitated. However, France's first governor, Auguste Bonnecarrère, did not rehabilitate the

112 League of Nations, *The Mandate system*, p. 41.

113 Emphasis added; Balakrishnan Rajagopal, *International law from below*: *Development, social movements, and Third World resistance* (Cambridge, U.K, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk& AN=120466, p. 69.

114 Chowdhuri, *International Mandates and Trusteeship Systems*, p. 206.

115 League of Nations, *Official Journal* (1923) *League of Nations Official Journal* 4, no. 3, p. 300.

116 Pedersen, *The guardians*, pp. 86–87.

117 Hall, *Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship*, p. 202.

Adjigo family, but sent their leaders to "obligatory residence" in northern Togoland. After the Adjigos' own appeals to return from exile failed, the Gold Coast lawyer, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, took on their case and sent three successive petitions to the PMC on their behalf. As a lawyer, Casely Hayford addressed the PMC as the "final Court of appeal."118 The largest petition he sent amounted to over one hundred pages, including at least thirty appendices. Yet, the PMC rejected Casely Hayford's petitions. More to the point, the PMC's French member, Pierre Orts, claimed that representation of a single family by a foreign lawyer was "an abuse of the right of petition," adding that Casely Hayford had falsely claimed that the French administration had not forwarded one of his petitions to the PMC. The PMC's refusal to accept Casely Hayford's petition was particularly absurd because Paris itself later called French Togoland's Governor Bonnecarrère to order and nearly removed him (albeit for reasons other than the petition). Finally, the Adjigo family returned from exile.

Anique van Ginneken compiled a comprehensive set of statistics on petitions that reached the PMC. 119 She establishes that until the League's dissolution in 1945, the PMC received in total 3,044 petitions among which it considered 13% (402) as 'not receivable': 4 were anonym (rule a), 183 raised issues that were already dealt with by the PMC (rule b), 19 contained 'violent language' (rule c), and 49 were protesting the Mandates System (rule d). For the remainder, the PMC considered them either not within its competence (67), too general (41), vague (24), or trivial (12).120 These petitions underwent classic *locutionary silencing* because they were either not forwarded to the League or classified as 'notreceivable'.

In quantitative terms 80% of petitions were either rejected (1,638) or no decision was found (841), whilst of all petitions only 14% (416) were partially and 5% (149) were fully 'considered'. 'Considered', however, did not automatically mean that a petition was acted upon according to its demands, but merely that the PMC made a recommendation to the respective mandate power. In fact, the League pronounced 15 reprimands against France and one against Britain for not acting on the petitions that emanated from Togoland.

As Pedersen notes, most petitions 'failed' because they clashed with the mandate powers' conception of the system, that is, not to challenge the basic premises of the system itself. After all, territories were placed under mandate because their inhabitants were "not yet able to stand by themselves."121 Though, almost three-quarters of all petitions were essentially political in nature,122 remarks such as that petitioners from mandated territories 'do not understand the terms of the mandate system' usually disqualified criticism towards the mandate powers because the petitioners' alleged backwardness rendered them incapable of recognising their need for foreign rule. In fact, the very proposal that established the rules of procedure of the PMC stated that "peoples of a less-advanced civilisation are always ready to address, to any authority, complaints

118 Lawrance, *Locality, Mobility, and "Nation"*, p. 55.

119 The research results regarding the numbers, origin, nature and effect of the mandate petitions are those of van Ginneken, "Volkenbondsvoogdij," pp. 211–18.

120 The reason for the three remaining petitions is not known.

121 *League of Nations*

122 van Ginneken, "Volkenbondsvoogdij," p. 214.

about the most insignificant matters for reasons which have little, if any, foundation"123 Thus, the PMC's civilizational attitude, which was formalized in the Covenant's mandate article, indicated *illocutionary disablement*, while the overwhelming majority of petitions underwent *illocutionary frustration* because they were either rejected or no decision was found because the PMC was incapable to challenge the negative response of Mandate Powers.

# 5.3.2 French & British Togoland under Mandate

The period of French mandated Togoland can roughly be divided into two phases: The first phase (1922–1930) was characterised by the new role of the chiefs in conjunction with a relatively prosperous economic climate.

# French Mandate Organisation

Akin to the other French possessions in West Africa, the mandate administration was highly centralized: at the top of the administration was the Governor, the *Commissaire de la République*, who reported directly to the Ministry of the Colonies in Paris at Rue Oudinot and not to the AOF Governor-General in Dakar. The highest colonial officials at the regional level were the 7 *Commandant de Cercle* (district commissioners) to whom the total of 11 *Chefs de Subdivision* were subordinate.The French established a rigid hierarchical system of Chiefs(*chefsdu village*) and superordinate Paramount Chiefs(*chefsdu canton*), each of whom had a set of responsibilities in a descending hierarchy of power. Chiefs had the task of transmitting and supervising the execution of directives and orders from the district commissioner, controlling the activities of their subordinate chiefs, whose most important functions were the census and the collection of the poll tax.124

African participation in government was limited to the so-called *Conseils de Notables*. Each composed of up to 30 elected rural or urban chiefs, the councils had only an advisory functionin the areas of taxation, public works,and the local budget.This experiment with elected offices displaced the former role of urban tribal chiefs and village heads in administration.125 Needless to say, the influential Octaviano Olympio was the president of the *Conseil des Notables* in Lomé. Nonetheless, these *Conseils de Notables* had little influence on the decisions of the district commissioners.

The French colonial doctrines, which were also applied to the mandate territories, were politically underpinned by a sense of cultural mission of the *civilisation française*. Based on the unquestioned superiority of French culture and its suitability for all populations, a basic tenet of French colonial policy in Africa was the slow cultural *assimilation* of the colonial population. Those colonial subjects who had acquired the characteristics of French civilization, that is, French language, dress, customs, education, religion, were accorded the status of *assimilé* or *evolué*. With this status came the right to vote, jurisdiction under French civil and criminal law (instead of customary law), and exemption from the *indigénat* code. Introduced in 1924, the *indigénat* code replaced constitutional rights

123 League of Nations, *Official Journal* (1923) *League of Nations Official Journal* 4, no. 3.

124 Lawrance, *Locality, Mobility, and "Nation"*, p. 47.

125 Lawrance, *Locality, Mobility, and "Nation"*, p. 19.

of indigenous people (*indigènes*) and applied them exclusively to Europeans and *assimilés* (citoyens). Ironically, the League of Nations itself was a factor in this development, for in order to prevent a "creeping annexation" of mandate territories, in 1923 the League of Nations disallowed the mandate powers to grant citizenship to mandate residents – only "naturalisation" was allowed. 126 The de facto restriction of civil and political liberties allowed the French administrators for example to impose forced labour or to sentence the natives according to customary law (instead of French civil and criminal law). The gross abuses and often arbitrary application of the *indigénat* code was one of the greatest sources of emerging anti-French sentiment within French Togoland.127

Active until the late 1940s, the Togobund sent a stream of petitions to the PMC from 1925 on, documenting what it described as human rights violations such as arbitrary arrest and called on the League of Nations to persuade France to leave and reunify Togoland under German control.128 The Togobund's strategy was aimed at discrediting the French regime and showing its unfitness to rule.This mythologisation of the German rule (which is still widespread today) did not arise on its own merits but can rather be understood as a means of criticising the French regime.The French feared the ambitions of the Togobund since their goal was to take the French possessions away. The French in return did their best to deny the Togobund access to the international press and to send representatives to the PMC. Eventually, the PMC did not address the demands of the petitions, holding the restitution of the territory to Germany to be incompatible with the provisions of the Mandates System.129

As a counterweight to the Togobund, which put itself at the service of the colonial claims of Hitler's Third Reich, the French Governor Montagne founded on 5 September 1936 a *Cercle des Amitiés Françaises* whose vice-presidency was assumed by one of the most respected merchants of Lomé: Sylvanus Olympio. Dormant at the beginning, the *Cercle des Amitiés Française* led to the foundation of the *Comité du l'Unité Togolaise* du *Nord et du Sud* by decree in 1941.

#### Security under Mandate

Between 1920 and 1946, many developments took place in the field of colonial forces of order, which were a Foucauldian-like "institution of permanent reform."130 The security architecture of the French Empire was organised along colonial rather than populaceprotection lines. Thus, the directors of the General Security AOFs were not chosen from among senior officers of the municipal police but from among the colonial administrators, as the colonial ministry preferred 'specialists in the colonial field' rather than in policing techniques in this position. Due to the mandate status, things in Togoland were

126 Gouvernement Français, "Rapport Annuel: 1955" T/1300 (1957)

127 Gregory Mann, "What Was the Indigénat?," *Journal of African History* 50, no. 3 (2009), https://doi. org/10.1017/S0021853709990090.

128 *SDN,* R 37 FMT (12226) N°32095: "Wir Togoleute hatten uns s[einer] Zeit *freiwillig* unter deutschen Schutz gestellt, während wir unter die französische Herrschaft *gezwungen* wurden" (emphasis in original). Lawrance, *Locality, Mobility, and "Nation"*, p. 224.

129 PMC, 15th Session. C.305 M.105 VI. p. 10.

130 Glasman, *Les corps habillés au Togo*, p. 189.

forced to take a different direction. The *tirailleurs sénégalais*, responsible for the territorial defence of French West Africa, had been deployed in Togoland since the campaign of World War I. However, Togoland's mandate status prohibited the conscription of military forces except for police purposes. Since the PMC insisted on the withdrawal of the *tirailleurs sénégalais*, France therefore created in 1924 from the territory's own budget a police force, the so-called *garde indigène*, which consisted mainly of mercenaries trained and led by French officers. The French administration then separated from the *garde indigène* a so-called c*ompanie de milice*, which it stationed in various parts of the territory from 1927 onwards.The c*ompanie de milice* could be reinforced by reservists at any time. It was subordinate to the West African General Command. The c*ompanie de milice* thus became a kind of substitute army and elite force of the *garde indigène*. Moreover, it offered an advantage over regular armed forces, as the militias' costs were much lower than the military costs under German rule and even lower than British military expenditure in Tanganyika.131

Based on the French annual reports to the PMC, Glasman calculated that in 1929 French Togoland comprised a staff of 1.608, of which 1.383 were natives.132 The *garde indigène* and c*ompanie demilice*(534) thusmade up roughly a third of the administration's entire personnel. If the hygiene guards and border guards are added, forces of order made up as much as 43.2% of the colonial state's indigenous personnel. Considering the extent of the territory and a population of about 750,000, however, there was on average only one state servant for every 500 inhabitants.Thus, the French administration constituted a weak state whose proportion of law enforcement officers was, however, disproportionately high. Until the 1933, the *garde indigène* and c*ompanie de milice* formed the almost sole forces of law enforcement.133

#### The 1933 Riots & Service de Police et de Sûreté

Between 1914 and 1920, that is, the interim period from the surrender of the German troops to the time when the British-occupied areas around Lomé were ceded to the French, the local population welcomed the British waiving most of the taxes that the Germans had introduced.134

Yet, in the wake of the global stock market crash of 1929 and to raise funds during the worldwide economic downturn, the French administration announced in 1933 that it would reintroduce a dozen taxes that had already existed under German rule. Led by Lomé's market women, local district and cantonal chiefs submitted petitions to the Lomé police headquarters on 22 January 1933 demanding the withdrawal of the new taxes, especially those on market stalls. The French administration responded to the petitions by arresting two of the leaders. That same afternoon, a crowd of 3,000 people marched through the streets, calling for a general strike and the release of their leaders. Although the arrested were released that same evening, the crowd still did not disperse the next day

131 Wright, *Mandates under the League of Nations*, p. 564.

132 Glasman, *Les corps habillés au Togo*, p. 195.

133 Glasman, *Les corps habillés au Togo*, p. 223.

134 Nugent, *Smugglers, secessionists & loyal citizens on the Ghana-Togo frontier*, p. 149.

and vandalized several buildings (including the house of Jonathan Savi de Tové, secretary of Lomé's *Conseil de Notables*, who was considered a lackey of the French administration).

As tensions increased, some 170 *tirailleurs* were brought in from the Ivory Coast. On 3 February, a skirmisher, Moussia Diarra, killed twelve Togolese and wounded three for no apparent reason: the governor invoked a "a stroke of madness." In the counter-repression, many villagers were killed, and women raped. In the subsequent trials of the revolt, fourteen Togolese were sentenced to death, entire villages and neighbourhoods were collectively fined thousands of francs and sentenced to several thousand days of forced labour. Some were jailed for up to five years for minor offenses such as unauthorized travel.135

To prevent such revolts in the future the French administration created in less than a month after the revolt the *Service de Police et de Sûreté*. The French Governor, Robert de Guise, pressured officials to keep in closer contact with village authorities and to report any activity they considered subversive or likely to endanger order and security to the administering authority.

The *Service de Police et de Sûreté*, which represented a new, that is, civil police service, whose urban commissariats now formed the central authority for maintaining order, marked a break with the *garde indigène* and its mere military presence in the streets. In the face of a civilian and otherwise peaceful population, the use of machine gun fire no longer seemed appropriate, especially in a territory particularly observed by the international press, the League of Nations and competing major powers.136 Control of the streets was, thus, handed over to the municipal police station, which now represented the central site of colonial order and political control of the territory.

The creation of the *Service* entailed the bureaucratisation and emergence of a remote policing, which increasingly made use of surveillance techniques.137 Henceforth, written reports formed the primary relationship between the police and the population. Not military experience was required any more, but scholarly experience.The commissariats issued numerous documents (certificates of good conduct, certificates of residence, loss certificates, et cetera). They documented their daily work. A good commissioner was one who writes good protocols. Anthropometry, that is, measuring people (length of feet, legs, etc.) to establish identities. In 1941, a special archival section of the police was founded138 and by 1947, that is, from the transition from the mandate to the trusteeship era, the police authorities had created an archive of 11,338 fingerprint samples.139 Although *la force d'ordre* in Togo was not as militarized as in the rest of French West Africa, the creation of the *Services de Sûreté* represented a reform of the previous law enforcers. Whereas previously the tasks of the *force d'ordre* had been those of colonial administration, tax collection, supervision of forced labour, et cetera, now it was a matter of preventing plots against the colonial powers, controlling the borders and directing

135 Decalo, *Historical dictionary of Togo*, pp. 196–97.

136 Glasman, *Les corps habillés au Togo*, p. 205.

137 Glasman, *Les corps habillés au Togo*, pp. 198–207.

138 Arrête 759, 27 December 1941.

139 Gouvernement Français, "Rapport Annuel: Togo placé sous la Tutelle de la France" T/221 (1948), p. 36.

the flow of population. However, this new urban police force was less concerned with fighting crime than with maintaining colonial power by criminalising political opponents.The bureaucratisation of the police was not synonymous with its pacification, but perfectly compatible with an exacerbation of police violence.

To summarise, then, there was a Foucauldian tendency towards the panopticon in France's colonial security system. While initially it was repression and brute force that held the colonial empire together, after 1933 Togo's *Service de Sûreté* was a knowledge institution that played an essential role in the construction of the threat in the preparation of threat assessments. The reactive-repressive police force was joined by a pre-emptive police force.

#### British Mandated Togoland

In contrast to French Togoland, the British were not willing to establish a separate administration and legislature, so that an administrative union was set in place between British-mandated Togoland and the neighbouring colony of Gold Coast. Thus, at the top of the mandate administration stood the governor of the neighbouring colony of the Gold Coast, who was based in Accra, while the *district commissioners* at the lower level of the colonial chain of command represented the local "barons."The Northern Section was administered as an integral part of the Northern territories of the Gold Coast and a Southern Section administered as anintegral part of the Southern third of the Gold Coast (itself referred to as Gold Coast Colony).140 Some divisions, whether Native States or administrative districts, thus extended across the borders between the Gold Coast and British Togoland.

In contrast to the French policy of centralised assimilation,British colonial policy was imbued with what Lugard called *indirect rule*, which consisted of a gradual devolution of authorityinto the hands ofindigenous*Native Authorities*(thatis, political groupings at the local level based on traditional elites and alignments) first as units of local administration and later as units of local government.The amalgamation of the divisions into *states* and*Native Authorities* under one paramount ruler has been a continuous process since the British Government assumed the mandate at the end of World War I. At the end of the mandate, four such states existedin southern section of British Togoland.Native Authorities had limited administrative, legislative, and executive powers, encompassing orders to natives subject to its authority and make rules providing for public order and police. *States* and *Divisions* had the power to enquire into all disputes of constitutional or political nature. The British refrained from forming larger states on the scale of the French cantons so as not to provoke chieftaincy disputes.141

While due to the French policy of *assimilation*, that is, *direct rule*, nationalist movements and self-government in Togoland were seen as a challenge and to some degree even a threat to the colonial system and suppressed accordingly, similar groups in British Togoland were not only legitimate and enjoyed greater freedoms, but also fulfilled a functional role: Native Authorities were created ostensibly to look after their own local affairs,

140 Whereas the "Colony of the Gold Coast" refers to the entire colony, "Gold Coast Colony" referred to the

141 Skinner, *The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland*, p. 15.

but hedged about with the overriding authority of the Administrative Officers and the veto of the Governor, so that in effect they were only instruments for carrying out the orders of the European administrators, who reserved certain judicial functions.

Especially during the war years, but also before, migration from the French to the British Mandate territory was not atypical, as conditions in British Togoland were apparently better: No forced labour or indigénat, lower taxes, more liberal trading policies, better conditions for African advance.142 It was easier to get an education in British Togoland, this implanted a favourable attitude towards British rule.143

#### World War II

When France and Vichy concluded an armistice in 1940, British-French tensions during World War II led to the complete closure of the border between British and French Togoland, which was only reopened with many restrictions, in June 1943, when French West Africa re-entered the war. The Allied blockade left Vichy-French Togoland struggling to cope in complete self-sufficiency at a time when hardships for the war effort were already mounting. Deprivations included poverty and hunger due to increased forced labour, taxation in money and kind, restrictions on freedom of movement, transport and trade, and requisition of goods and services. Nugent noted that shortages of commodities prompted the French regime to facilitate smuggling, and that life in British Togoland was far bleaker than in French Togoland because of the high market demand in Lomé and elsewhere.144

In November 1942, before the invasion of North Africa by Anglo-American troops and the eventual break with the Vichy regime, the French administration in Lomé decided to detain representatives of foreign trading houses and Togolese who were known to be pro-British. Many fled over the border to British Togoland. Because Sylvanus Olympio was a representative of the United Africa Company, a Unilever subsidiary, and a former graduate of the LSE who regularly listened to the BBC radio, the Vichy-controlled administration interned him along with six of his colleagues for a fortnight in Djougou, north of Dahomey in November 1942. They were suspected of having links to the British and Gaullists. However, ironically, it was his internment that made Olympio a potential contact for the Gaullists in Algiers, who were gradually gaining influence in the French African colonies. Certainly, this was an experience that shaped resentment towards French administrative policy. Ironically, it was Nicholas Grunitzky, Olympio's later rival, who was a Gaullist underground member during World War II in Vichy-controlled Togoland.145

When representatives of Free France met with senior colonial officials from the African colonies at the Brazzaville Conference in early 1944 to involve the African colonies more fully in the struggle for the liberation of France, they recognised, in return for their support, the need for political, social and economic reforms in the French-controlled part of Africa and promised a fundamental reorganisation of relations between

142 Welch, *Dream of Unity*, p. 60.

143 Welch, *Dream of Unity*, p. 51.

144 Nugent, *Smugglers, secessionists & loyal citizens on the Ghana-Togo frontier*, p. 163.

145 Decalo, *Historical dictionary of Togo*, p. 154.

metropolitan France and its colonies. The administrators present recommended the abolition of the worst features of the old system, such as the indigénat, forced labour and compulsory tributes, while recommending the establishment of local territorial assemblies and representation of the territories in Paris. But they had reiterated an old principle of French colonial policy: namely that France's aims in its civilizing work in the colonies excluded any idea of self-government and any possibility of development outside the French empire. The formation of independent governments could not be contemplated. The reorganisation decided upon at the Brazzaville Conference merely provided for the transformation of colonial relations into a newly born *French Union*.

Contemporaries146 and literature,147 undoubtedly identify World War II as an awakening of political consciousness in Togoland. Nugent highlights the permeability of border in interwar years.148 The hardships of the World War II, translated into the rise of Ewe nationalism.149 When the Vichy regime imposed increasing economic burdens on the population of French Togoland for the war effort, again in 1943 a petition to the Secretary of State for the Colonies,Oliver Stanley, and several newspaper articles in 1944 called for the unification of all Ewes under British administration.150 Similarly, on 24 August 1944, the Asogli State Council addressed a memorandum to Sir Alan Burns, Governor of the Gold Coast, stating that the restoration of Ewe unity was as important to them as the self-government promised by the British government, since the Atlantic Charter and other wartime conferences.

Likewise, former members of the Togobund hoped that under Hitler the Germans would return to reunite Togoland and the members of the Federation would regain their former jobs and status. In 1943, when Oliver Stanley's visit a group of teachers in southern British Togoland, many of them educated by the Bremen Missionary Society, such as Francis Yao Asare, Kofi Dumoga and Gerald Otto Awuma, revived the idea of a united Togoland by founding the *Togoland Union*. 151 It is important to note that as its primary goal the Togoland Union did not seek the unification of Eweland. Though many of its members were Ewe, especially for the Akpini and Atando area, also many members were Buems. Its members were resentful of the fact that many of the more important posts in the education system of the Southern Section of Togoland were held by Ewes from the Gold Coast Colony (which is hardly to be wondered since there have been schools in the Gold Coast Peki and Keta areas for over 100 years). Although the Togoland Union signed a joint resolutionin the autumn of 1948 supporting the unification of the whole of Eweland, it soon became an opponent of the Ewe unification movement, opposing all efforts that

146 Sylvanus Olympio, MAE (La Courneuve), 77QO-13, *Élections de 1958, travaux du Conseil de Tutelle*, Note sur M. Sylvanus Olympio, Mai 1958. Pedro Olympio TCOR, "6th Session" (1950), p. 156.

147 Welch, *Dream of Unity*, p. 41; John Kent, "The Ewe Question," in *The Internationalization of Colonialism*, ed. John Kent (Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 217; Lawrance, *Locality, Mobility, and "Nation"*, pp. 135–55.

148 Nugent, *Smugglers, secessionists & loyal citizens on the Ghana-Togo frontier*.

149 Amenumey, *The Ewe Unification Movement*, pp. 37–38.

150 ANOM (Aix-en-Provence), 1AFFPOL/3284/3, *Affaire Ewe*, Bulletin de Renseignement, N/175-932 S. D., p. 2

151 PRAAD (Accra), ADM 39/1/651, *Togoland Union and Togoland Association for the United Nation Association Statement subject and reasons etc*, Application for Registration of the Togo Union

would lead to the abandonment of the territorial identity of former German Togoland that would result from the integration of the Ewe territories into the Gold Coast.

# **6. The Securitisation of Ewe & Togoland Unification before the United Nations**

"The Ewe problem was the most critical that had yet emerged from the operation of the International Trusteeship system. The finding of an adequate solution must be regarded as a test of the Trusteeship System itself […] a test of local administrative policies and also a test of the whole concept of colonialism. It raised the validity of the concepts of the British Commonwealth of Nations and of the French Union."1

# **6.1 Bringing Togoland under United Nations Trusteeship**

During World War II, to mobilize global support for the Allied war endeavour, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly affirmed their commitment to the right of all peoples to self-government.This joint declaration, known as the Atlantic Charter, was made in August 1941. Churchill later tried to limit this promise to peoples living under Nazi occupation, but expectations had already been raised in the colonies since the Atlantic Charter was issued by various nations in January 1942 and later confirmed by the United Nations.2 The US position, on the other hand, was initially to insist on a broad application of the Atlantic Charter's promise of self-determination and independence. In mid-July 1942, Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, set up a committee in the State Department whose working paper later served as the basis for the United Nations' institutional design, which also laid out the contours for the eventual establishment of a Trusteeship System.

1 Intervention by Philippine Representative Diosdado Macapagal, GAOR, "6th Session: 4th Committee" (1951), p. 189.

2 Tom Parker, *The Ultimate Intervention*: *Revitalising the UN Trusteeship Council for the 21st Century* (Sandvika, 2003), accessed 29 July 2019, available from www.bi.edu/globalassets/forskning/cen tre-for-european-and-asian-studies/pdf/03-03the\_ultimate\_intervention.pdf, p. 9.

At the so-called "Big Three Conferences" in Cairo and Tehran in late 1943, Roosevelt proposed to Churchill and Stalin that all dependent French territories, by then Vichycontrolled, be placed under international trusteeship. The plans included a powerful Trusteeship Commission, which would have been authorised to recommend and revise "charter terms, designate or replace administering authorities, and terminate trust status."3 Roosevelt's suggestion was vehemently opposed by Churchill who regarded an all-powerful Trusteeship Commission as an implicit threat to the British Empire.4 Furthermore, the US Military preferred to keep the question of trusteeship open until the US government had defined its final disposition of the Pacific Islands, which it conquered from Japan.

Over the following year, as a concession to the British but also the US military, the State Department retreated from its proposition and instead advocated for 'self-government' rather than independence and limited UN powers.5 Nevertheless, dissatisfied with the revised proposals, the US military insisted that the question of trusteeship be dropped from the forthcoming Dumbarton Oaks Conversations that were taking place between August and October 1944. Much to the regret of Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who considered American securityinterests fully protected trough the proposed Trusteeship System, it was agreed to omit Section IX from the "Tentative Proposals."6 With the exception of the forthcoming strategic trusteeship provisions, theUS State Department's plans laid out a decidedly vague blueprint for deliberations on the new Trusteeship System that appeased conflicting preferences of the US State Department, the US military and the interests of the colonial powers, especially the British. Principles of trusteeship would be applied to the administration of all colonies, but only territories voluntarily placed by the colonial powers under the Trusteeship System would fall under UN supervision.

Although the colonial question was an issue during the war, especially considering the burgeoning decolonisation movements, due to US-American security interests the Dumbarton Oaks proposals thus did not have much influence during the forthcoming negotiations in San Francisco and London.7 Yet, one crucial proposal made at Dumbarton Oaks lingered its way into the later negotiations: As was done under the Mandates System, instead of the new international organisation, the Administering Authorities should prepare the terms of each trusteeship agreement and submit them to the organization for approval before placing a territory under trusteeship. This formula was proposed by the US government as a concession to the British in order to give them a free hand in determining the conditions by which they would place any of territory under trusteeship and so would circumvent direct UN administration or supervision by a powerful Trusteeship Commission.8 Thus, the fact that contemporary peacebuilding

3 Thullen, *Problems of the Trusteeship System*, p. 33.

4 Tom Parker, *The Ultimate Intervention*: *Revitalising the UN Trusteeship Council for the 21st Century* (Sandvika, 2003), accessed 29 July 2019, available from www.bi.edu/globalassets/forskning/cen tre-for-european-and-asian-studies/pdf/03-03the\_ultimate\_intervention.pdf, p. 9.

5 Thullen, *Problems of the Trusteeship System*, p. 33.

6 Thullen, *Problems of the Trusteeship System*, pp. 33–34.

7 Falcón, *Power interrupted*, p. 42; TCOR, "1st Session" (1947), p. 2; Welch, *Dream of Unity*, p. 29.

8 Thullen, *Problems of the Trusteeship System*, p. 35.

missions comprise 'mandate agreements' derives from the tradition of mandate agreements once agreed upon during the Paris Peace Conference, and after World War II, at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference.

The first concrete proposal for international supervision was officially discussed in February 1945 at the Yalta Conference and already containing the demand of the US Military to classify future trusteeship territories either as *strategic* or *non-strategic*. While *non-strategic* territories would be overseen by the Trusteeship Council,*strategic* territories would be overseen by the future Security Council, where the US could protect its interests by exercising its right of veto.9 John Foster Dulles, who participated in the Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta conferences, commented that these proposals "had the defects which usually occur when a few big powers get together to decide how to run the world [and]conclude that the best of all possible worlds is a world which they will run."10 Thus, in the aftermath of World War II, the institutional design of the Trusteeship System emerged, driven not only by the perennial concern for power preservation but also by considerations of national and international security, as evident in the substantial involvement of actors such as the US Military.

# 6.1.1 Establishment of the United Nations Trusteeship System

It was planned that the relevant articles for the Trusteeship System in the United Nations Charter would be drawn up at the *United Nations Conference on International Organization* (UNCIO) in San Francisco. Since the Big Five failed to reach agreement at the UNCIO in San Francisco in April-June 1945, a subcommittee of the *Preparatory Commission* was appointed to continue negotiations in London. It took about eighteen months of debate and compromise before the Trusteeship System was born. As Sylvanna Falcón has shown, the negotiations of the Trusteeship System weremarked bymost blatant paternalism and racism. For example, the British negotiator, Robert Gascony-Cecil, regarded that:

"Many of these areas are small, poor and defenseless and could not stand on their own feet. Many of them are extremely backward. Many need help building roads and communications, building modern health systems, introducing scientific methods to agriculture, and promoting the spread of education that is fundamental to all progress. Take your helping hand away, and such areas would quickly fall back into barbarism. What we can give them is freedom and free institutions. We can gradually train them to lead their own affairs, so that if independence eventually comes, they will be ready."11

Thus, even after the horrors of World War II, which the 'civilized world' brought upon itself and other world regions, non-Western peoples were described with the tropes of

9 Thullen, *Problems of the Trusteeship System*, p. 34.

10 Falcón, *Power interrupted*, pp. 32–33.

11 Department of State, *The United Nations Conference on International Organization*: *San Francisco, California, April 25 to June 26,* Conference Series 83 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), p. 694.

being 'uncivilized,' 'wild,' 'backward' and 'primitive.' As had happened during the drafting of the now-to-be-replaced League of Nations Covenant, this paternal spirit found its wayinto the euphemistic wording of the Charter describing colonial territories 'non-selfgoverning' and their peoples as 'not yet fully self-governing.'12 These negative formulations formed the phraseology of the trusteeship principle, suggesting that 'governmental authority' was understood as something that endows self-government only altruistically.

Since World War II represented a turning point in history, both in terms of the maintenance of international peace and security as well as in terms of its relationship to principles of trusteeship, security considerations also found their way into the trusteeship chapters of the Charter:

"Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have nor yet attained a full measure of selfgovernment recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the *system of international peace and security* established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories."13