![Flag of the Ewe people](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Flag_of_the_Ewe_people.svg)
The Ewe Unification Movement was a series of west African
ethno-nationalist
Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric (and in some cases an ethnocratic) approach to various politic ...
efforts which sought the unification of the
Ewe people
The Ewe people (; ee, Eʋeawó, lit. "Ewe people"; or ''Mono Kple Volta Tɔ́sisiwo Dome'', lit. "Ewe nation","Eʋenyigba" Eweland;) are a Gbe-speaking ethnic group. The largest population of Ewe people is in Ghana (6.0 million), and the second ...
s spread across what are now modern
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
and
Togo
Togo (), officially the Togolese Republic (french: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its c ...
. It emerged as a direct political goal around 1945 under the
colonial mandate of
French Togoland
French Togoland (French: '' Togo français'') was a French colonial League of Nations mandate from 1916 to 1960 in French West Africa. In 1960 it became the independent Togolese Republic, and the present day nation of Togo.
Transfer from Germ ...
,
however the ideal of unifying the group has been an identifiable sentiment present amongst the ethnicity's leadership and wider population ever since their initial
colonial partitions by the
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
and
German Empires from 1874 to 1884.
While there have been many efforts to bring about unification, none have ultimately been successful due to both the platform itself often being a secondary concern for political leadership, or inter/intrastate conflicts overshadowing them.
Background
A loose conception of an Ewe identity has existed through a shared origin myth surrounding the Togolese town of
Notsé
Notsé (also Notsie or Nuatja) is a town in the Plateaux Region, Togo, Plateaux Region of Togo. It is the capital of Haho Prefecture and is situated 95 km north of the capital Lomé. The town was formed around 1600 by the Ewe people, after th ...
and a subsequent exodus from it due to the tyranny of its king
Agokoli,
but historical evidence for this specific tradition's basis in reality is lacking.
The more accepted version of their history follows the group's 1600s westward migration from the town of
Ketu
KETU (1120 AM) is a radio station licensed to serve Catoosa, Oklahoma. The station is owned by Antonio Perez, through licensee Radio Las Americas Arkansas, LLC.
The station was licensed originally to Atoka, Oklahoma, and operated for many years ...
around the
Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north ...
-
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
border after pressures began to mount from the neighboring
Yoruba
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
.
After settling in their current territories around the
Volta Region
Volta Region (or Volta) is one of Ghana's sixteen administrative regions, with Ho designated as its capital. It is located west of Republic of Togo and to the east of Lake Volta. Divided into 25 administrative districts, the region is multi-et ...
, the Ewe were fragmented into a menagerie of chiefdoms and villages called ''dukowo'', though they sometimes consolidated into military alliances against external threats such as the
Akwamu
Akwamu was a state set up by the Akwamu people in present-day Ghana. After migrating from Bono state, the Akan founders of Akwamu settled in Twifo-Heman. The Akwamu led an expansionist empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. At the peak of their ...
in 1833, or
Ashanti in 1868.
While no fully unified Ewe character had consolidated at this point, because conflicts between different ''dukowo'' were common — such as those between the
Anlo
The Anlo Ewe are a sub-group of the Ewe people of approximately 6 million people, inhabiting southern Togo, southern Benin, southwest Nigeria, and south-eastern parts of the Volta Region of Ghana; meanwhile, a majority of Ewe are located in the ...
and
Gen
Gen may refer to:
* ''Gen'' (film), 2006 Turkish horror film directed by Togan Gökbakar
* Gen (Street Fighter), a video game character from the ''Street Fighter'' series
* Gen Fu, a video game character from the ''Dead or Alive'' series
* Gen l ...
in the 1680s — Ewe nationalists eventually took advantage of the aforementioned shared traditions and moments of cooperation during the colonial period.
Early colonialism
![Togoland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Togoland.svg)
Ewe interaction with Europeans prior to colonization was primarily confined to
trade
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...
along the
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...
&
Slave coasts and mouth of the
Volta River
The Volta River is the main river system in the West African country of Ghana. It flows south into Ghana from the Bobo-Dioulasso highlands of Burkina Faso. The main parts of the river are the Black Volta, the White Volta, and the Red Volta. In ...
. However, this changed once the British Empire began asserting itself in the region to establish
its own west African colonial claims from 1850 to 1874.
In accordance with this new colonial rush, the German Empire, too, established
its own holdings along the coast in 1884, thus dividing the Ewe between two colonial powers.
It was with this division that the Ewe identity began to become politically salient, as many within their leadership protested the consequent restriction of movement through what they had begun to see as a unified Ewe territory.
German missionaries
![Togolandflag](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Togolandflag.png)
Under German colonial rule, a common governing ethos was that of ''
divide et impera
Divide and rule policy ( la, divide et impera), or divide and conquer, in politics and sociology is gaining and maintaining power divisively. Historically, this strategy was used in many different ways by empires seeking to expand their terr ...
'', which sought to exacerbate their various colonial subjects' cultural identities against each other to prevent larger political units from forming against their imperial hegemony.
This manifested itself in German Togoland with the pitting of the Ewe peoples against other more allegedly barbaric groups, like the Ashanti, by
German Protestant
The religion of Protestantism, a form of Christianity, was founded within Germany in the 16th-century Reformation. It was formed as a new direction from some Roman Catholic principles. It was led initially by Martin Luther and later by John Ca ...
priests from the ''
Norddeutsche Missionsgesellschaft''.
Under the ethos, these priests translated the
Protestant Bible
A Protestant Bible is a Christian Bible whose translation or revision was produced by Protestants. Such Bibles comprise 39 books of the Old Testament (according to the Hebrew Bible canon, known especially to non-Protestants as the protocanonica ...
into a standardized
Ewe language
Ewe (''Eʋe'' or ''Eʋegbe'' ) is a language spoken by approximately 20 million people in West Africa, mainly in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and also in some other countries like Liberia and southwestern Nigeria. Ewe is part of a cluster of related ...
, and utilized it and the resulting linguistic studies to consolidate a shared Ewe identity based around a common language to loosely unify their disparate polities further.
World War I and late colonialism
During the
first World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, the Ewe in the British Gold Coast Colony actively supported their overlords in the
Entente, while those in Togoland mostly withheld loyalty from their own colonizer, in the hopes that the defeat of the Germans would unify the Ewe peoples under one government.
When the war ended, the British and French
divided
Division is one of the four basic operations of arithmetic, the ways that numbers are combined to make new numbers. The other operations are addition, subtraction, and multiplication.
At an elementary level the division of two natural numb ...
Togoland between themselves. This ultimately only served as a partial unification of some Ewe — for while many in the west now found themselves essentially unified under two British colonial administrations, the rest in the east were placed under a French mandate. This tripartite division between the Gold Coast Colony and
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
& French Togoland left many Ewe leaders dissatisfied, but voicing their concerns ultimately, having been brought by the
Congress of British West Africa to British administrators for consideration in 1920, yielded no change.
Unification movements
In Togo
Around 1945, various members of Ewe and wider Togolese leadership began the construction of political organizations which sought to decolonize French Togo. These developed as the
Comité de l'Unité Togolaise, led by
Sylvanus Olympio
Sylvanus Épiphanio Olympio (; 6 September 1902 – 13 January 1963) was a Togolese politician who served as prime minister, and then president, of Togo from 1958 until his assassination in 1963. He came from the important Olympio family, wh ...
, and the
Mouvement la Jeunesse Togolaise. Both possessed political platforms that included the reunification of the separate British western and French eastern Togolands, and, for the Ewe, this implied a reunification of their eastern populations.
After the Comité de l'Unité Togolaise began gaining power in the territory's Representative Assembly in 1946, French administrators, from 1950 onward, attempted to subvert the movement's gains by arresting or restricting its leadership, limiting its legal political status, and sowing rivalries with other Togolese political parties. Despite these efforts, however, the French administration began to lose favor with the Togolese population, and, coupled with mounting pressures from the neighboring and ever more autonomous British colonies, began a process of autonomy granting, which eventually altogether ended their trusteeship over the territory in 1956, giving Togo independence, and placing Sylvanus Olympio in power as Togo's first president.
Sylvanus Olympio's eventual usurper,
Gnassingbé Eyadéma
Gnassingbé Eyadéma (; born Étienne Gnassingbé, 26 December 1935 – 5 February 2005) was the president of Togo from 1967 until his death in 2005, after which he was immediately succeeded by his son, Faure Gnassingbé.
Eyadéma participated i ...
, did not focus on his predecessor's greater Togoland claims in the initial period of his leadership.
However, after internal pressures of Ewe separatism in Ghana resurfaced, Gnassingbé Eyadéma's regime reaffirmed the claims and publicly lauded the Ewe's goals.
However, this reorientation towards
irredentism
Irredentism is usually understood as a desire that one state annexes a territory of a neighboring state. This desire is motivated by ethnic reasons (because the population of the territory is ethnically similar to the population of the parent sta ...
was seemingly only rhetorical, as Gnassingbé Eyadéma's government was in practice cooperative with Ghana's efforts at suppressing the separatists due to Togo's heavy reliance on Ghanaian
hydroelectric capacities.
In Ghana
Like in Togo, political organizations such as the
All Ewe Conference pursued the Ewe unification platform in the British colonies.
Just the same, the British were antagonistic to the idea of granting them any special autonomy.
In 1956, the British conducted a
plebiscite
A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a ...
in their Togoland mandate which resulted in the unification of it to the Gold Coast Colony. This drew opposition from many Ewe under the new administration, as while most of them supported the results, some instead still preferred to be reincorporated into a united Togoland — with this portion having been the primary support behind another unification party called the
Togoland Congress
The Togoland Congress (TCP; was a political party formed in 1951 which had won three seats in the Gold Coast elections of April 1954 and two seats in the July 1956 elections, but did not survive for long afterwards. The Togoland Congress's goal ...
.
After Ghanaian independence, the country's first president,
Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah (born 21 September 190927 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957. An in ...
, supported Ewe unification by proxy, because he required their favor for his goal of a Ghanaian-led unification with Togo, which would consequently place the Ewe under one country's administration— though he was ultimately still opposed to a fully independent Ewe state.
This created tensions with Sylvanus Olympio, as both leaders, thereafter, had claims over the other's territories, and this resulted in a more restrictive border between the two newly independent countries. This tension briefly subsided with the rise of Gnassingbé Eyadéma to power in Togo, because his regime was more cooperative with Ghana — at least until the 1970s, when he began agitating for Ewe separatism and suggesting border readjustments.
Tolimo
![Flag of Western Togoland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Flag_of_Western_Togoland.svg)
In 1976, an Ewe-led movement formed in Ghana's former British Togoland provinces that sought secession and reunification with Togo called the
National Liberation Movement of Western Togoland, or Tolimo Movement, which stemmed from the Togoland Congress. While its secessionist sentiments developed originally due to the 1956 plebiscite, this iteration was spurred by alleged Ewe repression by Kwame Nkrumah due to the more restrictive border with Togo, along with the generally poorer conditions which were common amongst the Ghanaian Ewe populations during the time.
It had support from Gnassingbé Eyadéma in Togo, though this was only an expressed public support, and ultimately nothing substantive.
Following an attempted coup in 1975, which the Ewe were implicated in as having been its alleged primary backers, the Ghanaian government cracked down on Tolimo with a plan,
Operation Counterpoint, that aimed to restrict cross-border Ewe travel.
The organization was eventually outlawed officially in 1976.
This separatist movement was largely repressed especially after
Jerry Rawlings
Jerry John Rawlings (22 June 194712 November 2020) was a Ghanaian military officer and politician who led the country for a brief period in 1979, and then from 1981 to 2001. He led a military junta until 1992, and then served two terms as the de ...
seized the reins of power.
While separatist groups do still exist, most of their independence efforts have been effectively stunted by the Ghanaian government.
References
{{Reflist
Ewe people
West Africa
Nationalist movements in Africa
Stateless nationalism in Africa
Separatism in Africa
Ethnicity in politics
Ethnic nationalism
Togoland