#Togoland

[intheshadowofwar]

06 June 2023

Wars of the Worlds

Canberra 06 June 2023

Note: The Author apologises for the lack of photography in this one. He will ensure that there are more in the next post, under pain of Field Punishment No. 3 (Being Made to Feel Really Bad about The Whole Thing.)

It’s nearly midnight, and I’m sitting in my room occupying that peculiar state where one is too tired to do much of substance, but too alert to sleep. I’d been reading the first volume of John C. McManus’ excellent series on the US Army in the Pacific War, but I’ve put that on hold - partially because I think it deserves more attention than I can give it before I travel, and partially because reading about Douglas MacArthur gives me a headache. I was scanning my books, seeing if there might be something I might read a chapter of section of, and my eyes fell on this.

This is the Imperial War Museum’s History of the First World War in 100 Objects by John Hughes-Wilson. I think it caught my eye because I’ll be there in two weeks. The book’s divided into six parts, so I thought I’d rifle through it and pick an object from each part that stood out particularly to me when I looked at the contents. It’s probably a strange way to do a book review, but to be fair I’m not aiming to review this. This, I think, is a bit more of a philosophical enterprise.

Part 1 is called Imperialism, Nationalism and the Road to War, and it’s fairly short, but it has some fairly choice artefacts. There’s George V’s crown, there’s a map of the European alliances, and there’s even the bloodstained tunic of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - but my eyes were drawn to a pen. This is on page 16, and it’s specifically ‘the pen that signed the Ulster Covenant.’ ‘This pen,’ the book tells us, ‘was used by Colonel Fred Crawford at the signing - reputedly in blood - of the Ulster Covenant, one of the totemic occasions in modern Irish history.’

The book highlights the pen (which forensic analysis has told us, disappointingly, was probably not dipped in blood) as an example of societal tension in both Britain and Ireland in the years leading up to the First World War. The chapter describes, for instance, industrial unrest being put down by troops in South Wales and Liverpool, the Suffragette movement, taxation issues created by welfare reform and the Anglo-German naval arms race, and principally the issue of Irish Home Rule. This brings us neatly back to the Ulster Covenant. It may surprise you, considering the hideous violence that overtook Ireland following the war, that Britain faced not a Catholic uprising in 1914, but a Protestant one. Unionists were alarmed at the Liberal government’s Home Rule Bill, which provided for a separate Irish parliament, and the prospect for the enfranchisement of the Catholic majority that it entailed. On Ulster Day (28 September) 1912, 80,000 Ulster Protestants gathered in Belfast to sign the Covenant, with Carson of course being the first to do so.

By March 1914, things had gotten, frankly, weird. The British Army faced the possibility of being sent in to crush the Ulster Volunteer Force, who were technically preparing to commit insurrection against the government so that they could remain attached to the government, ostensibly in support of an Irish Catholic majority, many of whom were anti-British republicans. To make things even more complicated, Anglo-Irish officers and Ulster sympathisers were overrepresented as officers in the British Army - Brigadier-General Hubert Gough (once again, remember that name) reported that the vast majority of his officers would refuse orders to enforce Home Rule. It was a mess from which it seemed Britain could not extract itself - and then Franz Ferdinand was shot, and the matter became moot as the First World War began.

So why the pen? I think there’s this idea that the First World War is the genesis of pretty much everything that happened afterwards. Yet here we can see the seeds of what would follow the war in Ireland being sown months and even years before the first shots were fired. The First World War didn’t create the Irish Civil War, or the Troubles, or anything like that. More broadly, it stands against the idea of a peaceful, golden Edwardian age that apparently existed before the war, or that there was a long uninterrupted peace between Waterloo and Sarajevo.

I’ll try to keep the other five a bit shorter.

Part 2 is The Shock of the New and there’s plenty of choices here, covering the course of the war through 1914. I was tempted to pick Admiral Souchon’s medals for their Gallipoli connection (I must remember to write a little about Souchon and Goeben before I get there) but my eyes were really caught by ‘the Imperial Eagle in Africa’ on page 88. This is a mosaic of the Imperial German eagle taken from Lome, the capital of German Togoland, by the British. In the late nineteenth century, Germany had joined the ‘Scramble for Africa,’ which had divided the continent between the various European powers. Like every other imperial power, their arrival caused great suffering to the people of their new colonies, most infamously the genocides they carried out against the Herero and Namaqua in Namibia. These Africans, so mistreated by their so-called superiors, were marched into battle when war broke out between Germany and Britain. Both sides used Africans as porters to carry supplies and as fighting troops - the Germans called them ‘askari.’ The East African Campaign, the longest of the African campaigns, cost 10,000 ‘British’ (mostly African), 2,000 ‘Germans’ (mostly African) and perhaps a hundred thousand civilians.

Naturally the vast majority of the historical attention on the African war goes to Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the German commander in East Africa, who, in internet terminology, is often called a ‘badass.’ To be fair, he did apparently tell Adolf Hitler to go fuck himself (though he was still a bit of a nasty authoritarian himself.) Yet it does seem a bit unjust that the great ‘hero’ of this war was a white German man, and not one of the thousands and thousands of anonymous black dead.

The third part is Theatres of War, which roughly seems to cover 1915. I was drawn to an Italian trench helmet on page 112. Italy entered the war in May 1915, and primarily fought the Austro-Hungarians over the Alps. If there was anywhere on Earth more miserable than the Western Front, the Alpine Front might have been it. Here, men fought for mountaintops, caves and valleys, fighting not only the enemy but the elements. The eleven - eleven! - battles for the Isonzo River read like a parody of the supposed incompetence of leadership in the First World War. Luigi Cardorna - a general who combined pig-headed refusal to accept that constant assaults on the Isonzo were achieving nothing with a brutal, even cruel disciplinarian streak - often tops lists of the worst generals of the war.

(To give you an idea of what I mean by a disciplinarian streak, the man brought back the Roman ‘decimation,’ executing every tenth man in units that ‘weren’t performing well.’)

It’s the unit that this helmet belonged to that really caught my attention. An almost mediaeval affair, it was issued, often along with metal armour, to troops advancing ahead of the main assault force, tasked with cutting barbed wire. They called them Compagnie della morte - the Company of Death.

(As an aside, they tried to replicate this sort of thing in the video game Battlefield 1. It’s, uh… it’s not very realistic.)

Part 4, Mud and Blood, roughly covers 1916-17. The first was Private William Short’s Brodie Helmet, but I’d already done a helmet. The second was a Simplex locomotive. The third, which I went with, was a recovered life buoy from the battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable, lost at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916. I picked this because it’s an example of the war on the sea.

The battlecruiser was the brainchild of Admiral John ‘Jacky’ Fisher, the First Lord of the Admiralty in the 1900s, and the concept was sound. A battlecruiser is not a battleship. Battleships are meant to slug it out, and have the armour to match that purpose. Battlecruisers have battleship guns, but they don’t have battleship armour. The idea is that they can ‘outrun what they can’t outfight, and outfight what they can’t outrun’ - basically, they take on smaller ships and raid commerce.

The battlecruiser idea is not a bad idea, but it ceases to work if their commanders forget they’re not actually in a battleship and engage in a full-scale battle. This is what happened to the British battlecruisers at Jutland. Admiral David Beatty, commanding the Battlecruiser Fleet, engaged his German equivalents in the so-called ‘Run to the South.’ Indefatigable was hit within the first twenty minutes of the engagement by the German battlecruiser Von Der Tann, and was blown in half by an ammunition explosion. Three of her 1,019 crew survived. Shortly thereafter, the Queen Mary exploded, and Beatty’s own flagship Lion nearly met the same fate. Later in the day, the very unfortunately named Invincible also exploded.

To be fair to Beatty, these losses weren’t just because of the weaker battlecruiser armour - the battlecruiser squadrons had taken to leaving the blast doors to the ammunition stowage open to facilitate faster reloading - this meant that when the stowage went up, there was nothing to stop the force of the explosion. To be less fair to Beatty, these unsafe ammunition practices were being implemented under his watch, and he promptly followed the German battlecruisers - who were in fact withdrawing in the direction of their own battleships - right into the main German fleet, and promptly had to race very quickly back north again.

Part 5, From Near-Defeat to Victory, covers 1918. I chose to look at a ‘wreath for Saladin.’ This was sent by Kaiser Wilhelm II to Damascus in the Ottoman Empire in 1898, to be laid on the tomb of the great Islamic warrior Saladin, who fought against the Third Crusade. On the 1st of October 1918, the Allies entered Damascus. The 10th Light Horse got there first, but the official entry was performed by Sherif Feisal’s Arabs - and alongside them, one T. E. Lawrence, today better known as Lawrence of Arabia.

The history of the Arabs after 1918 was one of betrayal and disappointment. They had assisted the British in hopes of ejecting the Ottomans and creating a new, unified Arab state. Instead, under the terms of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, Arabia was to be split between French and British mandates. Feisal was made king of Iraq as a consolation, but the seeds of conflict that continue to affect the Middle East were sown here. It’s controversial how much Lawrence knew about this and how much he told to Feisel, though it does seem to me that he supported Feisel’s ambitions for an Arabic state. Ultimately, it was an example of how, for many peoples, the deposal of an old master simply cleared the way for a new one - Ottomans for Englishmen, Tsars for Bolsheviks, and in parts of the southwest Pacific, Germans for Australians.

This has taken a lot longer than I thought it would, but we’re up to the last part, A New European Landscape. I’ve picked Augustus Agar’s boat on page 410. Lieutenant Augustus Agar, Royal Navy, used this torpedo boat to sneak into a Bolshevik flotilla off Finland and sink the cruiser Oleg. I’ll be as a blunt as I can; I chose this because it demonstrates that the First World War did not neatly end on the 11th of November 1918. Conflict was continuing across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, Siberia and China - there’s probably places I’m forgetting. The fact of the matter is that ‘peace’ was really only for the west. The war didn’t ‘end’ so much as it eventually petered out.

Well, that’s about it. I’ve very much moved into the ‘tired enough to sleep’ zone, so I’ll leave that there. Sorry it’s a bit wordy, but I thought it may be of interest. And of course, if you want to look at this book yourself and see the objects I didn’t share, this all came front A History of the First World War in 100 Objects, by John Hughes-Wilson.

A quick acknowledgement to Drachinifel, whose videos on Jutland I used to reorientate myself to the battle. They can be found here and here.

[gyamfieric]

Some  other days...

Teak Atlas: From where do we begin? 2022/2023

As part of  “Tracing Emerging Ecologies”  curated by Baerbel Mueller and Juergen Stromayer

[burnpheonix04]

Togo Karte + Inschrift auf Deutsch Sprache // #togo #togo🇹🇬 #togoland #togolese #togolese #historyoftogo #togoflag Togoische #GeschichteTogos #TogoFlagge #Togodeutschland #Westafrika #Frakturschrift #Germanstyle #TogoischeFlagge #rot #gelb #weiss #grün #findyourthing #printredbubble @togolais_du_monde_entier @les_eperviers_du_togo_officiel @gotogo_2023 @togo_fashion_awards @assotogoornottogo https://www.instagram.com/p/CmEk3H1IoJD/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[yearningforunity]

Untitled, Togoland (Togo)

Women and men walking on election day, April 27, 1958.

Photo: Todd Webb

[joeinct]

Untitled, Togoland (Togo), Photo by Todd Webb, 1958

[friendswithclay]

“Togoland, fetish priest (Juju - priest).” c.1910s

Photo by: Haeckel collection/ullstein bild

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.20 (before 1940)

70 – Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, storms the Fortress of Antonia north of the Temple Mount. The Roman army is drawn into street fights with the Zealots. 792 – Kardam of Bulgaria defeats Byzantine Emperor Constantine VI at the Battle of Marcellae. 911 – Rollo lays siege to Chartres. 1189 – Richard I of England officially invested as Duke of Normandy. 1225 – Treaty of San Germano is signed at San Germano between Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX. A Dominican named Guala is responsible for the negotiations. 1398 – The Battle of Kellistown was fought on this day between the forces of the English led by Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March against the O'Byrnes and O'Tooles under the command of Art Óg mac Murchadha Caomhánach, the most powerful Chieftain in Leinster. 1402 – Ottoman-Timurid Wars: Battle of Ankara: Timur, ruler of Timurid Empire, defeats forces of the Ottoman Empire sultan Bayezid I. 1592 – During the first Japanese invasion of Korea, Japanese forces led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi captured Pyongyang, although they were ultimately unable to hold it. 1715 – Seventh Ottoman–Venetian War: The Ottoman Empire captures Nauplia, the capital of the Republic of Venice's "Kingdom of the Morea", thereby opening the way to the swift Ottoman reconquest of the Morea. 1738 – Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye reaches the western shore of Lake Michigan. 1799 – Tekle Giyorgis I begins his first of six reigns as Emperor of Ethiopia. 1807 – Nicéphore Niépce is awarded a patent by Napoleon for the Pyréolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine, after it successfully powered a boat upstream on the river Saône in France. 1810 – Citizens of Bogotá, New Granada declare independence from Spain. 1831 – Seneca and Shawnee people agree to relinquish their land in western Ohio for 60,000 acres west of the Mississippi River. 1848 – The first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, a two-day event, concludes. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Peachtree Creek: Near Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate forces led by General John Bell Hood unsuccessfully attack Union troops under General William T. Sherman. 1866 – Austro-Prussian War: Battle of Lissa: The Austrian Navy, led by Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, defeats the Italian Navy near the island of Vis in the Adriatic Sea. 1871 – British Columbia joins the Canadian Confederation. 1885 – The Football Association legalizes professionalism in association football under pressure from the British Football Association. 1903 – The Ford Motor Company ships its first automobile. 1906 – In Finland, a new electoral law is ratified, guaranteeing the country the first and equal right to vote in the world. Finnish women are the first in Europe to receive the right to vote. 1917 – World War I: The Corfu Declaration, which leads to the creation of the post-war Kingdom of Yugoslavia, is signed by the Yugoslav Committee and Kingdom of Serbia. 1920 – The Greek Army takes control of Silivri after Greece is awarded the city by the Paris Peace Conference; by 1923 Greece effectively lost control to the Turks. 1922 – The League of Nations awards mandates of Togoland to France and Tanganyika to the United Kingdom. 1932 – In the Preußenschlag, German President Hindenburg places Prussia directly under the rule of the national government. 1935 – Switzerland: A Royal Dutch Airlines plane en route from Milan to Frankfurt crashes into a Swiss mountain, killing thirteen. 1936 – The Montreux Convention is signed in Switzerland, authorizing Turkey to fortify the Dardanelles and Bosphorus but guaranteeing free passage to ships of all nations in peacetime. 1938 – The United States Department of Justice files suit in New York City against the motion picture industry charging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act in regards to the studio system. The case would eventually result in a break-up of the industry in 1948.

[flagwars]

Flag Wars Bonus Round

[oleworm]

Speaking of such times, I looked up an incident mentioned in passing in the book I'm reading and I thought some of you might like to learn about it too.

Robert Kwami, a representative of the Protestant Ewe-Church, had come to Germany in summer 1932. He was invited by the Norddeutsche Missionsgesellschaft in order to hold a lecture tour with sermons in Northern Germany[1] to inform the German people about Christianity in the former German colony of Togoland and to collect donations to support the young African church. Donations had been scarce in the age of depression. 60 events had been planned, but due to the great public interest 150 lectures and sermons were carried out in 82 towns in Lippe, East Frisia, the County of Bentheim and in the Free State of Oldenburg. [...]

Despite the public threats by the local Nazis, the sermon was carried out as planned September 20, 1932. Robert Kwami, not only fluent in German, but also of German citizenship, held his sermon in the afternoon and a lecture in the evening. The event was a great success. About 2000 people filled the pews of the church, with people waiting in front of the church to listen, to support Kwami, and to encourage the young African pastor. Due to the open letter that Pastor Hoyer had sent to 35 newspapers, the “Kwami-Affair” had become a topic talk not only in Germany. British and Dutch newspapers too covered the event.[6]

Despite the increase in violence and racist propaganda in the years leading up to this, there were quite a lot of people who came out because they wanted to hear a Black man speak, and not only that but risked to protect him from a group of ethnonationalist extremists.

I have two thoughts relating to this, sombre ones. That in any given time and place there are many people that want to do good by others. But also, how little the principles of the people can mean when there is a seizure of power in the way that happened not long after.

[lboogie1906]

President Sylvanus Épiphanio Olympio (September 6, 1902 – January 13, 1963) was a Togolese politician who served as prime minister and president of Togo (1958-63). He came from the important Olympio family, which included his uncle Octaviano Olympio, one of the richest people in Togo in the early 1900s.

After graduating from the London School of Economics, he worked for Unilever and became the general manager of the African operations of that company. After WWII, he became prominent in efforts for independence of Togo and his party won the 1958 election, making him the prime minister of the country. His power was further cemented when Togo achieved independence and he won the 1961 election, making him the first president of Togo. He was assassinated during the 1963 Togolese coup d’état.

He was born in Kpandu in the German protectorate of Togoland. He was the grandson to the important Brazilian trader Francisco Olympio Sylvio and son to Ephiphanio Olympio, who ran the prominent trading house for the Miller Brothers from Liverpool in Agoué.

His early education was at the German Catholic school in Lomé, which his uncle Octaviano had built for the Society for the Divine Word. He began studying at the London School of Economics, where he studied economics. He worked for Unilever first in Nigeria and the Gold Coast. He was located to be the head of Unilever operations in Togoland. He was promoted to become the general manager of the United Africa Company.

During WWII, the colony came under the control of the Vichy France government which treated the Olympio family with general suspicion because of their ties to the British. He was arrested in 1942 and held under constant surveillance in the remote city of Djougou in French Dahomey. The imprisonment changed his view toward the French and he would become active in pushing for independence of Togo at the end of the war.

He is remembered as the first president to be assassinated during a military coup in Africa. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[squarcoo3]

The League of Nations granted German Togoland as mandates to France and Britain

On May 6, 1919, a significant event took place in the history of Togoland, a German territory in West Africa. A part of the adjoining German territory of Togoland was placed under British administration by a League of Nations Mandate. This decision was made in the aftermath of World War I, when the Allied Supreme Council decided to grant German territories as mandates to France and Britain. The…

[nationsoftheworldtournament]

Nations Of The World Retro: 1914

Round One Matches

1. Colombia vs British Honduras

2. Nicaragua vs South Orkney Islands

3. Amoy vs Togoland

4. Italian Somaliland vs Luxembourg

5. Chongqing vs French Indochina

6. Emirate of Afghanistan vs Persia

7. Uruguay vs South Shetland Islands

8. Khiva vs Union Islands

9. Federated Malay Islands vs Réunion

10. Bahama Islands vs New Zealand

11. Ottoman Empire vs Spain

12. Suzhou vs Monaco

13. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland vs Straits Settlements

14. Kingdom of Italy vs French Madagascar

15. Portuguese East Africa vs Panama Canal Territory

16. Saint Barthélemy vs Netherlands

17. Guernsey vs Alaska

18. Bechuanaland vs Barbados

19. Ethiopia vs Curaçao and Dependencies

20. Midway Atoll vs Brunei

21. Saint Martin vs German East Africa

22. Amoy vs Sverdrup Islands

23. Sulu vs Northern Rhodesia

24. Serbia vs Panama

25. German Kiautschou vs Norway

26. British Guiana vs Sikkim

27. Falkland Islands vs Argentina

28. Ha'il vs Mexico

29. French Guiana vs British East Africa

30. Switzerland vs Seychelles

31. Italian Tripolitania vs Quita Sueño Bank

32. Italian Cyrenaica vs American Samoa

33. North Borneo vs Portuguese Guinea

34. Portuguese India vs British Jamaica

35. Portuguese Sao Tomé and Principe vs Kwantung

36. Jiujiang vs Zanzibar

37. Karafuto vs Costa Rica

38. France vs Hawaii

39. Jarvis Island vs British Winward Islands

40. Terengganu vs Surinam

41. British Trinidad and Tobago vs Belgium

42. Newfoundland vs Ubangi-Shari

43. Palmyra Atoll vs Romania

44. Fernando Poo vs Portuguese Macau

45. Sierra Leone vs Wallis and Futuna

46. British Mauritius vs French Tunisia

47. India vs Spanish Sahara

48. Tristan da Cunha vs Navassa Island

49. Siam vs Tientsin

50. Guadaloupe vs Bulgaria 51. Wake Island vs Maldive Islands

52. Johor vs Isla de la Pasión

53. Sarawak vs French Morocco

54. Norfolk Island vs Hankou

55. Swan Islands vs German Empire

56. Johnston Atoll vs Saint Pierre and Miquelon

57. Egypt vs Baker Island

58. Trucial States vs Paraguay

59. Hangzhou vs Isle of Man

60. Victoria Land vs Emirate of Nejd and Hasa

61. French Oceania vs French India

62. Territory of New Guinea vs Mbundaland 63. Spanish North Africa vs Nigeria

64. Uganda vs Phillipine Islands

65. Basutoland vs Tibet

66. Elobey, Annobón, and Corsico vs Nepal

67. San Marino vs Andorra

68. Kongo vs Howland Island

69. Canada vs Muscat and Oman

70. Martinique vs Rhodesia

71. Bolivia vs Russian Empire

72. Ascension Island vs Dutch East Indies

73. China vs Fort of São João Baptista de Ajudá

74. Graham Land vs Serranilla Bank

75. French Equatorial Guinea vs Liechtenstein 76. Portuguese West Africa vs Australia

77. Kingdom of Montenegro vs Weihai

78. Honduras vs Papua

79. Perlis vs Haiti

80. Bhutan vs Iceland

81. Middlebrook Island vs Greenland

82. Guam vs Setul Mambang Segara

83. Denmark vs Bahrain

84. Serrana Bank vs Gold Coast

85. Italian Eritrea vs Taiwan

86. French West Africa vs British Hong Kong 87. Gibraltar vs French Algeria

88. United States vs Bermuda

89. Puerto Rico vs Finland

90. Kamerun vs Kelantan

91. Anglo-Egyptian Sudan vs French Somaliland

92. Shanghai vs Suez Canal Zone

93. Shasi vs Sultanate of Aussa

94. Bouvet Island vs Empire of Japan

95. Portuguese Cape Verde vs Zhenjiang

96. Spanish Morocco vs Kingman Reef

97. Venezuela vs Principality of Albania

98. Aden vs Portugal

99. Darfur vs German Samoa

100. Belgian Congo vs Malta

101. Heard Island and McDonald Islands vs Ecuador

102. Swaziland vs Kuwait

103. Bukhara vs Gambia

104. Cuba vs Corn Islands

105. British Somaliland vs German South-West Africa

106. Kedah vs Portuguese Timor

107. Liberia vs New Caledonia

108. Danish West Indies vs Peru

109. Northern Nigeria vs Saint Helena

110. South Africa vs Bajo Nuevo Bank

111. British Leeward Islands vs Roncador Bank 112. Sweden vs British Western Pacific Territories

113. Kingdom of Greece vs Mongolia

114. Brazil vs Chile

115. Austria-Hungary vs British Hong Kong

116. Uryankhay vs Rio Muni vs British Cyprus

[yearningforunity]

Untitled, Togoland (Togo)

Attendant at Texaco station, 1958.

Photo: Todd Webb