Chapter 01 · c. 1200 – 1600
Peoples, migrations and the land
Before any state called Togo existed, the land was settled by the Ewe of the south, the Kabye and related farmers of the north, and — in the rugged Atakora hills — the Batammariba, whose mud tower-houses still rise from the Koutammakou landscape.
The territory of modern Togo has no single founding people. Its rugged north was settled early by the Kabye (Kabyè), the Tem, the Bassar and related groups who farmed the hills and savanna, while in the far northeast the Batammariba — sometimes called the Tamberma — built the fortified mud tower-houses, the takienta, that still define the Koutammakou cultural landscape. These communities lived largely without centralised kingdoms, organised instead around clans, lineages and ritual specialists, and their relative isolation in difficult terrain helped them resist absorption by larger neighbouring states.
The south and centre became the home of the Ewe, a people whose own traditions trace their journey from Tado, on the Mono River, to the walled town of Notsé (Notsie). There, oral tradition holds, they lived under a king remembered as the tyrant Agokoli, who set them to harsh labour behind a great earthen wall. In an episode central to Ewe identity, the people are said to have broken out through the wall and dispersed in several directions — westward into what is now Ghana's Volta region, and across the south of present-day Togo and into Benin — founding towns such as Bè, on the site of modern Lomé.
These were living, layered societies, not a blank stage awaiting European arrival. Farmers, traders, weavers, smiths and diviners linked the interior to the coast and to the wider commerce of West Africa long before any colonial border was drawn. The very name 'Togo' comes from a small lakeside town, Togoville, on Lake Togo near the coast — a local place-name that Germany would later stretch to cover an entire colony.
“By tradition the Ewe broke through the wall of Notsé and scattered — a single act of escape that seeded peoples across three modern nations.”
Turning points
- by the 13th centuryPeoples & Migration
Ewe ancestors present in the region
By oral tradition and scholarly reconstruction, the ancestors of the Ewe had moved into the Togo–Ghana region from the east, settling around Tado and later the town of Notsé before their dispersal.
See the data - before c. 1600Culture & Ideas
- c. 15th–17th centuriesPeoples & Migration
The Ewe exodus from Notsé
Ewe tradition tells of escape from the walled town of Notsé and the tyranny of King Agokoli, after which the people dispersed westward and southward — a foundational narrative of Ewe identity across Ghana, Togo and Benin.
See the data
Chapter sources: Exodus of the Ewe from Notsé, Togo (country overview and history), Koutammakou, the Land of the Batammariba, Mud tower-houses (takienta), Koutammakou region, Kabye people, History of Togo, Togo
Chapter 02 · 1600 – 1884
The coast, the Guin and the Slave Coast
Refugees from the wars of the Gold Coast founded the coastal town of Aného, which grew into a slaving and commercial port on the stretch of shore that Europeans called the Slave Coast.
In the seventeenth century the short Togolese coast received new settlers from the west: the Guin and the Mina, including the Ane people who, by tradition, fled the wars and Denkyira raids around Elmina and Accra in present-day Ghana. They founded the port of Aného — also written Anecho and known to Europeans as Petit-Popo or Little Popo — which became the most important trading town of the coast, alongside Glidji and other settlements. The newcomers brought commercial skills and contacts that tied the coast firmly into the Atlantic economy.
This shore lay at the western edge of what European traders called the 'Slave Coast', the stretch of the Bight of Benin from which vast numbers of enslaved Africans were shipped to the Americas. Aného served as a slaving and commercial port, trading captives, and later palm oil and other goods, with Portuguese, Dutch, British, French and Brazilian merchants. The traffic in human beings was a sustained catastrophe whose violence and dispossession scarred the societies of the coast and interior alike, feeding cycles of raiding and war well into the nineteenth century.
As the Atlantic slave trade was suppressed in the nineteenth century, commerce on the coast shifted toward 'legitimate' goods, above all palm oil, drawing growing European interest. German merchant houses established themselves at Aného and elsewhere, and it was this commercial presence — and the rivalry of British, French and German traders along the shore — that set the stage for formal colonisation in the 1880s.
“Aného was founded by people fleeing the wars of the Gold Coast — and grew into the chief slaving port on the western Slave Coast.”
— The Atlantic trade on the Togolese shore
Turning points
- late 17th centuryPeoples & Migration
Founding of Aného (Petit-Popo)
Ane settlers fleeing conflict around Elmina in present-day Ghana founded Aného on the Togolese coast; it grew into the region's chief commercial and slaving port and would later briefly serve as a colonial capital.
See the data - 17th–early 19th centuriesEconomy & Trade
The Slave Coast and the Atlantic trade
The Togolese shore formed part of the 'Slave Coast', through whose ports including Aného enslaved Africans were trafficked to the Americas — a sustained system of violence and dispossession that reshaped coastal and interior societies.
See the data - mid-19th centuryEconomy & Trade
From slaving to 'legitimate' trade
As the slave trade was suppressed, commerce on the coast turned to palm oil and other goods, and German and other European merchant houses established themselves at Aného and along the shore.
See the data
Chapter sources: Aného, Togo (country overview and history), Togoland
Chapter 03 · 1884 – 1914
German Togoland, the 'model colony'
After Gustav Nachtigal secured a protectorate treaty on the coast in 1884, Germany built the colony of Togoland — promoted as a profitable 'model colony', but sustained by heavy taxation and forced labour.
On 5 July 1884 the German explorer and Reichskommissar Gustav Nachtigal signed a treaty on the coast, traditionally associated with a local ruler styled Mlapa of Togoville, declaring a German protectorate over a stretch of the shore. The move came amid the European 'Scramble for Africa', and the new protectorate was recognised by the other powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, which set the rules for the partition of the continent. Germany steadily expanded its claim inland, and the colony took the name Togoland from the lakeside town of Togoville.
The early colonial capital moved from Aného to Lomé, which became the seat of government in 1897 and the colony's principal port and commercial centre. Germany invested in infrastructure unusual for the region — three railway lines radiating from Lomé, a network of roads, plantations and a powerful wireless station at Kamina — and pointed to Togoland's balanced colonial budget as proof that it had created a profitable 'model colony', a Musterkolonie, for the empire.
The reality behind the showcase was harsh. German administration rested on direct taxation, compulsory cultivation and forced labour, recruited and coerced from the African population to build railways, roads and plantations and to staff the colonial economy. Resistance and punitive expeditions accompanied the colony's expansion into the interior. The 'model colony' was, in the end, a system of extraction and control whose prosperity was extracted from the labour and taxation of the people it ruled.
“Germany called Togoland its 'model colony' — yet the showcase budget was paid for in taxation and forced labour.”
— German Togoland, 1884–1914
Turning points
- 5 July 1884Colonisation
Nachtigal proclaims a protectorate
Gustav Nachtigal signed a protectorate treaty on the coast, associated with a ruler styled Mlapa, declaring German authority over the shore — the founding act of the colony of Togoland.
See the data - 1884–85Colonisation
The Berlin Conference recognises Togoland
At the Berlin Conference the European powers laid down rules for partitioning Africa and recognised the German protectorate that became the colony of Togoland.
See the data - 1897Colonisation
Lomé becomes the colonial capital
The seat of German administration moved to Lomé, which grew into the colony's main port and commercial centre, served by railways and roads built across Togoland.
See the data - c. 1884–1914Economy & Trade
A 'model colony' built on forced labour
Germany promoted Togoland as a profitable Musterkolonie, but its plantations, railways and balanced budget depended on heavy taxation and the coercion of forced African labour.
See the data
Chapter sources: Togoland, Togo (country overview and history), Gustav Nachtigal, Aného, Germany–Togo relations
Chapter 04 · 1914 – 1956
Conquest, partition and the mandates
At the outbreak of the First World War a swift Anglo-French invasion ended German rule in 1914; the territory was then split into British and French mandates, and in 1956 British Togoland voted to join Ghana.
Togoland was one of the first theatres of the First World War in Africa. When war broke out in August 1914, British forces from the Gold Coast and French forces from Dahomey invaded the German colony. The Germans fell back and, after destroying their strategically vital wireless station at Kamina on the night of 24–25 August, surrendered on 26 August 1914 — barely three weeks into the war. The campaign was brief and decisive, ending three decades of German rule almost at a stroke.
The victors divided the spoils. Togoland was provisionally partitioned between Britain and France, and after the war the League of Nations formalised the split into two mandates: a smaller British Togoland in the west, administered together with the neighbouring Gold Coast, and a larger French Togoland in the east, administered from Lomé. The boundary cut through the lands of the Ewe and other peoples, dividing communities between two colonial systems — a partition that would feed Ewe reunification movements for decades and complicate the path to independence.
The two halves moved toward decolonisation on different tracks. In a United Nations–supervised plebiscite on 9 May 1956, the people of British Togoland voted, by roughly 58 per cent, to join the Gold Coast, which became independent Ghana the following year; the territory was integrated into Ghana, though the decision left a legacy of dissent in parts of the former mandate. French Togoland, meanwhile, became a UN Trust Territory and moved separately toward its own independence.
“The colony fell in three weeks in 1914 — but the line drawn through Togoland afterward split the Ewe between two empires for a generation.”
Turning points
- August 1914War & Rupture
Anglo-French conquest of Togoland
At the start of the First World War, British and French forces invaded German Togoland; after destroying the Kamina wireless station, the German garrison surrendered on 26 August 1914.
See the data - 1919–1922Colonisation
Partition into British and French mandates
Togoland was divided between Britain and France and formalised by the League of Nations as two mandates — British Togoland in the west and French Togoland in the east — splitting the Ewe and other peoples.
See the data - 9 May 1956Politics & Power
Chapter sources: Togoland, Togo (country overview and history), British Togoland, 1956 British Togoland status plebiscite, History of Togo
Chapter 05 · 1956 – 1967
Independence and the killing of Olympio
French Togoland became the independent Republic of Togo on 27 April 1960 under Sylvanus Olympio — whose assassination in January 1963 is often called the first coup of post-independence Africa.
French Togoland advanced toward self-rule as a United Nations Trust Territory, becoming an autonomous republic within the French Union in the mid-1950s. In the 1958 elections the nationalist Comité de l'Unité Togolaise (CUT), led by Sylvanus Olympio, defeated the more pro-French parties, and Olympio became head of government. On 27 April 1960 the territory achieved full independence as the Republic of Togo — recognised the same day by the United States — and in 1961 Olympio, an economist educated at the London School of Economics and a former senior manager for the Unilever group in West Africa, was elected its first president.
Olympio's government pursued a cautious, austere course and kept the army deliberately small. That decision proved fatal. On 13 January 1963 a group of demobilised soldiers, including non-commissioned officer Étienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who had served in the French army, assassinated Olympio outside the United States embassy in Lomé. Eyadéma later claimed to have personally fired the shot that killed the president. The killing is widely described as the first successful military coup against an elected leader in newly independent sub-Saharan Africa, and Olympio as the first African head of state to be assassinated in such a coup.
The coup installed Nicolas Grunitzky, Olympio's brother-in-law and rival, as president of a civilian government. But Grunitzky's administration was weak and divided, and the military that had killed Olympio remained a force in the background. Within four years the soldiers struck again, ending Togo's brief experiment with multiparty civilian rule and bringing the army directly to power.
“Olympio kept his army small; on 13 January 1963 the soldiers he had spurned killed him outside the American embassy in Lomé.”
— The first coup of post-independence Africa
Turning points
- 1958Politics & Power
- 27 April 1960Independence
- 13 January 1963Politics & Power
- 1963Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Chapter sources: Sylvanus Olympio, Togo (country overview and history), Gnassingbé Eyadéma, French Togoland, A Guide to the History of Recognition, Diplomatic, and Consular Relations: Togo, Togo Gains Independence From France
Chapter 06 · 1967 – present
The Eyadéma era and the Gnassingbé dynasty
Gnassingbé Eyadéma seized power in 1967 and ruled Togo for nearly four decades behind a one-party state; on his death in 2005 the army installed his son Faure Gnassingbé, who rules still.
On 13 January 1967 — four years to the day after Olympio's murder — Étienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma overthrew Grunitzky and made himself president, taking office that April. He built a personal autocracy around the armed forces, dominated by men from his own northern Kabye region, and in 1969 founded the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (RPT) as the sole legal party, ruling through it as a one-party state. A cult of personality, manipulated elections and periodic repression sustained his grip, even as opposition movements and waves of unrest, especially among the southern Ewe, challenged him in the early 1990s.
Eyadéma weathered the pro-democracy pressures of that decade, conceding a multiparty constitution in 1992 but retaining power through contested elections and force. By the time he died of a heart attack on 5 February 2005, he had ruled for nearly thirty-eight years and was the longest-serving leader in Africa. His death did not end the family's rule. In a move condemned as an unconstitutional coup, the army immediately installed his son, Faure Gnassingbé, as president.
Under regional and international pressure, above all from Nigeria and the West African bloc ECOWAS, Faure Gnassingbé stepped down within weeks and submitted to an election. He won the disputed April 2005 poll, which observers criticised as flawed and which was followed by violence that, by United Nations estimates, left hundreds dead. He has remained in power since, winning further elections and overseeing constitutional changes — including a 2024–25 reform shifting Togo toward a parliamentary system in which he became President of the Council of Ministers — that critics say are designed to entrench the Gnassingbé family's decades-long hold on the state.
“Eyadéma ruled for thirty-eight years; when he died, the army simply handed the presidency to his son.”
— The Gnassingbé succession, 2005
Turning points
- 13 January 1967Politics & Power
- 1969Politics & Power
- 1990–1992Politics & Power
- 5 February 2005Politics & Power
- April 2005Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Gnassingbé Eyadéma1935–2005
President of Togo, 1967–2005
Soldier who took part in the 1963 killing of Olympio, seized power in 1967, and ruled Togo for nearly four decades through the RPT one-party state — Africa's longest-serving leader at his death in 2005.
Chapter sources: Gnassingbé Eyadéma, Togo (country overview and history), Faure Gnassingbé