I often make the point of how important contact with the home country was to a colonial outpost in darkest Africa. I think that is why you see the home country Royal or in Germany’s case his yacht on the stamps. You hope they are remembering what you are up to so far from home. When Togo was attacked against pre war conventions, Germans made their stand not in the trading post of Lome but in the mountains at Kamina where there was a radio facility to call home. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp starts as a French colony of Dahomey stamp showing an Ewe tribesman climbing a palm tree to extract palm oil and coconuts. This was the new industry after the colonials had banned the slave trade that the Ewe were a big part of. So this image makes sense whether we are talking about Ewe people in French Dahomey, German Togoland or the British Gold Coast. Europe than intrudes more with an Overprint announcing Togo was now under joint French and English occupation. Most of the military work against the Germans was British but notice the postal service became French.
Todays stamp is issue A5, a 15 Centimes stamp issued for use in Togo during the joint French and British occupation of the former German Togoland. It was a 17 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 70 cents.
The area of Togo was in the area of west Africa known as the slave or guinea coast. The Ewa and Ashanti would raid each other and capture slaves that they would sell on. In the 19th century Europeans tried to end this practice both by not buying and trying to bring the tribes under their control. First the coastal village of Lome was obtained by Germany and then at the Berlin Conference of 1885 German claims were recognized as extending inland. The European powers further agreed that their colonies in Africa would cooperate to control unruly natives, which all of the nations realized as the biggest threat. There was a further provision of the treaty that if there was war in Europe, colonies in Africa would remain neutral.
Germany relied on this provision a great deal and their colonies were very lightly defended, This was to lower the cost in the hope that giving merchants more of a free hand could generate a profit from the colony. In fact there were no German Army units stationed in Togo just a few officers and 300 part time German reservists called polizetruppen. When word of World War I breaking out in Europe in 1914, the German Governor sent telegrams to his counterparts in neighboring French Dahomey and the British Gold Coast suggesting neutrality as per the Berlin Conference of 1885. The British reply was a demand for German surrender and both France and Britain prepared to invade using their larger troop presence.
The German plan for defense was to immediately get their people out of Lome and withdraw inland along their railway toward Kamina in the mountains where the radio transmitters were that were the colonies connection to Germany. The British found Lome abandoned and on fire as the natives had begun the looting. The French had no military plan beyond Lome as they did not know about Kamina. The British force turned inland to pursue the Germans. During the pursuit an Askari soldier from the Gold Coast Regiment, Private Alhaji Grunshi fired the first British shot of World War I.
The German governor decided to send 300 men to delay the British when they tried to cross the Chra river. They successfully stopped the British though most of the Askari troops on both sides went awol when the shooting started. The German Governor had received word from Germany to give up after blowing bridges, rail cars, and the radio towers. No help was coming from Germany. The Allied casualties were 123 and the Germans lost 41.
After the war German Togoland was divided into separate colonies of French and British Togo. Modern Togo is only the French part. British Togo voted to join the Gold Coast as it became the independent country of Ghana. In the 1970s, independent Dahomey renamed itself Benin.
Well my drink is empty and I wonder if it provoked any thought among African colonists of other nations when Germany decided to not mount a recovery force for their colonies. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.