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PEER REVIEWERS! My current version is already published as "Ewe Unification Movement." You can view it by clicking the link on the "Assigned Articles" section on the class page. You can review either this or that one, but the other is the most current. The Ewe Unification Movement was a west African ethno-nationalist effort which emerged politically across the Ewe-speaking populations present in modern Ghana and Togo after 1945 under the colonial mandate of French Togoland - though the ultimate goal of unifying the Ewe people had been a sentiment present amongst the populations since their initial colonial partition by the British Empire in 1874, and eventually the German Empire in 1884.

Background

A loose conception of an Ewe people has existed through a shared origin myth surrounding the Togolese town of Notsé and a subsequent Ewe exodus from it due to the tyranny of its king Agokoli, but historical evidence for this specific tradition is lacking. A shared historical origin however can be seen in their 1600s westward migration from the town of Ketu around the Benin-Nigeria border after pressures began to mount from the neighboring Yoruba. After settling in their current territories surrounding the Volta Region, 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 Akwamu in 1833, or Ashanti in 1868. While no fully unified Ewe identity was consolidated at this point, because conflicts between different dukowo were common - such as those between the Anlo and Gen in the 1680s - Ewe nationalists eventually took advantage of these shared traditions and moments of cooperation after the colonial period began.

Early Colonialism

Flag of the Gold Coast Colony.

Ewe interaction with Europeans prior to colonization was primarily confined to trade along the Gold & Slave coasts and mouth of the Volta River. 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.

Ironically, it was with this division that the Ewe identity truly began to take hold, as many Ewe leaders protested the restriction of movement through, and splitting of, what they had begun to see as a unified Ewe country.

German Missionaries

Flag of German Togoland.

Under German colonial rule, a common governing ethos was that of divide et impera, which meant consolidating their various colonial subjects' cultural identities against each other to prevent larger political units from forming against German hegemony. This manifested itself in German Togoland with the pitting of the Ewe peoples against other allegedly more barbaric groups, like the Ashanti, by German Protestant priests from the Norddeutsche Missionsgesellschaft. Under the ethos, these priests translated the Protestant Bible into a standardized Ewe language, and utilized it and the resulting linguistic studies to consolidate an Ewe identity based around a common language to loosely unify their disparate polities against other ethnic groups.

Division of Togoland by British (Left) and French (Right).

World War 1 and Late Colonialism

During the first World War, the Ewe in the British Gold Coast Colony actively supported their overlords in the Entente, while those in Togoland withheld loyalty from their colonizer, in the hopes that the defeat of the Germans would re-unify the Ewe peoples under one government.

After the official end of the war, the British and French established the Milner-Simon Declaration in 1919 to divide Togoland between themselves. This ultimately only served as a partial unification of some Ewe, for while many now found themselves effectively unified under two British colonial administrations, the rest were exchanged to a French mandate. This tripartite division between the Gold Coast Colony & British and French Togoland left many Ewe leaders dissatisfied, but their concerns, eventually championed by the Congress of British West Africa in 1920, fell on deaf ears.

Unification Movements

In Togo

In response to the conditions imposed upon them by the French, various members of Ewe and Togolese leadership began the construction of political organizations which would decolonize Togo and eventually unify the Ewe people. In French Togo, these developed as the Comité de l'Unité Togolaise, led by Sylvanus Olympio, and the Mouvement la Jeunesse Togolaise, and both sought the reunification of what had become, under British and French administration, separate Western and Eastern Togolands.

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 amongst other Togolese political parties. Despite these efforts, however, the French administration began to lose favor with their Togolese subjects, and, coupled with mounting pressures from the neighboring and ever more autonomous British colonies, began a process of autonomy granting, and eventually altogether ended their trusteeship over the territory in 1956, giving Togo independence.

In Ghana

Like in Togo, a political organization, around the same time, called the All Ewe Conference took up the unification platform in the British territories. Just the same, the British were completely antagonistic to the idea of granting any special autonomy to the Ewe territories.

In 1956, the British conducted a plebiscite in their Togoland mandate, which resulted in the unification of it to the Gold Coast Colony. This drew significant ire from the Ewe under their administration, as many instead preferred to be re-incorporated into a united Togoland - having been the primary support behind another unification party called the Togoland Congress party in the British territory.

Proposed flag for Western Togoland.

After Ghanaian independence, the Ewe unification effort was primarily taken up by Kwame Nkrumah, as he sought a Ghanaian-led unification with Togo that would unify the Ewe under one state. This created tensions with Sylvanus Olympio, as both had irredentist claims over the other, which resulted in an even more restrictive border between the two newly independent countries. This tension eventually subsided with the rise of Gnassingbé Eyadéma to power in Togo, as his regime was far more cooperative with Ghana.

The National Liberation Movement of Western Togoland

In 1972, a movement formed in Ghana's Togoland province that sought secession and unification with Togo called the National Liberation Movement of Western Togoland, or Tolimo Movement, which stemmed from the Togoland Congress. This developed out of alleged repression by Nkrumah, and poor conditions which ravaged the Ghanaian Ewe populations.

References

Article Evaluation - Togbe Agorkoli

The article is perhaps too short and missing multiple citations. For example, the original claim simply describing the King was un-cited, so I added one as part of the exercise. Other claims that relate more about the content of the story, like "After the exodus, the Ewe were led by the wise man called Torgbui Ewenya. The word Ewe was taken from their formal leader Torgbui Ewenya," are still completely un-cited. There really is no need for any improvement of tone, as the article isn't describing any history or controversial event, but rather a myth. The article has some links, but some don't have a page to direct to. The talk page is overall lacking of any substantive discussion, and the article itself is in need of some serious revision.