In the First World War, Britain and France invaded Germany's colonies of Togo and Kamerun and cut them in two. Britain ran its slices for 40 years as parts of the Gold Coast and Nigeria. Then the United Nations asked the people to vote, and the results redrew the map of West Africa in ways that are still argued over today.
When war broke out in Europe in August 1914, Britain and France moved against Germany's small colonies in West Africa. Togo was a quick target. Gold Coast and French colonial troops invaded at once, aiming for Germany's big wireless station at Kamina, which linked Berlin with its colonies and ships. Within weeks the Germans destroyed the station and surrendered. According to the British army's records, the first shot fired by a soldier in British service in the whole war was fired in Togoland, by a Gold Coast soldier.
Kamerun took far longer. British forces from Nigeria crossed the border at three points in August 1914 and were beaten back in the north at Garua. An Anglo-French force under Brigadier-General Charles Dobell took the port of Duala (Douala) on 27 September 1914. The fighting dragged on through 1915 in forests and highlands, with tens of thousands of African carriers doing the hardest work. Most German forces fled into neutral Spanish Guinea in February 1916, and the last German garrison, on the mountain at Mora, surrendered on 18 February 1916.
The Treaty of Versailles took Germany's colonies away, but the new League of Nations would not let the winners simply annex them. Instead they were "mandates": territories run on behalf of the League, with reports sent to Geneva. Britain and France formally accepted their mandates over Togoland and the Cameroons on 20 July 1922.
In practice, Britain ran its share as part of its neighbouring colonies. British Togoland, a long thin strip from the coast to the north, was governed from the Gold Coast. British Cameroons, in two separate pieces along the Nigerian border, was governed from Nigeria. Nigerian stamps were even used there. In 1946 the mandates became United Nations trust territories, and the UN Trusteeship Council began to take petitions from the people.
The new border cut through the Ewe people, splitting families and farms between British and French rule. From the 1940s Ewe leaders sent petition after petition to the UN asking for the Ewe to be reunited. Many in the south of British Togoland, organised in the Togoland Congress, wanted to join French Togoland, or to stay separate until its future was clear. The north, home to Dagomba, Mamprusi, Gonja and other peoples, had close ties with the Gold Coast's Northern Territories.
As the Gold Coast moved quickly towards independence under Kwame Nkrumah, a decision could not wait. The UN General Assembly asked Britain to hold a plebiscite.
The plebiscite was held under UN supervision on 9 May 1956. Voters were asked whether they wanted union with an independent Gold Coast, or to remain a trust territory separate from the Gold Coast until their future could be decided. Turnout was about 83 per cent.
The UN treated the territory as a single unit, so the overall majority decided. The UN Plebiscite Commissioner reported that the vote had been free and fair, the UN General Assembly approved union, and British Togoland was joined to the Gold Coast on 13 December 1956. It became part of Ghana at independence on 6 March 1957.
The southern majority against union was never forgotten. Groups calling for "Western Togoland" independence still exist, and the Volta Region's history remains a sensitive subject in Ghana.
British Cameroons was really two territories. The Northern Cameroons, mostly Muslim, was run as part of Northern Nigeria and its emirates. The Southern Cameroons, mostly Christian and English-speaking, with its capital at Buea below Mount Cameroon, was run as part of Eastern Nigeria and later got its own government. Many southerners resented being ruled from Nigeria, and especially resented the influence of Nigerian traders and officials.
French Cameroun became independent as the Republic of Cameroon on 1 January 1960, and Nigeria on 1 October 1960. The British Cameroons had to choose between them. In the Southern Cameroons, Emmanuel Endeley campaigned for joining Nigeria and John Ngu Foncha for joining Cameroon. In the north, a first plebiscite in November 1959 voted to postpone a decision, largely as a protest against local administration.
The UN organised separate plebiscites in the north and the south on 11 February 1961. There were only two questions: did people want to achieve independence by joining the Federation of Nigeria, or by joining the Republic of Cameroon? Independence as a separate state was not on the ballot.
On 21 April 1961 the UN General Assembly endorsed the results and ended the trusteeship. The Northern Cameroons joined Nigeria on 1 June 1961 as a province of the Northern Region. The Southern Cameroons joined the Republic of Cameroon on 1 October 1961 as West Cameroon, in a federation with the French-speaking East.
"With respect to the Southern Cameroons, on 1 October 1961, upon its joining the Republic of Cameroun."UN General Assembly Resolution 1608 (XV), 21 April 1961
Cameroon protested the northern result at the International Court of Justice, without success. Britain, which had hoped both parts would join Nigeria, did little to help the south prepare for life in a mainly French-speaking state.
In 1972 Cameroon abolished the federation and became a unitary state, and English-speaking Cameroonians increasingly felt pushed aside. Protests by lawyers and teachers in the Northwest and Southwest regions in 2016 turned into an armed conflict between separatists and the government that has cost thousands of lives and driven many from their homes. Both sides look back to 1961 and the choices that were and were not on the ballot paper.
In Ghana, the Volta Region is part of the nation, but the memory of the divided 1956 vote has never quite gone away. Both stories show how lines drawn by European powers in 1914–16 still shape lives today.
The Colonial Office files on the mandates and trust territories are at The National Archives in Kew. The UN's own records of both plebiscites, including the commissioners' reports, are in the UN Digital Library online.
In Ghana, the old British Togoland lies east of the Volta: Ho, Hohoe, Kpando and the highlands around Mount Afadjato, Ghana's highest peak. Our partner site Ghana-Net has the full story of German Togoland and the 1956 plebiscite. In Cameroon, Buea, the old German and British capital of the Southern Cameroons, still has German colonial buildings. Check current travel advice before visiting Cameroon's Anglophone regions.
Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome.
Ghana's Volta Region, the old British Togoland:
Douala and Cameroon:
In London:
The men who fought the Togoland and Kamerun campaigns.
The colony British Togoland joined in 1957.
The colony that ran the Cameroons for 40 years.
Next: East Africa and the settler colony.
All of Britain's African territories, country by country.
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