Locality, Mobility, and “Nation”: Periurban Colonialism in Togo’s Eweland, 1900–1960 (review)

Locality, Mobility and “Nation” investigates one of the least understood colonial systems of modern Africa- the League of Nations Mandate of French administered Togoland. Initially colonized by the Germans in the late nineteenth century, the Ewe people were divided between French and British administration (today Togo and Ghana respectively) by order of the League of Nations. Benjamin Lawrance’s approach allows for a re-reading of the narrative of modern nationalism in today’s Togo by making visible the often invisible role of Ewe leadership in the “periurban zone,” a new spatial designation defined neither by familiar categories of urban elite or rural chieftaincy. Moreover, Lawrance places the role of women as actors in shaping anti-colonial struggle at the center of his analysis rather than as peripheral subjects. Based on research in governmental archives, missionary archives and private collections in multiple European and African countries as well as extensive interviews in Ghana, Togo and Benin, Locality, Mobility and “Nation”, offers new insights for those interested in colonial studies, geography and urbanization, gendered perspectives on colonialism and modern nationalism in Africa.

The monograph begins with an explanation of periurban colonialism as an analytic framework to explain the creation of this neither rural nor strictly urban spatial zone created by French administrators after World War I. Chapter one elaborates the process of migration, market activity, and labor rhythms that defined the lives of the majority of inhabitants of Togo’s periurban zone during the interwar period. Chapter two and three explain the making of French models of chieftaincy in this zone and Ewe men and women’s responses to the imposition of illegitimate male authority. In examining the 1933 Lomé revolt from the perspective of male chiefs and Ewe market women, Lawrance argues that men and women understood this moment differently. For women, in particular, anti-colonial protest centered around oppressive taxation by French officials and the complicity of African male collaborators that marginalized women from public protest. Chapter four brings together ethnographic accounts of religion in Togoland, oral interviews, and secondary literature to illustrate how colonial observers misunderstood vodou. The resurgence of vodou, Lawrance contends, served as a means to establish the credentials necessary for individuals in the periurban zone to reclaim political authority. The final two chapters illustrate how nationalist discourse emerged in Togoland. Drawing from emergent periurban notions of Ewe identity, Lawrance maintains that Togolese national unity grew out of a distinct “periurban Ewe project of Togolese nationalism.” Chapter five considers a proto-nationalist organization called the German Togo-Bund and explains why some Ewe leaders, communicating across British and French administrative borders, sought redress from Geneva for abuses suffered under the French by demanding a return to German rule. The final chapter takes an in-depth look at the role of print media between 1940 and 1960 by showing the conflation of southern Ewe notions of ethnicity emanating from periurban communities with Togolese nationalism. The struggle between elite and non-elite actors to define Togolese nationalism, as Lawrance suggests, created specific tensions inherited by the post-colonial state.

The main strength of Locality, Mobility and Nation is the works’ corrective to scholarship that over-emphasizes the uniformity and coherence of the colonial state at the expense of understanding how the actions of non-elite men and women shaped colonial practice and contributed to anti-colonial movements. By focusing on the League of Nations mandate for administration of French Eweland, Lawrance offers a new theoretical perspective on late colonialism in Africa. International pressure for reform coupled with the uneasy relationship of French administrators seeking to enforce colonial control and Ewe actors informed by Geneva and Germany as a point of reference for anticolonial protest, created specific tensions that distinguished French mandate rule from French colonial rule in Africa more generally. In addition, this study breaks through traditional approaches to modern nationalism in Africa by providing a new geographic lens in which to understand the intersection of rural and urban...