The History of Togo and the Togolese People
The History of Togo and the Togolese People
- Marius KothorMarius KothorDepartment of History, Yale University
- and Benjamin N. LawranceBenjamin N. LawranceDepartment of History, University of Arizona
Summary
The history of Togo and the Togolese people may best be told as a pluralizing historical narrative. Togo’s history is first narrated in a relatively conventional framework, which one might find in any historical dictionary or encyclopedia, to show how national histories can weave, bend, and misdirect attention at particular national and regional dimensions. A subsequent richer retelling of Togolese history via a transnational and translocal approach, inclusive of women in events in the region, broadens an historian’s understanding of the history of Togo and the Togolese people to offer new insights beyond those of the traditional nation-state and area studies models. The archives of Togo are scattered around the world, notably in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Great Britain. Scholarship on Togo, covering themes from the precolonial period to the postcolonial epoch and present day, is well developed and multilingual.
Subjects
- West Africa
