Borderline Politics in Ghana: the National Liberation Movement of Western Togoland

Abstract

Theinter-state boundaries of Africa have changed remarkably little since the end of colonial rule, despite their lack of contiguity with the economic, ethnic, and political realities of African societies. In the few cases where attempts have been made to reject, in principle, the boundaries which were inherited at the time of independence, the demands for change have emerged in three major forms: as irredentist claims by established states based mainly on assertions of pre-colonial hegemony; as calls for the re-establishment of early colonial states which had been either partitioned or integrated into a larger state by the time of decolonisation; or as ethnic nationalist demands by partitioned communities.1