Battle of Adibo

Battle of Adibo
DateDecember 3rd and 4th, 1896[1]
LocationAdibo, near Yendi
9°18′09″N 0°01′11″E / 9.3024°N 0.0198°E / 9.3024; 0.0198Coordinates: 9°18′09″N 0°01′11″E / 9.3024°N 0.0198°E / 9.3024; 0.0198
Result German victory
Belligerents
Dagbaŋ GermanyGerman Empire
Commanders and leaders
  • Dr. Gruner
  • Lieutenant Valentin Von Massow
  • Lieutenant Thierry
Strength
Between 4000 and 7000[2] 372 men, including 4 Europeans, 91 soldiers and 46 carriers; armed with breech-loaders[3]

The Battle of Adibo was a German military campaign in 1896 against the Dagbamba of West Africa in Adibo, now in present day Ghana.[2] Following their resistance against foreign authority, the Dagbamba tribesmen met and launched an attack on the heavily armed German Schutztruppe and Askari paramilitary police accompanying the Lieutenant Valentin von Massow on his way to their capital at the village of Adibo, who was sent by the German colonial administration to quell the rebellion. The Dagbamba fighters suffered many losses on the second day of the battle and yielded after their capital Yendi was razed to the ground on December 4, 1896.[4] Defeat of the Dagbamba enabled the Germany Empire to complete establishment of the Togoland protectorate which encompassed the eastern part of the Kingdom of Dagbon. The western part of the Kingdom was released to the British to be included in the British empire.

Written accounts of the incursion are generally related from the personal letters and diaries of Valentine von Massow to his mother, and from his official reports addressed to the Governor of Lome under the colonial department of the ministry of foreign affairs in Berlin. On the other hand, Dagbaŋ drummer storytellers have mostly been responsible for relating the event; their narrative being slightly different, is almost always transmitted orally.[3]

Background

Before 1850, German missionaries were firmly rooted among the southern tribes of present day Ghana and Togo but Germany first established a formal protectorate along the coast of West Africa on July 5, 1884. They continued their advances northwards and from 1884 established the Togoland protectorate as a discontiguous part of the Deutsch-Westafrika protectorate that included Cameroon.[2]

Their advances was influenced by the need to expand agricultural plantations, road and railway lines; and to exact forced labor for those purposes. Factors that facilitated their movement into the hinterlands included the construction of a port at Lomé, installation of the Kamina Funkstation radio communications transmitter, and the little resistance posed by the tribes they encountered such as the Ewe people, who mostly settled as fragmented clans.[2]

By 1890, the German expeditions had ventured into the savanna regions of present day Ghana and Togo, where they encountered the rather formidable Dagbamba warriors.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Pukariga, Dasana. "Dagbon ? Recalling History, the Battle of Adibo".
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Quesada, Alejandro de; Dale, Chris (2013-08-20). Imperial German Colonial and Overseas Troops 1885–1918. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781780961668.
  3. 1 2 Massow, Valentin (2014-07-07). Die Eroberung von Nordtogo 1896 – 1899: Tagebücher und Briefe (in German). BoD – Books on Demand. ISBN 9783954940424.
  4. ↑ Papathanassiou, Manolis. "Battle of Adibo". www.10000battles.com. Retrieved 2018-02-23.
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