Octaviano Olympio

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Octaviano Olympio (* 1860 ; † 1940 ) was the leader of the citizens of Lomé ( Togo ).

Life

Octaviano Olympio was the son of Francisco Olympio Silva, a slave trader from the Brazilian Bahia . Silva had come to Keta in 1850 at the age of 17 and then moved to Porto Seguro . Then he put the name Silva off and founded a home in Agoué . From 1865 he changed from a slave trader to a planter and normal trader. His mother was Constancia Talabi Pereira dos Santos, she had seven other sons from Silva.

Olympio was first taught in Portuguese by a Catholic priest , after which he continued his education in Nigeria and London . In London he learned the basics of trading. He then worked for the British trading company A. and F. Swanzy .

In the early 1880s, a new English-dominated trade center began to establish itself on the west coast of Africa, then known as the Bay of Bey or Be, now a district of Lomé. Olympio and his brother Chico were selected by their company A. and F. Swanzy to set up a branch there in 1882. While Chico died in 1886, Olympio became a successful trader. He not only worked for Swanzy, but also for his family. He bought land on Marktstrasse directly behind the European trading houses and employed his two older sisters, Clara and Julia, as shop assistants. He established a trade with the Hausa from Salaga , the later area of ​​the Gold Coast .

In 1884 the Germans established the Togo colony . Its administration was first located in Baguida , then in Anecho and finally in Lomé in 1897. In 1887 Olympio used his influence on the new German governor Jesko von Puttkamer to persuade him to also control the Kpalime area and thus be able to conduct an undisturbed trade with Hausa from Ghana . It is very likely that he was talking about cheap labor, if not disguised slavery .

In 1889 he built his first coconut plantation in the northwest of the city on 90 hectares of land with 12,000 palm trees. He was the first Togoer who made and exported copra from his coconuts . He built the first and for a long time the only brickworks in Lomé, which he fired with remains of copra production.

In 1892 Olympio was the most prominent citizen of Lomé. He welcomed Catholic Steyler missionaries and immediately asked them to open a school. At the same time he separated from the Swanzy brothers, but got a loan from them to expand his business. In 1903 he had a herd of 150 cattle.

Between 1909 and 1913 he doubled his income from around 9,000 to 21,000 Reichsmarks annually. He invested most of his wealth in land and diversified it. In 1914 the value of his lands was estimated at 750,000–1,000,000 marks. At the same time, many local traders perished under the harsh German regulations such as high import and export duties. The Germans were very strict, in 1891 they even flogged Olympio for insulting. In 1898 and the following year, Olympio had to pay fines for opposing the tax authorities. This approach paved the way for the first anti-colonial and nationalist efforts in Togo , which Olympio later led.

In 1909 Olympio and Andreas Aku , a teacher, pastor and later head of the Ewe Church, sent a petition to the German governor Count Julius von Zech . They called for equal treatment for the natives, bans on provisional arrest in civil disputes, and the possibility of depositing land as bail in court instead of cash . In his report to the colonial administration of the German Empire, Zech found these demands to be too revolutionary, although he portrayed the petitioners as loyal Germans. His German-speaking answer to Olympio, on the other hand, was based on racial grounds that whites were superior to blacks and therefore had to be treated differently. Four years later, in 1913, the native citizens drafted another petition, again with Olympio's signature on top. This time it was written in German and was addressed to Wilhelm Solf , the head of the Reich Colonial Office . Olympio and seventeen others were then imprisoned.

With the beginning of the First World War , the Germans withdrew from Togo. The colony first fell to the British , who were very welcome and made the locals prosper again. Olympio stormed the British Foreign Office, British newspapers and the League of Nations with telegrams and petitions during the peace negotiations at the end of the World War to give locals more rights. Nevertheless, Togo came under French influence in 1919 . At the age of 61 he learned French . In 1922 the French set up a Conseil des Notables (for example, “Council of the Notable”) in Lomé with Olympio (until 1935) as one of the first members. The council of local citizens was allowed to advise on colonial matters. Later he also became a member of the Conseil d'administration .

In 1924 Olympio traveled to London and Paris . He died in 1940 at the age of 81.

Olympio had 24 children from different women. His eldest son, Agostinho, became a Farmer and Chef de Canton in Agoue in 1937. His son Pedro was the first doctor in Togo to be trained in Europe. His youngest son Luciano (Lucien Bebi) became Attorney General at the Togolese Supreme Court. Olympios nephew Sylvanus Olympio was the first president of Togo.

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Philip de Barros: How Far Inland Did the Arm of the Slave Trade Reach? An Overview of the Slave Trade in Togo. Conference contribution: Excavating the Past: Archaeological Perspectives on Black Atlantic Regional Networks, 2009, text as PDF file .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Alcione M. Amos: Afro-Brazilians in Togo. In: Cahiers d'études africaines. 162, 2001.
personal data
SURNAME Olympio, Octaviano
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Togolese businessman and politician
DATE OF BIRTH 1860
DATE OF DEATH 1940