Robert Sutherland Rattray and Indirect Rule

2018 ◽  
pp. 47-84
Author(s):  
Montgomery McFate
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Indigenous Institutions ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Indirect Rule

This chapter begins with a description of how Captain Robert Sutherland Rattray, an anthropologist working for the British colonial government in what is now known as Ghana, may have averted a war between the Ashanti Empire and the British colonial government. This chapter offers a brief discussion of the origins of European colonial expansion and the various modes of European rule. Indirect rule is described as an administrative system, which (in theory) used indigenous institutions for governance. This chapter then explores how implementation of foreign policy creates a variety of knowledge imperatives, including the need for empirical, scientific research (instead of the impressionistic research of untrained administrators) concerning African social, political, economic and legal systems and the relationships between them. Lacking the requisite information, the mutual incomprehension between British colonial officers and the African societies they encountered resulted in a variety of unanticipated cultural disjunctions. Three disjunctions of indirect rule are then discussed, including the dangers of exporting western models, the problem of self-defeating policies and third, the tyranny of the paradigm.

‘Natural Justice, Equity and Good Conscience’: History, Politics and Law in Nigeria, 1900–1966

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-25
Author(s):  
Katherine Isobel Baxter
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Natural Justice ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Good Conscience ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Indirect Rule

Chapter One provides an account of the history of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, focusing particularly on politics and law. The chapter recounts the long history of British colonial presence in West Africa and explains the introduction of indirect rule as a system of colonial government from the turn of the century. Some of the impacts of indirect rule are considered through reference to Obafemi Awolowo’s memoir, Awo, and Chinua Achebe’s novel, Arrow of God. The chapter also sketches out the divisions that indirect rule fomented and the resistance to which it gave rise. Finally, the chapter explains the implications of indirect rule for the implementation of law in Nigeria both during colonial rule and following independence.

Colonial Rule

2018 ◽  
pp. 75-88
Author(s):  
Toyin Falola ◽  
Matthew Heaton
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Social Activists ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
European Education ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Indirect Rule

This chapter examines the transformations brought about by British colonial rule in Nigeria, which began with the annexation of Lagos in 1861 and ended with the independence of Nigeria on October 1, 1960. Colonial rule transformed political, economic, social, and cultural dynamics among indigenous peoples. Indirect rule bound “traditional” rulers to British authority. The economy became increasingly dependent on exports. European education created a middle class of Nigerian civil servants and social activists both indebted to the colonial project and resistant to its racialist underpinnings. Resistance to colonial rule took a number of forms, incrementally moving Nigeria toward independence. However, decolonization also brought regionalization and a hardening of ethnic identities. British colonialism created Nigeria, but did little to make it a viable, stable, self-sustaining national entity. The historiography of colonial rule in Nigeria has been shaped by efforts to grapple with the antecedents of postcolonial crisis.

Property’s Guardians, People’s Terror

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (137) ◽  
pp. 54-74
Author(s):  
Gagan Preet Singh
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Important Case ◽  
North India ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Indian People ◽  
Indigenous Institutions ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Colonial Police ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Indian Penal Code

Abstract This article explores why victims of cattle theft in colonial north India avoided the police and courts, whose very purpose was to apprehend thieves and to restore stolen property. Throughout colonial rule, victims recovered stolen cattle themselves and with the help of khojis (trackers) and panchayat (indigenous systems). From the mid-nineteenth century onward, however, the British colonial government introduced criminal laws, like the Indian Penal Code and the Indian Evidence Act, and relied on colonial police to enforce those laws. These colonial laws and policing systems proved not only highly ineffective at dealing with theft, worsening the plight of victims while protecting thieves, but they also eroded the authority of indigenous institutions. By revisiting an important case, the Karnal Cattle Lifting Case (1913), the article shows how the institution of colonial police and courts oppressed rural Indian people and how and why Indian people, in turn, avoided colonial justice systems.

scholarly journals How Africans Shaped British Colonial Institutions: Evidence from Local Taxation

2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 1189-1223
Author(s):  
Jutta Bolt ◽  
Leigh Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Rural Population ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Quantitative Comparison ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Local Taxation ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Colonial Institutions ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Indirect Rule ◽  
Economic Inequalities

The institutions that governed most of the rural population in British colonial Africa have been neglected in the literature on colonialism. We use new data on local governments, or “Native Authorities,” to present the first quantitative comparison of African institutions under indirect rule in four colonies in 1948: Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Nyasaland, and Kenya. Tax data show that Native Authorities’ capacity varied within and between colonies, due to both underlying economic inequalities and African elites’ relations with the colonial government. Our findings suggest that Africans had a bigger hand in shaping British colonial institutions than often acknowledged.

A Crisis of Classical Political Economy in Assam

Tea War ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 81-114
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Liu
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Initial Failure ◽  
Migrant Families ◽  
Assam Tea ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Colonial Government

This chapter discusses the initial failure of British colonial officials to profit from tea in colonial Assam from 1830 to 1860, and presents a reexamination of classical political-economic principles. After colonial schemes to lure “free migrant” families from China failed, the bureaucrat W. N. Lees implored the colonial Government of India to dispense with liberal Smithian ideals and instead embrace the “colonization” schemes of Edward G. Wakefield, drawing upon historicist, paternalistic theories that were popular in the late nineteenth century. This debate introduces classical political economy's concept of “value” as a key category for the rest of the book. The chapter then recounts how, starting in the 1860s, officials legalized penal labor contracts that prevented migrant Indian workers from leaving employers under threat of prosecution. During the last decades of the century, the system shepherded nearly half a million migrant workers into Assam, a boon of cheap and immobilized labor critical to the industry's success. Assam tea thrived, in other words, based upon an economic strategy that stood opposed to the principles of liberalism espoused at its outset.

Multiple Voices and the Force of Custom on Punishment: Trial of ‘Family Honor Killings’ in Mandate Palestine

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Badi Hasisi ◽  
Deborah Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Honor Killings ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Multiple Voices ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Global Relations

Colonial regimes tended to change existing legislation and judicial structures, and to introduce new legal systems. When the previous legal system was partly upheld, and especially when a number of legal systems were already in effect, a complex and plural system would emerge, often with contradictory principles and normative assumptions. As a result, the colonial government faced inevitable dilemmas regarding the priorities it should grant to the different legal systems, and the means it should use to mediate conflicts among the different perspectives. Much has been written over the last few decades concerning the interrelation of colonial expansion and the transformation of law. The colonial government emphasized the necessity of changing existing legal systems, often portrayed as backward and unsuitable for the functioning of an empire and the global relations embedded in it. New colonial legislation was intended to achieve greater efficiency and the unification of colonial rule and to advance the “civilizing mission” by negating elements of existing traditions and introducing what the colonial rulers considered to be higher levels of morality. However, such changes ran the risk of being perceived as excessive intervention in the subordinated societies, and, therefore, might undermine the legitimacy of the colonial government.

THE CONCEPT OF THE BALTIC-BLACK SEA ARC AND UKRAINIAN FOREIGN POLICY (1990 - EARLY 2000)

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Alexandr S. Levchenkov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Black Sea ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Caspian Region ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Eastern Baltic ◽  
Post Soviet Space

The article analyzes the influence of the concepts of the Intermarium and the Baltic-Black Sea Arc on the formation of Ukraine’s foreign policy in 1990 – early 2000. The use of these concepts in American, European and Ukrainian geopolitical thought, which historically included the idea of opposing Russian influence in the region, contributed to the increase in tension and was aimed at further disintegration of the Western flank of the post-Soviet space. The article proves that the design of the Euro-Atlantic vector of Ukraine’s foreign policy was already active under the first two Ukrainian presidents – Leonid Kravchuk (1991–1994) and Leonid Kuchma (1994–2005). One of the concrete attempts to implement the idea of forming a common political, economic, transport and logistics space of the Black Sea-Caspian region with a promising expansion of the cooperation zone to the whole of Eastern Europe and the Eastern Baltic during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma was the foundation and launch of a new regional organization, Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, better known as GUAM (composed by the initial letters of names of member states – Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova; when Uzbekistan was also a member of Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, the name of the organization was GUUAM), which is an alternative to Eurasian projects with the participation of Russia.

Prerequisites for the reforms of the Russian Empire in the 1860s: a historical analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-2) ◽  
pp. 176-184
Author(s):  
Dmitry Nechevin ◽  
Leonard Kolodkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Political Economic

The article is devoted to the prerequisites of the reforms of the Russian Empire of the sixties of the nineteenth century, their features, contradictions: the imperial status of foreign policy and the lagging behind the countries of Western Europe in special political, economic relations. The authors studied the activities of reformers and the nobility on the peasant question, as well as legitimate conservatism.

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