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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:British Justice and the Native Tribunals of the Southern Gold Coast Colony
Author:Gocking, RogerISNI
Year:1993
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:34
Issue:1
Pages:93-113
Language:English
Geographic terms:Ghana
Great Britain
Subjects:colonialism
customary courts
Law, Human Rights and Violence
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/183033
Abstract:As a result of the policy of indirect rule which British administrators introduced into the Colony of the Gold Coast (Ghana) at the turn of the twentieth century, customary courts, or what were called Native Tribunals, became important venues of adjudication for the indigenous population. As a result, however, of the powerful impact of British justice on the Colony, the judicial responsibilities, procedure, personnel and the nature of the customary law that these courts applied underwent profound changes. It was an excellent example of how important was the cultural interchange between European and African ideas during the colonial period, which, however, both academic lawyers and historians have neglected. By looking at this example of cultural interaction on a fundamentally popular level, we can see that this 'transforming moment' in the colonial situation can be seen neither as something 'imposed' on African society by colonial administrators nor as simply generating new mechanisms for privileged groups to take advantage of. The Native Tribunals never fully came up to what British administrators or African lawyers considered the highest standards of British rule of law. Nevertheless, their most important function was to popularize recourse to judicial institutions which increasingly adopted more and more of the features of the British legal system. The focus of the article is on the towns of the southern coastal area, where colonial rule was longest. Notes, ref., sum.
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