L’evolution du concept de propriete chez les peuples de Côte d’Ivoire au XXe siecle

Abstract

In pre-colonial Africa, societies were governed by traditional systems that had adopted a very different concept of property from that prevailing in European countries governed by Roman law. In Africa, property is a value as much as a good, a link that connects man and divinity, a right that is part of a multitude of lineage and community rights: everyone can therefore obtain uses for the value, but no one can, strictly speaking, claim to own it, dispose of it, sell it or destroy it. When the French coloniser made Côte d'Ivoire a colony (1882), he investigated traditional rights according to his own legal categories and regimes, in order to modify the African concept of property. This article, based on the French colonial surveys of 1901-1902 and recent personal surveys (2022-2023), seeks to understand how the French coloniser sought to introduce the French concept of property and to measure the extent to which the Baule peoples, especially the Baule of Koliakro, have resisted the modern concept of property to this day.