Legal Colonialism by European States

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the legal structures that were introduced by the European powers during colonial rule, to understand how law related and contributed to these systems of domination (Sect. 4.1). In a wider sense, assessing the role of law in the context of European colonialism provides the framework for the later assessment of legal neo-colonialism in the field of ICL. Emphasis is particularly placed on the administration of French and British colonial possessions because both Great Britain and France, despite the presence of several other European states on the continent, were the leading powers on the African continent during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the same time, they were the architects of the most renowned colonial policies in Africa, the French system of assimilation and the British indirect rule (Sect. 4.2). In the context of both colonial strategies, law was used a tool to unilaterally impose a Western legal system and enforce Western moral values in the colonial territories. The analyses of the French and British colonial policies further demonstrate that colonial legal systems were based on selectivity ratione personae and ratione materiae, both of which served the consolidation of the system of colonial subordination and the implementation of the colonial objectives of the European powers (Sect. 4.3).