Indirect Colonial Rule Research Articles

Debating Diya: Indirect Rule and the Transformation of Islamic Law in British Colonial Northern Nigeria

Abstract For all of British Colonial Indirect Rule’s avowed deference to Islamic law and institutions in Northern Nigeria, it radically transformed them. Of the most overt areas in which this occurred was the colonial state’s elimination of diya, the payment of compensation for unlawful killing. Justified by the colonial state on the basis of good order, the abolition of diya was the product of a debate over who had the prerogative to respond to crimes directed at the person: the aggrieved individual or the state. Prominent Muslim jurists argued in favor of the former, citing source texts and the precolonial practice that gave life to those textual prescriptions. On the other hand, colonial administrators insisted that the response to crimes against the person was the state’s prerogative and that interpersonal resolution of such matters challenged imperial authority, the protection of which was not without basis in Islamic law. At the same time, the peculiar design of Northern Nigerian indirect rule meant that statutory, and therefore, unequivocal elimination of diya, remained elusive—at least until the eve of independence. This article traces the contours of the debate over the fate of diya as a lens through which one may apprehend the impact of colonial indirect rule on Islamic law, particularly criminal law, in Northern Nigeria. The demise of diya illuminates colonial indirect rule for what it was: a “constitutional trick” that paid lip service to Islamic law and institutions while radically transforming their essence and, eventually, eliminating them. Ultimately, however, that the means through which the demise of diya was brought about—the reconfiguration of the precolonial constitutional balance between political and juristic authorities—is, at least, as significant as the demise of diya itself. Indeed, that constitutional transformation has endured, surviving colonialism and finding expression in nascent attempts to reinstate Islamic law in the postcolonial state.

(Re)negotiating State Authority: How Hinterland Protests against Global Capital Impact the Mediating Role of Traditional Rulers in Postcolonial Sierra Leone

AbstractSesay draws from three hinterland protests against multinational corporations in the mining and agricultural sectors to examine how global capital influences central/local politics in postcolonial Sierra Leone. Focusing specifically on the mediating role of traditional rulers—a strong legacy of British colonial indirect rule—Sesay argues that hinterland protests not only enable the relative autonomy of rural citizens to (re)negotiate with the state outside existing political arrangements but also challenge the broker authority of these rulers in center/peripheral relations. While some protests form new alignment of interest with traditional rulers, others allow rural citizens to bypass their chiefs to summon the attention of central authorities. In either of these processes, the local constituents question the position of chiefs in the indirect governance system and shape the governing strategies adopted by the central government to rule over the hinterland.

Public garden, British station and landscape perception in Bangalore City (1881–1934)

ABSTRACT This paper presents the spatial and ideological connections between colonial perception of landscape, sanitary improvements and landscape change in Bangalore City under indirect colonial rule. Before 1947, Bangalore City in the princely state of Mysore developed alongside a British Civil and Military station. The colonial landscape perception of stinking ‘native’ settlements portrayed the British station as being superior to Bangalore City. In the early twentieth century, Bangalore City administration tried to remove this stigma by improving the city. Under indirect colonialism and the differences in landscape perceptions that it generated, the Mysore State’s public garden in Bangalore City became central to the activities of the newly improved city and presented a curated vision that could replace its unruly landscapes. The odourfree sanitary ‘garden’ extended into the city became the antithesis to its pre-British vernacular produce smallholdings.

Israeli Colonial Governance vs. Palestinian Resistance: An Institutional Genealogy

This article examines the institutional genealogy of Israeli colonial governance (ICG) and the accompanying patterns of Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. It argues that ICG has experienced three phases, each marked by a particular form of direct or indirect colonial rule. Each of these colonial rule forms has been resisted through a distinct pattern of centralized or decentralized collective political agency. I argue that both the form and governing logic of ICG are determined not only by colonialist aims, but also by their interplay with the Palestinian resistance.

In defence of ideological struggle against neocolonial self-justifications: Revisiting Asad's Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter amid the decolonial turn

Over the past decade-plus, there has been a surge in anthropological writing on decolonisation. Yet, whereas mid-twentieth century anticolonial revolutionaries fought to uproot imperialism's extractive political economy, certain contemporary decolonial tendencies give primacy, instead, to asserting cultural/epistemological difference. This shift has motivated pertinent critiques, such as that of Nigerian philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, of atavistic conceptions of decolonisation. Táíwò's dismissal, however, of the neocolonialism thesis and his conceptual uncoupling of imperialism's material and symbolic dimensions results in a one-dimensional polemic. What gets lost is the much-needed role of decolonisation as an ideological struggle in mobilising populations against an entrenched neocolonial political economy. With this debate as framing, I propose revisiting Talal Asad's 1973 volume, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, published at the height of anthropology's disciplinary anti-imperialism. The book's contributors detail how, amid intensifying anticolonial agitation, interwar anthropologists anxious about cultural change among colonised populations advocated a shift to indirect colonial rule through native elites, rather than an abolition of imperialism per se. While spurning colonialism's earlier assimilationist agenda, anthropological calls to institutionalise cultural differences among colonised populations resonated with an imperialist project of incorporating while subverting anticolonial demands. Amid present-day anthropological discussions around decolonisation, these insights remain relevant. This is because contemporary neocolonial relations operate in a manner akin to indirect colonial rule.

Reinventing a Cultural Practice of Interdependence to Counter the Transnational Impacts of Disabling Discourses

The women’s talking group featured in this article theorizes the community literacy practice of thanduk—“setting something aside”—that members practice together. Sanduk—with an s and translated as Arabic for “box”— has a long, well documented history involving informal, rotary credit and savings associations practiced among people in Africa and of African descent. Rather than using the s, the group’s spelling is distinctively Nuer— thanduk—harkening back to indigenous versions of the practice documented throughout areas of East Africa and beyond. Thanduk invokes nommo, a distinctly African spiritual and philosophical value that strives for harmony and balance among interdependent members of a community. This article aims to make legible how the women in this study employ thanduk to thwart the transnational, intergenerational impacts of indirect colonial rule and neoliberal economics in pursuit of individual and collective thriving.

“Do Not Harm the Decorum”: Mixed Courts and Cloth in Colonial Indonesia

In this article four photographs of mixed law courts (landraad) in nineteenth-century colonial Indonesia are approached as a window to study the materiality and meaning of cloth in courtrooms. The photos grant access to a careful colonial curation as well as complex Javanese hierarchies that were translated onto and through cloth, and its colors and patterns. Batik sarongs, tablecloths, head scarves, robes and gowns, coats and turbans reveal a courtroom of semiotic richness and plurality where different actors were signaling different messages to multiple audiences. This emphasis on cloth contributes to an emergent and rich discussion on the importance of objects in the study of law and empire, that has primarily focused on the materiality of paper and other objects of lawmaking. In the mixed court of the landraad, it was cloth that spoke louder than words and paper. This article emphasizes that in a mixed court the display of a plural world and jurisdictional layering, complicating the binary between direct and indirect colonial rule, was more important than a monolithic reflection of state law. Cloth was crucial to the display of this plural world and used as a way to impose, maintain, alter, insert oneself in or resist colonial rule.

The Tribal Conciliar Experiment and Marginalisation of Local Public Opinion in Botswana, 1948–1957

ABSTRACT Indirect colonial rule in Botswana differed from practice elsewhere in British Africa because of the involvement of local public opinion expressed through the long-practiced kgotla forum. This had something to do with the ‘voluntary’ way Botswana fell under British colonial rule in 1885. However, problems sometimes arose, with aggressive agitation against and even violent confrontation with agents of the British colonial system. Starting in 1947 the British had plans for decolonising much of their African empire by introducing ‘democratic’ tribal conciliar systems for running local governments. But there were no immediate plans to do the same for Botswana until widespread turmoil, starting in the late 1940s, led to the introduction of the tribal conciliar system, even though the Tswana dikgosi (chiefs) wanted a more powerful legislative apparatus. Using archival sources this paper demonstrates how this development marginalised popular participation through the open kgotla.

Legal pluralism across the global South: colonial origins and contemporary consequences

This essay conveys past and present legally plural situations across the Global South, highlighting critical issues. It provide readers a deep sense of legal pluralism and an appreciation of its complexity and the consequences that follow. A brief overview of colonization sets the stage, followed by an extended discussion of colonial indirect rule, which formed the basis for political and legal pluralism. Thereafter, I discuss in order, the transformation-invention of customary law, socially embedded village courts, the enhancement of the power of traditional elites, uncertainty and conflict over land, clashes between customary and religious law and women’s right and human rights, the recent turn to non-state law by development agencies, and the entrenched structure of legal pluralism. Notwithstanding innumerable variations and changes across locations and over time, the essay shows that legal pluralism across the Global South constitutes a distinct, enduring social-historical formation with shared structural features that must be understood on its own terms. The essay is written for scholars, government officials, international development agencies, and law and development theorists and practitioners interested in law in postcolonial societies.

Colonial Origins of Sons of the Soil Insurgency: Maoist Rebellion in Central India

ABSTRACT What is the role of colonial institutions in creating the conditions for nativist sons of the soil (SoS) insurgency? The literature on sons of the soil conflicts has not explored the historical legacies of colonial institutions, nor has it sufficiently analyzed how land tenure institutions create sons of the soil conflict. I address these gaps, by proposing a theory of how British colonial indirect rule and land tenure institutions in India caused exploitation of land resources of indigenous tribes by ethnic outsiders, which caused SoS grievances that persisted through path dependence and were later mobilized by Maoist rebels in the former princely state of Bastar in Central India. I show generalizability of this mechanism to other cases of leftist insurgency in Colombia, Mexico and Philippines.

Anioto and nebeli: local power bases and the negotiation of customary chieftaincy in the Belgian Congo (ca. 1930–1950)

ABSTRACTBy means of two case studies, this paper demonstrates how customary chiefs in Northeast Congo crafted their power position under colonial indirect rule. The first case discusses chiefs’ role in anioto or leopard-men killings to secure their authority over people, land and resources whilst circumventing colonial control. The second case concerns nebeli, a collective therapy characterised by the distribution of a medicine or charm used to protect, heal and harm in Northeast Congo and South Sudan. These case studies show that indirect rule designed customary chieftaincy too one-sidedly, based on patrilineal succession and land rights. It tried to cut chiefs off from spiritual and coercive power bases such as anioto and nebeli, which were part of local political culture. While colonial authorities framed institutions such as anioto and nebeli as subversive, and expected government-appointed chiefs to renounce them, they were clandestinely used by chiefs to retain their grip on local society whilst fulfilling their state-imposed duties. However, these institutions were not simply used to resist or by-pass colonial control, but also to support it. These historical cases help to gain insight in contemporary chiefs and militia leaders’ continued use of similar coercive, spiritual and remedial means to boast their power.

Continuity or Change? (In)direct Rule in British and French Colonial Africa

AbstractCurrent political order in Africa is often linked to legacies of colonialism, in particular to legacies of indirect colonial rule. However, evidence about the application of indirect rule is scarce. In this paper I argue that empire-level characteristics interacted with precolonial institutions in shaping the indirectness of local rule. First, British governments ruled more indirectly than French administrations, which followed a comparatively centralized administrative blueprint, came with a transformative republican ideology, and had more administrative resources. Empirically, I find that French colonization led to the demise of the lines of succession of seven out of ten precolonial polities, twice as many as under British rule. Second, precolonial centralization was a crucial prerequisite for indirect rule. Local administrative data from eight British colonies show that British colonizers employed less administrative effort and devolved more power to native authorities where centralized institutions existed. Such a pattern did not exist in French colonies. Together, these findings improve our understanding of the long-term effects of precolonial institutions and draw attention to the interaction of characteristics of dominant and subordinate units in shaping local governance arrangements.

Colonial origins of the resource curse: endogenous sovereignty and authoritarianism in Brunei

ABSTRACT The literature on the political “resource curse” has recently seen heated debates over the average causal effects of oil on democracy and the generalizability of the theory. One of the reasons these disagreements remain unresolved is that the causal mechanisms of the resource curse receive little scholarly attention and historical and international aspects are frequently overlooked. To address these problems, this study investigates the relationship between oil and the political regime in Brunei, arguably the most understudied state among the archetypes of the resource curse, extending the time frame back to the very beginning of oil exploration during the colonial period. It uncovers a previously overlooked causal process by which oil affected the emergence of authoritarianism. It shows that in the case of Brunei (and potentially some Persian Gulf monarchies), sovereignty is endogenous to the resource curse. That is, oil, together with indirect colonial rule, affected the creation of the state, and this state-formation process contributed to the long-standing autocracy. This study contributes to the resource curse literature by identifying a new mechanism of the resource curse, showing that we need to reconsider the way we apply the potential outcomes approach, and highlighting the importance of historical and international factors.

Postcolonial Proportionality: Johar, Transformative Constitutionalism and Same Sex Rights in India

At its inception, the Indian Constitution was envisioned as a transformative document, in two senses: anti-colonial and cosmopolitan. It gave birth to a radically new constitutional order, that conferred citizenship and political power on the previously disenfranchised living under the yoke of British imperial rule, created democratically elected legislatures and accountable executives, and conferred fundamental rights on citizens that reconfigured their relationship with public power, under which they had been hitherto treated as colonial subjects. But the Indian Constitution was also a cosmopolitan constitution in its fidelity to the universal principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. These universal values mandated and framed a vast project of social, economic and political transformation. The Supreme Court of India has yet to articulate an overarching theory of transformative constitutionalism, in either its anti-colonial or cosmopolitan senses. In this essay, I take up this task, by wrestling with the landmark decision in Johar, where the Supreme Court unanimously struck down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalized same sex relations. The idea of transformative constitutionalism figured centrally in the various opinions, and the closely related concept of constitutional morality, given real legal teeth for the first time by the Supreme Court. So did another piece of the global template of rights-protection – proportionality, which is relatively new to Indian constitutional jurisprudence. The unifying thread between transformative constitutionalism and proportionality in Johar is that the purposes underlying Section 377 were constitutionally impermissible. The dual mission of the transformative constitutional project defined the scope of admissible reasons for proportionality analysis. Section 377 was unconstitutional on the cosmopolitan ground that mere social morality was an insufficient reason to limit the right to engage in harmless, constitutionally protected activity, the basis on which courts around the world have struck down parallel provisions. The colonial-era origins of Section 377 also figured prominently in the submissions and various opinions, as an additional reason why it was unconstitutional. I argue that Section 377 was also unconstitutional for the anti-colonial reason that it was an element of the Imperial constitutional order in British India in the period after the Indian Mutiny in 1857 of indirect colonial rule.

Indirect colonial rule and the salience of ethnicity

• Advances our understanding of the causes of the salience of ethnicity. • Establishes a cross-country relationship between indirect colonial rule and the salience of ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa. • Shows, controlling for ethnicity and location, that ethnicity is also more salient in indirectly ruled areas of Namibia. • Causal mechanisms are shown to be the importance of traditional leaders and customary land in indirectly ruled areas. Why is ethnicity more salient in some contexts than in others? This paper provides new theory and evidence linking indirect colonial rule to the contemporary salience of ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa. Using Afrobarometer survey data, I establish a substantively significant cross-national relationship between the indirectness of colonial rule and the strength of contemporary ethnic identification in sub-Saharan Africa. To show that this relationship is causal, I then exploit a sub-national research design leveraging regional variation in direct and indirect colonial rule across the country of Namibia. I show that, controlling for location and ethnicity, indirect colonial rule is also associated with stronger ethnic identification within Namibia both across the country as a whole and within 50 km of the border dividing indirectly and directly ruled areas of Namibia. This paper then disentangles why indirect rule is so robustly associated with the salience of ethnicity. I theorize and provide evidence that the effects of indirect rule can be attributed to the greater importance of traditional leaders and ethnically demarcated customary land rights in formerly indirectly ruled areas. As such, this paper helps uncover the causes of important regional variation in the salience of ethnicity, advances our understanding of the institutional origins of ethnic conflict in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and thus why indirect colonial rule is so often associated with poor developmental outcomes.

Colonial America Today: U.S. Empire and the Political Status of Native American Nations

AbstractThe article systematically assesses U.S.-Native relations today and their historical foundations in light of a narrow, empirical definition of colonial empire. Examining three core elements of colonial empire—the formal impairment of sovereignty, the intensive practical impairment of sovereignty through practices of governance and administration, and the continuing otherness of the dominated and dominant groups—we compare contemporary U.S.-Native political relations to canonical instances of formal colonial indirect rule empires. Based on this analysis, we argue that the United States today is a paradigmatic case of formal colonial empire in the narrow, traditional sense, one that should be better integrated into the comparative, historical, and sociological study of such formal empires. Furthermore, this prominent contemporary case stands against the idea that the era of formal colonial empire is over.

Indirect Colonial Rule and the Salience of Ethnicity

Indirect Colonial Rule and the Salience of Ethnicity

Critical Investigation of Challenges in the Recognition of Customary Law in the Democratic South Africa

This paper identifies indirect colonial rule as an impediment towards recognition of indigenous authority in South Africa. Indigenous Africans have observed customary law from time immemorial in the pre-colonial era to govern its own people with success before the establishment of British colonial policies. Indirect rule treated indigenous tribal chiefs as political intermediaries, which has caused imbalance of the application of law. This policy was used as a mechanism from which apartheid emerged during the twentieth Century and changed African political identity landscape to favour imperialistic ideology. We explore potential alignment in the application of customary law with common law in our courts to mark the democratic dispensation in the post-colonial era. This paper aims to explore the implications of different legal systems used in democratic post-apartheid South Africa and which are influenced by the apartheid legacy and the failure to recognise African values and principles. The influence of western values resulted in the omission of Ubuntu humanist philosophy from the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1966 (Act 108 of 1996) (hereinafter referred to as “the Constitution”).

Historical legacies of colonial indirect rule: Princely states and Maoist insurgency in central India

Abstract What are the long term effects of colonial institutions on insurgency? The literature on civil wars has not explored the historical legacies of colonial institutions for insurgency. I address this gap in the literature, by exploiting sub-national variation in the most important internal security threat in the world's largest democracy—the Maoist insurgency in India. Within India, I focus on the crucial case of the Maoist rebels in the tribal state of Chhattisgarh in central India which epitomizes the causal mechanism of indirect rule through native princely states creating enclaves of weak state capacity, low development and tribal grievances due to natural resource exploitation. I test my theory on a new dataset at the sub district level within Chhattisgarh, and use instrumental variable regression to address endogeneity due to selection bias, combined with historical analysis and interview data to demonstrate path dependence. This study demonstrates historical origins of weak state capacity and ethnic grievances due to natural resource exploitation, which are important explanations for civil war onset. It also sets the agenda for further research on other cases where colonial indirect rule creates conditions for insurgency, like the Taliban in FATA in Pakistan, the ethnic insurgencies in Burma's peripheries, and leftist insurgencies in Nepal, Peru and Colombia.

Indirect Colonial Rule Undermines Support for Democracy: Evidence From a Natural Experiment in Namibia

This article identifies indirect and direct colonial rule as causal factors in shaping support for democracy by exploiting a within-country natural experiment in Namibia. Throughout the colonial era, northern Namibia was indirectly ruled through a system of appointed indigenous traditional elites whereas colonial authorities directly ruled southern Namibia. This variation originally stems from where the progressive extension of direct German control was stopped after a rinderpest epidemic in the 1890s, and, thus, constitutes plausibly exogenous within-country variation in the form of colonial rule. Using this spatial discontinuity, we find that individuals in indirectly ruled areas are less likely to support democracy and turnout at elections. We explore potential mechanisms and find suggestive evidence that the greater influence of traditional leaders in indirectly ruled areas has socialized individuals to accept nonelectoral bases of political authority.