Colonial authorities empowered African chiefs to flog subjects under colonial ordinance

Evidence

The Berlin Conference did not directly produce the operational pedagogical apparatus of colonial Africa. But the partition Berlin authorized produced the colonial state. The colonial state produced — across the next half-century — the operational legal-administrative framework within which the third transmission vector achieved its mature institutional form. Three operational developments matter. … First — the Native Authority system. Under indirect rule (the British formulation associated with Frederick Lugard’s The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 1922) and under direct rule (the French assimilation and Belgian and Portuguese variants), colonial administrations established Native Authorities — African traditional rulers or appointed chiefs whose operational role included the administration of “native discipline” under colonial supervision. The Native Authority chiefly courts had jurisdiction over civil and minor criminal matters among African subjects. They were authorized — under colonial ordinance — to impose corporal punishment for a wide range of offences. Native flogging, in many colonial jurisdictions, was an officially sanctioned judicial instrument across the entire colonial period. — , The Rod and the Child, 4444

Categorization

• XREF: The indigenization-through-Native-Authority angle connects to how post-colonial states inherited repressive judicial instruments. — connects to: Colonial authorities deflect responsibility onto colonized groups against each other — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 373; French colonial administration layered circles over African chiefdoms with chiefs below French heads.

Broader Connections

• French colonial administration layered circles over African chiefdoms with chiefs below French heads. #expands (0.60)
• Colonial authorities deflect responsibility onto colonized groups against each other #complicates (0.50) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 373