Colonial governors and Dakar clashed over whether courts should force custom change

Evidence

The governors did, however, differ with Panty on the best means to bring about the desired progress in Africans’ social mores. They wished to modify the behavior of African individuals through locally determined measures. Panty supported the professional magistrates’ view that African society as a whole could and should be transformed through the introduction of judicial institutions and principles borrowed from the metropole. This difference in outlook affected the way in which the lieutenant governors and the governor general viewed the Chambre d’homologation. The former concluded that its role should be limited to noting the transformations occurring in customary law, rather than deliberately attempting to alter custom through its ruling. In contrast, Panty felt that the Chambre’s role was to apply the principles of French law every time they were more lenient than existing customs. Although these contrasting points of view surely reflected a power struggle between an encroaching central bureaucracy and subordinate administrations, we should not lose sight of their ideological dimension. Dakar resolutely pursued its understanding of France’s civilizing mission in the judicial realm between 1908 and 1914, even as lower-level administrators pleaded for a more pragmatic approach to introducing change. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 447

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of how France’s republican civilizing mission was imposed on West Africa through centralized institutions versus local pragmatism.