The customary law Europeans applied was largely invented by them

Evidence

More often than not, these scholars have argued, the “customary law” the Europeans applied was invented and tells us little about precolonial traditions of law. See Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order; Snyder, “Colonialism and Legal Form” and Capitalism and Legal Change; Mann and Roberts, eds., Law in Colonial Africa, pp. 21-23. This same invented “custom” can, however, tell us a great deal about the European colonizer. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1081

Categorization

• XREF: Directly builds the invented-tradition thesis — connects to Terence Ranger and to broader scholarship on colonial knowledge production, useful against the reader’s frame of French republicans reshuffling West African order. — connects to: European law drew its reasoning and terminology from Rome despite local sources prevailing — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 144