Truncated Allegiances? Chiefly Jurisdiction and Colonial Law on the Ghana-Togo Borderlands
African Legal History Seminar
- Date: Jan 18, 2022
- Time: 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Edem Adotey
- (University of Ghana)
- Location: video conference
- Room: For further information please contact the organisers
- Host: Joint initiative of the Max Planck Research Group 'Legal Connectivities and Colonial Cultures in Africa' and the project 'Global Legal History on the Ground'
'Colonial boundary making in Africa as several scholarly studies show how several stools were separated from their subjects. This paper examines colonial law on cross-border chiefly jurisdiction on the Ghana-Togo border. How did the convergence or divergence on the meaning of border for the colonizer and the colonized affect the implementation of colonial laws on the borderlands? Using examples from some Ewe communities on the Ghana-Togo border this paper argues that there were contradictions in their implementation due to the complexities of African conceptions and constructions of the border.'