Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia

Abstract

This book explores the historical formation during the colonial period of that part of African law known as customary law. In treating the emergence of the customary law as part of the history of the social and economic transformation of African societies under colonial rule, it also provides an interpretation of the ways in which people tried to control the disrupting effects of the changes which they experienced. Martin Chanock shows how African ideas, aspirations and activities regarding law were shaped by interaction with the legal ideas of the British colonisers, their understandings of African societies, and the judicial institutions of the colonial state. These thematic considerations are illustrated by studies of how the customary law developed alongside criminal law in colonial society in Malawi and Zambia as part of the moral weaponry of a changing social order, and more specifically by describing the role of the customary law of the family in conflicts between men and women in the new colonial political economy.