Using Ethnography to dispense Justice. Belgian Magistrates in Katanga and their journals (1920-1960)

Landmeters, Romain
(2018) Congo Research Network Conference 2018. Congolese Studies: Past, Present, Future — Location: University of Oxford - St Antony’s College (26.April.2018)

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This contribution falls within the scope of the Study of the Belgian Colonial Justice. Our Belgafrican Magistrates Social Networks project (2014-2018) shed light on the colonial Magistrate’s position. We contribute to the understanding of the Katangase judicial body and its key role in the colonization. We focus in particular on their use of ethnographic methods in their making of law. To do this, we combine different methods: biographical and prosopographical approaches, social networks’ analysis and periodical studies. In the 1920’s, the booming mining production put Katanga at the centre of world affairs’ map. Within this changing societal context, Belgian colonial authorities were convinced in law’s power and its application to maintain their position of domination. The recently founded (1910) and cosmopolitan city Elisabethville was the centre of this changing society. In 1924, the Belgian magistrate Antoine Sohier (1885-1963) was a catalyst of the legal science of the colony and gathered a group of magistrates in the Société d’Études Juridiques du Katanga (SEJK). Together they created the Revue de droit et de la jurisprudence du Katanga (RDJK). It was used as an instrument to provide fixity and intelligibility of legal principles but also to disseminate ideas. As consequence of the 15 April 1926 decree, which erected a hundred of indigenous jurisdictions in Belgian Congo, the Bulletin des Juridictions Indigènes et du Droit Coutumier Congolais (BJIDCC) was published in 1933 as a supplement to the previous journal. The purpose was to reinforce the study of customary law in the Belgian Congo: codification of customary law seemed to be a means for the authorities to cope with the troubles that threatened the colonial society. The SEJK asked for missionaries’ and territorial agents’ help to conduct ethnographic inquiries in their respective areas and report their results in the BJIDCC. We question this initiative. How did these magistrates use this ethnographic material? How did they develop, through these publications, a « Congolese » legal culture? Which ideology of colonization was spread by the contributors? What did this cooperation reveal of the relationship between the different Belgian colonial corps?
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Landmeters, R. (2018). Using Ethnography to dispense Justice. Belgian Magistrates in Katanga and their journals (1920-1960). Congo Research Network Conference 2018. Congolese Studies: Past, Present, Future, University of Oxford - St Antony’s College. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/259792