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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Competing Systems of Inheritance before the British Courts of the Gold Coast Colony |
Author: | Gocking, Roger |
Year: | 1990 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
Volume: | 23 |
Issue: | 4 |
Pages: | 601-618 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Ghana Great Britain |
Subjects: | colonialism customary law family law matriarchy History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Women's Issues |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/219500 |
Abstract: | Among the Western-educated community of the Gold Coast (Ghana) during the interwar years, there seemed to be considerable public agreement that the 'primitive' and 'monstrous' custom of matrilineal inheritance would gradually be swept away by the advancing tide of 'civilization'. However, rather than the colonial legal system working hand in glove with the onward march of 'civilization', paradoxically it often worked to preserve the 'outmoded' custom of matrilineal inheritance. During the last decades of colonial rule, the Colony's British courts were caught up in 'a disconcerting conflict between judicial enunciation of customary doctrine and contemporary practice in the social process'. One of the implications of this situation was that it provided a great deal of room for legal manoeuvring that served to more than just keep alive matrilineal inheritance. In order to understand why what many members of the coastal intelligentsia considered an 'outmoded system' was able to survive as well as it did, this article examines the advantages that the Colony's dualistic legal system offered to those who had a vested interest in defending matrilineal inheritance. Notes, ref. |