The Law and the Colonial State: Legal Codification versus Practice in a German Colony

Colonial law has recently become a focus of extensive scholarly attention. Several authors have been concerned with the development of law in German colonies from a jurisdictional as well as a historical perspective.¹ A common methodological element of such studies is that they try to identify the significance of colonial law for German or international legal history by analyzing legal files and treaties from the perspective of what was happening at home in the Reich, even though they claim to describe how Germany’s administration and legal systems functioned in the colonies.² This chapter has a different emphasis and a broader...