POINTING TO PROPERTY: COLONIALISM AND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LAND TENURE IN NORTHERN NIGERIA

Abstract

ABSTRACTColonial contact created many African ‘traditions’ that are in fact novel; part of this process involved translation, in which cultural accommodations were determined not just by the political interests of negotiators but by the challenges of moving between languages and conceptual universes. This article focuses on the cultural translation of land tenure and property in colonial northern Nigeria, as legal paradigms and principles of governance. Beginning in the early colonial period, Western paradigms came to shape the ways colonial authorities understood indigenous landholding, which in turned influenced how they governed small-scale farmers. The article traces how different intellectual traditions came together to create a ‘traditional’ system of land tenure with very little purchase on past practices, and a somewhat attenuated relationship with the lives of ordinary farmers.