Belgian Colonial Justice in Congo: Men and Institutions

Over the last fifteen years, researchers have given a new impulse to Congo’s Colonial history. Research concerned essentially on two major characters: the violences perpetrated under Leopold IInd and the murder of Patrice Lumumba. Historians managed to pass beyond these clichés to put forward the structural dimensions of the Belgian Colony. Some of them have recently focussed on Justice (e.g. Justice and Po pulations and Belgafrican Magistrates So cial Networks). As members of that resurgence, we have put forward the architecture and functioning of Belgian colonial judicial system from 1885 to 1960. Within the frame of this panel, we would like to present the latest results of our research. More precisely, we intend to underline the main features of this organization and to show the elements that were especially created in the congolese context and the borrowings from other (colonial) legal systems. We will also take an interest in the leaders of Belgian Colonial Justice[5]. In particular, we will highlight the magistrates’social and intellectual networks developed around the General Prosecutor Antoine Sohier. He was a catalyst of legal science in Congo that organized the Katanga Legal Studies Society and animated law periodicals in the Interwar period. Combining biographical/prosoprographical methods and periodical studies, we will make visible what ideology of colonization they spread building “Congolese” law