Table Of ContentCambridge Imperial & Post-Colonial Studies
COLONIAL JUSTICE AND
DECOLONIZATION IN
THE HIGH COURT OF
TANZANIA, 1920–1971
ELLEN R. FEINGOLD
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
Series
Series editors
Richard Drayton
Department of History
King’s College London
London, United Kingdom
Saul Dubow
Magdalene College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom
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Ellen R. Feingold
Colonial Justice and
Decolonization in the
High Court of
Tanzania, 1920–1971
Ellen R. Feingold
Georgetown University
Washington, DC, USA
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series
ISBN 978-3-319-69690-4 ISBN 978-3-319-69691-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69691-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959100
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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For my husband, Alexander K. Dewar, and our daughter, Hannah Pearl,
with an abiding love.
And
In honour of the memory of Dr Jan-Georg Deutsch—rigorous scholar,
imaginative teacher, devoted mentor, and very dear friend.
A
cknowledgements
I should like to express my deepest gratitude to those who have supported
me in this research project. First and foremost, I am grateful to Dr Jan-
Georg Deutsch, who was a devoted and inspiring mentor to me for ten
years before his passing in 2016. He helped guide this project from the
beginning, and his steadfast support and enthusiasm for this book helped
propel it to completion. I will always be indebted to him for training me
and generously sharing his creativity and time.
I also thank five other Oxford historians: Prof. Judith Brown, Prof.
John Darwin, Prof. Avner Offer, Dr Karl Gerth, and Prof. Antony Kirk-
Greene for their advice at various stages of my research. Prof. Kirk-
Greene’s wonderful encouragement and his essential advice to place a
notice in The Overseas Pensioner to locate former members of the colonial
administration and judiciary in Tanganyika proved to be more fruitful
than either of us imagined. It opened up lines of enquiry and provided
evidence that I would have found inaccessible, and it made this project
much richer than it otherwise would have been. I am also grateful to the
Overseas Service Pensioners’ Association for placing my notice in their
journal, which allowed me to meet so many of its members.
The most satisfying element of this research was interviewing and cor-
responding with the men and women whose recollections are cited in the
chapters and listed in the bibliography. Their generosity with their memo-
ries, time, contacts, and personal papers was humbling and invaluable to
this project. Beyond sharing their own personal narratives, they helped to
shed light on the roles of their long-deceased colleagues, friends, and fam-
ily members who left behind few records, but have been examined in this
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
book as a result of interviewees’ willingness to share their memories with
me. Sadly, some of those interviewed for this project have become ill and
passed away since I interviewed them, in some cases within months of the
interview. I hope that the publication of this book will allow them to take
their places in the history of the legal system of Tanzania.
I received help from many people during my fieldwork in Tanzania in
2008. I am grateful to the United Republic of Tanzania for permitting me
to carry out my research. I thank Dr Chris Maina Peter for advising me
during my fieldwork, as well as other members of the Tanganyika Law
Society and Law Reform Commission who offered me advice. I am also
grateful to Ilvin Mugeta and Ken LuePhang for their assistance during my
time in Dar es Salaam.
I am very grateful to the following bodies at the University of Oxford
for their financial assistance: the John Roberts Fund (supported by Merton
College and the History Faculty); the Beit Fund; the History Faculty’s
Arnold, Bryce and Read Funds; the Colin Matthew Fund; the Merton
College Research Grant Fund. I would also like to thank the International
Seminar on Decolonization in Washington, DC, for giving me the oppor-
tunity to conduct research at the National Archives and Library of
Congress, and the seminar leaders Prof. W. Roger Louis, Prof. Philippa
Levine, Prof. Dane Kennedy, Prof. Jason Parker, Prof. Marilyn Young, and
seminarians for their supportive feedback on my work at a crucial stage in
the project. Furthermore, I am thankful to the staff at the libraries and
archives I visited in Tanzania, the UK, and the USA for their assistance;
and to Merton College for providing a vibrant intellectual home during
my time at Oxford.
I was remarkably fortunate to find a welcoming community of scholars
and colleagues at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, who kindly
included me in the African Studies Program in the School of Foreign
Service. I am deeply grateful to Prof. Scott Taylor, Prof. Lahra Smith, and
Prof. Kathryn de Luna for their openheartedness and friendship. The
completion of this book would not have been possible without their
support.
I thank the whole team at Palgrave Macmillan, and especially my edi-
tors, Molly Beck and Oliver Dyer, for their hard work on behalf of this
book, as well as the series editors, Prof. Richard Drayton and Prof. Saul
Dubow, for selecting it for their series. I am also grateful to the two anony-
mous peer reviewers for their thoughtful feedback.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT S ix
Many colleagues and friends gave me helpful advice on this project. I
warmly thank Dr Sarah Stockwell, Dr Leigh Gardner, Dr Yonina
Murciano-Goroff, Dr Margret Frenz, Dr Michelle Osborn, and Dr Sarah
Weicksel. Similarly, I say asante sana to Dr Festo Mkenda for his friend-
ship and guidance.
With love and appreciation, I thank my parents Susan Feingold and
Russell Feingold, my stepfather and stepmother, Chester Dussault and
Christine Ferdinand, and my sister and brother-in-law, Jessica Feingold
Lieberson and Jeffery Feingold Lieberson, for providing continuous
encouragement throughout my academic career and especially during my
years at Oxford. I also want to honour the memory of my inspiring grand-
mothers, Pearl Levine and Sylvia Feingold, and grandfathers, Herbert
Levine and Leon Feingold, whose love of the law was contagious.
Finally, I thank my husband, Alexander Dewar, for his unwavering con-
fidence in me and this project. No words can convey the depth of my
gratitude to him for his true partnership in our life together and for help-
ing me see this book through to completion.
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
Part I The High Court of Tanganyika Under British Rule,
1920–1958 23
2 Building a Judiciary for the Empire: The Development
of the Colonial Legal Service 25
3 The Marginalisation of the High Court Under Indirect
Rule, 1920–1944 53
4 The Resurgence and Expansion of Tanganyika’s Judiciary,
1945–1958 87
Part II Decolonising the High Court of Tanganyika,
1959–1971 133
5 Restructuring Colonial Justice, Empowering the High
Court, 1959–1964 135
xi
