Bérengère Piret

Postdoctoral Researcher
Research group: 
Centre de recherches en histoire du droit et des institutions (CRHIDI)
Address: 
Boulevard du Jardin botanique 43
1000 Bruxelles
Belgium
Telephone: 
+32 2 792 35 12
E-mail: 
Work Package(s): 
Research themes: 
Colonial studies
Criminal justice
Research project: 

Natives in front of the colonial justice. A history of Belgian Congo through the archives of the district courts (1934-1958)

This PhD project is based on the discovery of an archival fonds that has been forgotten for many years. The fonds gathered a collection of documents produced by the legal institutions of Belgian Congo (1908-1960). Those records aimed to document each step of the legal proceedings followed at that time. As a consequence, they contain all initial complaints, the minutes of the auditions, the observations made during the inquiries, medical reports, the court audition records and the judgments. Some files also contain documents linked to the Court of Appeal. This archival fonds, called “Gouvernement général de Léopoldville –-Justice”, contains the records of all the colonial criminal courts of law but for a very pragmatic reason, B. Piret decided to focus her research on the archives produced by the District Court, which was a very particular institution. Created during the Congo Free State period, it was largely transformed after the First World War to finally become properly organised in the mid-30s. It was responsible for all crimes and offenses committed by natives, which explains the large diversity of cases with which the court dealt. The cases were tried by a judge who was the district commissioner. The judge was attended by a clerk and a deputy public prosecutor. They composed one district court and there were between 16 and 24 district courts, that is, one for each district. Each court delivered about 200 verdicts every year. Those verdicts concerned mostly thefts, embezzlement of funds, murders, wounds and rapes. One additional offense category covers the offences of special colonial laws. Those texts forbid natives to use hemp, to drink alcohol, to move without a passport or to be a polygamist, for instance. The research is conducted in three directions; the institution, the cases and the contextual aspects. The last one seems to be the most difficult. The contextual aspects were probably considered as irrelevant by the authors themselves but, actually, they give us today important details about the repression policy, the daily life in the colony or major events.

Picture: ©Cegesoma, image nr°169622 :lawyers in the courthouse of Ghent, 1941[Maes]

The Interuniversity Attraction Pole P7/22 "Justice & Populations: The Belgian Experience in International Perspective, 1795-2015" (BeJust 2.0) is part of the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme Phase VII (2012-2017), financed by the Belgian Science Policy Office of the Belgian State.

The IAP VII/22 Justice & Populations www.bejust.be is the outcome of a collaboration between the Cegesoma, the IAP coordination team (CHDJ-UCL) and the Royal Military Academy. Design: tangografix. Powered by Drupal