Farmers and the state in colonial Kano: land tenure and the legal imagination

Abstract

Steven Pierce examines issues surrounding the colonial state and the distribution of state power in northern Nigeria. Here, Pierce deconstructs the colonial state and offers a unique reading of land tenure that challenges earlier views of the role of indirect rule. According to Pierce, land tenure was the means the colonial government used to rule the local population and extract taxes from them, but it was also a political logic with a fundamental flaw and Western bias. In this sweeping and eloquent account of African history, readers will find an extended genealogy of land law and taxatio.