Colonial law
In general, the legal norms that regulated the legal relationships of the colonies were called colonial law . In detail, however, the following distinction must be made:
Legal relationships in colonies
Colonial law is the law that applied in the respective colonies, i.e. that was decisive for the legal relationships of the inhabitants in the respective territories. Depending on the circumstances to which these legal norms related, they belonged to public or private law. Colonies which had a special organization and which, like many British colonies , were granted extensive autonomy by appointing special representative bodies for them, had developed colonial law in this sense.
Constitutional nature
For other colonies, the law applicable in the mother country was more or less decisive. Of a constitutional nature, the colonial law that regulated the relations between the colony and the mother country was. In this respect, too, there was great diversity, in that some colonies were part of the main state; B. Algeria belonged to France under constitutional law without having lost its colonial character. Other colonies were under the sovereignty of the government of the mother country, while in other countries the government of the mother country only exercised a so-called “protective rule” and only exercised “protective power” over their nationals who were staying in the foreign country. But this “protectorate” could be so extensive that the “protected areas” were to be understood as colonies. This applies to the German "protected areas", which in this sense were colonies. There were no protectorate relationships under international law in the German Reich during the colonial period between 1884 and 1919.
International Colonial Law
Colonial law was also used to name the legal principles according to which the relationships between the various powers are determined with regard to their colonial possessions. These were of an international law nature (international colonial law). If the colonial property of one country should be respected by the government of the other country, it was not enough for the occupation of a country to be merely formally inhabited, according to the understanding of the time, ie not inhabited by an international legal community, so-called “uncivilized” people , e.g. B. by flag-raising, took place; it was rather an actual exercise of rule over the territory to be occupied. Details were very controversial.
In this sense, the Congo Act of February 26, 1885 (Art. 34 et seq.) Recognized the obligation of the Signatory Powers to secure the existence of an authority sufficient for acquired rights in the areas occupied by them on the coasts of the African continent to protect. In addition, in this act, which is decisive for future colonial acquisitions, the obligation was recognized to notify the signatory powers of assuming a new "protectorate" or new appropriation in order to enable them to make their complaints if necessary.
German colonial law
As a result of the German colonial- political endeavors at the end of the 19th century, colonial law was not only made the subject of scientific research several times, but was also dealt with by law in Germany. The German Reich constitution (Art. 4, Paragraph 1) contained provisions on the colonization of legislation and the supervision of the Reich.
According to the German Imperial Law of April 17, 1886 ( Protected Areas Law ), regarding the legal relationships of the German colonies, the Emperor exercised the "protective power" in the latter in the name of the Empire. "Colonial Minister" was the Chancellor. According to the enacted law, the civil law, criminal law, court proceedings and court constitution governing the German colonies were to be determined by the Reich Law of July 10, 1879 on consular jurisdiction . The consul was replaced by the official authorized by the Chancellor to exercise jurisdiction. Imperial ordinances could, however, justify deviations from that law on consular jurisdiction. The imperial law of May 4, 1870, concerning the marriage and civil status certification of nationals abroad, could also be extended to non-nationals by imperial ordinance, as was done for the "protected areas" of Cameroon and Togo by ordinance of April 21, 1886. Another ordinance of June 5, 1886 regulated the legal relationships in the colony of the New Guinea Company , while an ordinance of September 13, 1886 dealt with the legal relationships in the Pacific colonies of Marshall, Brown and Providence Islands.
In the following years a lively and intensive legislative activity developed, which only became almost irrelevant with the Treaty of Versailles. The last remnants of the protection area-related legislation were not until the legal expiry of the "colonial societies" (§ 4 sentence 1 of the federal law of August 20, 1975) and tax adjustments (articles 8 and 10 of the federal law of February 25, 1992) in the 2nd half eliminated in the 20th century.
literature
- Conrad Bornhak: The Beginnings of German Colonial Law. in: JCB Mohr (ed.): “Archive for public law”, vol. 2, p. 1 ff., Freiburg 1887
- Ioel: The law regarding the legal relationships in the German protected areas. in Georg Hirth (ed.): Annalen des Deutschen Reichs , Munich 1887, p. 191 sf.
- Ferdinand Lentner: The international colonial law . Vienna 1886
- Arnold Pann: The right of German patronage . Vienna 1887
- Karl von Stengel: The constitutional and international legal position of the German colonies . Berlin 1886
- Marc Grohmann: Exotic constitution: The competences of the Reichstag for the German colonies in legislation and constitutional law of the Empire (1884-1914). Mohr Siebeck, 2001, ISBN 978-3161475320
- Helmut Janssen: The Transfer of Legal Concepts to Foreign Cultures Using the Example of English Colonial Law: A Contribution to Comparative Law. Mohr Siebeck, 2000, ISBN 978-3161473210
- Dominik Nagl: No Part of the Mother Country, but Distinct Dominions - Legal Transfer, State Building and Governance in England, Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1630–1769. LIT, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-11817-2 . On-line
- Luigi Nuzzo: Colonial Law , European History Online , ed. from the Institute for European History (Mainz) , 2011, accessed on: July 18, 2011.
- Dominik Nagl: Borderline cases. Citizenship, racism and national identity under German colonial rule. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2007, ISBN 978-3-631-56458-5 .
- Julian Steinkröger: Criminal law and the administration of criminal justice in the German colonies: A comparison of law within the possessions of the empire overseas. Publishing house Dr. Kovač, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-339-11274-3 .
- Norbert B. Wagner: The German protected areas: acquisition, organization, and loss from a legal point of view. Nomos-Verl.-Ges., Baden-Baden 2002, ISBN 3-7890-8033-0
