This book explores the historical formation during the colonial period of that part of African law known as customary law. Martin Chanock treats the emergence of the customary law as an aspect of the social and economic transformation of African societies under colonial rule. He argues that African presentations of "customary" law were one of the ways Africans tried to control the disrupting effects of the changes which they experiences as a consequence of colonial impositions. Chanock shows also how African ideas, aspirations, and activities regarding law, and the rudiments of customary law, were shaped by interaction with the legal ideas of the British colonizers, their understandings of African societies, and the judicial institutions of the colonial state. Chanock's book furnishes a valuable critique of approaches within the anthropology of law which either assume the existence of law in all societies, or which, by concentrating on dispute management, avoid consideration of process