ABSTRACT
IF there is one thing more than another upon which the most competent students of West Africa are agreed, it is the tenaciousness of the West African Negro to his landed rights. Land tenure in West Africa has been properly described as a H cult." The most experienced English, French and German observers have noted this characteristic. Wherever it has been adequately studied, the system of native land tenure, in its tribal, family, individual and commercial aspects, is found to be at once simple in its broad lines, elaborate in its details, and approaching in many respects to the most advanced democratic conceptions of Western Europe. Before the torchlight of scientific in.. quiry, the old idea of the Negro being more or less of an animal, incapable of evolving any rational or consistent
policy; too backward to frame anything approaching an unwritten code of law; his every act of life being merely the outcome of natural instinct, can no longer be entertained. And to the knowledge that these beings, who were thought irrational, and inconsequent to the extent of being the halfdevil, half-child of popular imagination, has been added the conviction that the commercial and political success of the Powers of Europe in their West African Possessions depends for its attainment upon the recognition of native laW in respect to property.
