Indirect rule: administrators, chiefs, and law

What this quiz covers

Indirect rule blended colonial administration with existing local leadership, often redefining who counted as a “chief” and what “customary law” meant. You’ll work through key ideas like legitimacy, taxation, courts, land control, and the day-to-day mechanics of governance.

Each question has 4 options and there’s no timer, so you can slow down and compare terms such as native authority, customary courts, and legal pluralism.

Skills you’ll practice

You’ll practice linking policy goals to institutional choices: why administrators empowered certain chiefs, how “tradition” was codified, and what happened when colonial law collided with local norms. The set is Mixed difficulty, so you’ll see both straightforward definitions and more interpretive, scenario-style items.

• Distinguishing indirect rule from direct rule and assimilation
• Reading “customary law” critically: invention, codification, and enforcement
• Tracing power flows between district officers, chiefs, councils, and courts
• Spotting legal pluralism (colonial law vs customary law vs religious law)
• Connecting labor, taxation, land tenure, and policing to administrative control

Common pitfalls and how difficulty is balanced

A frequent mistake is assuming chiefs were always traditional leaders; many were appointed, reshaped, or given new powers under colonial supervision. Another trap is treating customary law as fixed rather than negotiated, recorded, and sometimes strategically used.

Difficulty is balanced by mixing recall questions (terms, roles, institutions) with applied questions (consequences, comparisons, and cause-and-effect). You can choose your preferred question count and difficulty before starting, making it easy to do a quick review or a longer, more challenging run.