Documenting Inter-personal Conflicts in Senegal during the First Quarter the 20th Century using Dispute Registries from native courts

In the early 20th century, new litigation bodies, the so-called 'native courts', were created and managed by the French colonial administration to regulate relations between native people. The monitoring of court activity has generated high-frequency litigation data. Such data provide a unique opportunity to document interpersonal conflict in a context of colonial rule that is undergoing rapid transformation. This paper has three objectives: (i) describe the institutional framework allowing for the emergence of the data on which this research is based --Les Etats Récapitulatifs--; (ii) detail our method to compile time series of disputes arbitrated by native courts; (iii) describe certain trends in the dynamics of disputes arbitrated by native courts. We conclude by discussing how this database could be used to better understand the economic and political roots of interpersonal conflict.