Serge Dauchy, winner of the ERC-2025-AdG call with the FoLC project

Serge DAUCHY
Research Director at the CNRS
Director of the CHJ, UMR 8025 CNRS / University of Lille
Recipient of the ERC-2025-AdG grant for the FoLC project
Forging Legal Confluences: from legal transplant to cultural bridging

The aim of FoLC is to study the drafting and application by the French colonial authorities of the Civil Codes for use by the indigenous courts of the Tonkin and Annam protectorates between 1887 and 1940. In the light of theories relating to legal transplantation, hybridisation and pluralism, the project examines the legal and political objectives behind an attempt to bring together the French Civil Code, on the one hand, and Annamite law and Confucian culture, on the other. Drawing on an examination of archives held in France and Vietnam, the project will analyse the sources and working methods of the drafters of the codes, the role of interpreters and translators trained at the Hanoi Law School, the resistance of local elites, and the implementation of this hybrid law by indigenous courts and the Indochina Court of Appeal. It will also identify the specific features of the Civil Codes for the Indochinese protectorates in comparison with the colonial law in force in the colony of Cochinchina.

Finally, FoLC aims to examine the extent to which a possible legal and cultural convergence that took place during French colonisation might explain why the Vietnamese legislature drew on the French model when drafting its new Civil Code in 2015, and, more broadly, to explore the question of the lingering influence of colonial law in post-colonial societies.