Book contents
- The Historicity of International Politics
- The Historicity of International Politics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Imperial Past and Present in International Politics and IR
- Part II Historical Sociology and the Imperial Fundaments of International Politics
- 8 The Afterlives of Empires
- 9 Divided World
- 10 The Colonial Origins of Policing
- Part III Global History and the Imperial Fundaments of International Politics
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
10 - The Colonial Origins of Policing
The ‘Domestic Effect’ in the UK and the US
from Part II - Historical Sociology and the Imperial Fundaments of International Politics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 June 2023
By
Book contents
- The Historicity of International Politics
- The Historicity of International Politics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Imperial Past and Present in International Politics and IR
- Part II Historical Sociology and the Imperial Fundaments of International Politics
- 8 The Afterlives of Empires
- 9 Divided World
- 10 The Colonial Origins of Policing
- Part III Global History and the Imperial Fundaments of International Politics
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
The so-called ‘civil police’ which originated in London and then spread to the US and the rest of the world has been a crucial institution for maintaining the international order. This is because the civil police, unlike the army, is a coercive regime meant for ‘citizens’ rather than ‘foreigners’ or ‘subjects’. The civil police regulates ‘domestic’ space, while the military is oriented to ‘foreign’ or ‘international’ space. This essay examines the origins of this important institution in the United Kingdom and the United States and reveals its colonial genealogy. The first civil police, the London Metropolitan Police, founded in the nineteenth century, was modelled after a colonial counter-insurgency force, the Irish Constabulary. In the United States, the civil police was initially modelled after the London police but later, in the early twentieth century, appropriated a series of techniques and tactics from America’s colonial regime in the Philippines. The strategic operation of both civil police institutions has been to draw upon the colonial site while covering up its colonial counter-insurgency and militaristic origins.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Historicity of International PoliticsImperialism and the Presence of the Past, pp. 208 - 224Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
Arnold, D. (1986). Police Power and Colonial Rule: Madras, 1859–1947, Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bayley, D. H. (1975). The Police and Political Development in Europe, in Tilly, C. (ed.). The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 328–79.Google Scholar
Beek, J., Gopfert, M., Owen, O. & Steinberg, J. (eds.) (2017). Police in Africa: The Street Level View, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bell, E. (2013). Normalising the Exceptional: British Colonial Policing Cultures Come Home, Mémoire(s), identité(s), marginalité(s) dans le monde occidental contemporain 9. http://mimmoc.revues.org/1286Google Scholar
Birtle, A. (2009). U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1860–1941, Washington: Center of Military History.Google Scholar
Brogden, M. (1987). The Emergence of the Police: The Colonial Dimension, The British Journal of Criminology, 27(1), 4–14.Google Scholar
Cosmas, G. (1998). An Army for Empire: The United States Army in the Spanish-American War, Shippensburg: White Mane Publishing Co, Inc.Google Scholar
Eck, K. (2018). The Origins of Policing Institutions: Legacies of Colonial Insurgency, Journal of Peace Research, 55(2), 147–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellison, G. & Smyth, J. (2000). The Crowned Harp: Policing in Northern Ireland, London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Ellison, G., Smyth, J. & O’Reilly, C. (2008). From Empire to Iraq and the ‘War on Terror’: The Transplantation and Commodification of the (Northern) Irish Policing Experience, Police Quarterly, 11(4).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emsley, C. (1999a). A Typology of Nineteenth-Century Police, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, 3(1), 29–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Emsley, C. (1999b). Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Go, J. (2020). The Imperial Origins of American Policing: Militarization and Imperial Feedback in the Early 20th Century, American Journal of Sociology, 125(5), 1193–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hay, D. & Snyder, F. (1989). Using the Criminal Law, 1750–1850: Policing, Private Prosecution, and the State, in Hay, D. & Snyder, F. (eds.). Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750–1850, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 3–54.Google Scholar
Hönke, J. & Müller, M.-M. (eds.) (2016). The Global Making of Policing: Postcolonial Perspectives, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kuzmarov, J. (2012). Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation-Building in the American Century, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Linn, B. (1991). Intelligence and Low-Intensify Conflict in the Philippine War, 1899–1902, Intelligence and National Security, 6(1), 90–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyman, J. L. (1964). The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 55(1), 141–54.Google Scholar
McCoy, A. W. (2015). Policing the Imperial Periphery: The Philippine-American War and the Origins of U.S. Global Surveillance, Surveillance & Society, 13(1), 4–26.Google Scholar
Mitchell, T. (1991). The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics, American Political Science Review, 85(1), 77–96.Google Scholar
Neocleous, M. (1998). Policing and Pin-Making: Adam Smith, Police and the State of Prosperity, Policing and Society, 8(4), 425–49.Google Scholar
Oliver, W. (2017). August Vollmer: The Father of American Policing, Durham: Carolina Academic Press.Google Scholar
Palmer, S. (1977). Before the Bobbies: the Caroline Riots, 1821, History Today, 27(10), 637–44.Google Scholar
Palmer, S. (1988). Police and Protest in England and Ireland, 1780–1850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Peel, R. & Parker, C. S. (1899). Sir Robert Peel. From his private papers. Edited for his trustees by Charles Stuart Parker. With a chapter on his life and character by his grandson, the Hon. George Peel, London: J. Murray.Google Scholar
Philips, D. (1980). ‘A New Engine of Power and Authority’: The Institutionalization of Law-Enforcement in England 1780–1830, Gatrell, V. A. C., Lenman, B. & Parker, G. (eds), London: Europa Publications.Google Scholar
Schlichte, K. (2017). Policing Africa: Structures and Pathways, in Beek, J., Göpfert, M., Owen, O. & Steinberg, J. (eds.). Police in Africa: The Street Level View, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19–26.Google Scholar
Schrader, S. (2019). Badges without Borders, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schutt, H. (1922). Advanced Police Methods at Berkeley, National Municipal Review, 11(3).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, G. (2006). At the End of the Line: Colonial Policing and the Imperial Endgame 1945–80, Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Sinclair, G. & Williams, C. A. (2007). ‘Home and Away’: The Cross-Fertilisation between ‘Colonial’ and ‘British’ Policing, 1921–85, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 35(2), 221–38.Google Scholar
Walker, R. B. J. (1993). Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar