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Understanding policing models is particularly frustrating for historians. While it is possible to make sweeping theoretical generalisations, there are clear inter-country variations in the practice of policing arising from the historical timeframe and its context and the type of population policed. In the case of the colonial police model, the colonial population varied
From the Victorian period to the present, images of the policeman have played a prominent role in the literature of empire, shaping popular perceptions of colonial policing. This book covers and compares the different ways and means that were employed in policing policies from 1830 to 1940. Countries covered range from Ireland, Australia, Africa and India to New Zealand and the Caribbean. As patterns of authority, of accountability and of consent, control and coercion evolved in each colony the general trend was towards a greater concentration of police time upon crime. The most important aspect of imperial linkage in colonial policing was the movement of personnel from one colony to another. To evaluate the precise role of the 'Irish model' in colonial police forces is at present probably beyond the powers of any one scholar. Policing in Queensland played a vital role in the construction of the colonial social order. In 1886 the constabulary was split by legislation into the New Zealand Police Force and the standing army or Permanent Militia. The nature of the British influence in the Klondike gold rush may be seen both in the policy of the government and in the actions of the men sent to enforce it. The book also overviews the role of policing in guarding the Gold Coast, police support in 1954 Sudan, Orange River Colony, Colonial Mombasa and Kenya, as well as and nineteenth-century rural India.
The Colonial Police Service was created in 1936 in order to standardise all imperial police forces and mould colonial policing to the British model. This book is the first comprehensive study of the colonial police and their complex role within Britain's long and turbulent process of decolonisation, a time characterised by political upheaval and colonial conflict. The emphasis is on policing conflict rather than the application of British law and crime-fighting in an imperial context. The overlapping between the Irish-colonial and Metropolitan-English policing models was noticeable throughout the British Empire. The policing of Canada where English and Irish styles of policing intermingled, in particular after 1867 when Canada became a nation in its own right with the passage of the British North America Act. Inadequate provisions for the localisation of gazetted officers within most colonies prior to independence led to many expatriates being asked to remain in situ. Post-war reform included the development of police special branches, responsible for both internal and external security. From the British Caribbean to the Middle East, the Mediterranean to British Colonial Africa and on to Southeast Asia, colonial police forces struggled with the unrest and conflict that stemmed from Britain's withdrawal from its empire. A considerable number of them never returned to Britain, settling predominantly in Kenya, South Africa, Australia and Canada. Policing the immediate postcolonial state relied on traditional colonial methods. The case of the Sierra Leone Police is revealing in a contemporary context.
The book shows how people have come to approach the writing of imperial histories in the early twenty-first century. It explores the social and political contexts that informed the genesis and development of the Studies in Imperialism series, and the conceptual links it has sought to forge between empire and metropolitan culture. The book provides an insightful account of John MacKenzie's 'Orientalism': the problems of 'power' and 'agency'. The 'MacKenziean moment' needs to be read historically, as a product of the 'delayed arrival of decolonising sensibilities', where contemporary popular phenomena and new types of scholarship integrated Britain and its empire. Sexuality made early appearances in the Series through the publication of 'Empire and Sexuality'. MacKenzie's 'Empire of Nature', 'Imperialism and the Natural World', and 'Museums and Empire' convey the impact of his scholarship in the themes of exploration, environment and empire. The historical geographies of British colonialism have enjoyed a prominent place in the Series, and the book explores the ways in which different 'spatial imaginations' have been made possible. Discussions on colonial policing during the depression years, and on immigrant welfare during and after decolonisation, take their cue from MacKenzie's European Empires and the People. The later nineteenth century witnessed the interaction of many diasporas, which in turn produced new modes of communication. By dealing with the idea of the 'Third British Empire' and the role of the Indian press during and after the British Raj, the book repositions British imperial histories within a broader set of global transformations.
Council. 1 This was how the Colonial Office described the role of the British Guiana Police in 1938 and how it would serve the interests of the British Empire. Defending the Empire became part of the bread and butter of colonial policing, alongside crime prevention and detection. This process was typically overseen by comparatively few gazetted
The British Government’s long-term plan had always been to leave a British rather than a colonial policing legacy. This would have corresponded to the evolution described in Jeffries’s three phases of colonial policing, the third being the transformation from a colonial to a civil police force. Colonial forces have raised problems for our understanding
From the Victorian period to the present, images of the policeman have played a prominent role in the literature of empire, shaping popular perceptions of colonial policing. Such distinguished authors as Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, Graham Greene and Paul Scott have provided us with characterisations of the policeman’s lot in the far-flung outposts of empire, although not
man with the horn – now very close – and fired. He went down in a heap. 3 The rioting that occurred that day had disastrous consequences for Imray and through a chain of circumstances, brought renewed attempts to reform the Colonial Police Service. The riots were preceded by a trade boycott – sparked by the disastrous cocoa swollen
them never returned to Britain, settling predominantly in Kenya, South Africa, Australia and Canada. Some officers stayed on for a short time and then returned home, pressured it seems by financial concerns, often linked to pension issues. Police officers who had been recruited into the Colonial Police Service from the home police forces had their years of service at home discounted from the
Asser’s experience was not untypical. During the European scramble for African and Asian colonies, paramilitary colonial police officers were seconded to military operations when the need arose. In the early 1900s the reverse more often applied, with soldiers supplementing colonial police numbers to stifle dissent. It is no exaggeration to talk of an early twentieth-century transition from imperial