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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.
population), prostitution was regulated in ways which continued into the twentieth century, eventually becoming the basis of organised police corruption on a substantial scale. 43 Conclusion Policing in Queensland played a vital role in the construction of the colonial social order. As the foremost agent of the state, much more indeed than a mere repressive
internal security role the colonial police in India, in Arnold’s words, serve as a metaphor for the colonial regime as a whole. 27 As Finnane argues here for colonial Queensland – a case surely applicable elsewhere – policing played a vital role in the construction of the colonial social order. In Australia, as in India, the police were among the first institutions established by the colonial state, and
whites. 36 It is clear from the offences committed by Africans that the main thrust of police work was directed not towards preventing or solving crimes like theft, housebreaking or assault but towards the preservation of the colonial social order and the concomitant fulfilment of the perceived needs of the upper classes. Many of the municipal regulations, which proliferated in the post-war period and
Twenty-Three of 1857) recognised that the function of the Volunteer Force in India was primarily for ‘the suppression of internal disorder and not [for] defence against external danger’ 18 Even at the height of the racial polarisation of 1857, however, the volunteer movement could not afford to ignore the crucial support of native elites for the reproduction of the colonial social order. During the 1857
‘revolts’ are also a reaction to a perceived loss of a Western way of life. They are to do with loss of sovereignty at home, namely a resistance to racial equality and to the existing racial/colonial social order being challenged through multiculturalist discourses and racial equality. In fact, anti-immigration sentiments are closely bound up with, if not at times used as a proxy for, showing discomfort
period, partly as a result of the development of new ideas about penal reform in Britain but also as the offshoot of an increasingly complex and dynamic colonial social order. Daniels’s admonition equally serves as a reminder of the need for historians to recognise and pay attention to specificities of place. Historians have too often tended to generalise about convict experiences on the basis of an analysis of New
parochialism of the English novel, in this sense, reflected the sensibilities of an entire, late colonial social order. The empire may have been ‘crashing’ through the pages of Burgess’s A Malayan Trilogy, but it functioned as no more than a weak mise-en-scène: it possessed no historical palpability and had no means to enter the lives of its characters. In this it was symptomatic of a larger mentality. ‘End of empire’ and ‘the English novel’ are both large abstractions, and greater specification is required. Thompson, in reflecting on the making of English civilisation
particularly effective in conveying the ideology of Victoria the Good and her place at the apex of the colonial social order. In turn, the growth of mass print and visual culture assisted in reinventing and humanising the monarchy in both British national life and that of its overseas empire in novel ways. 8 Reproductions of Queen Victoria’s image adorned the walls of missions and
one member of the council: ‘It was a law really to preserve the prestige of the white race in this country and to prevent anything being done which might endanger the existence of the honour of white women in this territory’. In New Guinea, white observers believed voluntary and forced sex between indigenous men and white women to be ‘injurious to the colonial social order’. On