The Colonial and Postcolonial Policing Group (COPP) is a global network of academics, policy-makers and practitioners with a shared interest in British colonial and postcolonial policing and its legacy and the active promotion of research into into international policing today. COPP is hosted by The Open University through its International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research.
On these webpages you will fine details of the aims of the network, of the interest and publications of its members and of events connected to COPP. Should you require further information or wish to join our group, please do contact us.
Cyprus Police (1952-54)
December 2013, Brussels, Belgium
After years of academic neglect, colonial policing has recently attracted increasing attention. New historical insights on colonial security strategies and on their postcolonial vestiges (in the global South as well as in the former metropoles) testify to the dynamism of this field of research. The 2-day international conference Policing Empires: Social Control, Political Transition, (Post-)Colonial Legacies, to be held in Brussels in December 2013, is the last in a series of events convened by the GERN Working Group on (Post-)Colonial Policing.
The conference will be organized along three major themes: social control, political transition and (post-)colonial legacies. These will provide a flexible framework allowing to explore a wide range of topics. Download the CFP as a PDF file (36 KB) to see the full range of topics and further information.
For paper proposals, please submit a title, a 250-word abstract and a short biography in English by April 1st, 2013 to policingempires.conference2013@gmail.com.
The East Asian Policing Studies Forum (www.policingstudiesforum.com) invites submission of historical, sociological, criminological or other research on policing around the Southern Chinese seaboard, including the coastal provinces of Mainland China, Taiwan and the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao. China’s southeastern littoral has long been a vital hub in the global economy, and the history of modern Chinese policing grows directly from the colonial administration of cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao and Taipei. More recently, a process of administrative integration initiated with the 1997 handover of Hong Kong has begun to reorganize these regional police forces within a single sovereign power. Nonetheless, the region remains a complex articulation of historically distinct policing traditions, and is seldom analyzed in a systematic, integrated manner. This special issue of Crime, Law & Social Change works towards developing such an integrated account by bringing together case studies and regional research under the following four themes: (a) contemporary organization and practices; (b) specialized functions, like community policing or public order management; (c) reform; and (d) histories, traditions, trends and possibilities. Interested authors are invited to submit a 250-word abstract describing a proposed paper and its relation to one of the project themes listed above to: Dr. Jeffrey Martin, at jtmartin@hku.hk. The deadline for submission is June 10, 2012. Additionally, a workshop on the topic will be held at the University of Hong Kong on June 15. Interested participants are invited to consider attending this workshop. However, papers will be accepted from people who do not attend the workshop.
Aart G. Broek - The History of the Police Force on the Dutch Caribbean Islands (1839 – 2010) Bound by Power and Powerlessness
Until the late nineteenth century, maintaining the established colonial order within the Dutch Caribbean Islands was in the hands of the garrison present on the islands, and the citizens themselves, who were organised in civic guards. In the eighteenth century, a small number of police officers were introduced onto the islands of Curaçao and St. Eustatius, following which the police presence increased slowly but surely on the other islands: Aruba, Bonaire, St. Maarten and Saba.
The police force as an organisation manifested itself in diverse forms, initially in 1839 as the Colonial Military Police Brigade, and subsequently in the form of such groups as the Field Guard and the Military Police Corps Troops. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the corps remained strongly militaristic, with limited professionalism. It was under pressure from a range of different social developments, such as the abolition of slavery, poverty and work migration, revolutions in neighbouring Venezuela, the establishment and expansion of oil refineries on Curaçao and Aruba, and the Second World War.
Once the Netherlands Antilles acquired autonomous status within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a civic police force was formed and its professionalism improved considerably. This Police Corps of the Netherlands Antilles (1949) had to contend with a number of factors that had a serious impact, not all of which were resolved successfully: social emancipation, the revolt of May 1969, anti-Dutch sentiments and Antillianisation, corruption within the administration, dubious developments in inter-island criminality (drugs, whitewashing, human trafficking, extreme violence), the increasing disintegration of the Antilles, the separate status of Aruba and the development of its own police force, renewed interference from the Netherlands, and major political changes in 2010.
Over the centuries, the islands in general and the police force in particular have in all kinds of ways been confined by Dutch power and desires. In this present history, it will become equally clear that this not an issue of omnipotence on the part of the Dutch, and that the islands and the police force were not themselves powerless.
Ellen Klinkers -
De geschiedenis van de politie in Suriname, 1863-1975, Van koloniale tot nationale ordehandhaving
(The history of the police in Suriname, 1863-1975: from colonial to national law enforcement.)
The police system in Suriname was created after the abolition of slavery in 1863, at a time when the former slave society was changing rapidly. Social boundaries were no longer determined by slavery and freedom, and police discipline and law enforcement had to be reshaped amidst the emergence of new forms of resistance. In addition, society became more complex because of the arrival of indentured laborers from Asia and the West-Indies. On one hand, the emancipation of the slaves paved the way for a free, modern society in which law and order acquired new meaning. On the other hand, however, the colonial administration attempted to maintain the traditional relations within Suriname society as much as possible. The police system in Suriname evolved within this uncertain context.
During the 20thcentury, the colonial authorities failed to establish a strong police force. The authorities seemed to distrust the local policemen and clung to the army as a loyal ally of colonial power. Moreover, the rise of (semi-private) policemen undermined the system of national law enforcement.
After World War II, Suriname became an autonomous part of the Dutch Kingdom. The police became an internal Surinamese affair, while the army remained Dutch. A struggle over the police between the old elites - supported by former colonial rulers - and an upcoming self-conscious Creole population emerged. The latter triumphed, but technical aid proved to be an effective way for the Dutch authorities to continue their influence on Suriname police and law enforcement.
The police developed and modernized during the 1960s and 1970s in a context of labor protest, a border conflict with Guyana and eventually the independence of Suriname in 1975. At that time the police seemed firmly rooted in Surinamese society as compared to the newly established Surinamese army. Only five years later, the military staged a coup d’etat which began with a violent assault of the police station in the nation’s capital.
Emmanuel Blanchard, ‘La Police Parisienne et les Algeriens 1944 – 1962’, Noveau Monde Editions 2011. Download the flyer for this book [PDF 1MB]
Jakob Zollman, ‘Koloniale Herrschaft und ihre Grenzen. Die Kolonialpolizei in Deutsch-Südwestafrika 1894 – 1915’, (Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft, Band 191), Göttingen 2010. Follow this link for more details.
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In recent years the history of police and policing has become a key area of debate across a range of disciplines: criminology, sociology, political science and history.
This authoritative series, published by Ashgate, brings together the most important and influential English-language scholarship in the field, arranged chronologically across four volumes. The series includes articles on the shifting meaning of 'police', the growth of bureaucratic policing during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, consolidation in the twentieth century, and the international diffusion of export models and practices. The texts included come from a range of disciplines and chart the recent debates from traditional Whig history, revisionist work published during the last quarter of the twentieth century, and subsequent reassessments.
Each volume is edited by a historian recognised as an authority in the area, and features an introductory essay which explains the key changes in the period and the significance of the selected articles and essays. The series provides a valuable resource for scholars new to the area as well as for those who may have overlooked an important essay or article published in an edited collection, or in a journal with limited circulation or from a discipline that they might not normally consult.
Further information is available at: www.ashgate.com, or you can download a flyer for each volume:
The New Police in the Nineteenth Century, Paul Lawrence
Police and Policing in the Twentieth Century, Chris A Williams
Globalising British Policing, Georgina Sinclair
Theories and Origins of the Modern Police, Clive Emsley
Escola de Criminologia,
Faculdade de Direito da Universidade do Porto,
14-15 April 2011
The principal objective of this interdisciplinary workshop is to bring together both established and early-career scholars with research interests in the areas of police history, colonial history, crime, justice and security regarding the Portuguese Empire. It will focus upon the organisational forms, methods and structures of Portuguese colonial policing, consolidating knowledge of the Portuguese colonial state and reflecting upon its postcolonial legacy.
Download the workshop programme [PDF, 157 KB]
A new website: Policing Studies Forum.
6pm–7.30pm followed by a wine reception
Venue: Chapters, King’s College London, Strand, London WCR 2LS
Hosted by the University of London Institute for the Study of the Americas, Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the British Society of Criminology.
Panel: Professor Ben Bowling (author of Policing the Caribbean: Transnational Security Cooperation in Practice, OUP 2010), Professor Robert Reiner (LSE), Dr Amanda Sives (Liverpool), and Leroy Logan MBE (Metropolitan Police Service) Chair: Professor Philip Murphy, Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
Chris Williams and Georgina Sinclair have been specialist advisers and contributors to the latest update to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. They have added biographies of forty individuals who shaped the history of policing in Britain and overseas territories under British rule.
Chris Williams says:
“The idea of the British police was one of Great Britain’s most distinctive contributions to the world of criminal justice. The ODNB has always reflected noteworthy people who have shaped the British past.
For most of the twentieth century, police officers have been taken for granted: always there, always in the background. Towards the end of it, though, an increased prominence of policing led to more interest in the present and the history of the topic.
It’s only right that this important group of people have their stories told and their achievements published.”
We had a very successful workshop at the University of London. Some of the papers are now available online: Richard Hill, Lanre Ikuteyijo & Kemi Rotimi and John Bown. We hope to put video extracts from several of the papers online in the future.
New book
by Ben BowlingPolicing the Caribbean, Clarendon Studies in Criminology
376 pages | 216x138mm
978-0-19-957769-9 | Hardback | May 2010
Follow this link for more information.
Congratulations to Richard on the publication of this authoritative new work on Crown‐ Maori relations. Maori and the State: Crown‐Maori Relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950‐ 2000 is the companion volume to State Authority, Indigenous Autonomy (VUP 2004), which examined Crown–Maori relations in first half of the twentieth‐century. Covering the period when official policy changed from assimilation to bi‐culturalism, Maori and the State analyses Maori aspirations in terms of the quest for Crown recognition of rangatiratanga (roughly, autonomy). Among other things, the book covers the policing of Maori, including the semi-autonomous institution of Maori Wardens which has deep roots in indirect-control methods of policing tribes in colonial times.
More information is available from the publishers’ website.
Marieke Bloembergen’s new book De geschiedenis van de politie in Nederlands-Indië. Uit zorg en angst (Amsterdam: Boom, Leiden: KITLV 2009) [The history of the police in the Dutch East Indies. Out of care and fear.] analyses the history of the police in the late colonial state of the Dutch East Indies, from the 1870s until the Japanese Occupation in 1942. It addresses, among other questions, the role of the police and the use of violence in the context of colonial state formation. To what extent could this colonial state be characterized as a police state? And what was colonial about colonial policing? Follow this link for more information.
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| The Colonial and Postcolonial Policing Group (COPP) is generously supported by the ESRC |  |
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