Colonial security strategies and the postcolonial vestiges they left both in the global South and in former metropoles have recently attracted renewed academic attention. Policing in Colonial Empires is a collection of essays reflecting current, ongoing research and exploring the multifaceted dynamics of policing in colonial societies over the past two centuries. Spanning several continents and colonial contexts (some of them liminal or little-explored), the book examines the limits and legitimacies of the functioning of colonial policing. Addressing issues such as collaboration, coercion, violence, race, and intelligence, the collected works ask what exactly was colonial about colonial policing. Together, the contributors point out the complex nature of colonial law and order maintenance, and provide insights on histories that might reflect the legacies of its many variants.

Contents: Emmanuel Blanchard, Marieke Bloembergen & Amandine Lauro: Tensions of Policing in Colonial Situations – Benoît Henriet: Ordering the Wetlands. Police and Legitimate Violence in the Leverville Concession – Mark Doyle: The Perils of Impartiality: Policing Communal Violence in Victorian India, 1858–1900 – Martin Thomas: Coolies, Communists and Capital: Policing the Rubber Crash in Malaya and Indochina – Melissa Anderson: Race, Violence, and White Crime: the Limits of Assimilationism in the Saigon Colonial Police – Valentin Chémery: Policing and the Problem of Crime within Local Communities in Colonial Algeria, ca. 1850–1890–Sandra Araújo: Shaping an Empire of Predictions: the Mozambique Information Centralization and Coordination Services (1961–1974) – Robert Whitaker: From Cooperation to Neocolonialism: Colonial Police and International Policing, 1920–1960 – Søren Rud: Policing and Governance in Greenland. Rationalities of Police and Colonial Rule 1860–1953 – Sinae Hyun: Missionaries of Royalist Nationalism: Transformations of the Thai Border Patrol Police during the Cold War.