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In
Policing Empires, Julian Go offers a postcolonial historical sociology of police militarization in Britain and the United States. He tracks when, why, and how British and US police departments have adopted military tactics, tools, and technologies for domestic use. Using both secondary and primary archival sources, Go reveals that police militarization has occurred since the very founding of modern policing. This book thereby unlocks the dirty secret of police militarization: Police have brought the imperial boomerang home to militarize themselves in response to perceived racialized threats from minority and immigrant populations.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction: A Civil Police?
- The Coloniality of Policing
- 1. The Birth of the Civil Police in London, 1829
- 2. Cotton Colonialism and the New Police in the US and England, 1830s-1850s
- The New Imperialism at Home
- 3. Police "Reform" and the Colonial Boomerang in the US, 1890s-1930s
- 4. "Our Problems...are not so Difficult": Militarization and its Limits in Britain, 1850s-1910s
- Informal Empire and Urban Insurgency
- 5. Tactical Imperialism in the US, 1950s-1970s
- 6. Cycles of Policing and Insurgency in Britain, 1960s-1980s
- Conclusion: Policing Beyond Empire?
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Julian Go is Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture and the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory (Oxford, 2016). He is the winner of Lewis A. Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting in Sociology given by the American Sociological Association and former President of the Social Science History Association.
Summary
The police response to protests erupting on America's streets in recent years has made the militarization of policing painfully transparent. Yet, properly demilitarizing the police requires a deeper understanding of its historical development, causes, and social logics. Policing Empires offers a postcolonial historical sociology of police militarization in Britain and the United States to aid that effort. Julian Go tracks when, why, and how British and US police departments have adopted military tactics, tools, and technologies for domestic use. Go reveals that police militarization has occurred since the very founding of modern policing in the nineteenth century into the present, and that it is an effect of the "imperial boomerang." Policing Empires thereby unlocks the dirty secret of police militarization: Police have brought imperial practices home to militarize themselves in response to perceived racialized threats from minority and immigrant populations.
Additional text
Go provides invaluable depth and specificity to a field that is most commonly surveyed from the vantage-point of grand strategy and macroeconomics. Reading this book as militarized American police forces are mobilized to crack down on students protesting the mass slaughter of Palestinians on university campuses further heightens its clear and immediate relevance.
