Recent years have seen the renewal of historiography concerning the police in the early modern period. Specialists no longer receive the figure of cities without police forces before the creation of modern institutions. Moreover, recent research has demonstrated convergence of a great movement of reflection with reforms of the police forces and organizations in European towns, especially in the second half of the eighteenth century. Two tendencies illustrate this evolution: first, the general decline of the institutions of civic police forces and their replacement by professional forces and, second, the professionalization of municipal police forces. But these reforms of the police force could also be realized via use of traditional mechanisms of community policing. In several cities, inhabitants of the district or neighborhood were again in charge of functions of “modern” policing. Although it is premature to present a global synthesis, various European examples demonstrate that there is no linear historical process leading directly from community or civic policing to a state police force while bypassing the municipal police force. The historical processes of the modernization of the police in early modern Europe are more complex.
Philip Rawlings, Policing: A Short History (Uffculme, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2002), provides an accessible introduction to the English-language bibliography.
2.
Cyrille Fijnaut, De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Politie (Amsterdam: Boom, 2007).
3.
Clive Emsley, The English Police: A Political and Social History (London : Longman, 1991, 1996 ).
4.
Elaine Reynolds, Before the Bobbies, The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720-1830 (London: Macmillan Press , 1998).
5.
Michael Stolleis, ed., Policey im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1996).
6.
Peter Blickle, Peter Kissling, and Heinrich R. Schmidt, Gute Policey als Politik im 16. Jahrhundert. Die Entstehung des öffentlichen Raumes in Oberdeutschland ( Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003); Andrea Iseli, "Bonne Police," Frühneuzeitliches Verständnis von der guten Ordnung eines Staates in Frankreich ( Epfendorf: Bibliotheca Academica Verlag, 2003).
7.
See http://www.univie.ac.at/policey-ak/.
8.
André Holenstein, Frank Konersmann, Joseph Pauser, and Gerhard Sälter, eds., Policey in lokalen Räumen. Ordnungskräfte und Sicherheitspersonal in Gemeinden und Territorien vom Spätmittelalter bis zum frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 2002).
9.
Livio Antonielli, ed., La polizia in Italia nell’età moderna (Soveria Manelli: Rubbettino, 2002).
10.
Brigitte Marin, "Policer la ville. Polices royales, pouvoirs locaux et organisations territoriales à Naples et à Madrid dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle" (postdoctoral thesis, Paris1, 2005).
11.
Unfortunately, this remains true for the chapter devoted to the ancien régime in the recent synthesis directed by Michel Aubouin, Arnaud Teyssier, and Jean Tulard, Histoire et dictionnaire de la police, du moyen âge à nos jours (Paris: Laffont, 2005).
12.
Jean-Luc Laffont, "Policer la ville, Toulouse capitale provinciale au siècle des Lumières," 3 vols. (PhD thesis, University of Toulouse II, 1997); Catherine Denys, Police et sécurité au XVIIIe siècle dans les villes de la frontière franco-belge, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002).
13.
The first comparison is found in the recent synthesis of Clive Emsley, Crime, Police and Penal Policy, European Experiences 1750-1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 57-73.
14.
Vincent Milliot, ed., Les Mémoires policiers, 1750-1850. Écritures et pratiques policières du Siècle des Lumières au Second Empire (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006).
15.
Denys, Police et sécurité, 74-81.
16.
Stéphane Nivet, "Acquisition des règles du métier et spécialisations des commissaires de police à Lyon au XVIIIe siècle," in Jean-Marc Berlière, Catherine Denys, Dominique Kalifa, and Vincent Milliot, eds., Être policier: les métiers de police(s) XVIIIe-XXe siècle, (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 249-260.
17.
Catherine Denys, "La territorialisation policière dans les villes au XVIIIe siècle," Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine 50, no. 1 (2003): 13-26; Vincent Denis, "Peut-on réformer un ‘monument de la police’? La réforme de la police de Strasbourg en débat à la fin de l’Ancien Régime, 1782-1788," in Milliot, Les Mémoires, 131-49.
18.
Serge Bianchi and Roger Dupuy, eds., La Garde nationale entre peuple et Nation en armes. Mythes et réalités, 1789-1871 ( Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006).
19.
Thus, in Brussels the aldermen employed huerlingen or loonwaeckende mannen to compensate for the deficiencies of the citizens’ militias and the serments when it came to performing sentry duty. Furthermore, ten to twelve handuyten (night watchmen) patrolled the streets of individual districts.
20.
Laffont, "Policer la ville," 719-23.
21.
Recueil des ordonnances des Pays-Bas autrichiens, 3rd ser., vol. 7, p. 150.
22.
Ibid., vol. 8, p. 48.
23.
Ibid., vol. 12, p. 529. Archives de la Ville de Bruxelles ( Brussels City Archives), archives anciennes, file 373. Printed rulings relating to these Bruges or Ghent companies can be found in the Brussels City Archives, as well as in the boxes relating to the Austrian Privy Council at the Archives Générales du Royaume (Belgian State Archives). Sent by the latter towns to Brussels, they were intended to serve as models.
24.
Denys, Police et sécurité, 105-23.
25.
Denys, "Les projets de réforme de la police à Bruxelles à la fin du XVIIIe siècle," Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée 115, no. 2 (2003): 807-26.
26.
The text of this decree is published in Recueil des ordonnances des Pays-Bas autrichiens, vol. 12, 488. A certain haziness surrounds both the makeup and the actual duties of the municipal militia in the year 1785-1786.
27.
Ruth Paley , "’An Imperfect, Inadequate and Wretched System’? Policing London before Peel,"Criminal Justice History10 (1989): 95-130.
28.
Denys, Police et sécurité, 82-84.
29.
Vincent Denis , "Réformer la police à Bordeaux au dix-huitième siècle: les mémoires de Moyse Clou Pudeffer, 1747-1748," in Milliot, Les Mémoires , 121-30.
30.
Stéphane Perréon, "Guet professionnel, bataillon d’infanterie ou garde bourgeoise? L’échec des tentatives de réforme de la police de Nantes en 1786-1788," in Milliot, Les Mémoires, 151-68.
31.
Allan Williams, The Police of Paris (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979); Fayçal El Ghoul, La police parisienne dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle (1760-1785) (Tunis: Université de Tunis, 1995). The publications of Jean Chagniot, Paris et l’armée au XVIIIe siècle. Étude politique et sociale (Paris: Economica, 1985); Steven L. Kaplan, "Note sur les commissaires de police de Paris au XVIIIe siècle," Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 28 (1981): 669-86; and Vincent Milliot, "‘Gouverner les hommes et leur faire du bien.’ La police de Paris au siècle des Lumières, Conceptions, acteurs, pratiques" (postdoctoral thesis, Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2002), have revised the image of an all-powerful lieutenant general at the head of the Paris police.
32.
Denys, Police et sécurité, 42.
33.
Clarisse Coulomb, "Qui doit faire la police à Grenoble? Autour du mémoire de P-J Vallet, Les sieurs Consuls ne doivent point se mêler de la police, 1759," in Milliot, Les Mémoires, 67-85.
34.
Marin, "Policer la ville," 70.
35.
Carlo Mangio, La polizia toscana. Organizzazione e criteri d’intervento (1765-1808) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1991).
36.
For this piece of information, I am indebted to Flavio Borda d’Agua, who is preparing a thesis under the supervision of Michel Porret at the University of Geneva on the eighteenth-century Lisbon police.
37.
Marin, "Policer la ville," 190-97.
38.
Marco Cicchini , "Être magistrat de police en République, ou apprendre à gouverner. L’exemple de Genève au XVIIIe siècle", in Berlière, Denys, Kalifa and Milliot, Métiers de police, 45-60.
39.
Frédéric Kisters, "Ferdinand Rapédius de Berg, amman de Bruxelles et polygraphe,"Cahiers bruxellois33 (1992): 17-68; "Rapédius de Berg, Ferdinand-Pierre," in C. Bruneel and J. P. Hoyois, eds., Les grands commis du gouvernement des Pays-Bas Autrichiens. Dictionnaire biographique du personnel des institutions centrales (Brussels: Archives Générales du Royaume, 2001), 515-18.
40.
Harald Deceulaer and Marc Jacobs, "Les implications de la rue: droits, devoirs et conflits dans les quartiers de Gand (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)," Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine49, no. 3 (2002): 26-53.
41.
Gabrielle Dorren, "Communities within the Community: Aspects of Neighbourhood in Seventeenth-Century Haarlem," Urban History25 (1998): 173-88.
42.
Kees Walle, Buurthouden, de geschiedenis van burengebruiken en buurtorganisaties in Leiden 14e-19e eeuw (Leiden: Ginkgo, 2005).
43.
David Garrioch , Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740-1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
44.
Denys, Police et sécurité, 328-32.
45.
Laffont, "Policer la ville," 735-82: "Le dizenier, sentinelle avancée de l’administration municipale." Jean-Luc Laffont, "La police de voisinage à la base de l’organisation policière des villes de l’ancienne France," Annales de la recherche urbaine 83-84 (1999): 23-30.
46.
Marin, "Policer la ville," 101-10.
47.
Ibid., 115-38.
48.
Deceulaer and Jacobs, "Les implications," 26-53.
49.
Nineteen-page pamphlet "Essai sur le rétablissement de la police à Bruxelles" (1898) by a certain J. Le Baussant in the Secrétairerie d’État et de guerre collection of the Archives Générales du Royaume in Brussels.
