The Twilight of the Beijing Gendarmerie,1900-1924

Abstract

The early-twentieth-century police of Beijing sprang not only from Japanese and European institutional models but also from the large Eight Banner and Green Standard Gendarmerie of the Qing era. The career of the gendarmerie, which had Ming dynasty and earlier roots and continued after the fall of the Qing until 1924, overlapped with that of the modern police for more than two decades. A significant number of individuals, including some leaders, were active in both forces simultaneously. Although the Qing-era capital cannot be called a “policed society” in all current senses of that term, the gendarmerie exercised considerable control. After 1900, this background sped the emergence of modern police in Beijing, a turn of events that contrasts sharply with contemporaneous urban history in Chengdu as reported by Kristin Stapleton.