Policing Empires : Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US

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. Cover Policing Empires Copyright Dedication Contents List of Tables List of Figures Preface Acknowledgments Permissions Notes Introduction: A Civil Police? PART I THE COLONIALITY OF POLICING 1. The Birth of the Civil Police in London, 1829 2. Cotton Colonialism and the New Police in the United States and England, 1830s–​1850s PART II THE NEW IMPERIALISM AT HOME 3. Police “Reform” and the Colonial Boomerang in the United States, 1890s–​1930s 4. “Our Problems . . . Are Not So Difficult”: Militarization and Its Limits in Britain, 1850s–​1930s PART III INFORMAL EMPIRE AND URBAN INSURGENCY 5. Tactical Imperialism in the United States, 1950s–​1970s 6. Cycles of Policing and Insurgency in Britain, 1960s–​1980s Conclusion: Policing Beyond Empire? Notes References Index