Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T16:06:29.461Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Introduction: urban crises, policing crises: mirror images? (c. 1700–1900): cities in flux and changes to policing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2015

VINCENT DENIS ,
VINCENT MILLIOT  and
CHIARA LUCREZIO MONTICELLI
VINCENT DENIS
Affiliation:
University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne/IHMC and Institut Universitaire de France, 17 rue de la Sorbonne, 75231 Cedex 05, Paris, France
VINCENT MILLIOT
Affiliation:
University of Caen-Basse-Normandie, CRHQ CNRs UMR 6583, Campus 1, esplanade de la paix, 14032 Caen Cedex 05, France
CHIARA LUCREZIO MONTICELLI
Affiliation:
University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, 1, via Columbia, 00133 Rome, Italy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The articles gathered here aim at outlining a complex view of the relationship between cities in a state of ‘crisis’ and changes to policing systems, in a period marked by rapid urbanization and industrialization. They explore the connections between the rhythms of urban change and the changes in the institutions responsible for policing the city. This introduction defines ‘urban crisis’ as a brief paroxysm and a way of describing rapid urban change that is considered problematic especially in terms of social control. It examines three sets of issues to highlight the relationships between policing powers and urban dynamics: first, how the police managed to handle unforeseen, traumatic events in emergency situations; second, how the police forces tried to legitimize their status through their understanding and control of urban dynamics; and third, how the police used the discourse of urban crisis they helped to produce, as a tool for their own ends.

Type
Special section on policing and urban crisis
Information
Urban History , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 200 - 214
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cf. Napoli, P., Naissance de la police moderne. Pouvoirs, normes, société (Paris, 2003)Google Scholar; Berlière, J.-M., Naissance de la police moderne (Paris, 2011)Google Scholar. For the English context, see Emsley, C., The English Police: A Political and Social History (London and New York, 1996)Google Scholar.

2 Cf. ‘Materiali per un lessico politico europeo: Polizia’, Filosofia politica, 2 (1988), and the overview offered by Preto, P., Il significato del lemma ‘polizia’, in Antonielli, L. (ed.), La polizia in Italia nell’età moderna (Soveria Manelli, 2002), 13–31Google Scholar.

3 Cf. Raeff, M., ‘The well-ordered police state and the development of modernity in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe: an attempt at a comparative approach’, American Historical Review, 80 (1975), 1221–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raeff, M., The Well-Ordered Police: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (Yale, 1983)Google Scholar; Stolleis, M. and Härter, K. (eds.), Policey im Europa, der frühen neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1996)Google Scholar.

4 Denis, V. (ed.), ‘Histoire des savoirs policiers in Europe (XVIIIe–XXe siècle)’, special issue of Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines, 19 (2008)Google Scholar, and Milliot, V., ‘Histoire des polices: l’ouverture d’un moment historiographique’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 2 (2007), 162–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Mais que font les historiens de la police?’, in J.-M. Berlière, C. Denys, D. Kalifa and V. Milliot (eds.), Métiers de police. Être policier en Europe, XVIIIe–XXe siècle (Rennes, 2008), 9–34; Antonielli, L. (ed.), La polizia in Italia e in Europa. Punto sugli studi e prospettive di ricerca (Soveria Manelli, 2006)Google Scholar.

5 Lempérière, A., Entre dieu et le roi, la République: Mexico, XVIe–XIXe siècles (Paris, 2004), 78Google Scholar.

6 Foucault, M., Sécurité, territoire, population: cours au Collège de France (1977–1978), edition prepared by M. Senellart under the direction of François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana (Paris, 2004), 31–58 and 319–70Google Scholar.

7 This expression is loaded with social and economic connotations and also incorporates urban planning and architectural concerns, especially in cases of uncontrolled urban expansion. See, among many others, Jacobs, J., The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York, 1961; new edn 1993)Google Scholar; Gossé, M., ‘La crise mondiale de l’urbanisme. Quels modèles urbains?’, Les annales de la recherche urbaine, 86 (2000), 85–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bachmann, C. and Leguennec, N., Violences urbaines. ascension et chute des classes moyennes à travers cinquante ans de politiques de la ville (Paris, 1996), 557Google Scholar. The description of the symptoms of poorly controlled urban development or ‘congestion’ is also part of much older discourses, cf. Topalov, C., ‘La ville “congestionnée”. Acteurs et langage de la réforme urbaine à New York au début du XXe siècle’, Genèses. Sciences sociales et histoire, 1 (1990), 86–111Google Scholar.

8 Marec, Y. (ed.), Villes en crise? Les politiques municipales face aux pathologie surbaines (fin XVIIIe s–fin XXe s.) (Paris, 2005)Google Scholar, and its use in the medical topographies in the eighteenth century, the genre that founded the ‘environmental’ approaches, Bardet, J.-P., Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Les mutations d’un espace social (Paris, 1983)Google Scholar.

9 Lepetit, B., The Pre-Industrial Urban System: France 1740–1840 (trans. Rodgers, G.) (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar; Barles, S., La ville délétère: médecins et ingénieurs dans l’espace urbain (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles) (Seyssel, 1999)Google Scholar.

10 Friedrichs, C.R., The Early Modern City, 1450–1750 (London and New York, 1995)Google Scholar, ch. 11, ‘Urban crisis’, 275. See also by the same author, Urban Politics in Early Modern Europe (London, 2000), ch. 5, 50–64

11 Hardy, A., ‘Urban famine or urban crisis? Typhus in the Victorian city’, in Morris, R.J. and Rodger, R. (eds.), The Victorian City: A Reader in British Urban History, 1820–1914 (London and New York, 1993), 209–40Google Scholar; Bourillon, F., ‘Changer la ville. La question urbaine au milieu du 19e siècle’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 64 (1999), 11–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See the variety of uses of the term in the recent overview: Clark, P., European Cities and Towns, 400–2000 (Oxford, 2012)Google Scholar.

13 Massard-Guilbaud, G., Platt, H.L. and Schott, D. (eds.), Cities and Catastrophes/villes et catastrophes. Coping with Emergency in European History/Réactions face à l’urgence dans l’histoire européenne (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Brussels, New York, Oxford and Vienna, 2002)Google Scholar.

14 Cf. A. Forti Messina, L’Italia dell’Ottocento di fronte al colera, in Storia d’Italia, Annali n. 7, F. Della Peruta (ed.), Malattia e medicina (Turin, 1984), pp. 429–94; Fosi, I. (ed.), ‘La peste a Roma’, Roma moderna e contemporanea, 14 (2006)Google Scholar; Quenet, G., Les tremblements de terre aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. La naissance d’un risque (Seyssel, 2005)Google Scholar; Carrière, C., Courdurié, M. and Rebuffat, F., Marseille, ville morte: la peste de 1720 (Gemenos, 2008; 1st edn, 1968)Google Scholar.

15 Innes, J. and Rogers, N., ‘Politics and government, 1700–1840’, in Clark, P. (ed.) The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. II (Cambridge, 2000), 542–3Google Scholar; Eyler, J.M., Victorian Social Medicine: The Ideas and Methods of William Farr (Baltimore, 1979)Google Scholar; Lewis, D.M., Lighten their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to Working-Class London, 1828–1860 (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Zucconi, G., La città contesa. Dagli ingegneri sanitari agli urbanisti, 1885–1942 (Milan, 1989)Google Scholar; Barles, La ville délétère; Adorno, S. and De Pieri, F. (eds.), ‘Burocrazie tecniche’, Città e Storia, 2 (2010)Google Scholar; Kalifa, D., Les bas-fonds: histoire d’un imaginaire social (Paris, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 D’Agua, F. Borda, ‘L’intendance générale de police de la cour et du royaume du Portugal: réflexions sur son histoire et ses références européennes’, in Denys, C. (ed.), Circulations policières 1750–1914 (Lille, 2012), 139–58Google Scholar.

17 Berlière, Denys, Kalifa and Milliot (eds.), Les métiers de police; Emsley, The English Police.

18 Bertelsen, L., Henry Fielding at Work: Magistrate, Businessman, Writer (Basingstoke, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beattie, J.M., The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840 (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 On Colquhoun as a ‘moral entrepreneur’, see Philips, D., ‘Three moral entrepreneurs and the creation of a “criminal class” in England, c. 1790s–1840s’, Crime, histoire & sociétés/Crime, History and Societies, 7 (2003), 79–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Radzinowicz, L., A History of the English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750, 4 vols. (London, 1948–68), vol. III, chs. 9–10Google Scholar; R. Paley, ‘Patrick Colquhoun (1745–1820)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5992, accessed 12 Feb. 2015.

20 Milliot, V., Un policier des lumières, suivi de mémoires de J.C.P Lenoir (Seyssel, 2011), 364–9Google Scholar; Le Roux, T., Le laboratoire des pollutions industrielles. Paris, 1770–1830 (Paris, 2011), 79–109Google Scholar.

21 Gatrell, V.A.C., ‘Crime, authority and the policeman-state’, in Thompson, F.M.L. (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1990), vol. III, 243–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Philips, ‘Three moral entrepreneurs’.

22 Cf. Villes et territoire pendant la période napoléonienne (France et Italie) (Rome, 1987); Moullier, I., ‘Police et politique de la ville sous Napoléon’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 54 (2007), 117–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Gibson, M., Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology (Wesport, 2002)Google Scholar.

24 de Munck, B. and Winter, A. (eds.), Gated Communities? Regulating Migration in Early Modern Cities (Farnham, 2012)Google Scholar.

25 Denys, C., Marin, B. and Milliot, V. (eds.), Réformer la police (Rennes, 2008)Google Scholar; Gainot, B. and Denis, V. (eds.), Un siècle d’ordre public en Révolution (de 1789 à la Troisième République) (Paris, 2009)Google Scholar.

26 Gatrell, ‘Crime, authority and the policeman-state’, 243–310, 245–6.

27 Anderson, M., In Thrall to Political Change: Police and Gendarmerie in France (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vogel, M., ‘Politiques policières et systèmes locaux: les polices des villes dans l’entre deux guerres’, Revue française de sociologie, 35 (1994), 413–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Monticelli, C. Lucrezio, La polizia del papa. Istituzioni di controllo sociale a Roma nella prima metà dell’Ottocento (Soveria Manelli, 2012)Google Scholar.

28 Palmer, S.H., Police and Protest in England and Ireland 1780–1850 (Cambridge, 1988)Google Scholar; Taylor, D., The New Police in Nineteenth-Century England (Manchester, 1997)Google Scholar.

29 Reynolds, E., Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830 (Stanford, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cox, D.J., A Certain Share of Low Cunning: A History of the Bow Street Runners, 1792–1839 (Cullompton, 2010)Google Scholar; Beattie, The First English Detectives.

30 Zeller, O., ‘Quartiers et pennonages à Lyon à l’époque moderne’, Bulletin du Centre d’histoire économique et sociale de la région lyonnaise, 1 (1979), 42–52Google Scholar.

31 Manuel, P., La police de Paris dévoilée par l’un des administrateurs de 1789 (Paris, 1790)Google Scholar.

32 For Italy, see Francia, E., Polizia e opinione pubblica in Toscana nel Quarantotto, in Macry, P. (ed.), Quando crolla lo stato. Studi sull’Italia preunitaria (Naples, 2003), 141–77Google Scholar.

33 Roche, D. (ed.), La ville promise. Mobilité et accueil à Paris (fin XVIIe–début XIXe siècle) (Paris, 2000), 21–76Google Scholar.

34 Piasenza, P., Polizia e città: strategie d’ordine, conflitti e rivolte a Parigi tra Sei e Settecento (Bologna, 1990)Google Scholar.

35 Haywood, I. and Seed, J. (eds.), The Gordon Riots. Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2012)Google Scholar, in particular, T. Hitchcock, ‘Re-negotiating the bloody code: the Gordon Riots and the transformation of popular attitudes to the criminal justice system’, 185–203.