Journal of Urban History http://juh.sagepub.

com/

The Development of Police Forces in Urban Europe in the Eighteenth Century

Catherine Denys Journal of Urban History 2010 36: 332 originally published online 1 February 2010 DOI: 10.1177/0096144209359144 The online version of this article can be found at: http://juh.sagepub.com/content/36/3/332

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

The Urban History Association

Additional services and information for Journal of Urban History can be found at: Email Alerts: http://juh.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://juh.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://juh.sagepub.com/content/36/3/332.refs.html

>> Version of Record - May 5, 2010 Proof - Feb 1, 2010 What is This?

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

The Development of Police Forces in Urban Europe in the Eighteenth Century

Catherine Denys1

Journal of Urban History 36(3) 332344 2010 SAGE Publications Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0096144209359144 http://juh.sagepub.com

Abstract 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. Keywords Police, town, professionalization, neighborhood The link between the safety of urban citizens and the duties of police forces is among the growing challenges of public service. The issue has brought about a great variety of local experiences in new ways of policing, including neighborhood watches, citizen patrols, and electronic surveillance. Urban police forces have adapted their ways of operating so as to meet societys changing needs, and this has led to development of specific training programs for police forces. Numerous studies in urban sociology and political science evidence the interest of social sciences in current changes in policing. However, they do not take into account the history of different forms of policing that can contribute to present debates. This article seeks to show that questions about various forms of policing are not always recent and that the solutions and experiences of the socalled premodern police are beneficial in reflecting about current reforms.
1

Universit Charles de Gaulle-Lille3, Lille, France

Corresponding Author: Catherine Denys, Universit Charles de Gaulle-Lille3, Institut de Recherche Historique du Septentrion, Domaine universitaire du Pont de Bois, BP 60149, 59653 Villeneuve dAscq cedex Email: catherine.denys@univ-lille3.fr

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

Denys

333

European literature on the history of police has grown considerably over the past twenty years or so, and this has allowed for history to enter the debate. In addition to pioneering studies of English-speaking historians,1 we have major works on pre-Napoleonic Italian, German, French, and Belgian towns. Yet the history of the police before the creation of modern institutions remains largely unexplored. Cyrille Fijnaut, in his monumental history of the Dutch police,2 explains that the police existed before the Netherlands integration into the Napoleonic Empire, but in his book he covers only the post-Napoleonic period. In the United Kingdom, the policeor rather various forms of policeexisted well before (and after) the birth of Scotland Yard in 1829, and we know, via Clive Emsley in particular,3 that criticisms against the London police were voiced above all by reformers intent on denigrating the force. However, for the police forces of eighteenthcentury London, we have only Elaine Reynoldss admirable thesis.4 In German-speaking countries, the importance of Polizeiwissenschaft in eighteenth-century Cameralist thought has naturally attracted legal historians to concepts of policing, policing legislation, and the role of police in the politics of power. Thus, concrete aspects of the application of policing norms in society are intentionally set aside in the major synthesis edited by Michael Stolleis5 on early modern Europe and in research undertaken under Peter Blickle.6 We come closer to these aspects in the publications of the University of StuttgartHohenheim research group Policey/Polizei im vormodernen [Early Modern] Europe.7 Thus, the multiauthor volume Policey in lokalen Rumen8 offers in-depth case studies and demonstrates the diversity of transformations in police forces between the Middle Ages and the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Italy, the history of the police reflects these poles, with legal historians being more attuned to general concepts and to police relations with the state, while historians proper are more likely to examine police activities, the policemen themselves, their practices, and their relations with society. All agree, however, in considering the eighteenth century a defining moment in the evolution of police forces. The studies collected by Livio Antonielli9 reflect on and provide insights into the wealth of Italian material. Brigitte Marins works on Naples and Madrid in the second half of the eighteenth century10 encourage further comparisons between Mediterranean cities. For French historians, a long-held fascination with the creation of the institution of the Parisian Lieutenance de Police in 1667 and belief (today more qualified critique) in the omnipotence of a prematurely centralized state have tended to focus history of the ancien rgime French police on Paris.11 The Terror and the disquieting figure of Joseph Fouch subsequently limited the history of the revolutionary police to political history of power. The revival of police studieswith France initially lagging far behind its European neighborsbecame possible only as historians looked beyond these caricatured images and focused instead on the polices daily practices, the officers in charge of policing, and their relations with the people. This change in perspective has allowed us to uncover in the large provincial French towns very different kinds of police than those in Paris12 and to reconsider the place of the Lieutenance Gnrale within the overall picture of Parisian systems of security. The administrative autonomy of French townsmaintained despite growth of the ancien rgimes monarchical administrationhas also facilitated this fresh approach to the history of the police, as questions of normativity and techniques of power do not pertain exclusively to the role of the state but are also relevant in discussions of local community, corporations, neighborhoods, and so forth. The French case is thus no longer understood as a historical exception and can be discussed within European analysis. These historical studies of premodern policing through different European states offer a framework that although incomplete allows a first comparison.13 The complexity of the situations in question evidences great diversity of evolutions, and this diversity necessitates questioning (again) the continuous, Weberian, state-forming process, especially regarding the problem of the professionalization of police forces within other public services.

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

334

Journal of Urban History 36(3)

The eighteenth century is an exciting period for historical analysis of the police of European towns and cities. Numerous factors were disrupting old equilibriums, including the growth of urbanization, challenges to traditional bases of power, the rise of individualist and liberal aspirations in defiance of corporate organizations, and increased circulation of people and ideas. The police for their part were questioned, criticized, and reformed. They were assigned new tasks, and others were withdrawn. Throughout Europe, the eighteenth century was a time of intense deliberation about the role of police, and this led to considerable growth in available sources. Besides traditional sources like policing legislation, account books, and judicial archives, there appeared writings of reflection, improvement, and remonstration on the subject of the police.14 These eighteenth-century writings about the police were from numerous authors and in diverse formats, but they all questionedand attempted to redefinepolice responsibilities. Some of these writings remained purely speculative proposals, while others accompanied and framed reforms that were put into practice. Although the present article does not claim to be a synthesis of all European materials, examining several cities nonetheless illuminates the different (even contradictory) trends underlying transformations in the composition of eighteenthcentury police forces.

The Professionalizing Tendency of Urban Police Forces

The notion of professionalization allows for incorporation of a series of reforms over a period spanning the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century. As Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk has suggested, the characteristics of professionalization are discernible in important changes such as full-time occupation, fixed payment, more formalized rules, and requirement of higher competence. These characteristics are easily detectable in the reforms of the different levels of the ancien rgimes urban police. We can note three levels of policing: the communal policemen, the civic police organizations, and the heads of urban police forces.

The Professionalization of the Sergent de Ville Job

From the Middle Ages, subordinate policemen, tasked with enforcing local police regulations, were found in all European towns. Their jobs were often not clearly distinct from other administrative functions, whether in the service of the town council (valets de ville) or the local courthouse (huissiers) or in the employ of a seignorial or royal officer (sergents du prvt or similar). They thus came to acquire myriad epithets: sergents de ville, sergents du Magistrat, gardes de police, commis, commissaries, aides de police, amptman cnaepen (Brussels), fausthamers (Strasbourg), Stadtknechte (Wrttemberg), alguazils, sbirri, constables, and beadles. The same diversity is evident in the status of these subordinate policemen: Some were junior officers, accountable to themselves; others were constables appointed by the city council; and others were chosen by more senior police officers. In general, however, their salaries were paid from the towns coffers, and they were under authority of the aldermen, which effectively meant that they were, partly or entirely, communal policemen. Beyond the diversity of institutional forms, there was a general trend in the eighteenth century to cast doubt on these policemens abilities. In the numerous reform proposals that emerged throughout the century, in Strasbourg as in Lille and Brussels, the fausthamers, sergents de ville, or amptman cnaepen were held responsible for poor local policing. The official account was more or less always the same: There were too few policemen, and they did not perform their jobs properly. They were not paid enough, which led to corruption, and above all, they neglected police duties for more profitable activities, such as court duty and other occupations. Policemen were accused of being ignoramuses, willfully brutal, and incapable of evaluating situations with

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

Denys

335

discernment essential to a good police officer. Finally, there were complaints about lack of discipline and refusal to obey orders. Taken altogether, these accounts paint a less than glowing picture of these subordinate policemen, whose social prestige seems to have been quite low. Thus, the reformers demanded, first and foremost, marked increase in police salaries, for only in fulfilling this condition would policemen be less tempted by corruption, would authorities be able to demand that policemen devote the greater part of their time to the police, would it be possible to recruit candidates of better caliber, and, finally, would policemen themselves be better respected by the population. The agreed salary increase had to be sufficient to oblige a policeman to drop his second occupation. In Namur, for example, annual wages of the sergents de ville rose from 150 to 300 florins in 1740.15 In Lyon, the annual pay for commissaires de police increased from 200 to 300 pounds in 1780 and from 300 to 700 pounds in 1788.16 But a salary increase was often inadequate, if not flatly rejected. The disastrous state of city finances might explain these refusals or parsimony, but there also existed (in the minds of certain aldermen) the idea that police officers must, at least partially, be spurred on in their work by sharing in the profits from fines they imposed. In Brussels, for example, the sergeants of the amman or chief magistrate received a wage of 60 florins in 1767, which was insufficient to live on. In Geneva, the slight increase in 1780 in court ushers salaries, from 100 to 150 florins, was intended to compensate for losses linked to reorienting their occupation away from issuing writs and towards police surveillance work. The criterion of salary constitutes an important index for the professionalization of the job of policeman, and analyzing this criterion allows us to measure the differing degrees of autonomy of urban police. The reforms, or rather reform schemes, often incorporated a section on the discipline of police sergeants. Their hours of duty and availability were posted, and above all, these policemen were tasked with overseeing a particular district of the town. Indeed, the development of police territorialization was another great eighteenth-century obsession, bound up as it was with the fear of uncontrolled settlement of outsiders within the city limits. Thus, the sergeant no longer had to watch over the entire town, roaming wherever he pleased, but was to patrol and rigorously investigate a well-defined territory.17

The Replacement of the Civic Police by Professional Militarized Watchmen

The same trend towards professionalization is evident in the evolution of citizens militias (known as gardes bourgeoises or milices bourgeoises). Local context is again all important, with circumstances varying from town to town. In some places, such as French garrison towns, the citizens militias were completely disbanded. Elsewhere, such as the towns of the United Provinces, the militias fulfilled guard duty and nighttime patrols via an intermediate situation. In such situations, the institution of the citizens militias still existed, but the post of officer was sought by townspeople for reasons of social prestige or fiscal advantage, and personal service was reduced to a minimum (as occurred in numerous towns in France and the Austrian Netherlands18). Despite this diversity, and with the exception of the United Provinces, it appears that citizens militias were declining throughout Western Europe during the eighteenth century. Their military role was outmoded, and their participation in nighttime security (through rounds, street patrols, and watches at town gates) was increasingly questioned by observers. Eighteenth-century townspeople no longer cared strongly about the common security of their town. Usually, they evaded militia duty by finding someone to deputize them. When deputizing was privately arranged between a burgher and a wretch who would accept a few pence to keep watch, results were often catastrophic. Commentators poked fun at such old, crippled men, incapable of holding a gun, who

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

336

Journal of Urban History 36(3)

were supposed to watch over the town. When the town hall paid watchmen (often former soldiers) to deputize, the night police were usually somewhat better.19 The most effective solution, to which numerous towns had recourse, was simply eliminating the citizens militias and establishing a professional watch of nighttime police paid to ensure order and security at night. The transition from citizens watch to professional watch occurred in Toulouse in 1780,20 in Limoges in 1776, and in Marseille in 1749. The same trend affected the Austrian Netherlands. In 1752, Ghent replaced its citizens militias with a company of forty-two men, called pandoeren.21 Bruges followed in 1756 with two companies of thirty men,22 combined as one in 1786. At Courtrai, the magistracy established two companies of waekende mannen in 1768, each of forty-four men.23 In garrison towns, the creation of a professional watch was avoided by recourse to soldier patrols, which explains the lack of a watch in Lille and Namur.24 In Brussels, the retention of the citizens militias, at least in organization if not in personal service, was a point of contention between the aldermen and the government. From the start of the 1760s, the Austrian government pushed for replacement of citizens militias and the so-called serments (militias in which the citizens had to swear an oath [Fr. serment] to abide by its regulations) with a more efficient municipal militia. However, the aldermens procrastinations, combined with the impossibility of finding means to finance, delayed establishment of the new night militia until 1786.25 Meanwhile, the city council had sent the sergents de ville back to their judicial occupations and recruited, in August 1784, six men and a leader to manage the policing of markets. The plans for a night militia presented between 1760 and 1783 provided for recruitment of up to 300 men. The council was more realistic, proposing to employ just thirty men in 1786.26 Subsequent events, however, prevented deployment of this professional watch. Whether a case involved new sergeants recruited by urban authorities or members of professional watches, or even the watchmen of London,27 it was common practice in the eighteenth century to assign these jobs preferentially to former soldiers, who were considered still young after six or twelve years of army service. For the towns, there was considerable advantage in using soldiers rather than civilians: Soldiers were used to discipline, they could withstand the exhaustion of long watches and night marches, they knew how to use firearms, and they commanded the citizenrys respect.28 In reformist writings, the recruitment of former soldiers is accompanied by demands for a militarized form of police force: uniforms, military ranks for the senior officers, rules of discipline, and sometimes even quartering in barracks. The discourse was the same in Bordeaux29 as in Nantes.30 Thus, militarization encouraged the professionalization of urban police forces in the eighteenth century, as soldiers were already professionals.

The End of Amateurism in the Management of Urban Police Forces

The third aspect of the trend towards professionalization of urban police emerges in the calls for a single, professional leader. In towns where the police were under control of aldermen or local judges, leadership was generally exercised collegially. Furthermore, these municipal posts were temporary, often annual, even when they could be extended. This seemed inappropriate to eighteenth-century reformers: how, they maintained, could policing, which is learned not in books or by study but through experience and implementation, be entrusted to people who had held such responsibility for only a year or two? How could the police be properly run by magistrates who were not only inexperienced but had to learn everything and then left their posts just when they were beginning to understand how to perform? The reformists therefore argued in favor of the police headship being entrusted to just one man, whose competence would grow each year. Very often there loomed behind this demand the

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

Denys

337

shadow of Pariss lieutenant gnral de police. Created in 1667 by the separation of the police and the judicature of the Chtelet courthouse, the Lieutenance Gnrale and its incumbent came to symbolize for European elites a Parisian police force that was as effective as it was formidable.31 The Parisian lieutenant general of police was therefore often invoked in debates about the police, sometimes put forward as a model and sometimes used as a foil. The tendency to criticize the aldermens collegial leadership grew more widespread even beyond the Parisian context. It appears in the writings of the Vicomte de Sarsfield, military commander of Valenciennes, who was exasperated by the inertia of the city council,32 and in the writings of the Grenoble lieutenant of police, Paul-Joseph Vallet, who in 1759 published a pamphlet titled Consuls must not interfere with the police.33 In Strasbourg in 1782, a report by the tax department official Windholtz proposed appointing a director of the police bureau who would control the fausthamers, the patrol sergeants, and the sentries. In Naples, the anonymous author of Observations on the Kingdom of Naples went so far as to state that policing in Naples would be properly performed only after a police lieutenant was established there as in Paris or Florence.34 In Florence in 1784, the responsibilities of the auditore fiscale were split into two distinct functions: presidente del Supremo Tribunale di Giustizia for judicial powers and presidente del buon governo for the governance of the police.35 In European capitals, it was often through the initiative of the sovereign that single police chiefs emerged. Examples include Lisbons intendant general of police created in 1760,36 Madrids superintendent general of police in 1782,37 and Milans director of police in 1787. The urban magistracies regarded the polices collegial leadership as a strong indicator of their administrative autonomy and independence in the face of a central government that preferred imposing a single chief, who would be easier to control. The recruitment of the junior officials (auditeurs) and lieutenant of the Geneva police court can thus be attributed to attachment to republican forms of power. The junior officials were elected for three years, and the lieutenant for one. The police roles were temporary, as they were envisaged merely as apprenticeship for nobler political positions and as the first step of a cursus honorum in service to the Republic.38 This was also the reason behind the resistance led by the Brussels aldermen against the amman Rapdius de Berg in the years 1775 through 1785.39 Ferdinand Rapdius de Berg had been chosen by the Austrian government to improve, through the office of amman, the citys policing, which was then controlled mainly by the town hall. To this end, de Berg had received an unprecedented salary increase (from 700 to 2,000 florins) and the right to appoint the handuyts or night watchmen. Despite these new means and his good will, the new amman encountered a hostile city council and, having received little support from the government, dropped his police duties. The daring reformism of Emperor Joseph II gave de Berg a chance for redress: in 1786, he was appointed director of general policing in the Netherlands and tasked with centralizing the countrys police forces. The new director, however, had only enough time to draft various instructions and organize his desk before the little revolution of May 1787 obliged him to leave his post and surrender to the aldermen all latitude in terms of policing. Finally, from all levels of the police, numerous towns and capitals chose in the eighteenth century to organize more rigorously and more regularly their police forces. They also recruited real professionals. These transformations caused numerous problems, and not all European towns adopted them in the same way.

Alternatives to Professionalized Police Forces? The Neighborhood Question

The reform of city police forces in the eighteenth century did not, apart from certain exceptions, lead to establishment of a state police force. Modernity, in this matter, was not synonymous with

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

338

Journal of Urban History 36(3)

development of central police power, and most reforms in the staffing and organization of urban police arose through instigation of the aldermen. In London, the reforms spread from parish to parish, while in the Austrian Netherlands, the aldermens assemblies forwarded their information and experiences to other town assemblies. The absence of a general pattern for standardizing the urban police under a central power, the large scope of autonomy of towns, and the normal links between towns present numerous choices more likely than the pattern of professionalization. The modernity of the eighteenth-century police is also evident in the revival of traditional mechanisms of control in the town.

The Advantages of Neighborhoods in Eighteenth-Century Towns

In fact, in numerous European towns and cities in the early modern period, there existed neighborhood organizations that created solidarity between inhabitants of a district and enabled the district to exercise control and monitor behavior that deviated from accepted norms. The kind of policing practiced by local residents is comparable to what we might call today community policing or proximity policing. It is easier to detect in towns where neighborhood associations assumed an institutional form that left specific archives, as in Ghent,40 Haarlem,41 and Leiden,42 but informal neighborhood surveillance existed in all old regime societies, as David Garrioch has demonstrated for eighteenth-century Paris.43 Generalizing about the extent of intervention of these neighborhood schemes is difficult, as each town is a specific case, and factors include whether a neighborhood organization was declining or still active and whether the urban population was undergoing growing or slowing transformation. In a small town with a static population, the neighborhood organizations, whether institutionalized or not, could play an important role of social control. But in a town whose population was growing, whose economic activities were diversifying, and where large numbers of migrants were staying temporarily or settling, the traditional means of regulating neighborhoods could no longer be guaranteed. Eighteenth-century towns underwent considerable changes: Most experienced population increases, and even those that remained stable faced problems of social cohesion linked to the growing gulf between rich and poor. Eighteenth-century European towns had to cope with influx of foreigners: rural people from nearby or migrants from further afield who often could not easily integrate into the world of guilds safeguarded by the town. At the same time, the crisis of urban industries in the face of the countrysides growing proto-industrial work increased worker joblessness in towns. Strengthening communal police could be a way to confront new problems, but it presupposed financial resources that were difficult to find at a time when town councils faced rising costs in poor relief and in maintenance of their townscapes. Certain cities thus preferred to turn to neighborhood organizations, which offered the advantage of costing the town little or nothing.

Four Cases in Which Neighborhoods Are Reformed in a Policing Sense

In Valenciennes, a French town with dire finances and a high poverty level, the aldermen decided, in a great ordinance of September 24, 1768, to revive an old neighborhood institution: the ruage (Fr. rue = street). Since its outset, in at least the fifteenth century, this was a territorial organization of the citizens militia and was based on bringing together the inhabitants of several streets. The heads of these ruages were called conntables des rues (constables of the streets). A ruling by Archdukes Albert and Archduchess Isabella in 1615 reorganized them, but little trace of their activity is found between then and 1768. The aldermens ordinance of 1768 gave the constables a clear brief to assume policing of their small district. Their job was to maintain public calm and prevent disorder. They were to denounce to the authorities dens of iniquity, parents who abandoned

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

Denys

339

their children, and citizens who entertained soldiers at their homes in the evening. Following the ordinance is a list with the names of 200 new constables and their streets. This list, when compared with the poll tax registers, enables one to establish a constables social profile, which was often very close to that of other inhabitants of the street, as they were people who were fairly well representative of the local population. The few mentions in the local judicial archives present the image of a mediator in minor nighttime disturbances rather than a repressive police officer.44 In Toulouse, some 500 dizeniers (a dizenier was head of a band of ten men [Fr: dix, dizaine]) oversaw small districts called moulons.45 The dizenier, who had to live in the moulon where he worked, had the double responsibility of giving the capitouls or municipal officials an account of everything connected with policing and of applying in the moulon the administrative decisions taken at town hall. The dizeniers performed censuses, compiled lists of young people required to draw lots for the militia, and could issue certificates attesting to good conduct or proving poverty. They were simultaneously conciliators in the districtrepresentatives of the population whose grievances they relayed to the capitoulsand tools of municipal power. The institution seems to have entered decline before the capitouls vigorously retook it in the eighteenth century. Especially from 1754, the dizeniers were more tightly controlled, and their jobs were reoriented towards maintaining order and preventing disorder. Within the framework of their duties, they could execute house searches, denounce criminals to judges, prevent fracases, and head the citizens militia patrols. New tasks were added gradually, including lighting of street lamps and supervising street cleaning. In 1783, their status was overhauled, and they were given a distinctive uniform (a two-tone black-and-white hood), and the capitouls referred to them as commissaires de quartier. The city council of Toulouse thus sought to give renewed value to these police auxiliaries, on whom it conferred increasingly extensive powers. Yet this was without financial compensation, as throughout the eighteenth century the post of dizenier remained entirely voluntary. The city of Naples was divided into twenty-nine small wards or ottine. Every year (theoretically), the inhabitants of the ottine elected six candidates, from whom the king selected a captain and two procurators. An ottina comprised several streets and a square. The ottine captains were middle-ranking notables, neither plebeians nor nobles, and their duties consisted of maintaining order, prosperity, and security among citizens. The captains were respected as much by the urban administration as by the general populace, who regarded them as their natural protectors. Like the dizeniers of Toulouse, they served as mediators (settling problems in the district) and as intermediaries between local people and city authorities. They kept the registers updated, especially those connected with dispensing aid to the poor, and issued certificates necessary for passport requests or admittance to the ranks of the bourgeoisie. The ottine captains were in the service of the people of their respective districts yet were also the princes eyes and ears in the same district. This ambivalence was an essential part of their job. Following the reform of the Naples police in 1779, the ottine captains, although their positions were not questioned as such, were placed under the judges of the Vicaria (the royal courthouse), who were themselves divided among twelve new districts. The ottine captains thus became auxiliaries of the local official receivers and the auxiliaries of the princes territorial police in the city. This evolution in the role of the ottine captains does not seem to have been effective, but it reveals how the royal administration in Naples tried to appropriate a neighborhood organization to enhance policing.46 For a borderline case, we turn to Madrid, as in this court city it was royal power that created, two years after the so-called Motin dEsquilache revolt and apparently ex nihilo, a system of neighborhood policing in the context of the great police reform of 1768. The city was divided into eight large districts (cuarteles) entrusted to the royal judges, the alcades de corte. These districts were each subdivided by eight, making a total of sixty-four small districts (barrios) placed in the care of junior officers (alcades de barrio), who were elected by the inhabitants of the district from among its honorable citizens. Their role was to register the population of the

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

340

Journal of Urban History 36(3)

barrio, check weights and measures, watch paupers and vagrants, and attend to street cleanliness and the upkeep of fountains. They could arrest thieves and criminals caught in flagrante and hold them until arrival of a judge. Each alcade de barrio had to keep a daily book of occurrences in which he noted everything that happened in his barrio. The books that have been preserved reveal that these officers acted above all as mediators, arbitrating in conflicts between families and neighbors and offering much help to the poor.47 In these examples, the city elders turned to minor notables, people who were not necessarily very rich or powerful but who possessed a moral authority that was recognized by the other inhabitants of the district. Their servicesunderstood as the contribution that a responsible citizen owes to his motherlandwere not remunerated, and of course, the head of the district did not quit his usual professional activities to fulfill his duties in the district. We observe here an evolutionary trajectory that runs contrary to the professionalization of the police.

Neighborhood Police versus Professional Police: The Hesitations of Towns

There is no one single trend toward professionalization common to the towns and cities studied here, and a city councils choice can likewise change over time, as the examples of Ghent and Brussels, among others, demonstrate. The extent and continuity of the archives of the Ghent gebuurten (neighborhoods) allow one to study their long-term evolution.48 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Ghent comprised around 200 neighborhoods, under the leadership of a gebuurtedeken, elected from the districts well-to-do inhabitants for three years. As elsewhere, the neighborhood encouraged a tight social bond, such as by obligatory presence at banquets and burials. The system for meeting the costs of neighborhood policing was highly developed, with fines and levies of all kinds. Meetings of the local assembly were frequent, and a chapel could be maintained by the neighborhood. Furthermore, the neighborhood was expected to foster civil tranquility, resolve minor conflicts on its own, and help authorities find and arrest criminals. This was to be achieved by a kind of global surveillance of offenders movements that would provide in-depth insider knowledge. Newcomers in particular were closely monitored and could not settle in the area without paying a welcome tax. These elements were common to a number of neighborhoods but were no doubt more formalized here than elsewhere. The originality lay less in the system itself than in its evolution, the chronology of which differed from that of the other towns discussed here. For Ghent, it was in the second half of the seventeenth century, especially the decade 1660 to 1670, that there was decisive increase in the administrative and policing responsibilities entrusted to the neighborhoods by the municipal administration: they had to present the communal lists of poor outsiders who had settled in the district, perform guard duty, provide judicial information, and make arrests. They were also tasked with paving streets and in the eighteenth century were assigned responsibility for street lamps. As in Toulouse, the role of gebuurtedeken evolved slowly from a role of internal head to that of negotiator with the magistracy. But in the second half of the eighteenth century, as city authorities were creating a professional police apparatus, the role and importance of neighborhoods entered decline, and the city council reclaimed the tasks that it had delegated to the districts. For Brussels, the sources on these local organizations are poor for the early modern period. The division of the urban area into wijcks or districts dates to the establishment of the citizens militias and was a consequence of the citys expansion. The fifteenth-century political ordinances mention the wijckmeesters, two honorable men chosen annually by the aldermen in each wijck to organize relief in the event of fire and to signal problems. In the early modern period, however, these wijckmeesters disappeared, their duties having passed to the hondersten (Dutch: hundredths), who corresponded to the French centeniers. They assumed the same responsibilities

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

Denys

341

and managed the local citizens militia. There were forty hondersten, and the ten districts of citizens militias were subdivided into smaller districts under their leadership. The hondersten were the source of all detailed administrative knowledge concerning the Brussels population. They played an essential role in censuses, registration of the poor, and tax collection. In the eighteenth century, they ceased being replaced annually: volunteers who obtained the aldermens consent remained hondersten until they died or resigned. It is not really possible to speak of neighborhood in relation to the hondersten of the Brussels districts, as they did not issue from the local community or play any role in the districts animation. However, they lived locally, were known by the inhabitants, and were probably respected, given their power to impose fines on people who defaulted on militia service. Hence the idea, found in several plans for improving the Brussels police, of using them as intermediaries between the municipal police and the community. Le Baussant, author of a scheme from 1750,49 is surprised not to find in the ordinances passed any police duties assigned to the hondersten. For, in his opinion, there could be no serious police without territorialization of the workforce, which had to adapt itself to the growth of the population. He therefore proposes creating quarteniers or commissaires de quartier charged with policing the district. Each commissaire would conduct a thorough investigation of his district every three months to record everything concerning public safety. They would gather complaints and denunciations and intervene (if necessary by calling for assistance from the armed citizens) in quarrels or disturbances in places of prostitution or taverns lodging vagrants. Furthermore, they would centralize the billeting orders of innkeepers so as to bring them to the amman after 10 p.m.; they would keep tabs on bad households, whose disputes shocked the public, and maintain a register of furnished rooms. Finally, they would supervise the citizens militia patrols and oversee the markets in their district. This scheme, like many of its kind, was never put into action, and the hondersten were not replaced by local policemen. The idea was certainly prevalent in the eighteenth century but was not realized in practice. Urban authorities, who wished to improve their police, had vested interested in their recourse to neighborhood organizations. Since the Middle Ages, the neighborhoods ensured a form of free social regulation. Yet a city like Brussels did not take this approach, and even in Ghent, where the gebuurten remained solidly established, the eighteenth-century aldermen preferred a professional police force.

Conclusion
In the eighteenth century, the evolution of urban police forces followed various paths. Recourse to local minor notables went against the trend towards professionalization applicable to communal policemen, and imposition of a single police chief was far from a universal phenomenon. However, to evaluate differences more effectively, we must be careful about the general configuration of a towns policing. A particular town can reform its police sergeants in a more professional way and keep its civic guard, whereas another town can hire a professional night watch but give more policing responsibilities to neighborhood heads. One must also consider a towns overall administrative policy. The key problem is often finances, and a city council can opt for financing improvement of garbage collection and street cleaning rather than increasing the number of communal policemen. For eighteenth-century aldermen, a towns cleanliness, beauty, and agrment were part of its good policing. Much money was spent in this wayfor example, in setting up public lightingand, as concerns improving inhabitants safety, police reforms were often considered less important than having the streets lighted at night. The link between the towns was based on common discourse about policing, regardless of applied solutions, and professionalization (or its absence). Ubiquitous within the eighteenth-century

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

342

Journal of Urban History 36(3)

archives are administrative mmoires, or policing reform projects, that share similar observations and solutions from Milan and Paris to Brussels and Naples. There seems to have been hardly any traveler who passed through a town without offering advice on organizing policing, or any administrator who did not write to the government to propose changes. Even the ordinary citizen had an opinion on the question of policing. During the Enlightenment, the improvement of policing became an issue of everyday debate, and it was an issue that reached public opinion by overcoming the authorized administrative circles. Yet although issues of policing and diagnosis of urban pathologies were often the same, the diversity of local circumstances prevailed when putting plans into action. Further study of European towns would of course offer better perspective to discern dominant tendencies, but current knowledge does not substantiate the idea of a linear historical process from community police to centralized state police via municipal police. On the contrary, the eighteenth century presents various processes in the modernization of urban police forces. Premodern policing was based on diversity; every town found its own way, via its own experiences, to solutions for problems of public safety. This conclusion may deceive those who ask that history offer simple answers to complex questions. Yet perhaps this is the contribution of history to current discussions; that is, rather than trying to find the good, final reform of policing, one should instead accept the idea that policing requires constant adaptation to local situations and evolving societies. Authors Note
This article is partly the result of the large discussions and common work with Vincent Milliot, Vincent Denis, and Brigitte Marin, members of the Construction et Circulation des Savoirs policiers europens, 1650-1850/Construction and Circulation of the European Police Knowledge, 1650-1850 (CIRSAP) research project. The CIRSAP research project is supported by the National Research Agency (ANR France) and Institut de Recherche Historique du Septentrion/Institute for Northern Historical Research (IRHIS) at the University Charles de GaulleLille3 (see http://irhis.recherche.univ-lille3.fr/ANR-CIRSAP-Prog.html).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article. Funding
The author received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes
1. 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 Frhen 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 ffentlichen Raumes in Oberdeutschland (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003); Andrea Iseli, Bonne Police, Frhneuzeitliches Verstndnis von der guten Ordnung eines Staates in Frankreich (Epfendorf: Bibliotheca Academica Verlag, 2003). 7. See http://www.univie.ac.at/policey-ak/.

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

Denys

343

8. Andr Holenstein, Frank Konersmann, Joseph Pauser, and Gerhard Slter, eds., Policey in lokalen Rumen. Ordnungskrfte und Sicherheitspersonal in Gemeinden und Territorien vom Sptmittelalter bis zum frhen 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 2002). 9. Livio Antonielli, ed., La polizia in Italia nellet moderna (Soveria Manelli: Rubbettino, 2002). 10. Brigitte Marin, Policer la ville. Polices royales, pouvoirs locaux et organisations territoriales Naples et Madrid dans la seconde moiti du XVIIIe sicle (postdoctoral thesis, Paris 1, 2005). 11. Unfortunately, this remains true for the chapter devoted to the ancien rgime in the recent synthesis directed by Michel Aubouin, Arnaud Teyssier, and Jean Tulard, Histoire et dictionnaire de la police, du moyen ge nos jours (Paris: Laffont, 2005). 12. Jean-Luc Laffont, Policer la ville, Toulouse capitale provinciale au sicle des Lumires, 3 vols. (PhD thesis, University of Toulouse II, 1997); Catherine Denys, Police et scurit au XVIIIe sicle dans les villes de la frontire franco-belge, (Paris: LHarmattan, 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 Mmoires policiers, 1750-1850. critures et pratiques policires du Sicle des Lumires au Second Empire (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006). 15. Denys, Police et scurit, 74-81. 16. Stphane Nivet, Acquisition des rgles du mtier et spcialisations des commissaires de police Lyon au XVIIIe sicle, in Jean-Marc Berlire, Catherine Denys, Dominique Kalifa, and Vincent Milliot, eds., tre policier: les mtiers de police(s) XVIIIe-XXe sicle, (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 249-260. 17. Catherine Denys, La territorialisation policire dans les villes au XVIIIe sicle, Revue dHistoire moderne et contemporaine 50, no. 1 (2003): 13-26; Vincent Denis, Peut-on rformer un monument de la police? La rforme de la police de Strasbourg en dbat la fin de lAncien Rgime, 1782-1788, in Milliot, Les Mmoires, 131-49. 18. Serge Bianchi and Roger Dupuy, eds., La Garde nationale entre peuple et Nation en armes. Mythes et ralits, 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 Gnrales du Royaume (Belgian State Archives). Sent by the latter towns to Brussels, they were intended to serve as models. 24. Denys, Police et scurit, 105-23. 25. Denys, Les projets de rforme de la police Bruxelles la fin du XVIIIe sicle, Mlanges de lEcole Franaise de Rome. Italie et Mditerrane 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 History 10 (1989): 95-130. 28. Denys, Police et scurit, 82-84. 29. Vincent Denis, Rformer la police Bordeaux au dix-huitime sicle: les mmoires de Moyse Clou Pudeffer, 1747-1748, in Milliot, Les Mmoires, 121-30.

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011

344

Journal of Urban History 36(3)

30. Stphane Perron, Guet professionnel, bataillon dinfanterie ou garde bourgeoise? Lchec des tentatives de rforme de la police de Nantes en 1786-1788, in Milliot, Les Mmoires, 151-68. 31. Allan Williams, The Police of Paris (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979); Fayal El Ghoul, La police parisienne dans la seconde moiti du XVIIIe sicle (1760-1785) (Tunis: Universit de Tunis, 1995). The publications of Jean Chagniot, Paris et larme au XVIIIe sicle. tude politique et sociale (Paris: Economica, 1985); Steven L. Kaplan, Note sur les commissaires de police de Paris au XVIIIe sicle, Revue dHistoire Moderne et Contemporaine 28 (1981): 669-86; and Vincent Milliot, Gouverner les hommes et leur faire du bien. La police de Paris au sicle des Lumires, Conceptions, acteurs, pratiques (postdoctoral thesis, Paris1 Panthon-Sorbonne, 2002), have revised the image of an all-powerful lieutenant general at the head of the Paris police. 32. Denys, Police et scurit, 42. 33. Clarisse Coulomb, Qui doit faire la police Grenoble? Autour du mmoire de P-J Vallet, Les sieurs Consuls ne doivent point se mler de la police, 1759, in Milliot, Les Mmoires, 67-85. 34. Marin, Policer la ville, 70. 35. Carlo Mangio, La polizia toscana. Organizzazione e criteri dintervento (1765-1808) (Milan: Giuffr, 1991). 36. For this piece of information, I am indebted to Flavio Borda dAgua, 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, tre magistrat de police en Rpublique, ou apprendre gouverner. Lexemple de Genve au XVIIIe sicle, in Berlire, Denys, Kalifa and Milliot, Mtiers de police, 45-60. 39. Frdric Kisters, Ferdinand Rapdius de Berg, amman de Bruxelles et polygraphe, Cahiers bruxellois 33 (1992): 17-68; Rapdius 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 Gnrales 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 sicles), Revue dHistoire moderne et contemporaine 49, no. 3 (2002): 26-53. 41. Gabrielle Dorren, Communities within the Community: Aspects of Neighbourhood in SeventeenthCentury Haarlem, Urban History 25 (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 scurit, 328-32. 45. Laffont, Policer la ville, 735-82: Le dizenier, sentinelle avance de ladministration municipale. Jean-Luc Laffont, La police de voisinage la base de lorganisation policire des villes de lancienne 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 rtablissement de la police Bruxelles (1898) by a certain J. Le Baussant in the Secrtairerie dtat et de guerre collection of the Archives Gnrales du Royaume in Brussels.

Bio
Catherine Denys has been a Matre de Conference at the University Charles-de-Gaulle in Lille (France) since 1999. Her main research concerns the history of policing in France and Belgium during the eighteenth century. She heads the Construction and Circulation of the European Police Knowledge, 1650-1850 (CIRSAP) research program.

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at CAPES on November 4, 2011