Violence and Colonial Order
Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940

A striking new interpretation of colonial policing and political violence in three empires between the two world wars.

Martin Thomas (Author)

9781107519541, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 May 2015

540 pages, 11 maps 8 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.72 kg

'Martin Thomas's remarkable Violence and Colonial Order succeeds in breaking new ground thanks in part to a breathtakingly comparative approach … His fine book will be of interest to a wide range of students and scholars, from world historians to labor, police, and colonial historians.' Eric T. Jennings, American Historical Review

This is a pioneering, multi-empire account of the relationship between the politics of imperial repression and the economic structures of European colonies between the two World Wars. Ranging across colonial Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, Martin Thomas explores the structure of local police forces, their involvement in colonial labour control and the containment of uprisings and dissent. His work sheds new light on broader trends in the direction and intent of colonial state repression. It shows that the management of colonial economies, particularly in crisis conditions, took precedence over individual imperial powers' particular methods of rule in determining the forms and functions of colonial police actions. The politics of colonial labour thus became central to police work, with the depression years marking a watershed not only in local economic conditions but also in the breakdown of the European colonial order more generally.

Introduction: police, labour and colonial violence
Part I. Ideas and Practices: 1. Colonial policing: a discursive framework
2. 'What did you do in the colonial police force, daddy?' Policing inter-war dissent
3. 'Paying the butcher's bill': policing British colonial protest after 1918
Part II. Colonial Case Studies: French, British and Belgian: 4. Gendarmes: work and policing in French North Africa after 1918
5. Policing Tunisia: mineworkers, fellahs and nationalist protest
6. Rubber, coolies and communists: policing disorder in French Vietnam
7. Stuck together? Rubber production, labour regulation and policing in Malaya
8. Caning the workers? Policing and violence in Jamaica's sugar industry
9. Oil and order: repressive violence in Trinidad's oilfields
10. Profits, privatization and police: the birth of Sierra Leone's diamond industry
11. Policing and politics in Nigeria: the political economy of indirect rule, 1929–39
12. Depression and revolt: policing the Belgian Congo
Conclusion
Notes to the text.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD], History [HB]