Abstract
This paper centers on the
history and nature of law enforcement in the former British colonies Nyasaland,
the Gold Coast, and Kenya. I discuss the central features of policing activities
and organizations in these colonies in relation to the general characteristics
of British colonialism. I then examine how colonial policing changed over
the period extending from the territorial conquest and consolidation of
colonial power to the formation of the independent African states. Colonial
policing provides a provocative topic of inquiry to assess the impact of
British colonialism on the subjugated African population. I approach law
enforcement in the colonial period from the perspective of the sociological
and criminological police literature which has this far mostly been applied
to western models of policing. Given the relative neglect of the study
of colonial policing, I identify some problems that future research on
this issue will have to address.
Introduction
In this paper I explore three
case studies in the history of law enforcement in British colonial Africa.
Against the background of the style of political government, economic control,
and the accompanying legal system of British colonial rule, I will specifically
analyze the nature and means of policing that emerged within these colonial
contexts. First, I will outline the basic principles of indirect rule and
customary law that guided British colonial policy in Africa. Second, I
will examine the police forces in the former British colonies Nyasaland,
the Gold Coast, and Kenya. I devote special attention to the changing nature
of policing from the time these colonies were initially formed until the
independence of the newly created African states. This will lead me to
discuss and compare some of the broader principles and patterns that shaped
policing in the discussed colonies.
I wish to demonstrate that
the study of colonial policing may foster crucial information to acquire
a more adequate understanding of the substantive impact of political and
economic colonialism on the native African population subjected to European
rule. I also seek to elucidate the important changes that took place in
the history of colonial policing from the formation of the colonial states
until their independence. The history of colonial policing is a pertinent
topic of inquiry since the way the colonial police forces were conceived,
organized, and gradually underwent changes has contributed to shape contemporary
modes of law enforcement in the African continent and is a necessary element
in our understanding of comparative policing issues today. In light of
the relative lack of scholarly attention to the history of colonial policing,
I conclude with some general problems and prospects for the study of law
enforcement in colonial regimes.
The Politics, Economy,
and Law of British Colonialism
The administration of the
British colonies was generally guided by the principle of indirect rule.1
Officially not introduced until 1934, indirect rule refers to the imposed
government of Africans through their own institutions. The policy was based
on the assumption that Europeans and Africans were culturally very distinct
and that the institutions which had locally developed in the African communities
were the best suited for their government under British control. However,
there was never a whole-scale adoption of local African practices. Rather,
the acceptance of native political authority always implied a British redefinition
and limitation of the role of African political powers and radical mutations
of traditional practices whenever they were considered repugnant in light
of European conceptions. Further, the principle of indirect rule was considered
secondary to the overall political and economic objectives of colonial
rule. Political paternalism replaced indirect rule when local politics
did not resemble appropriate government in the eyes of the British authorities
and when it conflicted with Company Rule which sought to make colonial
conquest a commercially viable enterprise.
The history of British colonialism,
therefore, always entailed an alien imposition of power and a mixture of
political and economic interests determining the government of the conquered
territory. This is further shown by the fact that indirect rule could be
interventionist or non-interventionist. In the case of interventionist
indirect rule, the native chiefs were governed as dependent rulers and
their traditional administration was gradually adapted to the alien institutions
of British rule. Non-interventionist indirect rule left the traditional
authorities to their own devices, but only to the extent that the over-all
political and economic goals of colonialism were not threatened. In practice
this meant that colonialism involved the collection of taxes, recruitment
for wage labor, and, as I will make clear in this paper, the enforcement
of colonial laws regardless of an official practice of limited non-intervention.
The legal system that accompanied
British colonialism is characterized by a mixture of different laws related
to the principle of indirect rule.2 Much like the way in which African
political authorities were incorporated within the overall structure of
British government, native law was taken up in the colonial legal framework.
Customary law, purported to represent the legal principles of native Africa,
was essentially amalgamated with colonially imported law. As was the case
with native political government, customary law was only accepted on the
condition that it did not conflict with the basic principles of British
law, which were in any case considered superior on a presumed evolutionary
scale of legitimate legality. Customary law did concern native Africans,
and was settled in separately organized native courts, but its premises
grew out of British understanding of traditional African legal systems.
What was accepted as the native African legal tradition was fundamentally
a British invention, probably having more sense of reality in the minds
of the British rulers than actually being founded upon the concrete historical
practices of the African population. Thus, the incorporation of African
political institutions in British government, based on the principle of
indirect rule, was complemented at the level of legal procedures by an
appropriation of customary law into British imported law.
Three Case Studies of
Policing in British Colonial Africa
The systems of law enforcement
that accompanied the regimes of European colonial rule have only in recent
years begun to attract scholarly attention.3 Most studies that have centered
on colonialism have done much to advance our understanding of the cultural,
political, and economic aspects of colonial rule, but a profound consideration
of colonial policing has not yet been sufficiently addressed. Even work
that has specifically investigated the principles and practices of colonial
law and legal systems has hardly examined the enforcement of these laws
by the colonial police forces. This neglect has regrettably lead to a shortage
of data on the issue. The colonial police forces which I will examine in
some detail are selected because of the availability of information over
a period of time extending from the imposition of colonial rule until the
independence of the new African states. To enhance the strength of comparison,
however, the three selected case studies represent geographically dispersed
communities in the African continent. Nyasaland (now Malawi) is located
in central-southern Africa, the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in west Africa,
and Kenya in east Africa.
I will focus my analysis
on the organization of the colonial police forces, the way they operated
within the wider realm of political and economic colonial rule, as well
as their functions and changing nature over time. These case studies allow
to offer an in-depth investigation of the type of policing in these colonies,
as well as a cross-cultural comparison of some of the broader patterns
of colonial policing under British rule.
From Territorial to Functional
Policing in Nyasaland
The history of the police
force in Nyasaland can be roughly divided into four periods.4 The first
period, from 1891 to 1900, is marked by the extensive use of coercion in
the establishment of British territorial domination over the newly founded
colony. The quest for hegemony was externally directed at the protection
of the frontiers, while internal control was established through the imposition
of hut taxes and the formation of alliances with local chiefs. Both functions
were secured by a military force, which consisted of an imported Indian
military detachment, an army of mercenaries from Zanzibar and Mozambique,
as well as selected native people from within the Nyasaland territory.
Most of the Nyasaland recruits came from the Yao ethnic community, since
the British rulers conceived them to be of a martial race, fit for control,
combat, and the enforcement of regulations. The British administrators
drew up so-called ethnic security maps that indicated the characteristics,
considered relevant for internal security and order, of the different ethnic
communities within the colonial territory. The notion of martial race denoted
the ethnic groups believed to produce reliable and efficient soldiers,
largely based on official British reports of the natives' presumed military
capacities. The first Nyasaland police forces were established in 1896
when the district tax collectors were instructed by London to raise and
train small law enforcement units.
After the territorial boundaries
of the colonial regime were secured, a period of control was set in. The
emphasis of colonial rule now switched from military security to the formation
of a colonial police force for civil duties. Armed with rifles, the central
function of the police force was to collect hut taxes and obtain African
labor for employment in the European estates. The army troops were gradually
reduced and matters of internal security given prominence since it was
thought that the African population would no longer resist British rule.
By 1914, some 400, armed yet largely untrained, policemen made up the Nyasaland
police force. Gradually, however, additional efforts had to be taken to
step up internal policing. The Chilembwe Rising of 1915 in particular had
alerted the British administration to the need for continued control of
the internal social order. As a result, a more professionally trained and
more specialized police force was established in 1920. The force was expanded
with a Finger-Print Bureau and a Central Intelligence Division for the
control of serious crimes and the monitoring of political activities against
the state. The official colonial police, however, remained a relatively
small force compared to the private uniformed police forces in the towns.
These private forces were set up by the different mining and industrial
companies and watched closely over European property and racial segregation.
After 1922, the third period
of Nyasaland's policing, the ties between British and native authorities
were strengthened, and the economic motives of colonial law enforcement
were further expanded. The emphasis on coercive control generally declined
in favor of closer collaborations with the local chiefs. The army troops
were reduced from about 1,000 in 1921, to some 250 in 1930, and the police
force sought to more adequately fulfill its role through expanding its
alliances with selected native chiefs. Most police work, nonetheless, was
not so much involved with the prevention and detection of crime, but focused
on the economic foundations of colonial power, and specifically involved
the collection of hut taxes and order maintenance at the tobacco markets
and the European estates. During the second World War, the police was still
of relatively small size and had little influence in the rural areas which
were by and large unexplored. While the police gradually engaged more in
the enforcement of various criminal laws, its economic functions remained
crucial. Police agents also functioned as prison wards for Africans that
could not pay hut taxes, or they kept women hostage to force their husbands
to pay. In addition, the police protected European property in the towns
and tried to enforce laws against liquor-distilling and native witchcraft
movements. Most other police activities during the war were military and
political. For instance, enemy aliens were arrested and detained by agents
of the newly created Political Intelligence Bureau.
The final phase of the police
in Nyasaland started after the second World War, when British authority
was at first strengthened, but in the following years gradually began to
decline. Two important changes after the second World War forced an increase
in the expenditure on the police force and its expansion into rural areas.
First, the British administration imposed soil conservation measures which
were intended to improve peasant agricultural techniques. These measures,
however, also lead to compulsory resettlements of selected native communities.
Second, this in turn disrupted African social life and enhanced criminal
activities in the towns, which now also involved organized thefts from
the European elite. During the early 1950s several major disturbances took
place in Nyasaland: impoverished tenants damaged European property, and,
because of emerging sentiments of African nationalism, colonially legitimated
chiefly authority weakened, leading to outbreaks of localized rioting.
Different efforts were taken to strengthen the coercive arm of the colonial
state: the Zomba Police Training School was opened in 1952, police training
programs were intensified, the manpower of the various police forces was
increased, totaling some 750 agents by 1959, new police divisions were
set up (e.g. the Special Branch for political intelligence work, and the
Police Mobile Force specialized in riot control), and more African policemen
from within the Nyasaland territory were recruited. By 1959 these changes
proved insufficient when major disturbances were taking place whereby natives
stoned police stations and attacked policemen. A state of emergency was
declared, and military forces were brought in to handle the situation.
Regiments of the Royal Rhodesian Army and platoons from Tanganyika and
Northern Rhodesia imported some 2,500 soldiers. The manpower of the police
force was expanded to a total of about 3,000, including 200 extra policemen
from Britain. Nevertheless, all these efforts were of no avail. The political
opposition to British rule, organized in the Nyasaland African Congress,
grew stronger and stronger, and the British colonial administration could
not but prepare the way for African self-government. After the transition
of power in 1962, the new African state of Malawi inherited from its colonial
past a police force of some 3,000 agents, consisting of British, Asian
and African recruits.
Establishing and Maintaining
Colonial Rule in the Gold Coast
As in Nyasaland, the British
conquest of the Gold Coast initially relied heavily on a military force
for the establishment of the territorial boundaries of British colonial
rule.5 In 1845 detachments of the West India Regiment were brought into
the territory, and the first official police force was organized in 1865.
Modelled after the Lagos Armed Police, the police force consisted, next
to British officers, largely of Hausas, the ethnic group which was considered
a martial race. The Gold Coast Armed Police, or the Hausa Constabulary
as it was unofficially named, became the paramilitary police arm of the
colonial government even before the proclamation of the colony in 1874.
Apart from Hausas, the police force also consisted of Fanti tribe members
which initially were the only police agents instructed in civil police
duties.
The different police forces
were put under control of the Governor of the colony, while the District
Commissioner supervised the day-to-day affairs. The organization of the
police was not regulated by any one model in particular, but organized
in a pragmatic way on the basis of an assessment of local conditions. In
practice, this meant a mixture of geographically spread and structurally
diverse systems: "Indian and Egyptian paramilitary policing provided examples
of practice; the Royal Irish Constabulary offered a structural model and,
after 1907, regular training facilities for all officers; the methods of
organization in English county forces, the London beat system, and some
of the accouterments of the Metropolitan Police, were transferred to the
coastal towns; and officers from other West African colonies and the Caribbean
islands also brought distinctive patterns and dimensions to civil police
work".6 The only unifying guidelines that determined the police recruitment
policy were the notion of the martial race, responsible for the high number
of Hausas, and the principle of policing strangers by strangers. Africans
from other territories were called in to join the police force because
they were considered to stand sufficiently close, yet not too close, to
the native populace.
While the importance of controlling
the colonial frontiers over the years declined, the Gold Coast police force
did retain several military functions next to its civil duties. These mainly
involved fiscal control through the collection of taxes. Though many inland
areas remained unpoliced, the police relied extensively on the cooperation
of local chiefs. The support of the chiefs was secured and regulated through
the Native Jurisdiction Ordinance, passed in 1878 and enforced in 1883.
The Ordinance transferred most chiefly powers to the Crown, but it also
allowed tribal chiefs make by-laws, subject to the Governor's consent.
While the police force was in those early days expected to interpret and
administer the law and was free to exercise personal judgment, unlike the
soldiers who had to obey orders, the force was generally unstable and demoralized.
The police was unpopular with the native population, and, in spite of its
ethnic composition, it was generally conceived as an intrusive alien force.
As early as 1886, African policemen were stoned in Accra, because they
were considered traitors of the native African community.
Until 1901, the Gold Coast
Constabulary embraced both police and military functions. Then it was officially
separated into the Gold Coast Regiment and the Gold Coast Constabulary.
The centralized Gold Coast Constabulary was accompanied by uniformed but
unarmed Native Authority Forces for the enforcement of customary laws.
The official separation between military and policing tasks, however, did
not prevent the transition from military to civil police work to be more
rhetoric than reality. During the 1920s specialized civil police divisions
were created (e.g. separate Escort, Mines, and Railway Police units), but
the police remained first and foremost an armed force directed at the paramilitary
protection of the political and, especially, economic interests of the
colonial powers. The police surveyed the European owned mining infrastructures,
agricultural production areas, and the transportation of goods. Thus, policing
had hardly anything to do with serving the community, but was primarily
directed at upholding the authority of colonial rule.
After the second World War,
political instability and public unrest were to announce major changes
in the organization of the police. Riots in 1948 caught the police unprepared
and led to a rapid expansion and gradual Africanization of the police force.
The central Commissioner of police now gained control over four regional
commands, divided into several districts and provinces, which were each
headed by an Assistant Superintendent of Police. The force had expanded
to no less than 8,000 agents, including Palestine recruits. The duties
of the force were divided over the General Police, a largely literate force
engaged in criminal procedures, and the Escort Police, which was illiterate
and took care of routine watch duties and patrols. The Escort Police had
a special division of the Mounted Escort Police whose members wore a uniform
that included an Indian cavalry style turban. The expansion of the force
was not only characterized by the policy of policing strangers by strangers,
it also involved a strengthening of its political and economic functions
to uphold colonial rule. The expanded police force was largely engaged
in riot control. Riots continued to break out because of food shortages
and led to the inauguration of the special anti-riot Elmina Mobile Force
in 1948. The police pamphlet "Riot Drill" provided instructions for riot
control based on experiences in the other British colonies.
After industrial unrests
started to break out and a general strike had taken place in 1949, the
way to African self-government was prepared. Supported by the National
Liberation Movement, several disturbances took place against British rule,
including attacks on police barracks. The police force was rapidly professionalized
and expanded in a last attempt of the British colonial rulers to retain
their power. Although the police's Special Branch, specialized in political
intelligence work, tried to gather information on the precise significance
of the unrests in the country, no coherent view and policy could be agreed
upon by the British power holders. In 1951 the first general elections
were held, but matters of law and order remained under British control
for another six years. In 1957, after 113 years of British rule, the Gold
Coast gained independence and was renamed Ghana. The Gold Coast Regiment
was reformed into the Ghana Army. The Gold Coast Constabulary was renamed
the Ghana Police Service, and remained patterned after the British imposed
police system, enforcing criminal codes inherited from British colonialism.
The police force was further modernized (in 1959 the Police Training School
was opened in Accra) and Africanized (by 1960 the force was composed of
90 percent Ghanaians). The newly installed political regime, however, rapidly
became dictatorial and had to face massive popular opposition. After a
police constable had tried to kill President Nkrumah, the police was disarmed,
and the President instituted a secret security police. In 1966, a military-police
coup was successful in overthrowing the regime. The intelligence services
of the police, directly resulting out of British colonialism, proved essential
for the success of the rebellion.
Military, Political, and
Criminal Policing in Colonial Kenya
Kenya provides one of the
best documented case studies of colonial policing and offers some remarkable
elements to gain better insight into the changing nature of policing in
the British colonial empire.7 The history of policing in Kenya, until 1920
called British East Africa, started in 1896 when the British Foreign Office
ordered the first police station to be opened in the city of Mombasa. The
officer of the force came in from the Zanzibar police and had previously
served in India. Originally, the force comprised some 150 agents, including
Indians, Somali, Swahili and Carmorans. Next to the official colonial police,
the Imperial British East Africa Company also had policing units at its
disposal. For the protection of its trade and commerce activities the Company
could appeal to the East African Rifles and the Uganda Rifles, two military
forces later merged into one army, the King's African Rifles. In addition,
a railway engineer established the Uganda Railway Police. The main tasks
of these forces were related to the territorial and economic establishment
of colonial rule.
The first important internal
duties of the police were developed with the passing of the Palm Wine Regulations
in 1900. This law stipulated that all persons distilling and selling wine
had to have a license provided by the District Collector. The free movement
of wine was considered disadvantageous for African employment in European
companies because it was thought that Africans whose livelihood dependend
on the production and distribution of wine could easily avoid contract
work with the British occupiers. The consumption of wine was also considered
detrimental for the quality of work performed by the African labor force.
The police forces had actually been the first to alert to these problems,
in which way they were directly instrumental for the creation of the wine
law. The hut taxes that were imposed on the Africans also served economic
motives. Because Africans had to pay their taxes in cash money, they were
forced to take up wage labor with the European owners. Vagrancy laws, moreover,
also sought to control the African labor force and were massively enforced
by the police.
The first major police reorganizations
took place around 1902. More police stations were opened, and the Railway
police were absorbed into the official colonial police force to become
the British East Africa Police (in 1920 it was renamed Kenya Police). Improvements
were made in drill and discipline, new uniforms were introduced, a Fingerprint
Bureau was set up in the Nairobi headquarters, and more inspectors were
appointed. The inspectors were all European, the assistant inspectors largely
Asian, and the rank and file was entirely comprised of Africans. By 1910,
the force contained no less than 2,000 men, but still they were largely
enforcing the law only in the urban centers, while the unarmed Tribal Police
was left to control the inland Native Reserves. The different District
Commissioners headed the tribal forces in their areas, but in their everyday
operation the Tribal Police were quite independently run by the local chiefs.
Of course, criminal activities were not restricted to the jurisdictional
areas mapped out by British colonialism, so that people could always commit
a crime in one area and flee into a Native Reserve where the local chief
would not enforce the law. To ensure better coordination of activities
between central and tribal police forces, the Stock and Produce Theft Ordinance
was passed in 1913. The law sanctioned collective punishments in case the
Tribal Police and the local chief did not cooperate in the apprehension
of criminals. During the first World War, the Police Service Battalion
was formed to fight against the German enemy in neighboring German East
Africa. After the war, civil police duties were resumed, and the police
force was expanded.
The criminal laws the police
had to enforce were originally planned to be quite similar to the British
codes. However, the colonial rulers soon decided that preference should
be given to introduce Indian law in Kenya since, unlike British law, Indian
law was codified and thus thought off to be a better instrument to control
the African population. The Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Act, and
the Police Act which were introduced in colonial Kenya, were all imported
from British India. Next to this imported legal system, the British took
into account customary laws: cases involving Africans were guided by native
regulations, so far as applicable, and inasmuch as they were reconcilable
with British standards of legal morality. The activities of the police
involved night patrols in the urban areas, the detection of property crimes,
the enforcement of labor laws on settler farms, the execution of death
sentences, and, more than anything else, the protection of European property
and persons. The enforcement of minor offenses took up most of the police
time. In 1937, for instance, no less than 6,000 Africans were prosecuted
for being resident in townships without permission, or because of failure
to produce a pass, over 3,000 for crimes against property, more than 4,700
for not paying hut taxes, and more than 1,000 for vagrancy. Despite these
impressive figures, however, many laws were not enforced by the police
who ran their operations quite independently from the colonial legal administration.
In the years before the second
World War, as crime became increasingly professional and organized, the
police expanded its facilities and manpower. By the end of the war, the
Kenya Police had largely taken over most activities from the Tribal Police
forces, and now comprised some 5,000 agents, most of which were Kenya Africans.
The Kenya Police was also rapidly professionalized after the war: a Mounted
Branch was established for patrol and pursuit work, an Emergency Company
was set up to handle labor unrests (there had been strikes in Mombasa in
1947 and in Nairobi in 1949), and the enforcement of traffic regulations
began to take up a lot of police time (in 1951 the traffic court in Nairobi
dealt with some 700 traffic offences per month).
The evolution of the ethnic
composition of the Kenya Police is quite remarkable, considering that Kenya
harbored some 27 tribes next to Asian migrants and European settlers. The
Imperial British East Africa Company had already recruited Indians for
police duties in 1887, and later more Asians and local Africans were recruited
into the Kenya Police. Very likely, the decision to recruit Africans, which
conformed to the policy of indirect rule, should also have helped prevent
the Asian community, which was largely engaged in trade and commercial
activities, from taking too much control over the area. The notion of the
martial race was again important in deciding which tribal groups were to
be recruited from the African population. Some figures may illustrate these
principles: in 1949 the police consisted of 84 British officers, 269 British,
41 Asian and 115 African inspectors, 22 Asian sergeants, and more than
5,500 African sergeants and constables. In 1954 the African police comprised
only 2 percent Kikuyu, though they took up 20 percent of the total population,
and 18 percent Kamba, who represented about 12 percent of all Kenyan tribes.
Crucial events affecting
the structure and operation of the Kenya police took place in the early
1950s with the rise of the Mau Mau movement. This religious-political movement
sought to overthrow British rule, and engaged in terrorism, arson, and
the killing of Europeans and African collaborators. One of its tactics
was to withhold from the police any information on crimes involving Africans.
The activities of the Mau Mau movement had already started around 1947,
and the political intelligence division of the police, the Special Branch,
had reported on its potential dangers for British rule. But initially British
authorities did not respond to these reports and thought off the movement
as a politically irrelevant religious group. Only after the Mau Mau movement
had vigorously shown its revolutionary political intentions, a state of
emergency was declared in October 1952, and the police force was again
brought to the center of political activities. The police now reacted energetically
against any actions by the Mau Mau movement. Regular police work had to
make way for semi-military actions in a three-legged anti Mau Mau campaign,
involving the police, the colonial administration, and the army. By 1954
some 78,000 prisoners were taken as a result of the campaign. Police operations
were facilitated by an expanded Special Branch, the import of more British
trained policemen, a special police bureau (the Special Effort Force) set
up in 1953 to deal with the Mau Mau movement, the appointment of several
District Military Intelligence Officers, nearly 200 Police Signals stations
for the exchange of information, vehicles with radio communications, and
two aircrafts. By 1954, the expanded police force consisted of some 14,000
policemen for a population of about 5,000,000 people. The increased police
efforts proved successful in the control of Mau Mau activities. Though
other police operations had suffered, the Mau Mau movement was virtually
eradicated by 1957. Thereafter the police could return to its normal duties,
and the country was again considered peaceful. During the final years of
the 1950s, legitimate African political activity was resumed, and political
meetings could again be held on the condition that they had been authorized
by the British administration. To improve the relations between the police
and the public, the police forces were gradually Africanized.
The period of peaceful and
civil oriented policing, however, was very short. In the early 1960s the
country was again very restless, facing unemployment, economic stagnation,
and ethnic disturbances. Inevitably, the way had to be made free for African
majority rule. When independence was in sight, the Africanization of the
police force was rapidly increased, and the tribal composition of the force
was adjusted to the ethnic composition in the country. Finally, elections
were held in 1961, and Kenya received independence in 1963. Regular police
duties were resumed in the newly created state, and, remarkably though
not all together surprisingly in light of its colonial past, the police
also took up political intelligence work in support of the new African
rulers.
Continuities and Discontinuities
in British Colonial Policing
The mere identification of
the changing means and nature of colonial policing in Nyasaland, the Gold
Coast, and Kenya already indicates the complexity and significance of law
enforcement as a crucial element in the establishment, continuation, and
eventual decline of British colonial domination. Some broader insight may
be gained from a discussion of colonial policing in relation to the political,
economic and legal foundations of British colonial government. In addition,
I will situate colonial policing within the history of the British tradition
of law enforcement.
Colonial Policing, Customary
Law, and Indirect Rule
The police forces in the
colonies I discussed consisted of both imposed central units and tribal
law enforcement forces. As with indirect rule in general, tribal police
units were shaped by British conceptions of law enforcement, and can in
no way be presumed to represent existing African legal practices. Projected
African law enforcement clouded larger British strategies directed at political
control and economic exploitation. The broader goals of British colonialism
were also reflected in the ethnic composition of African recruitment. Based
on the imperial notion of martial race, the British colonial administration
sought to incorporate African and Asian people into colonial law enforcement
units to fulfil the ambiguous, yet likely more efficient, role of close,
but not too close, policing. The examples mentioned in the previous section
make this clear and are confirmed by information from other colonies. In
British Guiana, for instance, the police consisted of British officers,
agents from Barbados and "individuals from Germany, Holland, Ireland, the
United States, Madeira, Africa, Calcutta, China, Surinam, and various West
Indian islands".8 This kind of multi-ethnic recruitment strategy reveals
the British belief that members of the native population could provide
a necessary link with the British rulers to increase the efficiency of
police work. Therefore, it was carefully arranged that native policemen
did not serve in their own region of origin or residence, which was considered
too dangerous, but were to police other regions of the conquered colony,
or were even exported into other British colonies. The policy of policing
strangers by strangers was in practice facilitated by the fact that native
recruits enjoyed several benefits when they joined the police force (e.g.
relatively high salary, and exemption from hut tax and hard manual labor).
At the same time, British hegemony was secured through the appointment
of British officers, though occasionally reliable Asians were also allowed
in commanding positions. The British control over law enforcement in the
colony was thus always predominant, in spite of the existence of relatively
independent tribal police forces. The gradual Africanization of the police
forces in later years, when African self-government became unavoidable,
likewise does not seem to follow from humanitarian concerns, but rather
reflected a carefully planned engineering of the inevitable path to African
independence.9
The fact that next to a central
police force a tribal police was maintained also reflects the principles
of indirect rule and customary law. The enforcement of customary laws was
mostly left to the tribal police, which operated in the economically unexplored
rural regions, while the central police handled violations of introduced
British criminal codes in areas of European settlement. Not surprisingly,
many of the introduced laws were meant to secure political stability and
served the economic interests of colonial power. The fact that much of
the police work was involved in enforcing property, tax and labor laws
testifies to this. Furthermore, many private police forces were established
by colonial companies, which again shows how law enforcement and commercial
imperialism were inextricably linked. Various aspects of colonial policing,
then, cannot be accounted for on the basis of a transposed model of western
policing, which would unjustly emphasize the role of law enforcement in
the prevention and detection of crimes as defined by systems of law. Rather,
it is imperative to consider the profit-motivated expansion and politically
motivated formation of colonial rule to adequately understand the development
of colonial policing.10 In addition, this perspective helps explain that
contemporary law enforcement in former colonial countries is, precisely
because of its past functions and characteristics during the colonial era,
more prone to play a role in political, economic and military affairs than
in western societies with stronger democratic legal traditions.11
Colonial Law Enforcement
in the History of British Policing
An important factor in the
relation between colonial policing abroad and British policing at home
is the aspired reliance in the formation of colonial law enforcement units
on the model of the Royal Irish Constabulary. In Britain, two types of
policing have historically emerged out of the Royal Irish Constabulary
and the Metropolitan Police.12 The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was formed
in 1836 to deal with the disturbances in British occupied Ireland. This
police force was organized like a military force: the RIC agents lived
in barracks, the different police units were headed by a commander whose
orders the agents had to obey, and the commander was directly responsible
to the British administration in Ireland. The RIC was primarily formed
to uphold British political rule in occupied Ireland rather than to enforce
the law.
The Metropolitan Police,
on the other hand, was first established in London in 1829 and became a
model for the police in all British towns and cities. This civil police
force was in the first instance directed at the preservation of order and
the prevention and detection of crime. The Metropolitan Police was not
organized as a military but as a civilian force. Metropolitan Police agents
were officially considered enforcers of the law, not servants of any political
government. The policemen all had the same duties and were each individually
accountable for their actions. The Metropolitan force was also unarmed
and its agents lived inside the community they were responsible for.
The differences between these
two British police forces may explain why the British colonial rulers decided
to introduce the Irish police model in its colonies overseas.13 It was
ascertained that the semi-military RIC police force was better suited to
establish, maintain, and secure the enforcement of British imposed colonial
laws. The police forces established in Nyasaland, the Gold Coast, and Kenya
were indeed first and foremost semi-military forces that were housed in
barracks and were separated from the community. Colonial police agents
also performed their duties under the control of officers who were primarily
responsible to the local administrative authorities and not to a legal
system. The general reliance on the model of the Royal Irish Constabulary
clarifies, for instance, the introduction in Kenya of Indian based police
organizations, since the Indian police force was itself directly modelled
after the RIC.14
This kind of cross-border
importation of a police force, and the recruitment of policemen from one
colony to another, are central features of colonial policing, and they
point to the fact that a colonial police force cannot be adequately comprehended
without taking into account the history of other colonies in the British
empire. Moreover, the return of colonial officers to Britain to join police
forces in the homeland suggests that policing in Britain was, at least
partly, formed by the imperial experience.15 The study of law enforcement
in any one colony, therefore, is at once a study of colonial policing across
the world as well as of policing in the homeland.
The British conception of
colonial policing, specifically as it relates to a shift from the territorial
conquest to the internal stabilization of control, also implied that the
military character of the police would gradually make way for a police
force designed to perform civil duties. In the history of British policing,
this can be seen as a transformation of policing from the Irish to the
Metropolitan model. But, as the case studies showed, this was not a goal
easily fulfilled, and the introduction of civilian police forces remained
often more an aspiration than an accomplishment.16 During the formative
years of the colonies, the military functions of the police were dominant,
and once the colonial territory was established, the creation of a more
genuine police force, with civil duties, slowly took place. However, the
shift to normal police duties was never complete, with military reserves
always standing by, and never lasted long because of mounting political
and economic tensions. Particularly, not long after the colonies were territorially
consolidated, political activities of African nationalism often led to
social unrest and forced the British colonial authorities to adopt forceful
measures to preserve European domination. The police forces then had to
engage in political activities, much like the military forces from which
they originated. When self-government became unavoidable, an orderly and
dignified as possible retreat was prepared, notably through a general Africanization
of the force and the training of African officers.17 The processes of militarization,
de-militarization, and re-militarization, as well as the changing nature
of Africanization, indicate how important it is to take into account the
temporal dimension from colony formation and consolidation to African self-government.
Moreover, it shows the rather ad hoc and often muddled way in which the
colonial powers responded to changing conditions.
Finally, it can be noted
that, while the general goal of British colonial rule was to create institutions
as British, or as Irish, as possible, adaptations to local circumstances
were always necessary, which suggests a more complex pattern than is expected
from the perspective of dependency theory.18 The inlands of the colonies,
for instance, were often not policed, either because of ecological conditions,
or because the area was not considered economically attractive for European
settlement. The opportunities for the economic exploitation of a region
heavily influenced the nature of law enforcement. This is clear from the
economic role of much of the colonial police work (e.g. surveillance of
European property and persons, collection of taxes, recruitment of wage
labor), the establishment of private police forces alongside Company Rule,
and the military and political nature of law enforcement in the transformation
from conquest to abandonment of the territory. The reliance of the colonial
police on the Royal Irish Constabulary, its evolution from military to
civil and back to military duties, the ethnic composition of the force,
and the adaptation to local circumstances given the overall goal of political
and economic conquest, indicate how British colonial policing reveals certain
general, re-occurring patterns, as well as locally specific features and
variations over space and time.
Conclusion: Problems and
Prospects in the Study of Colonial Policing
Many chapters in the history
of colonial policing still have to be written. As I pointed out at the
beginning of this paper, investigations into the means and nature of colonial
law enforcement form a relatively neglected field of study. It appears
that most research during and after the colonial era has concentrated,
understandably perhaps, on the erosion of native cultures and the devastating
impact of modernization and industrialization. Attention has also been
paid to the political, economic, and legal aspects of colonialism. Legal-anthropological
research, for instance, has markedly advanced its scope and perspectives,
centering on new approaches to law and law related processes and often
leading to demystify some of the all too long taken for granted myths of
the so-called benign nature of British indirect rule.19 However, legal-anthropologists
mostly focus on the production of colonial law, the European construction
of customary law, the historical dimensions of legal change, and the actual
behavior of law in disputing processes in colonial courts. What is involved
in the enforcement of colonial laws is not dealt with, or but mentioned
in passing.
The main problem resulting
out of this neglect for the enforcement of colonial laws is that adequate
models for a thorough analysis of the patterns of colonial policing are
lacking, and that many issues still remain unexplored. The work that has
been done on the dimension of colonial policing is mainly historical and
descriptive. Of course, such analyses are important, but research should
also go further to ask pertinent questions inspired by the wide body of
police studies developed from a sociological and criminological perspective,
yet which is mainly applied to western countries. Additional research would
prove invaluable to clarify some of the following issues: - the links between
colonial political rule and economic company rule and their effects on
colonial policing; - the relations between the central colonial police
forces and the native forces; - the concrete operation of colonial policing,
enforcement and non-enforcement, and its repercussions for colonial legal
systems; - the relationships between colonial police forces, private police
units, and the army; - the impact of colonial policing on native cultural
experiences of European domination; - the adaptations of colonial policing
to local circumstances versus the adherence to an ideal model of imperial
law enforcement; - the changing nature of colonial policing in the history
of the colonies, and the related processes of militarization and de-militarization,
professionalization, and Africanization; and - the results of this evolution
for present police formations in the new African states. A detailed comparison
of more case studies of policing in British colonial Africa is needed to
more carefully analyze some of the patterns that I have clarified in this
paper. In addition, a comparison of the police forces of colonies in different
continents, and occupied by alien powers from different European regimes,
would reveal crucial information on the interdependencies between past,
and consequently contemporary, forms of policing across the world.20
In conclusion, I wish to
shortly explore one of the issues that, I believe, merits further attention.
A cross-cultural comparative study of policing in the British colonies
with the police forces that evolved in French administered colonial states
can be well-founded based on anthropological accounts of colonialism21
and sociological perspectives of policing.22 First, Britain and France
each had a distinct approach to colonialism because of their different
emphasis on indirect versus direct rule, that is, the incorporation of
native authority into colonial institutions versus the substitution of
local rule by colonial command. Second, the two countries have markedly
different traditions of legal ideologies: British common law is grounded
on decisions of earlier courts (precedent law) and adopts an accusatorial
model (presumed innocent assumption), while French civil law is based on
statutes and doctrines (codified law), and employs an inquisitional model
(presumed guilty assumption). Finally, Britain and France are also known
for their distinct conceptions of the role of policing. The British policing
system developed principally out of a decentralized unarmed civilian force
(the Metropolitan Police), while the French police are established around
a centralized armed force (the Gendarmerie).
The analysis which I undertook
in this paper only focused on policing in three British colonies but nevertheless
reveals some elements that may show the value of a comparison of policing
under British and French colonialism. First of all, it is striking to note
that British colonial rule did not introduce the genuinely British model
of the Metropolitan unarmed civilian police into its colonies. Instead,
it relied on the Royal Irish Constabulary, which is in fact a police force
more closely akin to the European-continental armed and centralized Gendarmerie.
The police in the British colonies were also not an independently operating
force adherent only to the law, but were intimately linked to the economic
imperatives of Company Rule and subject to the political administration
of the Colonial Districts. Next, critical questions can also be asked about
the import of British common law in the colonies. Common law may have been
applied to the European settlers in the colonies, but as far as the African
populations were concerned, British law was mixed with the European construction
of customary law, forming an amalgam of entirely divergent legal principles.
Moreover, in light of the economic and political-military role of colonial
rule, it does not seem very wise to employ such notions as the presumed
innocent principle for an understanding of colonial law enforcement. British
laws were introduced, but always with certain mutations, largely for economic
and political purposes, to form a hybrid of laws, reflected in a mixture
of central and native colonial law enforcement units. Finally, the distinction
between indirect and direct rule seems to become quite fuzzy when colonial
policing is considered, as the repressive nature of British colonial policing
testifies, and seems to point to differences in degree rather than quality.
Further analysis is needed to reveal how these adaptations of British policing
relate to patterns of law enforcement in the French colonies. In this regard,
the data that cross-cultural research on colonial policing would bring
forth could be quite demystifying to some all too readily accepted presumptions
in our understanding of the colonial era as well as its persisting relevance
for the once colonized countries today.
Notes
1 See the discussions in:
Michael Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1968); Michael Crowder, Colonial West Africa: Collected
Essays (London: Frank Cass, 1978).
2 On the policy of customary
law, and its relation to European imperialism, see: James S. Read, "Customary
Law under Colonial Rule", in H.F. Morris, and J.S. Read, eds., Indirect
Rule and the Search for Justice: Essays in East African Legal History,
167-212. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); Kristin Mann and Richard Roberts,
"Law in Colonial Africa", in K. Mann and R. Roberts, eds., Law in Colonial
Africa, 3-58 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991); John R. Schmidhauser, "Legal
Imperialism: Its Enduring Impact on Colonial and Post-Colonial Judicial
Systems", International Political Science Review, 13 (1992), 321-334.
3 Some recently published
collections on colonial policing have done much to advance knowledge of
the issue, specifically by providing much needed historical data. See,
particularly: David M. Anderson and David Killingray, eds., Policing the
Empire: Government, Authority and Control, 1830-1940 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1991); David M. Anderson and David Killingray, eds.,
Policing and Decolonisation: Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 1917-1965
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992); Anthony Clayton and David
Killingray, Khaki and Blue: Military and Police in British Colonial Africa
(Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1989).
4 Historical data on policing
in Nyasaland are taken from: Anthony Clayton, "Law Enforcement and Colonial
Police Forces", in A. Clayton and D. Killingray, Khaki and Blue: Military
and Police in British Colonial Africa, 67-78 (Athens, OH: Ohio University
Center for International Studies, 1989); John McCracken, "Coercion and
Control in Nyasaland: Aspects of the History of a Colonial Police Force",
Journal of African History, 27 (1986), 127-148; John McCracken, "Authority
and Legitimacy in Malawi: Policing and Politics in a Colonial State", in
D.M. Anderson and D. Killingray, eds., Policing and Decolonisation: Politics,
Nationalism and the Police, 1917-1965, 158-168 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1992).
5 This section draws on:
Anthony Clayton, "Law Enforcement and Colonial Police Forces", op.cit.,
12-26; W.H. Gillespie, The Gold Coast Police, 1844-1938 (Accra, Gold Coast:
The Government Printer, 1955); David Killingray, "Guarding the extending
frontier: Policing the Gold Coast, 1865-1913", in D.M. Anderson and D.
Killingray, eds., Policing the Empire: Government, Authority and Control,
1830-1940, 106-125 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991); Ernest
W. Lefever, Spear and Scepter: Army, Police, and Politics in Tropical Africa,
33-79 (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1970); Richard Rathbone,
"Political intelligence and policing in Ghana in the late 1940s and 1950s",
in D.M. Anderson and D. Killingray, eds., Policing and Decolonisation:
Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 1917-1965, 84-104 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1992).
6 David Killingray, "Guarding
the extending frontier: Policing the Gold Coast, 1865-1913", op. cit.,
112.
7 See: David M. Anderson,
"Policing, Prosecution and the Law in Colonial Kenya, 1905-39", in D.M.
Anderson and D. Killingray, eds., Policing the Empire: Government, Authority
and Control, 1830-1940, 183-200 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1991); Anthony Clayton, "Law Enforcement and Colonial Police Forces", op.
cit., 79-142; C.J. Duder, "Men of the officer class: The participants in
the 1919 soldier settlement scheme in Kenya", African Affairs, 92 (1993),
69-87; W.R. Foran, The Kenya Police, 1887-1960 (London: Robert Hale Limited,
1962); David Throup, "Crime, Politics and the Police in Colonial Kenya,
1939-63", in D.M. Anderson and D. Killingray, eds., Policing and Decolonisation:
Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 1917-1965, 127-157 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1992); Justin Willis, "Thieves, Drunkards and Vagrants:
Defining Crime in Colonial Mombasa, 1902-1932", in D.M. Anderson and D.
Killingray, eds., Policing the Empire: Government, Authority and Control,
1830-1940, 219-235 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991); James
B. Wolf, "Asian and African Recruitment in the Kenya Police, 1920-1950",
International Journal of African Historical Studies, 6 (1973), 401-412.
8 George K. Danns, Domination
and Power in Guyana: A Study of the Police in a Third World Context, 19
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1982).
9 See: David M. Anderson
and David Killingray, "Consent, Coercion and Colonial Control: Policing
the Empire, 1830-1940", in D.M. Anderson, and D. Killingray, eds., Policing
the Empire: Government, Authority and Control, 1830-1940, 1-17 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1991); William F. Gutteridge, "Military and
police forces in colonial Africa", in L.H. Gann and P. Duignan, eds., Colonialism
in Africa 1870-1960, 286-319 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
10 Stanley Cohen, "Western
crime control models in the third world: Benign or malignant, Research
in Law, Deviance and Social Control, 4 (1982), 85-119; David Killingray,
"The Maintenance of Law and Order in British Colonial Africa", African
Affairs, 85 (1986), 411-437. It should be noted that recent perspectives
in the police literature have suggested that western policing, too, cannot
be exclusively framed in terms of legal systems, but should also consider
its political connections and economic-industrial aspects. See the discussions
in: Stanley Cohen, Visions of Social Control (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1985); Mathieu Deflem, "The Invisibilities of Social Control", Crime, Law
and Social Change 18 (1992), 177-192; Steven Spitzer, "The Rationalization
of Crime Control in Capitalist Societies", Contemporary Crises 3 (1979),
187-206.
11 Research indeed indicates
that contemporary police work in former colonies is often inefficient because
of a lack of western technical facilities and organizational skills which
were no longer available in the post-colonial era. Post-colonial police
forces perform not only civil crime duties but at the same time operate
as a semi-military force involved with the control of political activities.
Popular perceptions of the police are often highly negative because of
its association with unjust economic and political structures, past and
present. See: James S.E. Opolot, "Police Training in the States of Africa",
Police Studies, 14 (1991), 62-71; Leonard P. Shaidi, "Crime, Justice and
Politics in Contemporary Tanzania: State Power in an Underdeveloped Social
Formation," International Journal of the Sociology of Law 17 (1989), 247-271;
Philip T. Ahire, "Re-Writing the Distorted History of Policing in Colonial
Nigeria", International Journal of the Sociology of Law 18 (1990), 45-60;
Etannibi C.O. Alemika, "Policing and Perceptions of Police in Nigeria",
Police Studies 11 (1988), 161-176; John P. Harlan and Charles P. McDowell,
"The Role of Police in Post-Colonial Sub-Saharan Africa", Police Studies
4 (1981), 21-27; Cynthia H. Enloe, "Ethnicity and Militarization: Factors
Shaping the Roles of Police in Third World Nations", Studies in Comparative
International Development, 11 (1976), 25-38.
12 Philip J. Stead, The Police
of Britain, 36-46, 61-66 (New York: MacMillan, 1985).
13 See the discussions in:
Mike Brogden, "The Emergence of the Police - The Colonial Dimension", British
Journal of Criminology, 27 (1987), 4-14; Richard Hawkins, "The "Irish Model"
and the Empire: A Case for Reassessment", in D.M. Anderson and D. Killingray,
eds, Policing the Empire: Government, Authority and Control, 1830-1940,
18-32 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991); Ernest W. Lefever,
Spear and Scepter: Army, Police, and Politics in Tropical Africa, op.cit.;
John J. Tobias, "The British Colonial Police: An Alternative Police Style",
in P.J. Stead ed., Pioneers in Policing, 241-261 (Montclair, NJ: Patterson
Smith, 1977).
14 David Arnold, Police Power
and Colonial Rule: Madras 1859-1947, 25-34 (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1986).
15 Mike Brogden, "An Act
to Colonise the Internal Lands of the Island: Empire and the Origins of
the Professional Police", International Journal of the Sociology of Law,
15 (1987), 179-208.
16 Adam Clayton, "Law Enforcement
and Colonial Police Forces", op. cit.; Cynthia H. Enloe, "Ethnicity and
Militarization: Factors Shaping the Roles of Police in Third World Nations",
op. cit.; Charles W. Gwynn, Imperial Policing (2nd edition) (London: MacMillan
and Co, 1936); Richard Rathbone, "Political intelligence and policing in
Ghana in the late 1940s and 1950s", op. cit.
17 See: D. Killingray and
D. M. Anderson, "An Orderly Retreat? Policing the End of Empire", in D.M.
Anderson, and D. Killingray, eds., Policing and Decolonisation: Politics,
Nationalism and the Police, 1917-1965, 1-21 (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1992).
18 Marlies Bouman, "A note
on chiefly and national policing in Botswana", Journal of Legal Pluralism,
25&26 (1987), 275-300; Stanley Cohen, "Bandits, Rebels, or Criminals:
African History and Western Criminology", Africa, 54 (1986), 468-483.
19 For comprehensive reviews
of recent work on colonial legal systems, see: Peter Just, "History, Power,
and Culture: Current Directions in the Anthropology of Law", Law and Society
Review, 26 (1992), 373-411; Kristin Mann and Richard Roberts, "Law in Colonial
Africa", op. cit.
20 In this paper I have of
course not considered all the literature which is available on colonial
policing, for instance, in India and South-East Asia. The most comprehensive
collection of works on colonial policing can be found in the bibliographies
in: David M. Anderson and David Killingray, eds., Policing the Empire:
Government, Authority and Control, 1830-1940, op. cit.; David M. Anderson
and David Killingray, eds., Policing and Decolonisation: Politics, Nationalism
and the Police, 1917-1965, op. cit.
21 See, for instance: Michael
Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule, op. cit.; Michael Crowder, Colonial
West Africa: Collected Essays, op. cit.
22 See, for instance: David
H. Bayley, Patterns of Policing: A Comparative International Analysis (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1985); R.I. Mawby, Comparative Policing
Issues: The British and American System in International Perspective (London:
Unwin Hyman, 1990); Philip J. Stead, The Police of France (New York: MacMillan,
1983); Philip J. Stead, The Police of Britain, op. cit.
