‘The ultimate masters of the city’: police, public order and the poor in colonial Bombay, c. 1893-1914
The turn of the twentieth century marked an important watershed in the history of urban ‘public order’ policing in British India. This essay focuses on fin-de-siècle Bombay and describes how the anxieties provoked by rapid industrial urbanization and massive labour migration precipitated an importan...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/chs, |
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| Hlavní autor: | |
| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Français |
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Crime, Histoire & Sociétés
2009
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| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | The turn of the twentieth century marked an important watershed in the history of urban ‘public order’ policing in British India. This essay focuses on fin-de-siècle Bombay and describes how the anxieties provoked by rapid industrial urbanization and massive labour migration precipitated an important shift in colonial policing strategies. In particular, it highlights the significance of a new act, introduced in 1902 that vastly enhanced and consolidated the authority of the police over a range of sites and activities within an emergent ‘proletarian public sphere’. The wide discretionary powers vested in the police by the new act, it is argued, amplified the scale and dimensions of the potential friction between the police and the urban poor in the years leading up to the First World War. |
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