Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940 (Critical Perspectives on Empire) - Hardcover

Thomas, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521768411 ISBN 13: 9780521768412

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2012

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Martin Charles Thomas is Professor of Colonial History in the Department of History at the University of Exeter. He is a director of the University's Centre for the Study of War, State and Society, an interdisciplinary research centre that supports research into the impact of armed conflict and collective violence on societies and communities.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521768411
• ISBN 13: 9780521768412
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 540