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Policing interwar Europe, by Gerald Blaney, Jr.Gerald Blaney, Jr. (ed)

Policing interwar Europe: Continuity, change and crisis, 1918–40

London: Palgrave (2007)

ISBN 9781403992642, pp. 240

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The convulsions of the First World War left considerable economic, social and political instability in their wake, bringing with them significant challenges to the various regimes of interwar Europe. As a result, great emphasis was placed on the need to maintain order as well as to reform the apparatus of the state to meet the demands and expectations of their populations. One of the most crucial institutions for achieving these aims was the police, as their loyalty to a regime, as well as their commitment to its ideology and policies, could prove instrumental in the success of that regime’s objectives and, ultimately, its survival.

Policing interwar Europe contains studies of ten different countries facing similar problems in distinct circumstances, and provides a unique opportunity for comparing how the various regimes of the period attempted to cope with the issues of policing, protest and public order.

Contents:

  1. Jean-Marc Berlière, ‘The difficult construction of a ‘republican’ police: The experience of the French Third Republic’
  2. Gerald Blaney, Jr., ‘Keeping order in republican Spain, 1931–36’
  3. Sara F. Hall, ‘Prussian police reform and the modernization of the academy classroom: The advent of the German police training film, 1919–20’
  4. Stewart Lloyd-Jones and Diego Palacios Cerezales, ‘Guardians of the Republic? Portugal’s Guarda Nacional Republicana and the politicians during the ‘new’ old republic, 1919–22’
  5. Jonathan Dunnage, ‘Mussolini’s policemen, 1922–43’
  6. Samuel Ronsin, ‘Police, republic and nation: The Czechoslovak State Police and the building of a multinational democracy’
  7. Andrzej Musiuk, ‘Police and policing under the Second Polish Republic, 1918–39’
  8. Dimcho N. Dimov, ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde revisited: Policing interwar Bulgaria’
  9. Jos Smeets, ‘ “Turbulent times”: The Dutch police between the two world wars’
  10. Joanne Klein. ‘Traffic, telephones and police boxes: The deterioration of beat policing in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester between the world wars’

Tags: police | republican guard | first republic