A 'Weak' State? The English State, the Magistracy and the Reform of Policing in the 1830s

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9803473
AutoresDavid Philips (autor de correspondencia)
Año2004
Volumen119
Número483
Páginas873-891
Fecha de publicación2004-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/119.483.873
OpenAlexW2077617808
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8

It has long been a historical cliché that the English state of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries was a weak one, compared to the bureaucratic states of France or Prussia. This article challenges this view by examining the political struggle over the issue of policing England outside London, in the 1830s and early-1840s. It argues that any definition of the state and its workings in this period must look beyond the small salaried bureaucracy to include the unpaid JPs in county Quarter Sessions. Though they maintained a rhetoric of gentlemanly independence of — and sometimes outright opposition to — the powers of the central state, they were a crucial ingredient of that state. An examination of their role in bringing in police forces for the counties shows that, in important respects, they complemented and strengthened the central state in maintaining law and order in a period of social, economic and political turbulence

Political science · Programming language · State (computer science · Computer Science · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Policing Practices and Perceptions