Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth-Century Europe

This book provides the first serious academic exploration of the origins and development of the role of soldier-policemen: the gendarmeries of nineteenth-century Europe. Looking at how the model was first developed in France and then exported across nineteenth-century Europe, it is argued that gendarmes played a significant role in establishing the state, particularly in rural areas. As a result of developing organization and style of policing, the 19th-century gendarme had brought the idea of the state and the state's law to much of continental Europe by the twentieth century.