This book offers a global history of civilian, military and gendarmerie-style policing around the First World War. Whilst many aspects of the Great War have been revisited in light of the centenary, and in spite of the recent growth of modern policing history, the role and fate of police forces in the conflict has been largely forgotten. Yet the war affected all European and extra-European police forces. Despite their diversity, all were confronted with transnational factors and forms of disorder, and suffered generally from mass-conscription. During the conflict, societies and states were faced with a crisis situation of unprecedented magnitude with mass mechanised killing on the battle field, and starvation, occupation, destruction, and in some cases even revolution, on the home front. Based on a wide geographical and chronological scope from the late nineteenth century to the interwar years this collection of essays explores the policing of European belligerent countries, alongside their empires, and neutral countries. The books approach crosses traditional boundaries between neutral and belligerent nations, centres and peripheries, and frontline and rear areas. It focuses on the involvement and wartime transformations of these law-enforcement forces, thus highlighting underlying changes in police organisation, identity and practices across this period.

Jonas Campion is Visiting Lecturer at UCLouvain, Belgium, Assistant Lecturer at the University of Lille, France, and Researcher at the IRHIS institute, France.

Laurent López is Research and Teaching Fellow at the French Defence History Service, Vincennes, France.

Guillaume Payen is Lecturer at Sorbonne University and Researcher at the Centre dHistoire du XIXè Siècle, France.

Preface; Clive Emsley.- Introduction - Policing in Wartime: Without any Disruption?; Jonas Campion, Laurent López& Guillaume Payen.- PART I: POLICE FORCES AT THE FRONT.- 1. Bobbies in Khaki: The British Military Police in the First World War; Clive Emsley.- 2. Is there an Lotharingian Axis in Military Police? Belgian, French, and Italian Cases during the First World War: A Study in Comparative Policing History; Louis Panel.- 3. Tracking the Enemy Within: Alcoholisation of the Troops, Excesses in Military Order and the French Gendarmerie During the First World War; Stéphane Le Bras.- 4. The Italian Carabinieri in the Third Dimension; Flavio Carbone.- 5. A Wartime Secret Police: Activities of the Geheime Feldpolizei on the Western Front during the First World War; Gérald Sawicki.- 6. Disarmed and Captive: Greek Gendarmes in Görlitz; Anastasios Zografos.- PART II: POLICE FORCES ON THE HOME FRONT.- 7. Normal Police Work in Times of War: Really? The Case of Ille-et-Vilaine; Jean-François Tanguy.- 8. The Großherzoglich Oldenburgisches Gendarmeriekorps, Oldenburg Communal Police Forces and Prussian Hilfsgendarmen: The Policing System in Oldenburg; Gerhard Wiechmann.- 9. The Gendarmerie of Luxembourg; Gérald Arboit.- 10. The Gendarmerie of the Habsburg Empire; Helmut Gebhardt.- 11. Serbian Gendarmerie Involvement in WWI: From Keeping Order in the Rear to Fighting on the Front Line; Stanislav Sretenovi.- PART III: POLICING FAR FROM THE WAR? THE EMPIRES AND THE NEUTRALS.- 12. The Swiss Police Forces at War; Christophe Vuilleumier.- 13. The Swiss Gendarmerie darmée: A Heterogeneous Force Facing the First World War; Philippe Hebeisen.- 14. Fighting the Enemy Within: Australian Police and Internal Security in World War I; Joan Beaumont.- 15. Coercion, Consent and Surveillance: Policing New Zealand; Richard Hill.- 16. Police Askaris, Kaiserliche Landespolizisten and Leoleo: The German Colonial Police Forces in 1914/15; Gerhard Wiechmann.- PART IV: THE AFTERMATH OF THE WAR - BACK TO PEACETIME POLICING.- 17. The Russian Police in War and Revolution; Jonathan Daly.- 18. Finding a New Balance: The Belgian Security System in the Aftermath of the War; Jonas Campion.- 19. A War without an End: French Gendarmes and the Post-Conflict Process, 1918-1921; Romain Pécout.- 20. The Penetration of French Ideas: The Role of The Gendarmerie of Alsace and Lorraine in the Reconstruction of the French National Identity, 1918-1925; Georges Philippot.- 21. Parisian Policemen and the Traces of a Such a Long War; Christian Chevandier.- Conclusion; Guillaume Payen.- Conclusion: Living and seeing the war without immediate experience; Jonas Campion and Laurent López.