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The Circulation of police knowledge in early modern Europe
| After lagging behind English historiography, sociologists, and political scientists, the French police has finally become the subject of historical study in the past fifteen years. Along with numerous studies in contemporary history, French historians of the early modern period have begun to compare their findings by noting the diversity of models of police in the Ancien Régime period. This renewal of the history of the French police should be pursued through a comparative and dynamic approach in order that it take part in a European history of policing. Rather than compare the historiography of each country, it should highlight the ensemble of these exchanges detectable both within and beyond the borders of Europe. A group research project, named CIRSAP (“Circulation et contruction des savoirs policiers européens, 1650-1850”) has been created in order to look for these exchanges.The circulation of ideas and practices cannot be over-simplified as mere national approaches to the most know phenomena such as the Lieutenance générale de police in Paris or the Napoleonic police. As early as the seventeenth century, the circles in charge of the police participated in exchanges, interested in how different methods elaborated elsewhere confronted with common issues. Thus circulation of police « knowledge » accelerated during the conquests of the French Revolution and the First Empire in Western Europe. The goal of this team is to recreate these exchanges, these links, these conduits between European police forces, mechanisms of imitation or transfer, of adaptation or rejection of police techniques from one country to another. Its second objective is to use this inquiry and pre-existing links to lead a dialogue between French, European and non-European historians and sociologists of the police.
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