POLICING CITIES (CAMBRIDGE ELEMENTS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2023)

Policing Cities explores the history of civic policing in the bourgeoning industrial cities of the former British Empire. It looks at the theory of police development and the impact of an emerging civic tradition on the central organisation of policing within the countries governed by the Common Law. The proliferation of Enlightenment principles into local governance and industrial progress, coupled with a series of inclement winters, failed harvests and associated social unrest, culminated in the first successful policing experiments in Dublin (1786) and London (1829).

Queensland Police in the Great War (2022)

Queensland Police in the Great War offers new and detailed knowledge of Queensland wartime policemen, their biographical and service histories; and in a select extended biographies connects their domestic and overseas policing experiences, as many of these men had previously served in police forces of Britain and Ireland.

The book consolidates a wide range of historical content on policing Queensland during and around the time of the Great War.

Early Australian policing had its roots on the streets of Dublin and London, where many of Australia’s first law and order enforcers hailed from.

Intrigued by this connection, historian Anastasia Dukova has researched and recreated the lives of colonial police officers and criminals in her adopted home city of Brisbane. Through exploring their personal stories, Dukova highlights how biography and history are inextricably linked and reveals the differences between metropolitan aspirations and colonial reality. To Preserve and Protect exposes political power abuse, corruption, mismanagement, professional burnout and gendered justice, issues which continue to challenge police forces.

The book illuminates the neglected history of the Dublin Metropolitan Police – a history that has been long overshadowed by existing historiography, which has traditionally been preoccupied with the more radical aspects of Irish history. It explores the origins of the institution and highlights the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s profound influence on the colonial forces, as its legacy reached some of the furthest outposts of the British Empire, including Brisbane, Queensland and Toronto, Upper Canada. In doing so Anastasia Dukova provides much needed nuance and complexity to our understanding of Ireland as a whole, and Dublin in particular, demonstrating that it was far more than a lawless place ravaged by political and sectarian violence. Simultaneously, the book tells the story of the bobby on the beat, the policeman who made the organisation; his work and day, the conditions of service and how they affected or bettered his lot at home and abroad.