Anastasia Dukova – författare

Current policing practices directly continue from historical methods. City policing in the Global North emerged as a response to unrest and subsistence crises during the late stage of the Little Ice Age, namely across two capital cities, Dublin and later London. From the mid-1700s, poor harvests and food rioting precipitated a series of policing reforms in the Irish Parliament. In the 1800s, further weather fluxes and unrest, combined with shifts in interpretation of social obligation - all linked to increasing urban population and its mobility - led to a series of new police reforms in Great Britain, soon reaching its former and current dominions. The expanding urban centres from Ireland to Australia, and England to North America, shared founding principles, structures, regulations and personnel. Despite modernisation and innovations in operational policing, law enforcement continues to face similar challenges in an increasingly globalising world, partly due to persistent adherence to historical antecedents.

Current policing practices directly continue from historical methods. City policing in the Global North emerged as a response to unrest and subsistence crises during the late stage of the Little Ice Age, namely across two capital cities, Dublin and later London. From the mid-1700s, poor harvests and food rioting precipitated a series of policing reforms in the Irish Parliament. In the 1800s, further weather fluxes and unrest, combined with shifts in interpretation of social obligation - all linked to increasing urban population and its mobility - led to a series of new police reforms in Great Britain, soon reaching its former and current dominions. The expanding urban centres from Ireland to Australia, and England to North America, shared founding principles, structures, regulations and personnel. Despite modernisation and innovations in operational policing, law enforcement continues to face similar challenges in an increasingly globalising world, partly due to persistent adherence to historical antecedents.

This 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. 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.