试论18世纪欧洲城市警务的发展

近年来,西方史学界开始关注现代早期的警务发展状况。一些学者认为,在探究欧洲城市的发展过程中,很难抛开对城市警务的研究。近年来的研究也表明,在18世纪下半期,欧洲城市警务经历了较大幅度的变革,这主要表现在城市巡逻队数量的减少,并逐渐被专业的警察队伍取代。但在一些城市,也有居民通过自发组织形成＂半专业＂的治安队伍。从历史的角度来看,警察队伍从非专业逐步转变为专业化经历了一个非常复杂的过程。

The Evolution of Police Forces in Urban Europe in the Eighteen Century

Recent years have seen the renewal of historiography concerning the police in the early modern period.Specialists no longer receive the figure of cities without police forces before the creation of modern institutions.Moreover,recent research has demonstrated convergence of a great movement of reflection with reforms of the police forces and organizations in European towns,especially in the second half of the eighteenth century.Two tendencies illustrate this evolution: first,the general decline of the institutions of civic police forces and their replacement by professional forces and,second,the professionalization of municipal police forces.But these reforms of the police force could also be realized via use of traditional mechanisms of community policing.In several cities,inhabitants of the district or neighborhood were again in charge of functions of "modern" policing.Although it is premature to present a global synthesis,various European examples demonstrate that there is no linear historical process leading directly from community or civic policing to a state police force while bypassing the municipal police force.The historical processes of the modernization of the police in early modern Europe are more complex.