"The Crown's Colonial Enforcers": The Stories of Two West Indian Police Officers

Abstract:Using the process described by Jennifer Jensen Wallach as "empathetic re-feeling", this paper engages in a comparative analysis of two memoirs written by British colonial police officers who worked in the Caribbean between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study shows that although British colonial policemen had unique and varied experiences and saw and interpreted their worlds in different ways, policemen living in different parts of the West Indies similarly saw themselves as important members of the British colonial establishment, helping to maintain law and order in the region.