How did law enforcement work in the past? From what I've about the Roman Republic they never had any type of police force and the same seems to hold true for the Empire. The laws they did have was made by the elites to handle certain conflict between other elites. Use of private force would could include murder in retaliation seemed to be allowed to some extent.
In Italian Manpower (pp.551-557) the author talks about the elites arming their slaves/retainers and taking others property or using their own little private armies for political reasons.
In The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (pp.433-448) also mentions such violence noting that many of the pleb uprisings were really just rabble rousing from the elite.
Did other places around the world at that time create any police like forces?
I think for most of human history in most places it was just left to the involved and their families to sort things out.
Of course if there was a really big problem you could send in the military.
Adrian Russell
I'm pretty sure that Roman Vigiles acted as a sort of law enforcement.
Dominic Diaz
Law enforcement meant "not letting the plebs riot in the streets". Actual protection came mafia figures who would protect the streets in exchange for pay
Andrew Walker
Although not exactly on topic, the Aztecs used police. They're the only civilization that I've studied extensively so I can only speak for them....
But the markets were patrolled by "constables". Markets were extremely well maintained, with upwards of 40,000 people visiting the Tlatelolco market in tenochtitlan during market days. The constables patrolled the markets and ensured that vendors werent selling bad products or otherwise ripping people off. Not sure if they were in uniform, but they were probably armed.
The Aztecs were fairly legalist about their laws, i.e. no begging, theft was severely punished, many crimes had the death penalty. All of these things were enforced by regional authorities who must have had some kind of police force.
Carter Moore
>Although not exactly on topic I would consider it on topic since I was curious about how law enforcement worked around the world in ancient and medieval times.
Matthew Flores
Here's a neat essay on the so-called "Scythian Archers" of ancient Athens, who acted like a police force
In anglo Saxon England every male had to join a group of about 10 men who were to be held collectively responsible for any wrongdoing that a member of the group committed. They had to arrest the criminal or face fines.
As I understand it when the common law came about this was replaced with a posse system where central law enforcement could conscript locals to arrest criminals without holding them responsible for the crime.
In Imperial China, Law Enforcement for the longest time, was a community job.
If you lived close to a military garrison (say, a fortified city) then the cunts enforcing the law would be the soldiers.
However, China happens to be a vast empire, and soldiers cannot afford to move far from their garrisons lest they spread out. So in the rural countrysides, what the Chinese do is simply send a single judge/jury/executioner type legal officer called a prefect to oversee at least 3 villages. Law enforcement, however, is done by the regular Chinese peasant, who more often than not, owned weapons. The males of the villages would form armed posses to go after robbers, bandit groups, town troublemakers, and problematic animals such as tigers & wolves, or simply drunk Uncle Ho trying to burn down an Inn again. To make Posse actions legal, the Prefect has to be notified of any arrests or, during times of bandit wars, lead the posse himself as the dude has basic military training.
Version 2 of law enforcement came from Private Military Groups of armed young men- memefully rogue scholars, but usually ex-soldiers, bravos, reformed criminals, toughs, and inheritanceless sons- who wandered around China offering services to whoever is rich enough. Since government contracts are lucrative, they were hired as muscle by the prefects, to make up for any shortcomings of the village posse. Their life is the stuff of Imperial Chinese popular poetry, which called them Youxia (wandering heroes).
Also this set-up led to the rise of martial arts schools among civilians, particularly the monasteries. Being places stocked with food & money, monasteries were vulnerable to bandits. So the Monks made martial arts their physical training to protect themselves. Unlike villagers though, Monks had all the free time from meditation - in addition to disciplined life- that made them almost paramilitary, as the Shaolin Monastery proved to be during the Pirate Wars of the 1560s.
Joseph Sullivan
WE
Brody Powell
Not him but what's so WE about that post? It's a interesting,detailed posts about a civilisation that doesn't get discussed that often.
Get your dumbass memes out of here.
Levi Hughes
no
Dominic Foster
>So the Monks made martial arts their physical training to protect themselves Why did Chinese monks fight back and retaliate when other Buddhist monks in other countries got totally slaughtered by hostile forces?
Dominic Wilson
go ahead and sauce a blonde Han Chinese for me.
>inb4 lol Central Asia
John Wood
The Tibetans fought back too.
Jason Long
it's some random fantasy drawing, I didn't even look at it before you pointed that out
who cares?
Ryder Cook
I'd like to know more. I don't know much about Vajrayana Buddhism besides some surface knowledge,
Joshua Hughes
Oh yeah, I must add: this same set up led to the rise of Chinese Organized Crime.
Since those villages? Yeah, they tend to all belong to a single clan. If you ran into trouble, your clan elders would be the first people the average Chink ran to for help, and the Clan acted on your behalf, often without the knowledge of the authorities.
Such semi-autonomy and "keeping it in the family" led to the foundations of organized crime as when villages get desperate, they resort to all manner of shit to help the clan out illegally, popularly via smuggling.
In addition, clans have "embassies" in the cities called "Kongsi" (literally: Clan Halls, places where members of the same clan can gather in the city) which enabled the clan to subvert the regular legal channels as the Kongsi -often founded by the members of the clan that left and became merchants- happily heard out their family members complaints and did shit like bribery/smuggling/and in one famous case in Fujian (the Zheng family): piracy, to help their clan out.
Julian Gomez
Ancient Chinese law enforcement sounds way better than I thought it was. I thought all Ancient states were all brutal shitholes for everyone except the people at the top.
Colton Green
rolling wheels with spinning blades wiping out like 200 dudes on a narrow mountain pass.
Ethan Perez
Lolwhat?
From China to Japan, the Monks were always self-sufficiently armed. In parts of SEA they were the state religion, and in Tibet, they wuz Kings.
That "non-violent" Buddhist Monk image is Richard Gere California Buddhism Hippie Shit. In China, before the Movies, the popular image of a Monk in battle wasnt a cunt with a bo staff, but an angry man with a sword and shield.
Easton Sanchez
Does the D in Detective Dee really stand for Dredd?
Hudson Rogers
Kek.
Oh yeah, I also forgot, Prefects also did detective work as per the fictional Dee. Historically however, the most famous detective in Chinese history was Song Ci, whose cases are celebrated in the book: "Washing away of wrongs: Collected Cases of Injustices Rectified."
Samuel King
Japan has a sort of similar set up but with a twist: if the suspect was a Samurai, you're dun goofd as a peasant to try and fucking kill him.
So they have to invent shitloads of non-lethals for the peasant assistants of Samurai - who, during the peace of Edo, became policemen, to catch rowdy samurai. The Sodegarami (literally, sleeve entangler) was one such weapon, and it was aimed at the voluminous clothes people usually wore then to avoid bodily harm towards the Samurai.
Nicholas Lee
They also had different executioners for samurai and commoners.
Hudson Adams
In Sparta they had the Krypteia who would live in the woods and shit and then go into town every so often and terrorize the helots keep everyone in line
Caleb Martin
About Roman law enforcement (during the Republic, when you don't have prefects or troops within Rome yet), Lintott talks a lot about it in his book about violence in Republican Rome. My memory's a bit fuzzy, but it's basically a lot of self-help, ie people enforce the laws themselves. Vectors could be seen as a kind of official law enforcement, but they're way too insignificant in training/equipment to do any kind of policing.
As for if other police-like forces were created at the time, I admit I'd highly doubt it. Would these kind of states have the manpower, training facilities, and money to maintain police forces?
Jose Howard
Speaking of China, does anyone have recommended historians or books on its history, for someone who hasn't really gotten into it pre-1900?
Ryder Sullivan
Didn't Monks get killed by Islamic Invaders in India though?
Joseph Lopez
I recommend checking out The Faithful Executioner. Its about the life of Frantz Schmidt a sixteen century executioner.
A Few interesting notes from the book:
The guy didn't choose to become a executioner. Some noble told his father to execute some criminal since they lacked one in those parts and he inherited the job.
You could make a lot of dosh as an executioner but you were also a social pariah.
Law enforcement was sketchy and one of the big problems they had was "what do we do with the criminals after we get them?". Some places didn't have jails because of the cost to build and maintain them.
There was a lot of "X equals death" type laws. There was also a lot of "maybe we shouldn't kill, perhaps a lighter punishment would do" too. Its strange how people can be so brutal yet sympathetic at the same time.
If you fucked up an execution people may turn on you. They were tense affairs for all involved.
The book is good for those interested in the history of law.
