rlands. The French history of policing is quite different because police already existed there. King Lodewijk the XIVth liked the army so much that he employed them everywhere. This French police shared the king’s command. They were armed with guns and horses. In 1793, the French announced war on the Dutch republic of the United Netherlands. General Napoleon gained power shortly after, and by 1810 the Netherlands belonged to France. The Dutch could apply for their police job, and some gladly did so even though the French police army wasn’t liked very much. “It was too French.” The Netherlands were free again by 1813. Prince Willem van Oranje moved back from Great Britain to the Netherlands that November and was instated as king. He obviously couldn’t keep the much-hated French policing system, even though he would have liked that very much. He changed their name. 26th of October 1814, signed the birth of the Royal Marechaussee. Their first post (police station) rose in Maastricht.
164 others followed across the south of the country before 1815. They patrolled day- and night. Horses need breaks, and these uniforms were not resistant to rain, but they were well equipped with a sabre, pistol and carbine. The Royal Marechaussee didn’t shy away from using rough force and violence against the king’s citizens that wouldn’t obey their orders. These police militias were generally employed for 6 years and never punished like ordinary citizens (they were soldiers, right?!). The north of the Netherlands had different minions of the law. This policing force had no investigative powers, did not wear a uniform and was not sworn by any oath. They very much worked just like they did before the French occupied them.
Slowly, very slowly, the order of policing changed. The Dutch government was inspired by Great Britain’s police enforcement, and they started copying their way around the 1840s/1850s; uniforms, swords, top hats and all. Schooling wasn’t needed; no issue if you hadn’t finished your primary school, and could read and write a bit.. nice, but not mandatory. You had to be big, tough and robust to join. The Dutch police were rough, and they handled the citizens even more harshly. Needless to say that they weren’t liked much.
1848, J. R. Thorbecke, a very important Dutch statesman, didn’t like them. Decent citizens knew where their responsibilities lay and would fill the state’s treasury anyway, he said. But not everyone agreed with him, and the police force grew bigger. Comparing the amounts; whereby 1815 only 52 ‘police’ were active in Amsterdam, 1844 counted 88,1856 had 23 inspectors and 96 agents, by 1877 303 and three years later Amsterdam counted 600.
In 1880, the world of Dutch citizens had changed too. Factories rose, and working conditions were unbearable. Workers protested, and this is a perfect example of what police calls; ‘disrupting public order. The police felt forced to intervene. To gain strength, national police officers and marechaussee joined their forces. The marechaussee’s horses were often deemed intimidating enough to prevent protests from happening. The tactic is still being employed to this day. A police apparatus formed around the same time. One that didn’t only bother with uprisings and misconduct, but legal knowledge, self-defence and First Aid too. And later, traffic policing was introduced, even though laws weren’t in place yet.
1901, who polices the police was raised by a liberal member of parliament H. Kist. Nothing changed much until WW1 when police training was introduced to be cancelled again only in a few years. The Amsterdam municipal police had three stations: one to combat counterfeit certificates, also known as the phoney money centre, which fought international criminals and investigated girls and women trafficking. In Rotterdam, located the smuggling of narcotics and car thefts. Amsterdam and Rotterdam were incredibly proud of those stations and their work against crime. They didn’t want to merge. Dutch police officers in training still learn about police collaboration from stories of those 