Customer Reviews

Wrong Place, Right Time: Policing the End of Empire

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The 1996 book by the former Inspector-General of Colonial Police, the late-Michael Macoun, is an excellent introduction to the basic facts about and history of the Colonial Police Service (CPS).

It complements the book on the subject by the late-Sir Charles Jeffries published some 40 years earlier.

Mr Macoun's work concentrates on experience with African forces but also presents useful material across the spectrum of the dependent territories, about the CPS and the I-G's many tasks (listed in a detailed but unsourced appendix).

However, close reading of those tasks and their discharge as presented does raise many questions.

For example, to anyone familiar with the history of the then-British Crown Colony of Hong Kong during Mr Macoun's tenure as I-G may wonder why his book makes no mention of that history.