Annamaria on Monday
First a confession:
My modus operandi when starting a new book is to research broadly,
keeping story possibilities in the back of mind. At some point, my characters start moving
around in their time and place—doing and saying things. I follow them and write down their words and
their actions. Eventually, the adventure
takes shape, and I am off and running on a workable first draft.
I was, in this way, about the begin the fourth chapter of Strange Gods when I realized
that I knew nothing about how the police force operated in British East Africa. I had a good idea who Tolliver was. He had had an encounter with some South
African drunks who were shooting up a hotel bar. He was about to go out to the Scottish
Mission to investigate the murder of Dr. Josiah Pennyman. It
suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea of the historical context for such
an investigation. I sent myself back to the research salt
mines. Google quickly got me to a monograph
called “Policing the Empire” by a Cambridge scholar. Its first two footnotes referred to a memoire—A Cuckoo in Kenya—by an Anglo-Irish
police officer, W. Robert Foran who served in BEA from 1905-09. Pay dirt!
Just my research cup of tea—the recollections of someone who had feet on
the ground there and then. And of
course, my precious New York Public Library had a copy. I dug right in. I got to know Foran and his lifestyle.
But I did not to give my Justin Tolliver Foran’s rather
devil-may-care, jolly attitude toward law enforcement by a colonial power. Based on what I gleaned from Foran’s story,
I imagined what life for a man with Tolliver's attitudes would be like once he
joined the police. I gave my particular
policeman a deep-seated regard for justice.
This, I imagined, would not coincide with the motivations of his superiors
in the government. It was all intuitive
for me, a way of creating an atmosphere that served my story.
That scenario served well in that first of the series and in
the following two books. Then, just over
a month ago, preparing to crawl my way into Vera and Tolliver 4, I found a new research
source—a 1994 paper by a sociologist that wasn’t on the Internet when I started work on the series back in 2013: “Law
Enforcement in British Colonial Africa.”
The paper explained to me how right I was about the difference between
Tolliver’s idea of policing and what his King’s empire builders would require
of him.
Here is what this new information confirmed for me: When it came to law enforcement, in the end
of the Nineteenth and beginning of the Twentieth Centuries, the British had two
models: One for their island home and another for the “possessions.”
The Home police, the Metropolitan Police Force established
in 1829 in London, became the pattern for almost all towns and cities in the
British Isles. These policemen were
civilians whose job it was to enforce the law, prevent crime, and keep the
peace. They lived in the communities
where they worked, were accountable for their own actions, and never under the
direct command of the governmentally powerful.
They were unarmed.
In the territories of the Empire, the model was based on the
Royal Irish Constabulary. This police
force was established in 1836 to put down disturbances that had arisen in
British-occupied Ireland. Unlike their
Metropolitan distant cousins, these men were a semi-military, armed force. They were commanded by their superiors, whom
they were required to obey. They lived
in barracks, rather than the communities they policed. Their main function was to support the ends
of their government as it took control of new territory—to aid in Britain’s
conquest, to support the economic and political goals of the British
government. They upheld what passed for British Law only when it suited them.
In fact, outside of areas where the British had political or
economic interests, there was no British “law enforcement” in BEA.
This approach to policing was not limited to BEA. It was well established in India before the British
entered East Africa. Once the
Protectorate of BEA was formed, they then found it convenient to import
officers from service in India, to use the Indian Code of Law, and to bring in
lesser police officials from the Raj.
This happened to such an extent that in BEA, the police records were
kept in Urdu!
Now I know what “really” happened. When Tolliver joined the force, he was
imagining joining a Metropolitan Police-style organization. But he found himself in an African
incarnation of the Royal Irish Constabulary.
And he was just where I needed him to be: a man at odds with his
surroundings.
