Regaining public space: Gendarmeries and coming out of Wars (Western Europe, 1918-1945)

During the two world wars, several countries in Western Europe are faced to long-term military occupation. Consecutively, the central government must, through its agents, reinvest the entire national territory and all of state functions. At the crossroads of war and peace, this process is a long, slow, and multifaceted (both civil, judicial, military and related to policing). The gendarmerie forces are at the heart of this phenomenon. National forces (which oppose them to the local municipal police), with a central hierarchy and a military identity (thus, they’re flexible and adaptable), with large effectives, the gendarmerie perfectly embody by their military, administrative or judicial duties, return to Affairs of the national State. They are at the same time strong symbols and armed wings of the State, and maids for its different administrations. It is therefore necessary to understand diversity of gendarmes’s practices in their relations with authorities and State services, the Armies, as well as policed populations . Using practice archives, this communication is considering gendarmes’s reinvestment of Public Space, through several experiences lived in Western Europe: Belgium and France for the two world wars, the Netherlands and the Second World War. By comparing both diachronic and geographic perspectives, we hope to highlight policing issues of transition from War to Peace, to understand regulation modes of modern Western societies