Book Review: Paul Knepper, The Invention of International Crime: A Global Issue in the Making 1881—1914, Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2009; 254 pp.: 9780230238183
Abstract
Book Review Paul Knepper The Invention of International Crime: A Global Issue in the Making 1881—1914, Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2009; 254 pp.: 9780230238183 SAGE Publications, Inc. 2010DOI: 10.1177/13624806100140040905 Constance Bantman University of Surrey, UK It has taken surprisingly long for historical criminology to go transnational, considering that international crime has been a matter of acute public concern for over a century, and that criminal anthropology has been an international field since its very emergence. Paul Knepper’s The Invention of International Crime starts to fill the gap, with a very convincing case study focusing on Britain between 1881 and 1914. The example of the world’s largest empire and leading industrial nation brings into sharp relief the multi-faceted internation- alization of crime, crime awareness and crime-fighting. Although it did not lead to the setting up of formal agencies to fight it until the 1920s—by which time it was already an international issue—international crime appeared in the collective consciousness and became a matter of public concern from the mid-19th century onwards, in a context of increased globali- zation. The staggering social, economic and technological changes of the three decades before the Great War converged for crime to be perceived as interna-