for a few years, the history of law enforcement agencies has been the subject of extensive research abroad. As a result, this book gives a general picture of the evolution of the Belgian Independence police apparatus on the eve of the First World War. What was the nature of the system put in place in 1830? How did it adapt to the evolution of Belgian society in the 19th century? What were the factors driving the dynamics of law enforcement forces at that time, and how did the discussions around them focus on police issues of the next century? These are the main topics addressed in this executive summary, illustrated by contemporaneous documents, in order to enable the reader to explore the issues raised and possibly to find new avenues for research. Historian is (...) faced with a wealth of choices and possible weightings (...) and since, in its weightings and choices, there is nothing “scientific”, it is even where it best measures the imposture of history to make history a science; he could be said to suffer. (Jean Stengers, on ‘the choices that historian cannot make to discern what is really important in the past’, in his preface to Marc Reynebeau, The Century of Belgium, Brussels, 1999, pp. 7-9) Long time left by sociologists and politicians, the police is now a privileged area of investigation for them, often at the request of the institution itself. History must provide the breadth of this reflection by placing problems over time, illuminating their roots, thus helping to get out of the myth, irrational, fantasmagorie, sensational research, pro domo advocacy or ‘poisoning’ — not always voluntary — which essentially characterises the works devoted to the issue. (...) De facto, the police are an essential object for questioning the state and society (...) While they have been abandoned for too long to non-specialists, police research has now come at a turning point. After having formed “an unknown social sciences”, the police institution finally became a research object like another. (Jean Marc Berlière and Denis Peschanski, ‘Histories of polices in the mirror of comparison’, in Powers and polices in the twentieth century, Europe, United States, Japan, Brussels, 1997, pp. 11-12)