ABSTRACT
It is difficult to draw a clear distinction between defence against external threats and that against internal insurgency. Such distinctions have rarely been drawn in history. City walls were intended as much to keep citizens in, and accounted for, as to keep enemies out. The wall (as has already been noted in Chapter 2) had a practical, as well as symbolic, jurisdictional purpose, enabling the urban authorities to exercise a control over the movement of goods and people, and thus served police, customs, fiscal and immigration purposes (as such flows could be channelled through the limited number of gates which would be opened and guarded at specific times). Thus the distinction between police and military structures was generally blurred, with the same forces being called upon to perform both functions. Indeed, the only distinction between the modern situation-especially in countries with the Anglo-American aversion to paramilitary police forces (Gellner 1974)— and that which prevailed in most countries until the last century, is that the military now operate ‘in support of the civil power’, whereas previously they were frequently the only effective instrument of that power.
