From Vigilantes to Sheriffs: The Global Sheep-Farming Economy and the Foundations of Rural Policing in Southern Chilean Patagonia.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the role of transnational markets and non-state actors in shaping policing. It concentrates on sheep-farming companies—and their members who acted as vigilantes—in influencing rural policing in Magallanes, the southernmost region of Chilean Patagonia, from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, when Magallanes was officially a Chilean colony. Methodologically, the study employs a descriptive qualitative analysis using Skocpol’s (1984) “targeted primary” approach.The findings reveal that rural police forces both emerged from and sustained the colonial order established by the Chilean settler colonial state through the sheep-farming economy, which was part of the British informal empire. The global sheep economy relied on coercive structures—military, vigilante, and police—that enabled its consolidation in Patagonia. Simultaneously, the growth of the sheep economy helped develop and expand vigilant institutions, laying the foundation for rural police. Additionally, sheep-farming companies influenced policing in several ways: by consolidating land ownership, affecting the placement of rural stations, the appointment of sheriffs, and the deployment of personnel; by directly managing police forces as company managers and official sheriffs; by lobbying authorities for law enforcement actions; and by providing physical policing infrastructure, such as stations, weapons, technologies, and personnel. Just as militarization elsewhere led police to adopt military technologies and personnel, in Magallanes, police drew from the weapons, technologies, and personnel associated with the sheep-farming economy. Importantly, many vigilantes working for companies later became sheriffs, demonstrating a direct institutional link between vigilantism and rural policing. In addition, the findings indicate that the racial character of rural police forces in Magallanes was a result of a synthesis between the Chilean state's racial project and the imperial hierarchies of the sheep economy. This broadens the understanding of policing and imperialism by illustrating how the British Empire extended policing practices into territories it never officially annexed, where it appeared to have no formal governance. The dissertation also expands Go’s (2024) framework of imperial military regimes by demonstrating that these regimes included non-state actors as part of the “loosely organized assemblage of coercion and control for creating and sustaining empires” (Go, 2024: 15). In doing so, it contributes to scholarship arguing that the monopoly on violence is achieved through diverse state and non-state actors that together form coercive assemblages. Rural police in Magallanes developed as a combination of military and vigilante practices, emphasizing their complementary role in shaping police power. Whether military forces or vigilantes were more dominant depended on the contextual conditions, but their cooperation allowed colonial states to project control across multiple frontiers at once. Ultimately, the study emphasizes the transnational aspect of vigilantism. Many vigilantes in Magallanes were British managers and workers who moved through the networks of the global sheep economy, bringing practices and experiences from Australia and New Zealand into Patagonia. This transnational aspect highlights the global reach of imperial policing and opens avenues for further research on the connections between capitalism, colonialism, and coercion.