The SYSPOE project takes place in the renewal of police studies in the field of social sciences. It aims at studying police systems, defined as configurations composed by the various actors of policing in a given space, in Europe and its colonial possessions in the 18th and 19th centuries, in a comparative perspective and at the crossroads of different disciplines. Supported by 4 research units, this project gathers 14 permanent researchers, historians of the 18th and 19th centuries, but also a sociologist and a political scientist. It combines a general, interdisciplinary reflection on police systems through a research seminar, and specific archival research delimited by 5 thematic workpackages : police systems and circulations ; police systems and colonial territories ; plural policing ; military culture and police systems ; police systems, crisis, revolutions and disasters. It aims at building the preliminary fundations for a European history of police forces, contributing to a better comprehension of European societies in the 18th and 19th centuries by observing their forms of regulation, and illuminating by the expertise of historical reflection some issues on the contemporary police systems.