| Summary: | The study of the urban order in the XVIIIth century in Mexico, the capital of New Spain, helps to understand how the police, used as a technique of government for the people and for things, contribute to improve the inhabitants’ security, means of supply and facilities of life. In the first half of the XVIIIth century, the right order of the town is based on a socio-ethnic differentiation found in both the city rules and the two separated Republics: the Spanish Republic and the Indian Republic. Several jurisdictions, using their privileges and own guards, all take a part, in different ways and degrees, to the peace process of the town. From 1760, thanks to the Crown impetus and the influence of new know-how police techniques imported from Europe, new concepts about order appear encouraged by the viceroy, the corregidor and the judges of the Real Audiencia, all wanting a reform of the traditional corporations. Hence, the 1782 reform dividing Mexico into cuarteles and barrios, is a copy of the 1765 reform in Madrid. Then, a new urban police is created, the alcaldes de barrio and the watchmen, who embody this new order. They can be found in most big towns in India at the end of the XVIIIth century. The viceroy Revillagigedo’s mandate (1789-1794) is most certainly a new step in the evolution of the new order concept and practice. Thanks to the army support established in town since 1765, and to a new police, Revillagigedo used the city as a laboratory to test new changes such as the street-lighting. At the end of a century of urban changes, neither regular nor unequivocal, the townscape order is not exactly the same as a century before. The socio-ethnic differences have regularly faded, the separation between the two Republics has been eliminated by the new police coverage, and the creation of new order forces as well as new guards participate to enforce the new, then prosperous urban laws.
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