This work attempts to comprehend the implications of imperial experience through the introduction and action of agents of a redimensioned State, themselves considered in their social dimension. Four sections structure the development. The first - Building the Empire - delivers an institutional history from life, paying attention to modes of institutional transfers (Stuart Woolf), to interactions at work and to shifts in the end. The second - Living the Empire - pens a portrait of the gendarmes and expatriated police officers. Indeed, it is only once we reveal who these agents are, that we may, in a third section, interest ourselves in what they do (Veiller au salut de l'Empire) so as to comprehend, beyond their legal remit, their actual practices, and, beyond these daily duties, their task of unifying officer in the service of a same normative space. Finally, the collapse of French domination acts as a powerful revealer, not only of the population with respect the imposed structure, but also of the implication of the police in the defence of the order that they represented (The fictitious Empire).
