Violence
OVERVIEW
The period between 1450 and 1800 saw extensive cultural, economic, political, religious, social, and technological changes which often resulted in violence. This violence was marked by both continuities with and differences from violence in the Middle Ages. The lives and deaths of contemporaries were shaped by wars, rebellions, revolutions, religious conflicts, persecutions of minorities, witch hunts, and European encounters across the globe as well as by interpersonal violence including assault, homicide, and rape. A dominant honour code fuelled widespread enmity which erupted in duels and vendettas. As states developed, conflicts were also resolved through courts whose investigations could involve torture and whose punishments could include mutilation as well as execution. Furthermore, with the rise of the printing press, violence was represented more extensively than ever before. These factors may have been especially pronounced in the seventeenth century, but they were certainly not unique to that period.
In the seminar we will focus on interpersonal violence, honour, vendetta, and the impact of warfare. Studying these topics calls for creative use of primary sources, given the trauma, secrecy and emotion that often accompanied acts of violence. You have a choice between two types of primary source, a short story and a private journal.
NB The lecture, seminar, and readings include discussions of violence, some of it graphic. If this could trigger you, in advance of the seminar, please speak to your module tutor or email them. They will then authorize your absence from the seminar.
GENERAL QUESTIONS
- what forms did violence take in early modern Europe?
- what motivated these forms of violence?
For the essential readings and associated questions, choose either option A or option B below.
OPTION A
Readings:
Zayas, María de, 'Most Infamous Revenge' in María de Zayas, The Disenchantments of Love, trans. H. Patsy Boyer (Albany, NY, 1997), 85-111.
Aronson, Stacey L. Parker, “Monstrous Metamorphoses and Rape in María de Zayas”, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 29/3 (2005): 525-47.
Davies, Jonathan. 'The Impact of War.' In Beat Kümin (ed.), The European World, 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History, 4th edn. (Abingdon, 2022).
Questions:
- what forms of violence are recorded in this source?
- what motivates the various forms of violence in this source?
- what are the advantages and disadvantages of fiction as a historical source?
OPTION B
Readings:
'Hans Heberle's Zeytregister' in The Thirty Years War : A Documentary History, ed. Tryntje Helfferich (Indianapolis, 2009), 336-62.
Mortimer, Geoff, 'Sources, Authors and Texts' in Geoff Mortimer, Eyewitness Accounts of the Thirty Years War 1618-48 (Basingstoke, 2002), 15-28.
Davies, Jonathan. 'The Impact of War.' In Beat Kümin (ed.), The European World, 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History, 4th edn. (Abingdon, 2022).
Questions:
- what forms of violence are recorded in this source?
- what motivates the various forms of violence in this source?
- what are the advantages and disadvantages of diaries and chronicles as historical sources?
* * *
RECOMMENDED READING
Antony, Robert, Stuart Carroll, and Caroline Dodds Pennock, eds, The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume 3, AD 1500-AD 1800 (Cambridge, 2020)
Broomhall, Susan, and Sarah Finn, eds, Violence and Emotions in Early Modern Europe (London, 2015)
Carroll, Stuart, Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2023)
Davies, Jonathan, ed., A Cultural History of Violence in the Renaissance (London, 2025)
Dwyer, Philip, ed., A Cultural History of Violence in the Age of the Enlightenment (London, 2025)
Glete, Jan, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500-1660 (London, 2002)
Loetz, Francisca, A New Approach to the History of Violence: “sexual assault” and “sexual abuse” in Europe, 1500-1850, trans. Rosemary Selle (Leiden, 2015)
Ruff, Julius R., Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 2001)
Sandberg, Brian, War and Conflict in the Early Modern World: 1500-1700 (London, 2016)
Wilson, Peter H., Europe’s Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War (London, 2010)
FURTHER READING
Amirell, S. E., et al., eds, Persistent Piracy: Maritime Violence and State-Formation in Global Historical Perspective (Basingstoke, 2014)
Beik, William, “The Violence of the French Crowd from Charivari to Revolution”, Past and Present 197 (2007), 75-110.
Cohen, Thomas V., and Elizabeth S. Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials before Papal Magistrates (Toronto, 1993)
Davis, Natalie Zemon, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Cambridge, 1987)
Dean, Trevor, and K. J. P. Lowe, eds, Murder in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2017)
Levene, Mark, and Penny Roberts, eds, The Massacre in History (New York, 1999)
Lynn II, John A., Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2008)
McIlvenna, Una, Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900 (New York, 2022)
Murphey, Rhoads, Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700 (London, 1999)
Rogers, Clifford, J., ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, CO, 1995)
Taylor, Scott K., Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain (New Haven, 2008)
ELECTRONIC RESOURCES:
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
BBC podcasts which use Old Bailey records
Sea Battle Between Dutch and Spanish Boats, Aert Anthonisz (1604)
English Broadside Ballad Archive
British Museum Collection Online [Searchable by subject and date. Try searching for terms such as battle, crucifixion, murder, rape, execution, etc.]
The Web Gallery of Art [Searchable by subject and date. Try searching for terms such as battle, crucifixion, murder, rape, execution, etc.]
Jacques Callot and the Miseries of the Thirty Years' War
BBC Radio 4 'In Our Time Programme' episodes;
The Saint Bartholomew Day's Massacre
Raid in Jacques Callot, The Great Miseries of War, etching (1633)