Introduction

This is the second of two seminars which are an overture to the whole module. In them, we will engage with a variety of approaches to crime and punishment in early modern Europe. We will also uncover and begin to discuss issues which we will return to across the year. In this seminar, we will look at how historians have approached the history of crime and punishment in different European states.

Seminar Question

What are the key issues which the historian of crime and punishment needs to address?

Required Reading

In preparing an answer to the seminar question, each student should choose and read three of the following items:

Dean, Trevor, and Kate Lowe, 'Writing the History of Crime in the Italian Renaissance', in Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe, eds, Crime, Society, and the Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1-15.

Gaskill, Malcolm, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000), Chapter One.

Heijden, Manon van der, Women and Crime in Early Modern Holland, trans. David McKay (Leiden, 2016), Chapter One.

Kollmann, Nancy Shields, Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge, 2015), Chapter One.

Schlau, Stacey, Gendered Crime and Punishment: Women and/in the Hispanic Inquisitions (Leiden, 2013), Chapter One.

Wiltenburg, Joy, Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany (Charlottesville, VA, 2012), Introduction.

Further Reading

Gray, Drew D., Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660-1914 (London, 2016), Introduction.