HST5116 – Violence in Early Modern Europe

Week 1 - Introduction
Lecture 1: Practical course information

 Aims:
Uncover a wide range of violent practices
recognise violence wasn’t meaningless and study its meanings
analyse early modern sources
think about victims – perpetrators – observers
their interchangeability and situate early modern violence in a longer perspective
 Assessment:
Source Analysis – 1500 words, 2 sources from readings, content-context-conversation
Essay – 2500 words, Pick a question from the essay list

Lecture 2: Violence and ‘Civilisation’

 ‘Civilisation’
Hierarchy of violence – instances of violent sport like jousting was for high society yet
brawl competitions amongst the poor were seen as uncivil.
Part of European, elite self-fashioning – violence brings civilisation, meaningful.
 Civilsation Thesis – Norbert Elias
Expressive violence stems from passion / Instrumental violence stems from reason
There is a decline in violence - why
 Quantitative Method Manuel Eisner ‘Long-Term Historical Trends IN Violent Crime’
little change in age and sex: 20-29 men
general decline
differentiated by region and class
----But what of what is not recorded?
 Steve Pinker, Better Angels (2011)
Claims that violence declined
Links with human evolution: people more self-control
Driven by enlightenment ideals, global trade and feminisation
Historians show that he is too reductive
 Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘About an Inventory: Dutch New York Between East and West: The
World of Margrieta van Varick’, Bard Graduate Center Films

 You can build up a historical figure’s world with the minor details of their life like
occupation, relationships, trade, housing, travel.
 Link the pieces together: Margarita’s husbands occupation in the church may
suggest she would Christianise her slave, what may seem as 2 entirely separate
categories (her relationships occupation and her slave) can tell about one another.
 When a network of objects and inventory is established, a route can be followed to
make a variety of interpretations and assumptions, they speak to eachother.
 Empathy: imagine yourself in their shoes in using their inventory, how to feel to
wear those specific pieces of clothing etc.

Some questions to consider:

 What are the key issues which the historian of violence in early modern Europe
needs to address?
 What is violence?
 Did violence decline in the early modern period, and if so, why?
 How can we measure the incidence of violence in the past?
 To what extent does violence have a history?
 How can we write a hopeful history around the topic of violence?
 Week 2 – Military Violence

Lectures:
 Early Modern War: Fiscal Military State (Wars and maintaining armies was expensive, taxes
were constantly raised) + Military Revolution
 Military Revolution:
Training: Drill and Discipline
Innovation: Weapons and Fortresses
Logistics: ‘Age of Entrepreneurs’
 Weaponry
Rise in mechanical weaponry and gunpowder weapons
Weapon training provided
Disciplined in their conduct
More infantry based and formal, specialised unit
 Logistics
Recruiters sought out able men
Higher wages, no longer a side job away from their craft
Monarchs relied less on tax rises and their own bureaucracies to pay for warfare.
Meritocracy: rewards provided for service, promotions available for all

Coping with war:

--Death via gunshot wound was the most common
--Physical trauma: survivors lost the ability to ever labour again and self-reliance
--Looting as a result of not good enough wages and supplies
--Armies in villages: sexual assault, murder, looting, razing.
--Punishments: Soldiers who overstepped their duties were punished, hanging, firing squad, burning
--Population: Villages constantly lost large portions of their male population damaging child birth
rate.
--Surgery: restorative more than transformative (prothesis), based around war with its inventions of
prosthetics centred around men.
--Mental wounds: mental wounds used to be dismissed as influence by demons, but now an
understanding to mental health rose. Trauma of war shaped peoples behaviour and could make
relatively tame men commit inhumane acts.
--Pensions attempted to be provided to injured and veterans, petitions were used as call for aids and
lawyers helped to reconstruct these to get the pension. If you were a previously skilled worker your
chance for pension was much higher, families and wives could too get a pension for lost men.

Imperial War:
Violence and inhumanity used as a weapon against a nations reputation: Spain often criticised for
its invasion and treatment of South America
Foreign disease was a huge factor in the genocide of natives.

Massacre of Tenochtitlan:
Spanish take over Emperor Monctezuma’s lands and arrest him claiming it was a moral good to
prevent human sacrifice, cannibalism (myth) and turn down rebellion, followed by a massacre of
Aztec elites.
 BBC Radio 4 In Our Time: ‘Thirty Years War’:

 Across the holy roman empire, Lutherans, Catholics and Protestants all were engaged in
a violent conflict spanning 30 years.
 Primarily motivated by the governance of land than religion
Holy roman empire: not a monarchy, elected emperor, religiously supercharged,
‘guardian’ of Christianity.
 Peace of Augsburg: allowed princes to choose their nations religion
 Church lands were 1/7 th of the empire and dynastical families refused to give them up
 Cannibalism came as a result of famine
 Strategic interest intertwined – Sweden sought to carve the Baltic empire
 All devout – not using religion as an excuse but genuinely believing in their
interpretations.
 Soldiers: mercenaries and volunteers around the world from Greece and cyprus. Badly
paid
 Training: peasants not disciplined and interested

Life of the Mind – War II – Sigrun Haude

 Begun as religious and political control in bohemia, encompassed all of Europe eventually.
 The majority of deaths did not come from direct warfare but by famine, forced
contributions, inflation, pestilence, plundering, disease and travel.
 Mental warfare: fear of harm often did more than actual harm, sanity broke down with
sieges and incoming armies, the awareness that chaos and violence will encompass ones
life drove many to suicide. Attempts to make sense of it often led to religious reasons,
often punishment or the betterment of religion by making clear the enemies and friends of
religion, forces of antichrist and Christ. Comfort was found in victory based on divine
assistance.
 Authorities were underequipped to protect their subjects, leaving peasants to be the
biggest victim to the war, relying on each other to protect land and wares from plunder
whilst labouring as usual.
 Refugee crisis led to hunger, poverty and homelessness.

The petition of Francis Petty of Aston, West Riding of Yorkshire, 6 August 1700

Francis Petty had suffered a gunshot in the knee whilst serving under King Charles as a royalist
rendering him relatively immobile and unable to conduct most labour after participating in 2
battles and 1 siege. As a result of both this and his old age of 78 years, he asks for a payment of
40s annually paid quarterly. The petition includes a mention of Petty's baptise date, a medal of
faith to demonstrate respectability, as well as the witness to his writing Samuel Trickett. In
return for the payment Petty promises to pray in his remaining days in favour of his endorser.
The outcome of the petition saw Petty receive the 40 shillings he requested in his preferred time
slots.
 Colonial Cruelty: The Expression and Perpetuation of Violence in
Theodor de Bry’s America

De bry brings to life numerous episodes of colonial violence including death, torture,
weaponry, forced labour, pillaging, burning of towns, punishment, resistance, and fighting
between Spaniards

 These parts of De Bry’s monumental collection of colonial narratives and images, which have
transformed the course of history, ultimately portray European ‘violence’ as justifiable, thus
consequentially, contributing to the acceptance and promotion of systematic colonial
violence against the indigenous inhabitants of that very America in focus.
 violence must be understood as a hegemonic, dynamic, and historically situated construct.
Colonial systems depend greatly on mechanisms of control, social hierarchies, and rules that
guide public behaviour, in such a way that distinctions are established between permissible
forms of punishment or discipline and acts of sanguinary character that stray from the
colonial norm
 De Bry: ‘Let us not be too quick to condemn the Spaniards and let us first seriously examine
ourselves, in order to see if we are truly better than they are’
 Violence shaped in law and sovereignty was more justified than violence in the name of
discord and barbarity:
 ‘By introducing time, velocity and direction to the composition, De Bry is able to transform a
colonial place into a colonial space endowed with the implicit message that sanctions
Spanish violence while criminalizing indigenous violence.’

 The torture assembly line suggests efforts were taken to reduce the duration of pain of the
victim in inducing a fast pace to the procedure: ‘This reduction of material pain is
characteristic of the ‘aesthetics of violence’ as explored by José Rabasa: ‘the renditions of
massacres and tortures remain aesthetic to the degree that they keep the audience from
empathizing with suffering’
 In this composition, the narrative technique directly creates a causal relationship between
the act of killing and that of feasting, between destruction and celebration. The accelerated
pace between these distinct events emphasizes the fresh, raw quality of the flesh of the
victims and, subsequently, the barbarity of the cannibals
 The importance of victim portrayal:
‘While the aesthetics of colonial violence in Figure 1 reveals a lack of empathy for indigenous
pain, Figure 2 highlights the indigenous’ complete disregard for the Spanish bodies. The total
desecration of the Spaniards in three fluid steps does not allow for the instigators to
empathize with the obliterated, non-recognizable, non-existent Spanish victims, suggesting
that the indigenous perpetrators of the violence are savages with entire lack of remorse for
and empathy with their human prey.’
 The lack of any cloth material separating the indigenous bodies from their environment or
any footwear separating their steps from the ground they tread reinforces their portrayed
inability to separate themselves from their environment. In this way, no differentiation is
indicated between the indigenous and animals:
Week 3 – State of Violence
Changes in Judiciary and Policing
 Torture declined as the standard for proof changed – it rarely led to a confession
 Early Policing: Mostly part-time volunteering, small group of salaried. Mid-17C was the rise
of professional centralised policing.
 First European police force in Paris in 1667 – 48 commissionaires, 20 inspectors and
innumerable informants
 Thief-takers: paid by victims to find the criminal, private individual
 Bow Street Runners (1749): Pursuing criminals, full time constables with a salary
 Max Weber
o German sociologist. Ascribed qualifications (functions based on merits), hierarchy of
power (people obey from higher up), specialisation (optimal individual for special
tasks) to the Sociology of the state.
 Michel Foucault:
o Surveillance: if you feel as if you are being watched you will act better.
o Social discipling: school, education, parenting.

Judicial Violence:

Torture:
o Estrapade: suspended by roped, stress on shoulders
o Question d’eau: stretched, water poured into mouth
o Brodequin: iron chai, wood hammered into legs
 4 witnesses required for a torture session.
 If they deny and continue to deny after torture sessions you may be free, potentially
escaping execution
 ‘Threat of pain’ was hoped to be enough, torture contraptions shown before
 Many died during torture despite unintended. Death was seen as a failure.
 Purpose: to admit guilt or confession, but created lies. More of a test of resilience and
patience than truth.

Executions:
 Display of state power, well-attended, spectacle culture.
 Justification: they are dangerous criminals, crimes like treason, terrorism.

Imprisonment:
 Transformation.
 Keep the danger away from society.

Cesare Beccaria:
Preventative rather than retributive
Probable punishment
Proportionate punishment
Public Procedures

Legal Pluralities:
 Multiple legal systems coexist
 Variety in conflict resolutions: guilds, families, communities,