Bibliographic Essay
The main syntheses of the long-term European history of homicide and serious violence are Robert Muchembled, Violence: A History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012) and Pieter Spierenburg, A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008).
The bibliographies in these two books, taken together, constitute a more or less exhaustive list of publications up to 2006. Since then a number of studies of murder and violence have appeared for separate European countries. For England: James Sharpe, A Fiery & Furious People: A History of Violence in England (London: Random House, 2016). For France: Michel Nassiet, La violence, une histoire sociale: France, i6e- iSe siecles (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2011). For Spain: Scott K. Taylor, Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). For Germany: B. Ann Tlusty, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). For Italy: Stuart Carroll, ‘Revenge and Reconciliation in Early Modern Italy', Past & Present 233 (2016), 101-42. For Corsica: Antoine-Marie Graziani, La violence dans les campagnes Corses du 16å ou i8e siecle (n.p., Editions Alain Piazzola, 2011).The main publications on the quantitative dimension of the history of homicide in Europe are Manuel Eisner, ‘Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime', Crime and Justice. A Review of Research 30 (2003), 83-142; and Manuel Eisner,‘From Swords to Words. Does Macro-Level Change in Self-Control Predict Long-Term Variation in Levels of Homicide?', Crime and Justice: A Review of Research 43 (2014), 65-134 (the latter with a set of quantitative proxies for the European process of civilisation).
Recent studies of various themes in the history of men fighting men in Europe include Ulrike Ludwig et al.
(eds.), Das Duell. Ehrenkämpfe vom Mittelalter bis zur Moderne (Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2012) and Stephen Banks, A Polite Exchange of Bullets: The Duel and the English Gentleman, 1750-1850 (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2010). On pardons for homicide: Rudy Chaulet, Crimes, rixes et bruits d’epee: Homicides pardonnes en Castille au siecle d’or (Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Mediterranee, 2007). On suicide murder: Tyge Krogh, A Lutheran Plague: Murdering to Die in the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2012). On the interrelationship with the penal system: Pieter Spierenburg, Violence and Punishment: Civilizing the Body through Time (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). On the theory of violence as a moral category: Alan Page Fiske and Tage Shakti Rai, Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End and Honor Social Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).For the global history of murder see Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011) and Pieter Spierenburg, ‘Toward a Global History of Homicide and Organized Murder', Crime, Histoire & Societes / Crime, History & Societies 18.2 (2014), 99-116. For China: Thomas M. Buoye, Manslaughter, Markets, and Moral Economy: Violent Disputes over Property Rights in Eighteenth-Century China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); William T. Rowe, Crimson Rain: Seven Centuries of Violence in a Chinese County (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); and Barend J. ter Haar, ‘Rethinking “Violence” in Chinese Culture', in Goran Aijmer and Jon Abbink (eds.), Meanings of Violence: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), pp. 122-39. For Latin America: William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican villages (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1979) and Eric A. Johnson et al., ‘Murder and Mass Murder in Pre-Modern Latin America: From Pre-Colonial Aztec Sacrifices to the End of Colonial Rule, an Introductory Comparison with European Societies', Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 37.3 (2012), 233-53. For India: Kim A. Wagner (ed.), Stranglers and Bandits: A Historical Anthology of Thuggee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). On honour in non-Western societies: John Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera (eds.), The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame and Violence in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
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