The Hidden History of Crime, Corruption, and States

The Hidden History of Crime, Corruption, and States
Author: Renate Bridenthal
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2017-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1785335189

Renowned historical sociologist Charles Tilly wrote many years ago that “banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war-making all belong on the same continuum.” This volume pursues the idea by revealing how lawbreakers and lawmakers have related to one another on the shadowy terrains of power over wide stretches of time and space. Illicit activities and forces have been more important in state building and state maintenance than conventional histories have acknowledged. Covering vast chronological and global terrain, this book traces the contested and often overlapping boundaries between these practices in such very different polities as the pre-modern city-states of Europe, the modern nation-states of France and Japan, the imperial power of Britain in India and North America, Africa’s and Southeast Asia’s postcolonial states, and the emerging postmodern regional entity of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the contemporary explosion of transnational crime raises the question of whether or not the relationship of illicit to licit practices may be mutating once more, leading to new political forms beyond the nation-state.

Binding Passions

Binding Passions
Author: Guido Ruggiero
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 1993-06-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195079302

Mining the rich Venetian archives, especially the unusually detailed records of Venice's own branch of the Roman Inquisition, Guido Ruggiero provides a strikingly new and provocative interpretation of the end of the Renaissance in Italy. In this boldly structured work, he develops five narrative accounts of individual encounters with the Inquisition that illustrate the double-edged metaphor of how passions were both bound by late Renaissance society and were seen in turn as binding people. In this way new perspectives are opened on magic, witchcraft, love, marriage, gender, and discipline at the level of the community and beyond. Witches, courtesans, prostitutes, women healers, nobles, Cardinals, and renegade priests and monks speak from these pages describing their lives, beliefs, hopes, fears, and lies. With an imaginative flair for storytelling and impeccable scholarship, Ruggiero exposes the rich complexity of the culture and poetics of the everyday at the end of the Renaissance and illuminates a previously unexplored chapter in Italian history.

Disciplines of Faith

Disciplines of Faith
Author: James Obelkevich
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 486
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136820868

First Published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Writing the Lives of People and Things, AD 500-1700

Writing the Lives of People and Things, AD 500-1700
Author: Robert F.W. Smith
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2017-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134809158

Historical biography has a mixed reputation: at its best it can reveal much not only about an individual, but the wider context of their life and society; at worst it can result in a narrowly focused work of hagiography or condemnation. Yet in spite of its sometimes inferior status amongst academics, biography has remained a popular genre, and in recent years has developed into new and intriguing areas. As the essays in this volume reveal, scholars from an array of different disciplines have embraced what biography can offer them, expanding the remit of biography from people to things, tracing the 'life' of their chosen object from creation to use to disposal to rediscovery. The increasing concern with the physicality of manuscripts and books has also meant an awareness of and interest in the 'lives' of these forms of material culture. Historians have also become increasingly interested in groups of individuals resulting in prosopographical studies. A book on the diversity of biography is therefore very timely, exploring the multi-disciplinary application of historical biography in the period 500-1700. It presents fourteen case studies offering new approaches to historical biography, written by early-career researchers from backgrounds in archaeology, English, art, architectural history and history, demonstrating different approaches and techniques. Overall, the collection is a strong and united statement by a group of early-career researchers who insist on the vitality of biography as a central concern of historians across the disciplines of the humanities. Contributors believe that the 'life' is a fundamental medium of study for the medieval and early modern periods, and thus . bolsters the move back towards biography as a primary tool of medieval and early modern scholars, as well as a tool for future research for humanities scholars interested in biography.

What is Microhistory?

What is Microhistory?
Author: Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2013-05-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135047065

This unique and detailed analysis provides the first accessible and comprehensive introduction to the origins, development, methodology of microhistory – one of the most significant innovations in historical scholarship to have emerged in the last few decades. The introduction guides the reader through the best-known example of microstoria, The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg, and explains the benefits of studying an event, place or person in microscopic detail. In Part I, István M. Szijártó examines the historiography of microhistory in the Italian, French, Germanic and the Anglo-Saxon traditions, shedding light on the roots of microhistory and asking where it is headed. In Part II, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon uses a carefully selected case study to show the important difference between the disciplines of macro- and microhistory and to offer practical instructions for those historians wishing to undertake micro-level analysis. These parts are tied together by a Postscript in which the status of microhistory within contemporary historiography is examined and its possibilities for the future evaluated. What is Microhistory? surveys the significant characteristics shared by large groups of microhistorians, and how these have now established an acknowledged place within any general discussion of the theory and methodology of history as an academic discipline.

Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c.1410-1800

Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c.1410-1800
Author: Tracey A. Sowerby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2017-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351736906

Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World offers a new contribution to the ongoing reassessment of early modern international relations and diplomatic history. Divided into three parts, it provides an examination of diplomatic culture from the Renaissance into the eighteenth century and presents the development of diplomatic practices as more complex, multifarious and globally interconnected than the traditional state-focussed, national paradigm allows. The volume addresses three central and intertwined themes within early modern diplomacy: who and what could claim diplomatic agency and in what circumstances; the social and cultural contexts in which diplomacy was practised; and the role of material culture in diplomatic exchange. Together the chapters provide a broad geographical and chronological presentation of the development of diplomatic practices and, through a strong focus on the processes and significance of cultural exchanges between polities, demonstrate how it was possible for diplomats to negotiate the cultural codes of the courts to which they were sent. This exciting collection brings together new and established scholars of diplomacy from different academic traditions. It will be essential reading for all students of diplomatic history.

The Scene of the Mass Crime

The Scene of the Mass Crime
Author: Christian Delage
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136330666

The Scene of the Mass Crime takes up the unwritten history of the peculiar yet highly visible form of war crimes trials. These trials are the first and continuing site of the interface of law, history and film. From Nuremberg to the contemporary trials in Cambodia, film, in particular, has been crucial both as evidence of atrocity and as the means of publicizing the proceedings. But what does film bring to justice? Can law successfully address war crimes, atrocities, genocide? What do the trials actually show? What form of justice is done, and how does it relate to ordinary courts and proceedings? What lessons can be drawn from this history for the very topical political issue of filming civil and criminal trials? This book takes up the diversity and complexity of these idiosyncratic and, in strict terms, generally extra-legal medial situations. Drawing on a fascinating diversity of public trials and filmic responses, from the Trial of the Gang of Four to the Gacaca local courts of Rwanda to the filmic symbolism of 9-11, from Soviet era show trials to Nazi People's Courts leading international scholars address the theatrical, political, filmic and symbolic importance of show trials in making history, legitimating regimes and, most surprising of all, in attempting to heal trauma through law and through film. These essays will be of considerable interest to those working on international criminal law, transitional justice, genocide studies, and the relationship between law and film.

What’s Left of Marxism

What’s Left of Marxism
Author: Benjamin Zachariah
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-09-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110677741

Have Marxian ideas been relevant or influential in the writing and interpretation of history? What are the Marxist legacies that are now re-emerging in present-day histories? This volume is an attempt at relearning what the “discipline” of history once knew – whether one considered oneself a Marxist, a non-Marxist or an anti-Marxist.

Between the Seas

Between the Seas
Author: Deborah Paci
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2023-01-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1838606203

In Between the Seas, Deborah Paci takes a comparative view of islandness in island identities through case studies of islands in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas. These case studies primarily include, in the Baltic case, the Åland Islands, Gotland, Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Ruhnu; and in the Mediterranean case, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia and Corsica. Examining multiple sites of these islands' identities such as history, environmental concerns and governance systems, this book provides a historical perspective into the relations between islands and the larger geopolitical regions around them, as well as historicizing 'insularist' rhetoric deployed by pro-independence groups within them. Paci examines the changing role and increasing political importance of islands in the European Union against the history of island insularity and offers a significant contribution to the wider field of island studies.

The Wealth of Communities

The Wealth of Communities
Author: Matteo Di Tullio
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351880489

The early decades of the sixteenth century were a turbulent time for the Italian peninsula as competing centres of power struggled for political control. Nowhere was this more true than the area contested by Milan and Venice, that was constantly crossed and occupied by rival armies. Investigating the impact of successive crises upon the inhabitants of the Po Valley, this book challenges many fundamental assumptions about the relationship between war and economic development and draws conclusion that have implications for early modern Europe as a whole. In traditional historiography, periods of war and general crisis have often been regarded as promoting a shift in resources from the communal towards a small number of individuals. However, through a close micro-study of a single region, this book offers a different perspective. Rather than promoting an aggressive individualism, it is argued that in times of general crisis, social networks aimed to reproduce themselves and the original status quo by developing creative solutions and institutions favouring co-operation. Furthermore the elites could not always exploit ’local’ wealth because of the need to protect their position of leadership within the community, which required the preservation of that very community. This thesis not only challenges the received wisdom, but also fuels a new debate about the ways in which economic growth occurred in Early Modern Italy and Europe.