Cultures of Violence

STUART CARROLL is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of York, UK, and author of Blood and Violence in Early Modern France. He is twice winner of the Nancy Roelker prize for the best essay on early modern French history and currently working on neighbourliness in Europe during the Reformation.

'Offers twelve stimulating and generally meticulously researched essays on topics as diverse as female dismemberment in Aztec rituals, rituals of rebellion in early modern England, vengeance in sixteenth-century France, kidnapping for ransom in the Mediterranean during the long nineteenth century, beheadings in early modern Ireland, and aerial warfare between Britain and Germany during the two world wars.' - Robert Gerwarth, English Historical Review

• Introduction; S.Carroll PART I: CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVES Female Dismemberment and Decapitation: Gendered Understandings of Power in Aztec Ritual; C.Dodds Religious Languages of Violence: Some Reflections on the Reading of Extremes; B.Weisbrod Conceptualizing Cultures of Violence and Cultural Change; J.Carter Wood PART II: EARLY MODERN PERSPECTIVES Collective Violence, Social drama and Rituals of Rebellion in Late Medieval and Early modern England; A.Wood Vengence in Sixteenth-Century France; M.Nassiet At the Sign of the Head: the Currency of Beheading in Early Modern Ireland; P.Palmer Duelling and the Court of Chivalry in Early Stuart England; R.Cust & A.Hopper PART III: MODERN PERSPECTIVES Popular Violence in the French Revlolution: Revolt, Retribution and the Slide to State Terror; D.Andress Avoiding the Ultimate Act of Violence: Mediterranean Bandits and the Kidnapping for Ransom, 1815-1914; M.Blinkhorn Swords and Daggers: Class Conceptions of Interpersonal Violence in Liberal Italy; S.C.Hughes Race, Class and Maritime Authority in Late Victorian England: the Surprising Cases of Charles Arthur (1888) and Bagwahn Jassiwara (1891); M.J.Wiener From 'Duels in the Clouds' to 'Exterminating Attacks': Legitimizing Aerial Warfare in Britain and Germany, 1814-1945; B.Rieger