Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe

Stuart Carroll is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of York. He is one of the editors of the Cambridge World History of Violence (2020). His other publications include Blood and Violence in Early Modern France (2006) and Martyrs and Murderers: the Guise Family and the Making of Europe, which won the J. Russell Major prize of the American Historical Association in 2011. He has also been awarded the Sixteenth Century Society's Nancy Lyman Roelker Prize an unprecedented four times.

• Introduction; Italy; 1. The use of the law; 2. The politics of vendetta; 3. The culture of vendetta; 4. The decline of vendetta; Germany; 5. Rethinking the feud; 6. The culture of enmity in Early Modern Germany; 7. Sühne: the theory and practice of peace-making; France; 8. Village politics and vendetta; 9. Peace and justice under the absolute monarchy; England; 10. Justice and violence; 11. Enmity in Early Modern England; Comparisons; 12. The experience of enmity; 13. Enmity and sacred space; 14. Living with the enemy.

'Based on extensive research in several languages, this book is the first major study of enmity across western Europe in the early modern period. Stuart Carroll argues that enmity remains one of the greatest challenges to liberal democracy and, as such, the concept of enmity remains of central importance today. This book makes a direct challenge to our very understanding of early modern Europe and it is an original and significant contribution to the histories of the state, violence, the law, and emotions.' Jonathan Davies, University of Warwick