Violence and Punishment

PIETER SPIERENBURG is Professor of Historical Criminology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is the author of A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (Polity, 2008).

• Introduction: Violence and Punishment within Civilizing Processes page 1PART ONE Violence1 Long-Term Trends in Homicide: Amsterdam, Fifteenth–Twentieth Centuries 192 Homicide and the Law in the Dutch Republic: A Peaceful Country? 393 Violence and Culture: Bloodshed in Two or Three Worlds 57PART TWO Punishment and Social Control4 Punishment, Power and History: Foucault and Elias 755 Monkey Butt’s Mate: On Informal Social Control, Standards of Violence and Notions of Privacy 926 "The Green, Green Grass of Home:" Refl ections on Capital Punishment and the Penal System in Europe and America from a Long-Term Perspective 104PART THREE Civilizing the Body in Human History7 Elites and Etiquette: Changing Standards of Personal Conduct in the Netherlands until 1800 1298 Civilizing Celebrations: An Exploration of the Festive Universe 1519 The Body’s End: Death and Paradise in Human History 163Epilogue: A Personal Recollection of Norbert Elias and How I Became a Crime Historian 174Notes 181Archival Sources 200Bibliography 201Index 221

Winner of the Choice award for Outstanding Academic Title “Pieter Spierenburg is one of the world’s experts on the history of violent crime, and his writings are filled with fascinating facts and thought-provoking insights. The essays in this volume will inform and stimulate anyone interested in human violence and its history.”Steven Pinker, Harvard University“Pieter Spierenburg is our leading student of the civilizing process in punishment and society. Violence and Punishment ties together decades of research into the dynamics of violence and state formation; truly the definitive work on the topic.”Jonathan Simon, University of California Berkeley“With this strong new addition to his previous work, Pieter Spierenburg consolidates his position as Europe's leading historian of violence.”Roger Lane, Haverford College