Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 (review)

The appearance of a general textbook on the history of European violence is, in itself, a significant event. Historical violence studies proliferated in the 1990s as violence—previously treated largely as a sub-topic of crime—emerged as a subject in its own right. However, focused studies have been, with some exceptions, confined to journals and collections of essays. The time is ripe for a sustained synthesis of what we know, or think we know, about the history of violence. That Julius R. Ruff’s ambitious book, the latest addition to the Cambridge New Approaches to European History series, is well written, clearly organized and laced with engaging evidence makes it an even more welcome contribution to the growing field of violence studies.

Ruff’s methodology is informed by cutting-edge concerns while giving well-established classics due credit and/or criticism. The result is a clear distillation of decades of detailed research and scholarly debate. Having taken on the difficult task of addressing three centuries and most of Western Europe, Ruff draws necessary limits, leaving aside warfare and revolution (although considering the impact of armies on civilians) and focusing instead on more quotidian banditry, homicide, assault, rape and riot. Diverse themes, regions and times are tied together by an approach influenced by Norbert Elias’s “civilizing process,” which has become a principal, though debated, analytical tool of violence history. Direct discussion of theory is in large measure confined to the introduction and conclusion, but Ruff’s claim that “Europeans half a millennium ago constituted a society far more violent than that of their modern descendants” (2) clearly echoes recent Elias-inspired trends that have reversed the view—closely associated with early twentieth-century sociology—that industrialization and urbanization are inseparable from rising violence.

The book is organized thematically, and the chapters “Justice” and “The Discourse of Interpersonal Violence” seem to form its conceptual core. Their focus on “infrajudicial” dispute settlement (i.e., without recourse to state courts) and community self-regulation of everyday life (83–92) points to the vitality of alternative modes of maintaining order and the difficulties states faced in establishing monopolies on the legitimate use of force. Here, Ruff builds on the insights that the definition of violence “is a moving target” (5) and that violence “erupted as part of the discourse of human relations” (117) by exploring brawling, dueling, policing, domestic violence, judicial torture, state punishment and rape. These issues are brought together elegantly and vividly, drawing on materials from various regions and contexts to create a convincing portrait of a society in which violence was a widespread and normal part of everyday social life.

Other chapters move in different directions. “Representations of Violence,” concerns the depiction of violence in early modern media. While the chapter is strong on the production, forms, styles and motifs of these depictions, it is rather vague on the admittedly more elusive issue of their reception. Three chapters—”Ritual Group Violence,” “Popular Protest,” and “Organized Crime”—provide very capable summaries of heavily investigated fields in crime and social history. Emphasizing fundamental changes in rural life and the withdrawal of elites from traditional mores, Ruff finds by the end of the eighteenth century a broad assault on popular culture from state and church. Regarding organized crime, Ruff is convinced by the revisionist denial of “social crime,” the capability of crime to express social protest.

“States, Arms and Armies,” concerning the impact of armies on civilian populations through violent atrocities, rape, looting, and the forced levying of supplies, is the closest that the book comes to dealing with warfare. That chapter’s uneasy position on the frontier of Ruff’s topic area perhaps contributes to it being the most problematic section of the book. His conclusion that military codes, improving discipline and better conditions diminished the “wanton cruelty” of military forces and “hastened the process of restricting the destruction wrought by soldiers” (66) appears relatively accurate within the period he considers. However, the general argument that more disciplined or...