Afterword

Abstract

In this volume, we find essays on rape, martyrdom, tyranny and treason, wife murder, revolution and riots, dismemberments and whippings, warfare, “defeat, imprisonment, and death.” We encounter violence used to promote disorder and express resistance and to impose or preserve order, to define identity and to forge affective and political connections (in overlapping marital and martial, political and domestic spheres). We read about those who plot purposeful violence and those who murder incidentally because they cut their food with sharp knives and so have deadly weapons in hand when they fall into a rage. The forms of violence examined here function as an accident, a strategy, “an expectation, a protocol, and an opportunity for confrontation” (chapter six). On the one hand, Paul Seaver argues that apprentices’ riots might have been tolerated because they were “carrying out by demonstrative and violent means objectives and ends of which the magistrates thoroughly approved, however much they might deplore the illegal actions by which they were pursued.” On the other hand, Melissa Mowry argues that the public whippings at Bridewell Hospital might have functioned to rupture rather than foster connections, acting as a mechanism for preventing identification, isolating and atomizing individuals, and undermining the potential for collective action. In short, these essays challenge our ability to generalize about what counts as violence in the early modern period or what cultural work it accomplished. As the authors show, different forms of violence meant different things at different moments for different people.