BOOK: Clive EMSLEY & Sara MCDOUGALL (eds.), A Global History of Crime and Punishment (London: Bloomsbury, 2023), 6 vol. ISBN 9781472584847, 550 USD

(image source: Bloomsbury)

 

Abstract:

What constituted a crime 2,500 years ago, and how was criminal activity dealt with? How has our definition of justice evolved over time alongside developments in law, society, religion and class structures? 36 experts address these pressing questions in a six-volume reference set that spans 2,500 years of human history. Integrating perspectives from history, cultural studies, philosophy and classics, this globally-focused work traces developments in the ever-changing criminal and justice worlds against a variety of social, legal and cultural contexts. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. The six volumes cover: 1. Antiquity (500 BCE - 800 CE); 2. Medieval Age (800 - 1450); 3. Renaissance (1450 - 1650) ; 4. Age of Enlightenment (1650 - 1800); 5. Age of Empire (1800 - 1920); 6. Modern Age (1920 – 2000+). Themes include crime, types of criminal, law enforcement, sanctions and representations of crime and punishment. The page extent is approximately 1,728 pp. with c. 300 illustrations. Each volume opens with notes on contributors, a series preface and an introduction, and concludes with notes, bibliography and an index.

Table of contents:

Volume 1: A Global History of Crime and Punishment in Antiquity
Edited by Adriaan Lanni, Harvard Law School, USA

Volume 2: A Global History of Crime and Punishment in the Medieval Age
Edited by Karl Shoemaker, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Volume 3: A Global History of Crime and Punishment in the Renaissance
Edited by Laura Stokes and Michael Menna, both Stanford University, USA

Volume 4: A Global History of Crime and Punishment in the Age of Enlightenment
Edited by Xavier Rousseaux, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

Volume 5: A Global History of Crime and Punishment in the Age of Empire
Edited by Mark Finnane, Griffith University, Australia

Volume 6: A Global History of Crime and Punishment in the Modern Age

Edited by Paul Lawrence, The Open University, UK

On the editors:

Clive Emsley was Emeritus Professor and founder Co-Director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research at the Open University, UK. His books include Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900, The English Police: A Political and Social History and Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Sara McDougall is Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and appointed to the faculty in Biography and Memoir, French, History, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She studies gender and justice in the Middle Ages, with a focus on women’s encounters with legal and religious ideas in the society and culture of Medieval France. She is the author of two books, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late-Medieval Champagne (2012), and Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, c.800-1230 (2017). She has co-edited special issues for Law & History Review and Gender & History.

 Read more here.