BOOK: Simon LEBOUTEILLER, Louisa TAYLOR (eds.), Peacemaking and the Restraint of Violence in High Medieval Europe (Londres: Routledge, 2023). ISBN: 9780367142568

(Image source: Routledge)

ABOUT THE BOOK

The High Middle Ages have been seen as an important point within the development of governmental and administrative bureaucracy, as well as a time in which there was frequent conflict. This volume addresses the methods by which violence was regulated and mitigated, and peaceful relations were re-established in high medieval Europe. By studying the restraint of violence and the imposition of peace, the chapters in this volume contribute to interdisciplinary discussions about the effects that violence had on medieval societies. The wide-ranging geographical scope of this volume invites comparisons to be made in relation to how violence was restrained, and peace established, in different settings.

The chapters in the first part of this volume address the issue of how violence was moderated and curbed during and following periods of conflict. The second part explores attempts to maintain peace and the processes which developed to deal with those viewed as having broken the peace. The final part of this volume explores the ways in which conflict was avoided through the maintenance of positive relationships between individuals and groups.

This book will be of interest to both academics and students interested in conflict, the restraint of violence, and peacemaking in medieval societies as well as those working on ritual and conflict resolution in any historical period.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Simon Lebouteiller holds a PhD in Medieval History and taught History and Scandinavian Studies at the Universities of Oslo and Sorbonne. He is currently an Associate Professor of Old Norse and Icelandic Studies at the University of Caen, Normandy, and a member of the research centre ERLIS (Équipe de Recherche sur les Littératures, les Imaginaires et les Sociétés). His research investigates peacemaking, rituals, political practices, and ideologies in medieval Scandinavia, as well as Norse historiography. He has also translated Icelandic sagas into French, such as Knýtlinga saga (La saga des rois de Danemark: Knýtlinga saga. Transl. Simon Lebouteiller. Toulouse: 2021).

Louisa Taylor is Lecturer in Medieval History at Aberystwyth University and Lecturer in History at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI). Her research explores elite culture and behaviour during conflict in high and late medieval Scandinavia, Iceland, England, Wales, and the Baltic region using comparative perspectives.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Peacemaking and the Restraint of Violence in High Medieval Europe (Simon Lebouteiller and Louisa Taylor)

Part 1 – Restraining Violence: Ideas and Practices

Chapter 1 – The Submission of Rebellious Cities in the Roman-German Empire (Hermann Kamp)

Chapter 2 – Peace or Punishment in Medieval England: From 1215 to 1322 (Stephen D. White)

Chapter 3 – ‘Be at peace with God and me’: Violence, War, and Royal Responses to Insurrection in Medieval Scotland, c.　1100–1286 (Iain MacIness)

Chapter 4 – Conflicts and the Use of Exile as a Means of Restraining Violence in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Castile-León (Harald Endre Tafjord)

Part 2 – Negotiating and Defining Peace

Chapter 5 – The ‘Old Peace’ as a Peacemaking Institution in Thirteenth-Century German-Russian Trade Treaties (Tobias Boestad)

Chapter 6 – Encounters at the Water’s Edge: Peace Meetings on Rivers, Bridges, and Islands in Medieval Scandinavia (Simon Lebouteiller)

Chapter 7 – God’s Peace and the King’s Peace in High Medieval Norway (David Brégaint)

Part 3 – Establishing and Maintaining Relationships

Chapter 8 – Food, Peacemaking, and Maintenance in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century England (Lars Kjær)

Chapter 9 – Food and Clothing in Rituals of Peacemaking in Medieval Europe and the Latin East (Yvonne Friedman)

Chapter 10 – Cloth, Clothing, and Peacemaking in Byzantium: From the Second Part of the Eleventh Century to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century (Nicolas Drocourt)

More information can be found here.

BOOK: Deana HEATH, Colonial Terror. Torture and State Violence in Colonial India (Oxford: University Press, 2021). ISBN: 9780192893932, pp. 240, £ 80.00

 

(Source: OUP )

ABOUT THE BOOK

Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule and some of the ways in which extraordinary violence was embedded in the ordinary operation of colonial states. Although enacted largely by Indians on Indian bodies, particularly by subaltern members of the police, the book argues that torture was facilitated, systematized, and ultimately sanctioned by first the East India Company and then the Raj because it benefitted the colonial regime, since rendering the police a source of terror played a key role in the construction and maintenance of state sovereignty. Drawing upon the work of both Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, Colonial Terror contends, furthermore, that it is only possible to understand the terrorizing nature of the colonial police in India by viewing colonial India as a 'regime of exception' in which two different forms of exceptionality were in operation - one wrought through the exclusion of particular groups or segments of the Indian population from the law and the other by petty sovereigns in their enactment of illegal violence in the operation of the law. It was in such fertile ground, in which colonial subjects were both included within the domain of colonial law while also being abandoned by it, that torture was able to flourish. in which two different forms of exceptionality were in operation - one wrought through the exclusion of particular groups or segments of the Indian population from the law and the other by petty sovereigns in their enactment of illegal violence in the operation of the law. It was in such fertile ground, in which colonial subjects were both included within the domain of colonial law while also being abandoned by it, that torture was able to flourish. in which two different forms of exceptionality were in operation - one wrought through the exclusion of particular groups or segments of the Indian population from the law and the other by petty sovereigns in their enactment of illegal violence in the operation of the law. It was in such fertile ground, in which colonial subjects were both included within the domain of colonial law while also being abandoned by it, that torture was able to flourish.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deana Heath is Reader in Indian and Colonial History at the University of Liverpool. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and has since held academic posts in four countries: the United States, Ireland, Canada, and the United Kingdom. she has been the beneficiary of grants from numerous national and international funding bodies, including the Independent Social Research Foundation, The Indian Council for Cultural Relations, The Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Fulbright Scholar programs. She is currently Reader in Indian and Colonial History at the University of Liverpool.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Torture, Empire, and the Exception

1: Violence, the Exception and Bare Life

2: The Facilitators I: Policing

3: The Facilitators II: Law and 'Justice'

4: The Perpetrators

Conclusion: Torture in a State of Exception

More information with the publisher.