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Violence Archive
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‘A Hand Prepared to be Red’: Manliness and Violence on Britain’s Colonial Frontiers
Posted on February 25, 2013 | No CommentsOn the frontiers of Queensland and British Columbia in the mid-nineteenth century, a culture of violence prevailed. Frontier men accommodated violence in their lives as a routine and normal part of frontier living. The Victorian ethos of 'manliness' - the possession of essential virtues such as self-restraint, courage and strenuous effort - had within it the potential for violence. On the frontier the practice of manliness often entailed violence and the manly ethos could be distorted to justify and legitimise violent acts. -
More Than Just Kidd’s Play
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsTom Wareham examines the role played by a legendary yet ill-fated pirate in the consolidation of England’s early trading empire. -
The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Toleration
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsThe relatively minor role torture played in the Gunpowder Plot investigation is a good example of the myths that surround this emotive subject. Permission was given to employ torture on Fawkes, who initially refused to say anything, but whether it was actually used and how much is unclear. -
It Isn’t About Duck Hunting: The British Origins of the Right to Arms
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsWho, if any, of these American analysts has found the truth? Does the story of the British right to arms offer anything of value to the modern American gun debate? The academic literature has heretofore been sparse. My two books on gun control in Great Britain both focused mainly on twentieth-century gun policy, rather than the story of the 1689 Bill of Rights and its right to arms. -
Negative Portrayals of Poles in Elizabethan Literature
Posted on December 8, 2012 | No CommentsAnglo-Polish relations improved during the first half of the sixteenth century. The newly established power of the kingdom of Poland-Lithuania probably raised English hopes that English merchants would gain greater access into the Baltic Sea. High-level diplomatic contacts between the two nations became more frequent. -
Historical Perspectives on Violence Against Women
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No CommentsThree great bodies of thought have influenced western society’s views and treatment of women: Judeo-Christian cultural beliefs, Greek philosophy and the western legal code. -
Violence and duelling between exiled courtiers: the case of the Caroline Stuart Court in exile, c. 1649-c. 1660
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No CommentsYet, though we can clearly say that the duel was not unique to the exiled Caroline Stuart Court, we must still concede that such acts of violence occurred quite frequently there. This was especially true from 1656-59, when Charles II’s Court was in the Spanish Netherlands, and this tendency to conflict was even remarked upon by contemporary observers. -
The Curse of Macbeth
Posted on October 11, 2012 | No CommentsWilliam Shakespeare wrote Macbeth sometime between 1603 and 1606 for King James I (Macbeth). -
Deeds Against Nature: women and Crime in Street Literature of Early Modern England
Posted on October 9, 2012 | No CommentsIn early modern England, when news in printed form designed for a large- scale readership was only beginning to develop, accounts of murders committed by women assumed an importance entirely disproportionate in relation to their actual occurrence. -
Bureaucratic mercy: The Home Office and the treatment of capital cases in Victorian England
Posted on September 15, 2012 | No CommentsThis dissertation is a study in the administration of criminal justice in mid-Victorian England, and in particular of the Prerogative of Mercy. -
Infanticide in Victorian England, 1856-1878: Thirty legal cases
Posted on September 15, 2012 | No CommentsTo combat this lack of modern memory of infanticide,it will be the purpose of this work to make a contribution to the understanding of the motives of the men and women who committed the crime in the nineteenth century and of those who commit it today -
‘A Suffering People’: English Quakers and Their Neighbours c.1650–c.1700
Posted on September 6, 2012 | No CommentsPopular hostility towards Quakers has attracted little attention from historians. Studies of crowds and riots in the Restoration period make little mention of violence against Quakers -
Home invasions: Victorian domestic space and the figure of the outsider
Posted on August 28, 2012 | No CommentsIn order to explain the Victorian ideology that underlies domestic space and its perceived threats, my thesis discusses several different aspects of identity in relation to inside and outside the home. -
Robert Harley and the Myth of the Golden Thread: Family Piety,Journalism and the History of the Assassination Attempt of 8 March 1711
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsOn 8 March 1711, a possible French double agent, the marquis de Guiscard, on his own initiative bearing a grudge against both Robert Harley and Henry St John, attempted to assassinate Harley, the chancellor of the exchequer (later lord treasurer and earl of Oxford) and head of the new tory ministry established the previous year, by stabbing him with a penknife. -
Staging Executions: The Theater of Punishment in Early Modern England
Posted on July 6, 2012 | No CommentsIn 1571, the first permanent structure for public hangings was constructed at Tyburn. Attending public hangings at “Tyburn tree,” as well as other forms of public punishment was a popular pastime in Elizabethan and Stuart England. Events we would now call “entertainment” in early modern England were fairly limited. -
The taming of the duel: masculinity, honour and ritual violence in London, 1660–1800
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe duel had a long history, but it was a malleable custom, and has been variously described as fundamentally feudal, early modern, and modern."Although traceable back to medieval tournaments, feuds, and judicial combat, the single combat to resolve questions of honour developed in the sixteenth century in several European countries, arriving in England in the 1570s.





























