Nicholas Rogers
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300169621
- eISBN:
- 9780300189063
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300169621.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
After the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748, thousands of unemployed, including soldiers and seamen, found themselves on the streets of London ready to roister and steal. This book ...
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After the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748, thousands of unemployed, including soldiers and seamen, found themselves on the streets of London ready to roister and steal. This book explores the moral panic associated with the rapid demobilization aftermath the War of Austrian Succession. Through interlocking stories of duels, highway robberies, smuggling, riots, binge drinking, and even two earthquakes, it captures the anxieties of a half-decade, and assesses the social reforms contemporaries framed and imagined to deal with the crisis. Later, the book also argues that in addressing these events, contemporaries not only endorsed the traditional sanction of public executions, but also wrestled with the problem of expanding the parameters of government to include practices and institutions, we now regard as commonplace: censuses, the regularization of marriage through uniform methods of registration, penitentiaries, and police forces.Less
After the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748, thousands of unemployed, including soldiers and seamen, found themselves on the streets of London ready to roister and steal. This book explores the moral panic associated with the rapid demobilization aftermath the War of Austrian Succession. Through interlocking stories of duels, highway robberies, smuggling, riots, binge drinking, and even two earthquakes, it captures the anxieties of a half-decade, and assesses the social reforms contemporaries framed and imagined to deal with the crisis. Later, the book also argues that in addressing these events, contemporaries not only endorsed the traditional sanction of public executions, but also wrestled with the problem of expanding the parameters of government to include practices and institutions, we now regard as commonplace: censuses, the regularization of marriage through uniform methods of registration, penitentiaries, and police forces.
Andrew Dilts
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262410
- eISBN:
- 9780823268986
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262410.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter gives a close reading of Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government, demonstrating the deep connection between punishment and membership in the Western liberalism. This reading reveals ...
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This chapter gives a close reading of Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government, demonstrating the deep connection between punishment and membership in the Western liberalism. This reading reveals how punishment and membership are inextricably linked through criminal subjectivity and political membership in early modern thought. Focusing on Locke’s usage of the “thief” as a central figure of his political thought and the fear of highway robbery as a motivating force, this chapter demonstrates how liberal political orders are rooted in unstable terms of proportionality. Moreover, this chapter shows how the difficulty and instability of punishing transgressors is managed by producing subjects who can be so punished to make the foundational violence of civil society palatable. In doing so, the chapter questions the stability of the distinction between war and crime in the liberal tradition.Less
This chapter gives a close reading of Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government, demonstrating the deep connection between punishment and membership in the Western liberalism. This reading reveals how punishment and membership are inextricably linked through criminal subjectivity and political membership in early modern thought. Focusing on Locke’s usage of the “thief” as a central figure of his political thought and the fear of highway robbery as a motivating force, this chapter demonstrates how liberal political orders are rooted in unstable terms of proportionality. Moreover, this chapter shows how the difficulty and instability of punishing transgressors is managed by producing subjects who can be so punished to make the foundational violence of civil society palatable. In doing so, the chapter questions the stability of the distinction between war and crime in the liberal tradition.
