History of...

Private law enforcement and order maintenance have usually been seen as working against or outside of state authority. A History of Private Policing in the United States surveys private policing since

This four-volume Cambridge World History of Violence is the first collection of its kind to look at violence across different periods of human history and different regions of the world. It capitalises on the growing scholarly interest in the history of violence, which is emerging as one of the key intellectual issues of our time. The volumes take into account the latest scholarship in the field and comprises the work of nearly 140 scholars, who have contributed substantial chapters to provide an authoritative treatment of violence from a multiplicity of perspectives. The collection thus offers the reader a wide-ranging thematic treatment of the historical contexts of different types of violence, as well as a compendium of experience shared by peoples across time.

In the period from 1500 to 1800 the problem of violence necessitated asking fundamental questions and formulating answers about the most basic forms of human organisation and interactions. Violence spoke to critical issues such as the problem of civility in society, the nature of political sovereignty and the power of the state, the legitimacy of conquest and subjugation, the possibilities of popular resistance, and the manifestations of ethnic and racial unrest. It also provided the raw material for profound meditations on humanity and for examining our relationship to the divine and natural worlds. The third volume of The Cambridge World History of Violence examines a world in which global empires were consolidated and expanded, and in which civilisations for the first time linked to each other by trans-oceanic contacts and a sophisticated world trade system.

Violence permeated much of social life across the vast geographical space of the European, American, Asian and Islamic lands and through the broad sweep of what is often termed the Middle Millennium (roughly 500 to 1500). Focusing on four contexts in which violence occurred across this huge area, the contributors to this volume explore the formation of centralised polities through war and conquest; institution building and ideological expression by these same polities; control of extensive trade networks; and the emergence and dominance of religious ecumenes. Attention is also given to the idea of how theories of violence are relevant to the specific historical circumstances discussed in the volume's chapters. A final section on the depiction of violence, both visual and literary, demonstrates the ubiquity of societal efforts to confront meanings of violence during this longue durée.

The first thirty years of the twentieth century was a key period in the development of Japanese society, during which it began to face directly the political, economic and cultural power of the West i