Domestic Disturbances, Patriarchal Values

Bringing together case studies from across Europe, this book offers an in-depth analysis of family violence between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It raises important questions regarding absolute power, sovereignty and its familial manifestation, and the role of gender in domestic violence, reconsidered in the context of modern state formation as a public sphere and family building as a private sphere. The case studies serve as the basis for an analysis of forms, models, and patterns of violence within the family in the context of debates on political power, absolutism, and violence. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the History of the Family.