‘What’s past is prologue’

Abstract

When introducing a special issue on Historical Criminology one is almost bound to ponder the question: what are the relationships between history and criminology? The topics that today belong to the categories of 'crime' and the 'criminal justice system' are by no means new forms of inquiry in historical research. Murder, adultery and theft, for example, address deeply moral issues in the Western canon and Western politics and seem to have fired the (historical) imagination throughout time. Control, safety and the boundaries of power and territory also conflate with issues of crime and punishment. The famous Florentine statesman Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) tells the story of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Romagna, who sought to pacify a province in his territory which was known for strife and conflict. The Duke commissioned Messer Ramiro de Lorqua, widely known for his brutality. De Lorqua duly crushed the resistance and took control of the province. When control was established Borgia no longer saw the need for de Lorqua. Borgia established a civil court, whose head, a famous legal scholar familiar with the regime, sentenced de Lorqua to death. In the month of December 1502, Messer Ramiro de Lorqua was torn in half in the town square. According to Machiavelli, the effect of the spectacle was to increase the loyalty of the inhabitants of the city: "The barbarity of this spectacle caused the people to be at once satisfied and dismayed" (Machiavelli, 1988: 26). Reinhart Koselleck's (1973/1959) classic study of the sattelzeitt 1 argues that Europe's religious wars of the 16th century caused a rise in secular technique for control-a secular 'raison d'état'. Hobbes' Leviathan is the prime example. In the wake of the early Enlightenment period this secular technology was re-moralized (Koselleck, 1973/1959). In return for safety

Historical context and the criminological imagination: Towards a three-dimensional criminology

“…But, with or without such direct implications for the present, historical research almost invariably provides the sort of background information on preceding periods of time that helps to frame the present in time. To borrow a phrase from Flaatten and Ystehede (2014: 137), historical research can thus provide a ‘prologue to the present’.…”

Conversations in a Crowded Room: An Assessment of the Contribution of Historical Research to Criminology

“…Peter King (1999) examined the relationship of history and criminology in 1999 and concluded that, although it had ceased to be a ‘dialogue of the deaf’, it was still a conversation being conducted in ‘discreet whispers’ (p.161). Since then, though, there has been an ‘explosion’ of research and undergraduate teaching in crime history (Godfrey, Williams and Lawrence 2008, p.18; also Flaatten and Ystehede 2014; Yeomans 2014). In recent years, ‘historical criminology’ working groups and networks have been formed within the European Society of Criminology, British Society of Criminology, and Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, while the North American Historical Criminology Network was created in 2019.…”

Thinking forward through the past: Prospecting for urban order in (Victorian) public parks

“…Historical research plays an indispensable role in helping to overcome this myopic fixation on the recent. In the face of this ‘chronocentrism’ (Rock, 2005) within much criminology—variously manifested as ‘presentism’ (Flaatten and Ystenhede, 2014: 138) or ‘epochalism’ (Crawford and Hutchinson, 2016: 1188)—this article explores ways in which historical insights can be imaginatively harnessed to understand the present and inform visions of the future. It contributes to a wider effort to stimulate engagement between criminology and history (Dubber and Valverde, 2006; Lawrence, 2012).…”