The Cambridge World History of Violence

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.

1. Violence in inner Asian history Nicola Di Cosmo; 2. Conspirators in violence Don J. Wyatt; 3. Armies, lords and subjects in Medieval Iran Jürgen Paul; 4. Armies and bands in early medieval Europe John France; 5. Viking violence Anders Winroth; 6. Early medieval China's rulers, retainers and harem Jonathan Karam Skaff; 7. Warrior regimes and the regulation of violence in medieval Japan David Spafford; 8. Torture and public executions in the Islamic middle period Christian Lange; 9. Crime and law in Europe Hannah Skoda; 10. Banditry and peasants in medieval Japan Morten Oxenbøll; 11. State, society and trained violence in middle period China Peter Lorge; 12. Seigneurial violence in medieval Europe Justine Firnhaber-Baker; 13. The growth of military power and the impact of state military violence in Western Europe, c.1460 to 1560 David Potter; 14. Ethnic and religious violence in Byzantium Teresa Shawcross; 15. Violence against women in the early Islamic period Nadia Maria El Cheikh; 16. Violence and murder in Europe Sara M. Butler; 17. Religion and violence in China T. H. Barrett; 18. Religion and violence in premodern Japan Martin Repp; 19. Human sacrifice and ritualised violence in the Americas before the European conquest Ute Schüren and Wolfgang Gabbert; 20. 'Not cruelty but piety': circumscribing European crusading violence Susanna A. Throop; 21. Chivalric violence Richard W. Kaeuper; 22. Jihad in Islamic thought Asma Afsaruddin; 23. Christian violence against heretics, Jews and Muslims Christine Caldwell Ames; 24. 'Fighting for peace' John Haldon; 25. Obligation, substitution and order Andrew K. Scherer; 26. Representations of violence in Imperial China Bret Hinsch; 27. Revealing the manly worth Hitomi Tonomura; 28. Picturing violence in the Islamic lands Sheila Blair; 29. Scenes of violence in Arabic literature James Montgomery; 30. Violence Is the name of the (bad) game Albrecht Classen; 31. Violence and the force of representation in European art Mitchell B. Merback.

Matthew Gordon is Professor of History at the University of Miami. He is the author of The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish Military of Samarra (2000) and The Rise of Islam (2005); co-editor of Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History (with Kathryn A. Hain, 2017) and co-editor and translator of The Works of Ibn Wadih al-Ya'qubi: An English Translation (with Chase F. Robinson, Everett K. Rowson and Michael Fishbein, 2017).
Richard W. Kaeuper is Professor of History at the University of Rochester, New York. He has published widely on justice and public order, and more recently on chivalry, in medieval Europe. Recent books include Medieval Chivalry (Cambridge, 2016) and Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry (2009). A collection of his essays, Kings, Knights, and Bankers: The Collected Articles of Richard Kaeuper (edited by Christopher Guyol), was published in 2016.
Harriet Zurndorfer is affiliated with the Leiden Institute for Area Studies in the Faculty of Humanities, Universiteit Leiden. She is the author of Change and Continuity in Chinese Local History (1989), China Bibliography: A Research Guide to Reference Works about China Past and Present (1995); and has published more than 200 learned articles and reviews. She is also founder, and editor of the journal Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China, published since 1999.