This conference brings global approaches to the history of violence, reassessing the nature of violence during the early modern period. Using violence and the restraint of violence as a unifying theme, participants are encouraged to make trans-national comparisons and connections across the early modern world. By examining large-scale, organized violence alongside broader social and cultural patterns, this conference will explore the boundaries between 'war' and 'violence', as well as how they relate to ideas of morality, social order, law, and political legitimacy in the early modern world. We encourage scholars to address contemporary perceptions of violence and its restraint, framing analysis through thematic, rather than geographic, approaches. Confirmed speakers include: Wayne Lee, Alan McFarlane, Stuart Carroll, Pratyay Nath, Brian Sandberg, Cecile Vidal, Lauren Benton, Adam Clulow, Simon Layton, Richard Reid, and James Belich.

We welcome papers that address:
- Global comparisons and indicators of violence
- Definitions of organized violence and crime, such as banditry and piracy
- Linkages between organized, collective and interpersonal violence
- Law’s penetration into oceanic, battlefield, domestic, and/or other novel arenas
- The nature of extra-territorial violence
- Actual practices of violence
- Toleration and restraint of violence
- Methods of measurement, used by contemporaries and/or historians, in assessing what is or was appropriate.

We particularly welcome papers on violence in regions not covered by confirmed speakers, such as China, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Africa.

An abstract of 400 words, accompanied by a short (two-page) CV, should be submitted to globalviolence@history.ox.ac.uk by 31 December 2016.

Organizers:
Peter H. Wilson, Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford
Marie Houllemare, Institut Universitaire de France, Universitе d'Amiens (CHSSC)
Erica Charters, Global History Centre, University of Oxford

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