scholarly journals WOMEN, CRIME AND THE SECULAR COURT IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CLUJ

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-42
Author(s):  
Andrea Fehér
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Female Crime ◽  
Female Criminality ◽  
The Law ◽  
Male Discourse ◽  
The Town

The purpose of this presentation is to address the issue of female criminality in early modern Cluj, and to analyze women’s position before the law. Our investigation is based on the records of the secular Court from the town Cluj, where we have identified more than 250 cases of women accused of fornication, adultery, witchcraft, infanticide, theft and drunkenness, poisoning, swearing and slander. There were a significant number of female convictions during the century, from which most ended with light sentences, such as banishment, corporal punishments, stigmatizations with hot iron, mutilations and only occasionally death. We would like to analyze in detail the types of crime  and their punishments presenting the legal background, the jurisdiction and the habitual practices of the Court. We would also like to underline the importance of the narrative strategies used in these inquisitorial trials, since our documents reveal female criminality from a male perspective, as in these times men ran the legal system, consequently the Court records, in our reading contain moral, legal and sexual elements of a male discourse on female crime.

Free Blacks and Coloreds and the Administration of Justice in Eighteenth-Century Curaçao

2010 ◽  
Vol 84 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han Jordaan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
The Law

Two case studies show the daily practice of justice regarding free Blacks and Coloreds in Curacao and the functioning of the early modern Dutch legal system pertaining to colonial and slavery-related matters. According to the author, both cases reveal that the application of the law, when free non-Whites were involved, was apparently open to interpretation and that there was a divergence in this respect between the colony and the metropole. Author assesses this conflict between the theory of the law and the practice of the administration of justice in the colonies.

False Friends, Spiteful Enemies: a Community at Law in Early Modern England

1998 ◽  
Vol 71 (174) ◽  
pp. 52-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Churches
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Fast Growing ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Town

Abstract This article examines a body of lawsuits from the fast‐growing colliery port of Whitehaven in northwest England, in the early eighteenth century. The matching estate correspondence illuminates how litigation affected relations between the major landowning family and their tenants, and how it was used by different interest groups within the town. Looking at the use of the law from the standpoint of the litigants, examining who initiated the suits and why, and with what results, will go some way in furthering our knowledge of the culture of the law in early modern England.

The Taming of Highland Masculinity: Interpersonal Violence and Shifting Codes of Manhood, c. 1760–1840

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Abrams
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Indigenous Culture ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
The Law ◽  
Violent Assault

This chapter argues that male interpersonal violence provides a way in which divergent, conflicting and shifting codes of manliness in Scottish society can be discerned. Historians of masculinity have argued that the eighteenth century saw a change in the model of manhood as male interpersonal violence in defence of honour and reputation was replaced by the advocacy of self-governance and recourse to the law. Using court records of violent assault, this chapter focusses on a type of modernizing society – the Scottish Highlands 1760-1840 - in which a code of violence governed by an indigenous culture of manhood was gradually superceded by new cultural norms. An earlier association of masculinity with interpersonal violence in the Highlands was challenged increasingly from around 1800 by those who advocated civility and restraint amongst men, especially in the growing Highland town of Inverness, the centre of an emerging middle-class culture with changing social sensibilities

scholarly journals Laws, Courts and Communities in the Pennsylvania Backcountry, ca. 1750–1800

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-67
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Frontier Settlers ◽  
Irish Migrants

Historians have commonly portrayed the Pennsylvania backcountry as a lawless, violent region. Many have attributed this these levels of violence to the influx of Scots Irish migrants to the province after the 1720. Examining several eighteenth-century Pennsylvania counties, this article demonstrates that earlier scholars have consistently overestimated levels of crime on the frontier. Moreover, court records shows that Scots-Irish individuals were no more likely to be prosecuted or convicted of crime than other ethnic groups. Overall, frontier settlers embraced the legal system, even as they insisted it be applied in ways that accorded with local conditions.

Emissaries, allies, accomplices and enemies: married women's work in eighteenth-century urban Sweden

Urban History ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARIA ÅGREN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Women’S Work

ABSTRACTBased on so-called Excise court records, this article argues that in eighteenth-century urban Sweden much of middling women's work took place in the interstices between households, as ‘help’ given to other women, often across social divides. These forms of work are often difficult to track in the historical records and, consequently, they have remained unnoticed, creating the erroneous picture that women did not contribute to their households through paid work. The lack of attention to these kinds of work has also overemphasized the closed character of early modern households which were, in fact, both flexible and permeable units.

scholarly journals BIGAMOUS MARRIAGE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERNARD CAPP
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Law

ABSTRACTThough divorce followed by remarriage was illegal in early modern England, a considerable number of people whose marriage had failed or whose spouse had deserted ventured to marry again, either uncertain of the law or choosing to defy it. Bigamy, traditionally a spiritual offence, came to be seen as a significant social problem and was made a felony in 1604. Drawing on ecclesiastical and secular court records and a variety of other sources, this article examines the legal framework, offers a typology of bigamists, and explores the circumstances surrounding their actions. It finds that offenders, predominantly male, ranged from the unlucky or feckless to the cynically manipulative, among them a small number of serial bigamists. It also asks how such offences might come to light in an age of relatively poor communications, and examines the plight of those who had married a bigamist in good faith. Finally it examines the likelihood of conviction, and the punishment of those who confessed or were convicted.

scholarly journals “Law and Economics” Literature and Ottoman Legal Studies

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 114-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Metin M. Coşgel ◽  
Boğaç Ergene
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Selection Principle ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Economics Literature ◽  
The Law

This article considers the relevance of hypotheses developed in the “law and economics” literature regarding settlement-trial decisions in the Ottoman Empire. In particular, it explores the applicability of the “selection principle” and “50 percent plaintiff win-rate” formulated by George Priest and Benjamin Klein. The article also demonstrates how existing research based on Ottoman court records can contribute to the “law and economics” scholarship, which is dominated by research based on modern, Western contexts. The article utilizes the court records from eighteenth-century Kastamonu to make observations about settlement/litigation decisions in an Ottoman context. 


scholarly journals Historical Gaps and Non-existent Sources: The Case of the Chaudrie Court in French India

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 979-1006
Author(s):  
Danna Agmon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Body ◽  
French Empire ◽  
Court Records ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Archival History ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article develops a typology of historical and archival gaps—physical, historiographical, and epistemological—to consider how non-existent sources are central to understanding colonial law and governance. It does so by examining the institutional and archival history of a court known as the Chaudrie in the French colony of Pondichéry in India in the eighteenth century, and integrating problems that are specific to the study of legal history—questions pertaining to jurisdiction, codification, evidence, and sovereignty—with issues all historians face regarding power and the making of archives. Under French rule, Pondichéry was home to multiple judicial institutions, administered by officials of the French East Indies Company. These included the Chaudrie court, which existed at least from 1700 to 1827 as a forum where French judges were meant to dispense justice according to local Tamil modes of dispute resolution. However, records of this court prior to 1766 have not survived. By drawing on both contemporaneous mentions of the Chaudrie and later accounts of its workings, this study centers missing or phantom sources, severed from the body of the archive by political, judicial, and bureaucratic decisions. It argues that the Chaudrie was a court where jurisdiction was decoupled from sovereignty, and this was the reason it did not generate a state-managed and preserved archive of court records for itself until the 1760s. The Chaudrie’s early history makes visible a relationship between law and its archive that is paralleled by approaches to colonial governance in early modern French Empire.

The Correction Court in the Diocese of Carlisle, 1704–1756

1990 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Kinnear
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ecclesiastical Courts

Many twentieth-century historians of early modern England have assumed that ecclesiastical jurisdication was a lost cause after the Restoration, and thus, in contrast to earlier periods, there has been little research on eighteenth-century ecclesiastical courts. However, an examination of the Correction Court records for the Diocese of Carlisle between 1704 and 1758 and a summary survey of other dioceses suggest that such archives may prove useful for historians. This article uses the Carlisle Correction Court archive to study the charges which were brought to the court in the first half of the eighteenth century and, after a brief description of the social and economic setting, looks at the characteristics of the people brought to book.

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