ViolenControl · Violence and its Control in early modern Venice, 1500-1797
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-09-01 → 2023-08-31
- EU contribution
- €224,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Violence and its Control in early modern Venice, 1500-1797
“ViolenControl” addresses the problem of interpersonal violence and its control in the early modern age, with a focus on the Republic of Venice. The project challenges views of the linear decrease of lethal violence between the Middle Ages and modern period, built on Norbert Elias’ analysis. This interpretation has long been contested by scholars of violence, but comprehensive studies on early modern Italy are still lacking. “ViolenControl” aims to offer a long-term study of the Venetian Republic, a different setting from the princely one usually surveyed. Understanding which factors and control mechanisms have actually contributed to the monitoring and decrease of interpersonal violence is an important discovery that can potentially help modern societies tackle the issue of violence, whose incidence varies greatly from nation to nation. The factors so far identified by scholars as major contributors to the increase in lethal violence are political and environmental-demographic factors. Finding out what impact these elements had on a complex setting as the Venetian Republic is another objective of this research, which focuses on both quantitative and qualitative aspects. In particular, “ViolenControl” addressed the following aspects: the spatial aspects of violence, class, and gender. Starting with the relationship between lethal violence and gender relations in the Venetian Republic, this project aimed at investigating the gendered characteristics of violence, especially the construction, performance, and elaboration of masculinity through male violence. This was, in fact, a prerogative of young men and associated with socio-cultural notions of male honour. But the project also gave special consideration to female-on-male and female-on-female violence as to better frame how violence framed, and sometimes even conflicted with, gender identities.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Violence is the result of complex interactions between cultural, social, economic, political and environmental factors and is subject to changes that reflect on-going transformations within society. Investigating its perception and understanding the boundaries between tolerated, sanctioned, and unacknowledged violence allows to examine inter-personal relationships within a community and the shared value systems within it. The management of violence is then a direct consequence of specific political factors, which are expressed on the judicial level. Studying violence during the early modern age is of fundamental importance to understand, for example, the role and weight of the state within society.This research project will study the rate of violence in the Venetian urban environment during the early modern age and the efforts made by the Republic to reduce it. The project will pay particular attention to political violence among members of families belonging to the Venetian ruling class, to verify whether the Venetian context was an exception in the European context. The project will examine the transformations that the Venetian judicial bodies underwent to demonstrate what impact they had on violence, either by increasing or effectively containing it. In addition to the judicial system, the project will also examine the policing measure and the expansion of the surveillance network as a form of control of the urban territory. The results achieved will be compared with the rates of political violence, caused by factionalism, in the Italian mainland under Venetian rule. Finally, the project will verify how the Republic tried to put a brake on another main source of violence, the one linked to border banditry. Venice repeatedly negotiated extradition treaties with its neighbouring states in order to deny any space of immunity to outlaws, but the execution of these agreements had little success.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF YORK · YORK NORTH YORKSHIRECoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union