Domestic Disturbances, Patriarchal Values

This book offers an in-depth analysis of several national case studies on family violence between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, using court records as their main source. It raises important questions for research on early modern Europe: the notion of absolute power; sovereignty and its applicability to familial power; the problem of violence and the possibility of its usage for conflict resolution both in public and private spaces; and the interconnection of gender and violence against