Gender and Policing in Early Modern England
Gender and Policing in Early Modern England
This book traces the beginnings of a shift from one model of gendered power to another. Over the course of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, traditional practices of local government by heads of household began to be undermined by new legal ideas about what it meant to hold office. In London, this enabled the emergence of a new kind of officeholding and a new kind of policing, rooted in a fraternal culture of official masculinity. London officers arrested, searched, and sometimes assaulted people on the basis of gendered suspicions, especially poorer women. Gender and Policing in Early Modern England describes how a recognisable form of gendered policing emerged from practices of local government by patriarchs and addresses wider questions about the relationship between gender and the state.
- Provides a new history of gendered policing which resonates with contemporary concerns about violence and discrimination in policing
- Links everyday social realities to big ideas about state power through concrete examples
- Bridges gaps between early modern and eighteenth century and between histories of officeholding and policing, with gender as the central theme
Product details
April 2025Paperback
9781009305198
265 pages
229 × 152 × 14 mm
0.389kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. Patriarchy:
- 1. Office and household
- Part II. Remaking Office:
- 2. The law of office
- 3. Office and manhood
- Part III. Policing:
- 4. Arrests
- 5. Searches
- Conclusion.
