Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Female Dismemberment and Decapitation: Gendered Understandings of Power in Aztec Ritual Violence

Chapter 3 Religious Languages of Violence. Some Reflections on the Reading of Extremes

Chapter 4 Conceptualizing Cultures of Violence and Cultural Change

Chapter 6 Vengeance in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France

Chapter 7 At the Sign of the Head: The Currency of Beheading in Early Modern Ireland

Chapter 8 Duelling and the Court of Chivalry in Early Stuart England

Chapter 9 Popular Violence in the French Revolution: Revolt, Retribution and the Slide to State Terror

Chapter 10 Avoiding the Ultimate Act of Violence: Mediterranean Bandits and Kidnapping for Ransom, 1815–1914

Chapter 11 Swords and Daggers: Class Conceptions of Interpersonal Violence in Liberal Italy

Chapter 12 Race, Class and Maritime Authority in Late Victorian England: The Surprising Cases of Charles Arthur (1888) and Bagwahn Jassiwara (1891)

Chapter 13 From ‘Duels in the Clouds’ to ‘Exterminating Attacks’: Legitimizing Aerial Warfare in Britain and Germany, 1914–45