In this incredibly detailed study of how enmity (“a state or feeling of mutual opposition or hostility” [1]) became a major social problem during the transition to modernity in Europe between 1500 and 1800, Stuart Carroll directly challenges the still widely accepted theory that the continent underwent a “process of civilization” in this period. By drawing on a wealth of microstudies from early modern Italy, Germany, France, and England, this book contests three key ideas about violence in the early modern period: that there was a consistent decline in interpersonal violence, that such violence was replaced by litigation, and that the Reformation led to more effective social controls. Instead, Carroll shows that the rise of civilized manners did not tame or control violence among early modern elites, and that a rise in litigation was in fact mirrored by an increase in murder rates across Europe in the sixteenth century, reaching their peak in the seventeenth century.

Arguing that religious divisions alone cannot explain the considerable violence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Carroll asserts that it was the impact of warfare on preexisting hostilities and local issues that made disputes far more likely to turn lethal. This work also convincingly argues that the rise in interpersonal violence across the sixteenth century was a signifier of important societal changes that were taking place against the backdrop of instability caused by warfare. In particular, the transformation of the social elite from a knightly upper class into “a much more amorphous class of gentlemen” led to violence due to “numerous squabbles over precedence and the signifiers of social ascendancy” (12–13).

The first section of the book addresses the Italian States, which experienced far higher rates of violence than any of their neighbors despite having highly developed legal systems. Three chapters are devoted to the politics, culture, and decline of vendetta, a process of conflict resolution which greatly contributed to the increasing homicide rates in the Italian States in the sixteenth century. Carroll argues that clashes over prestige and status during a period of warfare, political uncertainty, and more pronounced social stratification led to elite individuals or factions being disproportionately responsible for the high body count. For example, the dueling mania that gripped the Italian Peninsula after 1500 is cited as a negative consequence of social mobility and social differentiation since members of the rising professional class adopted the trappings and mentality of “gentlemen”—including carrying a sword and issuing challenges (96–97).

The second section of the book addresses enmity within the German States, and Carroll deftly challenges the idea that increased litigation and new legislation resulted in a decline in interpersonal violence. For example, the rise in executions following the introduction of Charles V’s legal ordinance in 1532 should not be seen as state repression of violence since “in seventeenth-century Saxony you were more likely to be executed for adultery than homicide” (156), and the growth of litigation after the 1555 Peace of Augsburg is proof that enmity between social elites was hardly in decline. Carroll places trends in interpersonal violence in early modern Germany within the chronological context of the Reformation, while still demonstrating that confessional differences alone rarely caused outbreaks of violence, and that witchcraft trials exposed preexisting local divisions and feuds. As in the previous section, Carroll attributes the explosion of violence in late sixteenth-century Germany to status anxiety and a clash between traditional ideas about virtue and hierarchy on the one hand, and social mobility and Renaissance ideas about worth and merit on the other.

Carroll contends that aristocratic feuding was a significant feature of rural life in early modern France, and while some instances of violence were confessionally motivated, communal politics was the most significant factor in generating extraordinary levels of violence. He effectively shows that the increase in violence after 1635 was not a united reaction to royal centralization policies but rather due to these policies causing a widening of local divisions. The section on England is the book’s least comprehensive due to the context’s relative lack of judicial sources. However, Carroll uses other materials such as diaries and state papers to demonstrate that the homicide rate in early modern England was much higher than previously assumed, and “not dissimilar to the rates recorded by its neighbours” (324). As in the other sections of the book, Carroll argues that local factional politics led to an escalation of personal hostility and violence in the late sixteenth-century, and that this coincided with a boom in litigation, demonstrating that violence and the courts were complementary tools of the elites as ways to pursue grievances.

A particular strength of this book is its close examination of the different forms of hostile relationship within each of the case study states and their respective cultural contexts. Vendetta, Fehden, querelles and quarrels in early modern Italy, German, France, and England each had their own unique legal meanings and customs which are often lost in translation or have been left behind by the evolution of a language. For example, the German Fehde had a narrower legal meaning than the English “feud,” and early modern “quarrels” were serious legal complaints rather than trivial disagreements. The final comparative section of the book provides a similarly thorough examination of how enmity and violence were recorded in ego-documents by writers across early modern Europe, as well as the spaces in which disputes occurred and the experiences of peace-making and subsequent coexistence.

Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe successfully dismantles the key historiographical assumptions it sets out to contest. Carroll shows that the rise of the state and litigation did not have a “civilizing effect” or reduce interpersonal hostility in early modern Europe. Rather, it had the opposite effect, with elites wielding lawsuits alongside weapons to uphold their honor and enforce their rights during a period of social and political unrest. This book is therefore of considerable value for scholars of the history of emotion and violence, as well as providing very useful insights into the social and political history of the continent as it entered modernity.