Clive Emsley, author of numerous studies of crime and policing, has turned his facility with the sources and literature to the question of violence. Emsley's point of departure is the late twentieth-century articulation of the fear that a nonviolent England had become violent, and he sets out to explore the reality of this assumption. The Victorians and their followers were profoundly invested in the notion that the English were exceptional in their reserve and restraint when compared with Europeans, Americans, and British colonial subjects. Emsley, however, successfully exposes the deep violence that existed throughout English society during the era when the English prided themselves upon their moderation. Yet he also suggests that the cultural association between Englishness and restraint may have had some impact on social practice, leading people to aspire to live up to the ideal. Emsley's “hard men” are symbolic of the struggle for control. The “plucky chap,” who “was violent only in the last resort” (ix), became the model of English manhood in the nineteenth century, supporting the overall stereotype of English nonviolence. The hard man, by contrast, “oozed toughness and violence” (ix), providing a constant counterpoint to the English image of themselves and a reminder of the gap between image and actuality.
This small book, packed full of absorbing case studies, anecdotes, and analytical queries, might be read two ways. The title points toward a brief survey of issues surrounding men, crime, and violence from the eighteenth century to the present. With such an expectation, the reader will find chapters addressing street crime, violence in sports, domestic and family violence, the association between violence and foreigners, economic and political protests, policemen, and the state's use of violent punishment. In such a short book covering over two centuries, each subject can only receive limited attention, but Emsley presents an engaging overview of numerous forms of and ideas about violence and violent men in English life.
More interestingly, this book should be read as an extended essay, an argument challenging both the exceptionality of the English with regard to violence and the insufficiency of the idea of the “civilizing process” to explain away violence. Each chapter provides a case study for the ways that violence was embedded in English culture, even as the English stereotype of themselves presented a contradictory image. While statistics from the early nineteenth century on demonstrate a decrease in violent crime through the middle of the twentieth century, Emsley is very careful to discuss the inadequacy of numbers to answer questions about the decline of violence. However, Emsley's study, like Martin Wiener's work, Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (2004), argues persuasively for a change in the perception of violence as something no longer acceptable. This perception affected areas as diverse as sports, street demonstrations, and domestic relations; those with the power to quell interpersonal violence made increasing efforts to do so through legislation, sentencing, and moral suasion. The glaring exceptions to the condemnation of violent behavior ironically had to do with the violence exerted by the liberal state itself in the form of corporal and capital punishment. The media had an obviously important role in publicizing crime and violence, and Emsley stresses the part played by the press in generating panics concerning violent behavior, a theme recently explored in more detail, although more narrowly, in Criminal Conversations: Victorian Crimes, Social Panic, and Moral Outrage, edited by Judith Rowbotham and Kim Stevenson (2005).
Unlike Wiener's study, however, which emphasizes a conjunction between changing perceptions and changing behaviors, Emsley's story is somewhat more complicated. He argues simultaneously for the possibility that new models of restrained masculinity influenced men to suppress their violence and for continuity in men's violent behavior across a wide spectrum of situations. Emsley aims to break down the picture of the violent actor as one who was always male, unrespectable, and located outside the boundaries of normal society. Economic protests came from respectable workers, not the residuum; they were often supported by the elite. Middle- as well working-class men beat their wives. Politicians themselves could be quite disorderly in election contests. The perpetrator of violence was almost universally perceived to be male, but Emsley shows that women had their fair share of violent encounters, and not just as victims or as the expected food rioters. Mothers beat children, wives beat husbands, and even factory girls could gather in a ring for a good fight.
Yet he returns to “hard men” as the embodiment of violence: they dressed and acted like gangsters; they fought violently on the streets. These hard men come and go throughout the text, symbols of a less-than-acceptable model of Englishness. They are not, however, always the central players. Indeed, there are many masculine types that appear in Emsley's cast of characters, and it would have enriched his framework had he given more attention to this spectrum and what the diversity suggests about masculinity and violence. While Emsley interrogates the relationship between Englishness and violence regularly throughout his study, his commitment to his gender theme is less consistent.
Emsley's conclusion that the image of the nonviolent English was a stereotype, little grounded in reality, is certainly not a shocking one. His suggestion that the image could in fact have controlled behavior is more provocative and, in the end, remains a suggestion. Hard Men provides a very good historiographical introduction to many themes concerning crime and violence in modern Britain and runs an engaging argument about the relationship between past and present perceptions. General readers and scholars of British studies alike will find something of interest in this lively text.
