Description
Book SynopsisCombating the Hydra explores structural as well as occasion-specific state violence committed by the early modern Habsburg Empire. The book depicts and analyzes attacks on marginalized people "maladjusted" of all sorts, women "of ill repute," "heretic" Protestants, and "Gypsies." Previously uncharted archival records reveal the use of arbitrary imprisonment, coerced labor, and deportation. The case studies presented provide insights into the origins of modern state power from varied techniques of population control, but are also an investigation of resistance against oppression, persecution, and life-threatening assaults. The spectrum of fights against debasement is a touching attestation of the humanity of the outcasts; they range from mental and emotional perseverance to counterviolence. A conversation with the eminent historian Carlo Ginzburg concludes the collection by asking about the importance of memorizing horrors of the past.
Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Glossary
- Abbreviations
- PART I. THE CONUNDRUM OF DEPORTATION AND COERCED LABOR
- 1. Forgotten Chapters in the History of Violence: Deportation in the Early Modern Habsburg Empire and Its European Surroundings
- 2. "An Austrian Cayenne": Forced Labor in the Early Modern Habsburg Empire
- 3. Austria's Penal Colonies: Deportation, Resettlement, and Detention in the Habsburg Empire
- PART II. PROTESTANTISM GOES UNDERGROUND
- 4. "Acting as if in a Republic Already": Carinthian Underground Protestants Rehearse the Uprising
- 5. Writing against Suffocation: Migrant Letters as Documents and Strategies of Survival
- 6. A Tale of Two Cities: Protestant Preachers and Private Tutors in Vienna under the Rule of Emperor Charles VI
- PART III. THE TEACHINGS OF GYPSY HISTORY
- 7. "Giving Short Shrift by Flogging, Hanging, and Beheading": A Gypsy Trial and Its Pitfalls
- 8. The Enemy Within: Gypsies as External and Internal Threat in the Habsburg Monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire
- 9. From Poisoned Pens to Procedural Justice: Remarks on Gypsy Agency
- 10. Out of the Past: The End of Gypsy Slavery in Bukovina
- PART IV. IN CONVERSATION WITH CARLO GINZBURG
- 11. There is No Meaning with a Capital "M": In Conversation with Carlo Ginzburg
- Notes
- Archival Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
