Description
Book SynopsisUnderworlds is a lively account of organized crime and the world of marginal groups in the seventeenth-- and eighteenth--century Netherlands. Rural banditry has often been associated with mountainous, poverty--stricken areas located at the peripheries of the European continent or on the borders between states.
Trade Review'This book is quite simply groundbreaking at every turn. It is a 'must' for any social and cultural historian of early modern Europe.'
Dr R. Scribner, Clare College, Cambridge 'This is not just a book which will be of value to historians of crime or historians of the Netherlands. It contains a wealth of material on, and insight into, early modern marginal groups, the poor in general, and perceptions of these groups. It is social history at its most vivid.'
Social History Society Bulletin
'One of the central topics in the history of crime, as distinct from the history of justice and punishment, is the question of the extent and nature of professional, organized crime; the question of whether there was a criminal 'underworld'. Florike Egmon's painstaking reconstruction of Dutch criminal bands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sheds new light on this issue.' International Review of Social History
Table of ContentsPreface.
Part I. :.
1. In Bad Company.
2. Confronting the Authorities.
Part II. Warfare and Banditry:.
3. Post-War Bands: Holland and Zealand, 1615-1720.
4. 'Foreign Soldiers': Military Bands in Brabant, 1690-1720.
Part III. Ethnicity:.
5. Gypsy Bands, 1695-1730.
6. Jewish Networks, 1690-1800.
Part IV. The Changing Structure of the Rural Underworld:.
7. Mixing Minorities, 1720-1800.
8. The Brabant Connection, 1730-1810.
Conclusion.
Appendix.
Works Cited.
