Penal Servitude In Early Modern Spain
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
In the shadows of Spain's imperial golden age lay a brutal and largely forgotten system of forced labour — one that shaped the very sinews of early modern statecraft. Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain by Ruth Pike chronicles the lives of convicts, galley slaves, and prisoners condemned to serve the Spanish Crown, tracing the evolution of penal institutions from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Pike situates these individuals within the broader machinery of empire, arguing that punishment was not merely a matter of justice but an instrument of economic and military policy, supplying the oars of royal galleys and the labour of mercury mines with condemned men. The work draws on rich archival sources to reconstruct the human experience of incarceration and forced toil in a society simultaneously projecting power across continents and managing disorder at home. Pike writes with the precision of a seasoned historian and the sensitivity of a social chronicler, illuminating how class, ethnicity, and crime intersected within Spanish penal practice. The study raises penetrating questions about the relationship between sovereign power and human expendability — questions that resonate far beyond the Iberian Peninsula. For scholars of early modern Europe, imperial history, and the history of crime and punishment, this is an indispensable work that refuses to let the condemned remain nameless and forgotten.
Author: Ruth Pike
Format: Hardback
Published: 1983, The University of Wisconsin Press
Genre: European history
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
In the shadows of Spain's imperial golden age lay a brutal and largely forgotten system of forced labour — one that shaped the very sinews of early modern statecraft. Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain by Ruth Pike chronicles the lives of convicts, galley slaves, and prisoners condemned to serve the Spanish Crown, tracing the evolution of penal institutions from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Pike situates these individuals within the broader machinery of empire, arguing that punishment was not merely a matter of justice but an instrument of economic and military policy, supplying the oars of royal galleys and the labour of mercury mines with condemned men. The work draws on rich archival sources to reconstruct the human experience of incarceration and forced toil in a society simultaneously projecting power across continents and managing disorder at home. Pike writes with the precision of a seasoned historian and the sensitivity of a social chronicler, illuminating how class, ethnicity, and crime intersected within Spanish penal practice. The study raises penetrating questions about the relationship between sovereign power and human expendability — questions that resonate far beyond the Iberian Peninsula. For scholars of early modern Europe, imperial history, and the history of crime and punishment, this is an indispensable work that refuses to let the condemned remain nameless and forgotten.