Xavier Rousseaux

The EURIAS project’s goal is to write the central part of a book, devoted to revolutions in the history of crime and justice in Western Europe and in its colonies from the middle ages up to the 20th century. The proposed synthesis will examine this “Western” globalization by comparing it with other legal cultures: Slavic Europe, the Muslim world, the Far East, The Americas. The specific project for 2015-2016 will address the crucial period of the transformation of European criminal justice, 1750-1950. Between the mid-18th and the mid-20th centuries, crime and justice underwent profound changes in Western societies. The agricultural and industrial revolutions, the bourgeoisies’ rise to political power, the acceleration of geographical and social mobility, the explosion of scientific knowledge, the modernization of political space and colonial wars put an end to the penal Ancien Régime. The “criminal question” will serve as a means of observing the evolution of European societies. The period was marked by the close links between state formation and public order (justice, police, punishment…), the modernization of public policies and the emergence of civil society, as well as tensions between authoritarian experiences and democratic models for regulating social problems. The project seeks to link three problems often treated separately: (i) state formation and the dynamics of contemporary society in its responses to crime; (ii) the extension of Western justice models through the creation of colonial empires; and (iii) the experiences of brutalization that Europe suffered during the two world wars. These major developments in the State's ever-widening monopoly over the right to punish generated varied reactions on the part of individuals, groups and communities (resistance, instrumentalization, compromise and submission). The analyses will thus take into account the different scales of such interactions (transnational, national, regional, and local), around five main processes of State involvement in the “criminal question”:

     (i) Describing crime and criminals: codifications, criminologies, investigations.
     (ii) Prosecuting crime and criminals: the time of the police.
     (iii) Regulating and judging crime and criminals: magistrates, courts and communities.
     (iv) Punishing crime and criminal: the penal system and its social roots.
     (v) Understanding crime: scientific debates and popular representations on the functions of crime in society.