A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse (Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife)

"Across many different times and places the criminal corpse has been harnessed for the ends of state power, medical science, criminal justice, and political subversion, amongst other things. This collection of essays for the first time examines execution practice and the punishment of the criminal corpse across a wide chronological and geographical span, ranging from eighteenth-century England to nineteenth-century India and twentieth-century Africa. Through studies of beheaded Irish traitors, smugglers hung in chains on the English coast, suicides subjected to the surgeon's knife in Dresden and the burial of executed Nazi war criminals, this volume provides a fresh perspective on the history of capital punishment which forces us to rethink current metanarratives of penal practice and change"-- Provided by publisher Foreword / Pieter Spierenburg -- Introduction: A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse / Richard Ward -- 1. Punishing the Dead: Execution and the Executed Body in Eighteenth-Century Ireland / James Kelly -- 2. 'For the Benefit of Example': Crime-Scene Executions in England, 1720-1830 / Steve Poole -- 3. The Gibbet in the Landscape: Locating the Criminal Corpse in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England / Zoe Dyndor -- 4. Never Equal before Death: Three Experiences of Dying as seen through Eighteenth-Century French Executions / Pascal Bastien -- 5. The Ill-Treated Body: Punishing and Utilising the Early Modern Suicide Corpse / Alexander Kästner and Evelyne Luef -- 6. Execution and its Aftermath in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire / Clare Anderson -- 7. Strangled by the Chinese and Kept 'Alive' by the British: Two Infamous Executions and the Discourse of Chinese Legal Despotism / Song-Chuan Chen -- 8. Dismembering and Remembering the Body: Execution and Post-Execution Display in Africa, c.1870-2000 / Stacey Hynd -- 9. Burying the Past? The Post-Execution History of Nazi War Criminals / Caroline Sharples. Through studies of beheaded Irish traitors, smugglers hung in chains on the English coast, suicides subjected to the surgeon's knife in Dresden and the burial of executed Nazi war criminals, this volume provides a fresh perspective on the history of capital punishment. The chapters 'Introduction: A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse' and 'The Gibbet in the Landscape: Locating the Criminal Corpse in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England' are open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. Through studies of beheaded Irish traitors, smugglers hung in chains on the English coast, suicides subjected to the surgeon's knife in Dresden and the burial of executed Nazi war criminals, this volume provides a fresh perspective on the history of capital punishment. This book has two open access chapters under a CC BY license