1.
Marcelline, Sanayi
Working the salterns. Convict workers in the natural salt pans of Hambantota, in British colonial Sri Lanka Journal Article
In: Labor History, vol. 64, iss. 6, 2023.
@article{nokey,
title = {Working the salterns. Convict workers in the natural salt pans of Hambantota, in British colonial Sri Lanka},
author = {Sanayi Marcelline},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-10-01},
issuetitle = {Exploring labor coercion through im/mobility and the environment (18th-20th centuries)},
journal = {Labor History},
volume = {64},
issue = {6},
abstract = {In the early 19th century, the British colonial state in Sri Lanka embarked on an experiment in deploying convict labour for salt collecting. ‘Criminals’ from all parts of the island region convicted mainly for robbery and vagrancy and sentenced to hard labour by various courts of justice, were sent to an isolated outpost in the district of Hambantota in the deep south of Sri Lanka to labour at a naturally formed saltern known as the Maha Levaya. Executive, judicial, and administrative actors of the state played a key role in mobilising and immobilising the convicts at the saltern in order to fulfil the dual functions of punishment and profit. This paper contends that the inter-regional and local practice of im/mobilizing convicts to worksites as seen in Hambantota was a micro-spatial process of punishment, exile and labour extraction that was integral to larger processes of social control and labour coercion. However, despite the attempts at confining the convict labour force at the saltern through military and judicial means, the men condemned to labour for salt resisted the conditions of servitude through multiple strategies ranging from flight to evasion.},
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In the early 19th century, the British colonial state in Sri Lanka embarked on an experiment in deploying convict labour for salt collecting. ‘Criminals’ from all parts of the island region convicted mainly for robbery and vagrancy and sentenced to hard labour by various courts of justice, were sent to an isolated outpost in the district of Hambantota in the deep south of Sri Lanka to labour at a naturally formed saltern known as the Maha Levaya. Executive, judicial, and administrative actors of the state played a key role in mobilising and immobilising the convicts at the saltern in order to fulfil the dual functions of punishment and profit. This paper contends that the inter-regional and local practice of im/mobilizing convicts to worksites as seen in Hambantota was a micro-spatial process of punishment, exile and labour extraction that was integral to larger processes of social control and labour coercion. However, despite the attempts at confining the convict labour force at the saltern through military and judicial means, the men condemned to labour for salt resisted the conditions of servitude through multiple strategies ranging from flight to evasion.
2.
Valentin, Emilie Luther
How to Be(come) the Perfect Inmate? Working the System in the Prison Workhouse at Christianshavn, 1769–1789 Journal Article
In: Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 48, iss. 5, pp. 679-698, 2023.
@article{nokey,
title = {How to Be(come) the Perfect Inmate? Working the System in the Prison Workhouse at Christianshavn, 1769–1789},
author = {Emilie Luther Valentin},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-07-04},
journal = {Scandinavian Journal of History},
volume = {48},
issue = {5},
pages = {679-698},
abstract = {Between 1769 and 1789, the warden of the prison workhouse at Christianshavn wrote around 300 statements to accompany petitions made for inmates’ release. Drawing on the theories of Arlie Russell Hochschild, this article argues that the statements detail the feeling rules of the prison workhouse and provide evidence that the inmates ‘worked the system’ by performing emotional labour in accordance with said feeling rules. Thus, the article uncovers and connects practices and tactics of coercion and autonomy in the prison workhouse, examining how inmates navigated the authorities’ expectations as a tactic of escape from imprisonment and labour coercion.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Between 1769 and 1789, the warden of the prison workhouse at Christianshavn wrote around 300 statements to accompany petitions made for inmates’ release. Drawing on the theories of Arlie Russell Hochschild, this article argues that the statements detail the feeling rules of the prison workhouse and provide evidence that the inmates ‘worked the system’ by performing emotional labour in accordance with said feeling rules. Thus, the article uncovers and connects practices and tactics of coercion and autonomy in the prison workhouse, examining how inmates navigated the authorities’ expectations as a tactic of escape from imprisonment and labour coercion.
3.
Heinsen, Johan
Carceral Chains: Pathways through a Convict Labour Institution, 1690–1830 Journal Article
In: Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 48, iss. 5, pp. 656-678 , 2023.
@article{nokey,
title = {Carceral Chains: Pathways through a Convict Labour Institution, 1690–1830},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-06-18},
journal = {Scandinavian Journal of History},
volume = {48},
issue = {5},
pages = {656-678 },
abstract = {This article examines early modern convicts’ experiences of extramural penal labour institutions – known in their time as slaveries. It centres on Denmark’s main slaveries in Copenhagen and analyses data collected from the books keeping track of the inmates. On this basis, the article examines their experiences at connected moments: before entry, at entry, in the extraction of labour, and at exit. The article describes how these moments linked together to form patterns. Crucially, experiences during and at the termination of stays in these prisons were often predicated on former experiences in the labour market, how punitive labour was linked to forms of corporal violence, and the question of honour.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
This article examines early modern convicts’ experiences of extramural penal labour institutions – known in their time as slaveries. It centres on Denmark’s main slaveries in Copenhagen and analyses data collected from the books keeping track of the inmates. On this basis, the article examines their experiences at connected moments: before entry, at entry, in the extraction of labour, and at exit. The article describes how these moments linked together to form patterns. Crucially, experiences during and at the termination of stays in these prisons were often predicated on former experiences in the labour market, how punitive labour was linked to forms of corporal violence, and the question of honour.
4.
Heinsen, Johan
Escape and Reform in the Early-Modern Danish Prison System Book Chapter
In: Bernardi, Claudia; Müller, Viola; Stojić, Biljana; Vilhelmsson, Vilhelm (Ed.): Moving Workers: Historical Perspectives on Labour, Coercion and Im/Mobilities, 2023.
@inbook{nokey,
title = {Escape and Reform in the Early-Modern Danish Prison System},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
editor = {Claudia Bernardi and Viola Müller and Biljana Stojić and Vilhelm Vilhelmsson},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-01-01},
urldate = {2023-01-01},
booktitle = {Moving Workers: Historical Perspectives on Labour, Coercion and Im/Mobilities},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
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5.
Vito, Christian De; Müller, Viola (Ed.)
Punishing the Enslaved: Slavery, Labor, and Punitive Practices in the Americas, 1760s–1880s Collection
2022.
@collection{nokey,
title = {Punishing the Enslaved: Slavery, Labor, and Punitive Practices in the Americas, 1760s–1880s},
editor = {Christian De Vito and Viola Müller},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-01-01},
urldate = {2022-01-01},
journal = {Journal of Global Slavery},
volume = {7},
issue = {1-2},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {collection}
}
6.
Vito, Christian De
Paternalist Punishment. Slaves, Masters and the State in the Audiencia de Quito and Ecuador, 1730s–1851 Journal Article
In: Journal of Global Slavery, vol. 7, iss. 1-2, pp. 48-72, 2022.
@article{nokey,
title = {Paternalist Punishment. Slaves, Masters and the State in the Audiencia de Quito and Ecuador, 1730s–1851},
author = {Christian De Vito},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-01-01},
issuetitle = {Punishing the Enslaved: Slavery, Labor, and Punitive Practices in the Americas, 1760s–1880s},
journal = {Journal of Global Slavery},
volume = {7},
issue = {1-2},
pages = {48-72},
abstract = {This chapter analyzes the punitive relationships among slaves, slaveholders and colonial authorities from the perspective of paternalism. Focusing on the territory of the colonial Audiencia de Quito and the Republic of Ecuador between the early eighteenth century and the abolition of slavery in 1851, the chapter proceeds in three directions. The first section addresses the interactions between the State and the slaveholders through the lens of “protection.” The second section turns to paternalism as a repertoire of both legitimation and contestation of punishment. The final section assesses the continuities and discontinuities in the impact of paternalism on the punishments of slaves across time, both during and beyond the colonial period.
},
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This chapter analyzes the punitive relationships among slaves, slaveholders and colonial authorities from the perspective of paternalism. Focusing on the territory of the colonial Audiencia de Quito and the Republic of Ecuador between the early eighteenth century and the abolition of slavery in 1851, the chapter proceeds in three directions. The first section addresses the interactions between the State and the slaveholders through the lens of “protection.” The second section turns to paternalism as a repertoire of both legitimation and contestation of punishment. The final section assesses the continuities and discontinuities in the impact of paternalism on the punishments of slaves across time, both during and beyond the colonial period.
7.
Müller, Viola
“Employed at the Works of the City”. The Punishment of Runaway Slaves in the Antebellum US South Journal Article
In: Journal of Global Slavery, vol. 7, iss. 1-2, pp. 153-176, 2022.
@article{nokey,
title = {“Employed at the Works of the City”. The Punishment of Runaway Slaves in the Antebellum US South},
author = {Viola Müller},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-01-01},
issuetitle = {Punishing the Enslaved: Slavery, Labor, and Punitive Practices in the Americas, 1760s–1880s},
journal = {Journal of Global Slavery},
volume = {7},
issue = {1-2},
pages = {153-176},
abstract = {Despite the successful maneuvers of many runaways to escape slavery in the slaveholding South, considerable numbers did not make it and were apprehended by slave patrols, civilians, or watchmen. What happened to those among them who were subsequently not reclaimed by their legal owners? To answer this question, this paper focuses on the punishment and forced employment of runaway slaves by city and state authorities rather than by individual slaveholders. It follows enslaved southerners into workhouses, chain gains, and penitentiaries, thereby connecting different institutions within the nineteenth-century penal system. Exploring collaboration and clashes between slaveholders and the authorities, it will discuss how the forced employment of runaways fitted in with the broader understanding of Black labor and the restructuring of labor demands in the antebellum US South.
},
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pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
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Despite the successful maneuvers of many runaways to escape slavery in the slaveholding South, considerable numbers did not make it and were apprehended by slave patrols, civilians, or watchmen. What happened to those among them who were subsequently not reclaimed by their legal owners? To answer this question, this paper focuses on the punishment and forced employment of runaway slaves by city and state authorities rather than by individual slaveholders. It follows enslaved southerners into workhouses, chain gains, and penitentiaries, thereby connecting different institutions within the nineteenth-century penal system. Exploring collaboration and clashes between slaveholders and the authorities, it will discuss how the forced employment of runaways fitted in with the broader understanding of Black labor and the restructuring of labor demands in the antebellum US South.
8.
Heinsen, Johan
Historicizing Extramural Convict Labour: Trajectories and Transitions in Early Modern Europe Journal Article
In: International Review of Social History , vol. 66, iss. 1, pp. 111-133, 2021.
@article{nokey,
title = {Historicizing Extramural Convict Labour: Trajectories and Transitions in Early Modern Europe},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-01-01},
urldate = {2021-01-01},
journal = {International Review of Social History },
volume = {66},
issue = {1},
pages = {111-133},
abstract = {New global histories of punishment are steadily decentring the history of punishment and convict labour, challenging traditional conceptions of a linear path towards a single penal modernity and the penitentiary as the telos of its history. Through an exploration of three strands of extramural convict labour emerging in Copenhagen (1558), Ulm (1561), and Almadén (1566), this interpretative essay argues that this challenge can be furthered by taking a view of Europe's own penal history from which the focus is less on origins and more on how the landscape of punishment evolved through a continuous and largely contingent process of assemblage. In this process, a few key elements – labour, displacement, pain, and confinement – were combined and mixed to different effects in specific contexts. Along with that approach comes the need to historicize the process by relating it to other practices of labour coercion, both within the penal field and outside it.
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
New global histories of punishment are steadily decentring the history of punishment and convict labour, challenging traditional conceptions of a linear path towards a single penal modernity and the penitentiary as the telos of its history. Through an exploration of three strands of extramural convict labour emerging in Copenhagen (1558), Ulm (1561), and Almadén (1566), this interpretative essay argues that this challenge can be furthered by taking a view of Europe's own penal history from which the focus is less on origins and more on how the landscape of punishment evolved through a continuous and largely contingent process of assemblage. In this process, a few key elements – labour, displacement, pain, and confinement – were combined and mixed to different effects in specific contexts. Along with that approach comes the need to historicize the process by relating it to other practices of labour coercion, both within the penal field and outside it.
9.
Heinsen, Johan
Penal Slavery in Early Modern Scandinavia Journal Article
In: Journal of Global Slavery, vol. 6, iss. 3, pp. 343–368, 2021.
@article{nokey,
title = {Penal Slavery in Early Modern Scandinavia},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-01-01},
journal = {Journal of Global Slavery},
volume = {6},
issue = {3},
pages = {343–368},
abstract = {In Scandinavia, a penal institution known as “slavery” existed from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Penal slaves laboured in the creation and maintenance of military infrastructure. They were chained and often stigmatized, sometimes by branding. Their punishment was likened and, on a few occasions, linked to Atlantic slavery. Still, in reality, it was a wholly distinct form of enslavement that produced different experiences of coercion than those of the Atlantic. Such forms of penal slavery sit uneasily in historiographies of punishment but also offers a challenge for the dominant models of global labour history and its attempts to create comparative frameworks for coerced labour. This article argues for the need for contextual approaches to what such coercion meant to both coercers and coerced. Therefore, it offers an analysis of the meaning of early modern penal slavery based on an exceptional set of sources from 1723. In these sources, the status of the punished was negotiated and practiced by guards and slaves themselves. Court appearances by slaves were usually brief—typically revolving around escapes as authorities attempted to identify security breaches. The documents explored in this article are different: They present multiple voices speaking at length, negotiating their very status as voices. From that negotiation and its failures emerge a set of practiced meanings of penal “slavery” in eighteenth-century Copenhagen tied to competing yet intertwined notions of dishonour.
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
In Scandinavia, a penal institution known as “slavery” existed from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Penal slaves laboured in the creation and maintenance of military infrastructure. They were chained and often stigmatized, sometimes by branding. Their punishment was likened and, on a few occasions, linked to Atlantic slavery. Still, in reality, it was a wholly distinct form of enslavement that produced different experiences of coercion than those of the Atlantic. Such forms of penal slavery sit uneasily in historiographies of punishment but also offers a challenge for the dominant models of global labour history and its attempts to create comparative frameworks for coerced labour. This article argues for the need for contextual approaches to what such coercion meant to both coercers and coerced. Therefore, it offers an analysis of the meaning of early modern penal slavery based on an exceptional set of sources from 1723. In these sources, the status of the punished was negotiated and practiced by guards and slaves themselves. Court appearances by slaves were usually brief—typically revolving around escapes as authorities attempted to identify security breaches. The documents explored in this article are different: They present multiple voices speaking at length, negotiating their very status as voices. From that negotiation and its failures emerge a set of practiced meanings of penal “slavery” in eighteenth-century Copenhagen tied to competing yet intertwined notions of dishonour.
10.
Heinsen, Johan
Escaping St. Thomas: Class Relations and Convict Strategies in the Danish West Indies, 1672-1687 Book Chapter
In: Rediker, Marcus; Chakrabort, Titas; van Rossum, Matthias (Ed.): A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, pp. 40.57, 2019.
@inbook{nokey,
title = {Escaping St. Thomas: Class Relations and Convict Strategies in the Danish West Indies, 1672-1687},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
editor = {Marcus Rediker and Titas Chakrabort and Matthias van Rossum},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-01-01},
urldate = {2019-01-01},
booktitle = {A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism},
pages = {40.57},
abstract = {An examination of the ways in which convicts in the Danish colony of St. Thomas challenged colonial order and exploitation through practices of escape. Through a close study of a particular group of convict runaways, the article unearths the minutiae of antagonisms in a system of coerced displacement and punishment.
},
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An examination of the ways in which convicts in the Danish colony of St. Thomas challenged colonial order and exploitation through practices of escape. Through a close study of a particular group of convict runaways, the article unearths the minutiae of antagonisms in a system of coerced displacement and punishment.
11.
Heinsen, Johan
The Scandinavian Empires in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Book Chapter
In: C, lare Anderson (Ed.): A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, pp. 97-122, 2018.
@inbook{nokey,
title = {The Scandinavian Empires in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
editor = {C,lare Anderson},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-01-01},
booktitle = {A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies},
pages = {97-122},
abstract = {This article provides an overview of the uses of convicts as labourers in the Scandinavian overseas empires of the early modern period.
},
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pubstate = {published},
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This article provides an overview of the uses of convicts as labourers in the Scandinavian overseas empires of the early modern period.
12.
Weber, Klaus
Die Gefängnisindustrie in den USA: Zur Verschränkung von Arbeits-, Wohlfahrts- und Strafregimen im Neoliberalismus [The prison industry in the USA: About the entanglement of regimes of work, welfare and punishment in neoliberalism] Journal Article
In: Kritische Justiz, vol. 50, iss. 2, pp. 187-194, 2017.
@article{nokey,
title = {Die Gefängnisindustrie in den USA: Zur Verschränkung von Arbeits-, Wohlfahrts- und Strafregimen im Neoliberalismus [The prison industry in the USA: About the entanglement of regimes of work, welfare and punishment in neoliberalism]},
author = {Klaus Weber},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-01-01},
urldate = {2017-01-01},
journal = {Kritische Justiz},
volume = {50},
issue = {2},
pages = {187-194},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
13.
Zammit, William
Kissing the Gallows: A Cultural History of Crime, Torture and Punishment in Malta Book
2016.
@book{nokey,
title = {Kissing the Gallows: A Cultural History of Crime, Torture and Punishment in Malta},
author = {William Zammit},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
abstract = {The first-ever in-depth academic study of crime and retribution in Malta during the early modern period discusses the primary sources available on the subject, the nature of crime, the judicial system and the ritual of public punishment in the context of current European practices. The book also records hundreds of crime cases of various types and that were reported to Rome by the Inquisitors of Malta, this given their spectacular nature. The publication was the result of ten years research in the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano and a variety of other archives in Malta and abroad.
},
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The first-ever in-depth academic study of crime and retribution in Malta during the early modern period discusses the primary sources available on the subject, the nature of crime, the judicial system and the ritual of public punishment in the context of current European practices. The book also records hundreds of crime cases of various types and that were reported to Rome by the Inquisitors of Malta, this given their spectacular nature. The publication was the result of ten years research in the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano and a variety of other archives in Malta and abroad.
2023
Marcelline, Sanayi
Working the salterns. Convict workers in the natural salt pans of Hambantota, in British colonial Sri Lanka Journal Article
In: Labor History, vol. 64, iss. 6, 2023.
Abstract | Tags: 19th century, colonialism, convict labour, punishment, sri lanka
@article{nokey,
title = {Working the salterns. Convict workers in the natural salt pans of Hambantota, in British colonial Sri Lanka},
author = {Sanayi Marcelline},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-10-01},
issuetitle = {Exploring labor coercion through im/mobility and the environment (18th-20th centuries)},
journal = {Labor History},
volume = {64},
issue = {6},
abstract = {In the early 19th century, the British colonial state in Sri Lanka embarked on an experiment in deploying convict labour for salt collecting. ‘Criminals’ from all parts of the island region convicted mainly for robbery and vagrancy and sentenced to hard labour by various courts of justice, were sent to an isolated outpost in the district of Hambantota in the deep south of Sri Lanka to labour at a naturally formed saltern known as the Maha Levaya. Executive, judicial, and administrative actors of the state played a key role in mobilising and immobilising the convicts at the saltern in order to fulfil the dual functions of punishment and profit. This paper contends that the inter-regional and local practice of im/mobilizing convicts to worksites as seen in Hambantota was a micro-spatial process of punishment, exile and labour extraction that was integral to larger processes of social control and labour coercion. However, despite the attempts at confining the convict labour force at the saltern through military and judicial means, the men condemned to labour for salt resisted the conditions of servitude through multiple strategies ranging from flight to evasion.},
keywords = {19th century, colonialism, convict labour, punishment, sri lanka},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
In the early 19th century, the British colonial state in Sri Lanka embarked on an experiment in deploying convict labour for salt collecting. ‘Criminals’ from all parts of the island region convicted mainly for robbery and vagrancy and sentenced to hard labour by various courts of justice, were sent to an isolated outpost in the district of Hambantota in the deep south of Sri Lanka to labour at a naturally formed saltern known as the Maha Levaya. Executive, judicial, and administrative actors of the state played a key role in mobilising and immobilising the convicts at the saltern in order to fulfil the dual functions of punishment and profit. This paper contends that the inter-regional and local practice of im/mobilizing convicts to worksites as seen in Hambantota was a micro-spatial process of punishment, exile and labour extraction that was integral to larger processes of social control and labour coercion. However, despite the attempts at confining the convict labour force at the saltern through military and judicial means, the men condemned to labour for salt resisted the conditions of servitude through multiple strategies ranging from flight to evasion.
Valentin, Emilie Luther
How to Be(come) the Perfect Inmate? Working the System in the Prison Workhouse at Christianshavn, 1769–1789 Journal Article
In: Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 48, iss. 5, pp. 679-698, 2023.
Abstract | Tags: convict labour, denmar, early modern history, emotional labour, europe, punishment, scandinavia
@article{nokey,
title = {How to Be(come) the Perfect Inmate? Working the System in the Prison Workhouse at Christianshavn, 1769–1789},
author = {Emilie Luther Valentin},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-07-04},
journal = {Scandinavian Journal of History},
volume = {48},
issue = {5},
pages = {679-698},
abstract = {Between 1769 and 1789, the warden of the prison workhouse at Christianshavn wrote around 300 statements to accompany petitions made for inmates’ release. Drawing on the theories of Arlie Russell Hochschild, this article argues that the statements detail the feeling rules of the prison workhouse and provide evidence that the inmates ‘worked the system’ by performing emotional labour in accordance with said feeling rules. Thus, the article uncovers and connects practices and tactics of coercion and autonomy in the prison workhouse, examining how inmates navigated the authorities’ expectations as a tactic of escape from imprisonment and labour coercion.},
keywords = {convict labour, denmar, early modern history, emotional labour, europe, punishment, scandinavia},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Between 1769 and 1789, the warden of the prison workhouse at Christianshavn wrote around 300 statements to accompany petitions made for inmates’ release. Drawing on the theories of Arlie Russell Hochschild, this article argues that the statements detail the feeling rules of the prison workhouse and provide evidence that the inmates ‘worked the system’ by performing emotional labour in accordance with said feeling rules. Thus, the article uncovers and connects practices and tactics of coercion and autonomy in the prison workhouse, examining how inmates navigated the authorities’ expectations as a tactic of escape from imprisonment and labour coercion.
Heinsen, Johan
Carceral Chains: Pathways through a Convict Labour Institution, 1690–1830 Journal Article
In: Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 48, iss. 5, pp. 656-678 , 2023.
Abstract | Tags: convict labour, denmark, early modern history, europe, punishment, scandinavia
@article{nokey,
title = {Carceral Chains: Pathways through a Convict Labour Institution, 1690–1830},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-06-18},
journal = {Scandinavian Journal of History},
volume = {48},
issue = {5},
pages = {656-678 },
abstract = {This article examines early modern convicts’ experiences of extramural penal labour institutions – known in their time as slaveries. It centres on Denmark’s main slaveries in Copenhagen and analyses data collected from the books keeping track of the inmates. On this basis, the article examines their experiences at connected moments: before entry, at entry, in the extraction of labour, and at exit. The article describes how these moments linked together to form patterns. Crucially, experiences during and at the termination of stays in these prisons were often predicated on former experiences in the labour market, how punitive labour was linked to forms of corporal violence, and the question of honour.},
keywords = {convict labour, denmark, early modern history, europe, punishment, scandinavia},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
This article examines early modern convicts’ experiences of extramural penal labour institutions – known in their time as slaveries. It centres on Denmark’s main slaveries in Copenhagen and analyses data collected from the books keeping track of the inmates. On this basis, the article examines their experiences at connected moments: before entry, at entry, in the extraction of labour, and at exit. The article describes how these moments linked together to form patterns. Crucially, experiences during and at the termination of stays in these prisons were often predicated on former experiences in the labour market, how punitive labour was linked to forms of corporal violence, and the question of honour.
Heinsen, Johan
Escape and Reform in the Early-Modern Danish Prison System Book Chapter
In: Bernardi, Claudia; Müller, Viola; Stojić, Biljana; Vilhelmsson, Vilhelm (Ed.): Moving Workers: Historical Perspectives on Labour, Coercion and Im/Mobilities, 2023.
Tags: convict labour, denmark, early modern history, europe, migration and mobility, punishment, runaways, scandinavia
@inbook{nokey,
title = {Escape and Reform in the Early-Modern Danish Prison System},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
editor = {Claudia Bernardi and Viola Müller and Biljana Stojić and Vilhelm Vilhelmsson},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-01-01},
urldate = {2023-01-01},
booktitle = {Moving Workers: Historical Perspectives on Labour, Coercion and Im/Mobilities},
keywords = {convict labour, denmark, early modern history, europe, migration and mobility, punishment, runaways, scandinavia},
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2022
Vito, Christian De; Müller, Viola (Ed.)
Punishing the Enslaved: Slavery, Labor, and Punitive Practices in the Americas, 1760s–1880s Collection
2022.
Tags: 19th century, convict labour, latin america, punishment, slavery, united states
@collection{nokey,
title = {Punishing the Enslaved: Slavery, Labor, and Punitive Practices in the Americas, 1760s–1880s},
editor = {Christian De Vito and Viola Müller},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-01-01},
urldate = {2022-01-01},
journal = {Journal of Global Slavery},
volume = {7},
issue = {1-2},
keywords = {19th century, convict labour, latin america, punishment, slavery, united states},
pubstate = {published},
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Vito, Christian De
Paternalist Punishment. Slaves, Masters and the State in the Audiencia de Quito and Ecuador, 1730s–1851 Journal Article
In: Journal of Global Slavery, vol. 7, iss. 1-2, pp. 48-72, 2022.
Abstract | Tags: 19th century, colonialism, early modern history, latin america, punishment, slavery
@article{nokey,
title = {Paternalist Punishment. Slaves, Masters and the State in the Audiencia de Quito and Ecuador, 1730s–1851},
author = {Christian De Vito},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-01-01},
issuetitle = {Punishing the Enslaved: Slavery, Labor, and Punitive Practices in the Americas, 1760s–1880s},
journal = {Journal of Global Slavery},
volume = {7},
issue = {1-2},
pages = {48-72},
abstract = {This chapter analyzes the punitive relationships among slaves, slaveholders and colonial authorities from the perspective of paternalism. Focusing on the territory of the colonial Audiencia de Quito and the Republic of Ecuador between the early eighteenth century and the abolition of slavery in 1851, the chapter proceeds in three directions. The first section addresses the interactions between the State and the slaveholders through the lens of “protection.” The second section turns to paternalism as a repertoire of both legitimation and contestation of punishment. The final section assesses the continuities and discontinuities in the impact of paternalism on the punishments of slaves across time, both during and beyond the colonial period.
},
keywords = {19th century, colonialism, early modern history, latin america, punishment, slavery},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
This chapter analyzes the punitive relationships among slaves, slaveholders and colonial authorities from the perspective of paternalism. Focusing on the territory of the colonial Audiencia de Quito and the Republic of Ecuador between the early eighteenth century and the abolition of slavery in 1851, the chapter proceeds in three directions. The first section addresses the interactions between the State and the slaveholders through the lens of “protection.” The second section turns to paternalism as a repertoire of both legitimation and contestation of punishment. The final section assesses the continuities and discontinuities in the impact of paternalism on the punishments of slaves across time, both during and beyond the colonial period.
Müller, Viola
“Employed at the Works of the City”. The Punishment of Runaway Slaves in the Antebellum US South Journal Article
In: Journal of Global Slavery, vol. 7, iss. 1-2, pp. 153-176, 2022.
Abstract | Tags: 19th century, punishment, runaways, slavery, united states
@article{nokey,
title = {“Employed at the Works of the City”. The Punishment of Runaway Slaves in the Antebellum US South},
author = {Viola Müller},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-01-01},
issuetitle = {Punishing the Enslaved: Slavery, Labor, and Punitive Practices in the Americas, 1760s–1880s},
journal = {Journal of Global Slavery},
volume = {7},
issue = {1-2},
pages = {153-176},
abstract = {Despite the successful maneuvers of many runaways to escape slavery in the slaveholding South, considerable numbers did not make it and were apprehended by slave patrols, civilians, or watchmen. What happened to those among them who were subsequently not reclaimed by their legal owners? To answer this question, this paper focuses on the punishment and forced employment of runaway slaves by city and state authorities rather than by individual slaveholders. It follows enslaved southerners into workhouses, chain gains, and penitentiaries, thereby connecting different institutions within the nineteenth-century penal system. Exploring collaboration and clashes between slaveholders and the authorities, it will discuss how the forced employment of runaways fitted in with the broader understanding of Black labor and the restructuring of labor demands in the antebellum US South.
},
keywords = {19th century, punishment, runaways, slavery, united states},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Despite the successful maneuvers of many runaways to escape slavery in the slaveholding South, considerable numbers did not make it and were apprehended by slave patrols, civilians, or watchmen. What happened to those among them who were subsequently not reclaimed by their legal owners? To answer this question, this paper focuses on the punishment and forced employment of runaway slaves by city and state authorities rather than by individual slaveholders. It follows enslaved southerners into workhouses, chain gains, and penitentiaries, thereby connecting different institutions within the nineteenth-century penal system. Exploring collaboration and clashes between slaveholders and the authorities, it will discuss how the forced employment of runaways fitted in with the broader understanding of Black labor and the restructuring of labor demands in the antebellum US South.
2021
Heinsen, Johan
Historicizing Extramural Convict Labour: Trajectories and Transitions in Early Modern Europe Journal Article
In: International Review of Social History , vol. 66, iss. 1, pp. 111-133, 2021.
Abstract | Tags: convict labour, early modern history, europe, punishment
@article{nokey,
title = {Historicizing Extramural Convict Labour: Trajectories and Transitions in Early Modern Europe},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-01-01},
urldate = {2021-01-01},
journal = {International Review of Social History },
volume = {66},
issue = {1},
pages = {111-133},
abstract = {New global histories of punishment are steadily decentring the history of punishment and convict labour, challenging traditional conceptions of a linear path towards a single penal modernity and the penitentiary as the telos of its history. Through an exploration of three strands of extramural convict labour emerging in Copenhagen (1558), Ulm (1561), and Almadén (1566), this interpretative essay argues that this challenge can be furthered by taking a view of Europe's own penal history from which the focus is less on origins and more on how the landscape of punishment evolved through a continuous and largely contingent process of assemblage. In this process, a few key elements – labour, displacement, pain, and confinement – were combined and mixed to different effects in specific contexts. Along with that approach comes the need to historicize the process by relating it to other practices of labour coercion, both within the penal field and outside it.
},
keywords = {convict labour, early modern history, europe, punishment},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
New global histories of punishment are steadily decentring the history of punishment and convict labour, challenging traditional conceptions of a linear path towards a single penal modernity and the penitentiary as the telos of its history. Through an exploration of three strands of extramural convict labour emerging in Copenhagen (1558), Ulm (1561), and Almadén (1566), this interpretative essay argues that this challenge can be furthered by taking a view of Europe's own penal history from which the focus is less on origins and more on how the landscape of punishment evolved through a continuous and largely contingent process of assemblage. In this process, a few key elements – labour, displacement, pain, and confinement – were combined and mixed to different effects in specific contexts. Along with that approach comes the need to historicize the process by relating it to other practices of labour coercion, both within the penal field and outside it.
Heinsen, Johan
Penal Slavery in Early Modern Scandinavia Journal Article
In: Journal of Global Slavery, vol. 6, iss. 3, pp. 343–368, 2021.
Abstract | Tags: convict labour, early modern history, global labour history, punishment, scandinavia, slavery
@article{nokey,
title = {Penal Slavery in Early Modern Scandinavia},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-01-01},
journal = {Journal of Global Slavery},
volume = {6},
issue = {3},
pages = {343–368},
abstract = {In Scandinavia, a penal institution known as “slavery” existed from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Penal slaves laboured in the creation and maintenance of military infrastructure. They were chained and often stigmatized, sometimes by branding. Their punishment was likened and, on a few occasions, linked to Atlantic slavery. Still, in reality, it was a wholly distinct form of enslavement that produced different experiences of coercion than those of the Atlantic. Such forms of penal slavery sit uneasily in historiographies of punishment but also offers a challenge for the dominant models of global labour history and its attempts to create comparative frameworks for coerced labour. This article argues for the need for contextual approaches to what such coercion meant to both coercers and coerced. Therefore, it offers an analysis of the meaning of early modern penal slavery based on an exceptional set of sources from 1723. In these sources, the status of the punished was negotiated and practiced by guards and slaves themselves. Court appearances by slaves were usually brief—typically revolving around escapes as authorities attempted to identify security breaches. The documents explored in this article are different: They present multiple voices speaking at length, negotiating their very status as voices. From that negotiation and its failures emerge a set of practiced meanings of penal “slavery” in eighteenth-century Copenhagen tied to competing yet intertwined notions of dishonour.
},
keywords = {convict labour, early modern history, global labour history, punishment, scandinavia, slavery},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
In Scandinavia, a penal institution known as “slavery” existed from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Penal slaves laboured in the creation and maintenance of military infrastructure. They were chained and often stigmatized, sometimes by branding. Their punishment was likened and, on a few occasions, linked to Atlantic slavery. Still, in reality, it was a wholly distinct form of enslavement that produced different experiences of coercion than those of the Atlantic. Such forms of penal slavery sit uneasily in historiographies of punishment but also offers a challenge for the dominant models of global labour history and its attempts to create comparative frameworks for coerced labour. This article argues for the need for contextual approaches to what such coercion meant to both coercers and coerced. Therefore, it offers an analysis of the meaning of early modern penal slavery based on an exceptional set of sources from 1723. In these sources, the status of the punished was negotiated and practiced by guards and slaves themselves. Court appearances by slaves were usually brief—typically revolving around escapes as authorities attempted to identify security breaches. The documents explored in this article are different: They present multiple voices speaking at length, negotiating their very status as voices. From that negotiation and its failures emerge a set of practiced meanings of penal “slavery” in eighteenth-century Copenhagen tied to competing yet intertwined notions of dishonour.
2019
Heinsen, Johan
Escaping St. Thomas: Class Relations and Convict Strategies in the Danish West Indies, 1672-1687 Book Chapter
In: Rediker, Marcus; Chakrabort, Titas; van Rossum, Matthias (Ed.): A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, pp. 40.57, 2019.
Abstract | Tags: caribbean, convict labour, denmark, early modern history, forced labour, punishment, runaways, scandinavia
@inbook{nokey,
title = {Escaping St. Thomas: Class Relations and Convict Strategies in the Danish West Indies, 1672-1687},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
editor = {Marcus Rediker and Titas Chakrabort and Matthias van Rossum},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-01-01},
urldate = {2019-01-01},
booktitle = {A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism},
pages = {40.57},
abstract = {An examination of the ways in which convicts in the Danish colony of St. Thomas challenged colonial order and exploitation through practices of escape. Through a close study of a particular group of convict runaways, the article unearths the minutiae of antagonisms in a system of coerced displacement and punishment.
},
keywords = {caribbean, convict labour, denmark, early modern history, forced labour, punishment, runaways, scandinavia},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
}
An examination of the ways in which convicts in the Danish colony of St. Thomas challenged colonial order and exploitation through practices of escape. Through a close study of a particular group of convict runaways, the article unearths the minutiae of antagonisms in a system of coerced displacement and punishment.
2018
Heinsen, Johan
The Scandinavian Empires in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Book Chapter
In: C, lare Anderson (Ed.): A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, pp. 97-122, 2018.
Abstract | Tags: convict labour, early modern history, punishment, scandinavia
@inbook{nokey,
title = {The Scandinavian Empires in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries},
author = {Johan Heinsen},
editor = {C,lare Anderson},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-01-01},
booktitle = {A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies},
pages = {97-122},
abstract = {This article provides an overview of the uses of convicts as labourers in the Scandinavian overseas empires of the early modern period.
},
keywords = {convict labour, early modern history, punishment, scandinavia},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
}
This article provides an overview of the uses of convicts as labourers in the Scandinavian overseas empires of the early modern period.
2017
Weber, Klaus
Die Gefängnisindustrie in den USA: Zur Verschränkung von Arbeits-, Wohlfahrts- und Strafregimen im Neoliberalismus [The prison industry in the USA: About the entanglement of regimes of work, welfare and punishment in neoliberalism] Journal Article
In: Kritische Justiz, vol. 50, iss. 2, pp. 187-194, 2017.
Tags: contemporary, convict labour, economic and social policy, neoliberalism, punishment, social control, united states
@article{nokey,
title = {Die Gefängnisindustrie in den USA: Zur Verschränkung von Arbeits-, Wohlfahrts- und Strafregimen im Neoliberalismus [The prison industry in the USA: About the entanglement of regimes of work, welfare and punishment in neoliberalism]},
author = {Klaus Weber},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-01-01},
urldate = {2017-01-01},
journal = {Kritische Justiz},
volume = {50},
issue = {2},
pages = {187-194},
keywords = {contemporary, convict labour, economic and social policy, neoliberalism, punishment, social control, united states},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
2016
Zammit, William
Kissing the Gallows: A Cultural History of Crime, Torture and Punishment in Malta Book
2016.
Abstract | Tags: early modern history, malta, punishment
@book{nokey,
title = {Kissing the Gallows: A Cultural History of Crime, Torture and Punishment in Malta},
author = {William Zammit},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
abstract = {The first-ever in-depth academic study of crime and retribution in Malta during the early modern period discusses the primary sources available on the subject, the nature of crime, the judicial system and the ritual of public punishment in the context of current European practices. The book also records hundreds of crime cases of various types and that were reported to Rome by the Inquisitors of Malta, this given their spectacular nature. The publication was the result of ten years research in the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano and a variety of other archives in Malta and abroad.
},
keywords = {early modern history, malta, punishment},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {book}
}
The first-ever in-depth academic study of crime and retribution in Malta during the early modern period discusses the primary sources available on the subject, the nature of crime, the judicial system and the ritual of public punishment in the context of current European practices. The book also records hundreds of crime cases of various types and that were reported to Rome by the Inquisitors of Malta, this given their spectacular nature. The publication was the result of ten years research in the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano and a variety of other archives in Malta and abroad.